Cash increases in the market?

When you’re considering buying a car, what assets do you consider something you could draw on to buy that car?

The cash in your wallet?
The money in your checking account?
How about money in your savings accounts?
Maybe you saved for it in CDs?

Why do I bring this up? Because the Fed boosted…

Right - that’s why I labeled their aviation business a failure. At least they got a sweet test track out of it in the end, I guess...

Agreed.

Being that they’re in a bit broader of a business than GM (though we shouldn’t forget about GM’s subsidiaries), they could arguably grow to be larger and more valuable. But they’ve picked absolutely brutal industries to get involved in (solar and batteries) outside of cars.

At this point, it’s not that…

Perhaps that is because every side business Ford has gotten into over the years (rental cars, HVAC systems, repair shops, bicycles, real estate, aviation, etc) has generally been a failure. Some companies are simply better at focusing on a core mission. If, as a shareholder, you want cars+airplanes, you’re better off…

Actually, they didn’t pull a profit - they used non-GAAP methods to claim a profit in a couple quarters, but they have never made a profit on a full year basis using GAAP.

Right - but Google at $75 a share had a market cap of $23 billion, revenues of $2.7B and a P/E of 80, along with showing promise for growth - they were growing at a strong clip for revenues and keeping margins up, and they were opening up new markets for new products.

Technically, since a correction would be a 10% drop, I’d agree that one is due.

And yes, a return to higher interest rates by itself might seem to necessitate a drop in stock prices, as investors want a fairly steady risk premium vs. the risk free rate, and a higher return would mean a lower price, everything else…

If you wanted space, you’d get a Sienna, not a Highlander.

Not likely. Many, if not most, of these crossovers have less space than the sedans they share a platform with.

14% isn’t generally deep subprime. 20%+ is.

But at 14% interest, you’d break even if first year depreciation is 22.5% of original sales price if you’re talking a 7 year loan. VERY few vehicles depreciate that badly anymore. At 20% interest, you can have 26.65% first year depreciation. And the longer the loan, the…

This is exactly what people are missing in the subprime auto loan freakout.

Those of us who qualify for prime loans are sitting around thinking people are paying 3-4% interest. But these subprimes are being charged sky-high rates that change all the math around.

Except that the interest rate on a subprime auto loan is ludicrously high. Interest+principal on these loans generally exceeds depreciation after 6-9 months, NOT 5 years.

I’ve wanted to do that with a stream of lysol, not water, after a kid threw up in the car...

(but I knew better)...

Often the factory manual methods are screwed up, but looking at the Highlander, I don’t see how you replace the water pump without removing the engine - they simply haven’t given enough space to do the job.

The old 97 Taurus I had was chock full of unnecessary procedures for replacement in its manual. Take the front…

It’s more efficient this way.

A 50 year old woman isn’t likely to need maternity coverage, but a 25 year old woman isn’t likely to need cardiac care.

So what you do is create a comprehensive set of benefits that everyone can use, likely or not, and the rates are set by what the odds of needing that care are at your…

The Sienna does have a significantly shorter book time with the same engine, but still at 10 hours - book method for that vehicle doesn’t call for removing the engine, just removing mounts and supporting it.

So it seems like access is a bigger PITA yet with the Highlander than with the Sienna.

What kills me is that prior to the 2008 MY, replacing the water pump on a V6 Highlander was 3.1 hours and only 1.3 on the I4. It’s like the purposefully decided for 2008 to fudge up the design as badly as they could.

Nothing like coming up with a design that takes a part that is likely to need replacement at some point…

Meh.

The heater core on an old Taurus could be removed pretty easily if you just cut off a bracket used in the installation of the dash - that eliminates the need to pull the entire dash, and cuts the job to about an hour and a half.

That’s nothing compared to the Toyota Highlander V6 water pump I posted - which takes…

And a close second: Front timing cover gasket on a Toyota Highlander with a V6 and a/c

Time to replace the gasket:
2WD: 19 hours
4WD: 19.6 hours
Hybrid: 22.7 hours

Water pump on a Toyota Highlander with air conditioning and a V6.

Step 1, according to the Chilton’s manual : Remove engine and transaxle assembly.

Total estimated labor time? About 18 hours.