While I think Hackett inherited a lot of Ford’s problems, it’s hard to see how “we’re not selling cars in the US anymore” was supposed to look like anything but a surrender. Crossovers aren’t as popular in the rest of the world as they are here, and even if Ford is still selling cars in other countries, it means the…

But it is about customer choice. Think about buying a car: Some people can only afford a small, cheap car, and some can afford a giant luxury vehicle, but even if you’ve settled on a car, there’s a lot of options that can significantly affect the customer experience (everything from engine choice, safety features,…

Why’s that sickening? Some people just want to get to some place as cheaply as possible - say you’ve got a family of 4 and tickets are now $50 cheaper, that’s $200 you save on flying to a vacation destination - a pretty decent meal out for the family.

That would be OK, except that the Trump admin is obviously trying to do the opposite: Destroying the states’ ability to set their own standards, thereby forcing them to accept the less-stringent federal standards.

Neutral: The cost of developing a car and bringing it to market have gone up significantly in the past 30 years and will keep on going up, and the US is becoming a smaller and less-significant share of the global market for cars as countries around the world develop.

Time and time again, when customers have been given the choice between flying cheaper with a little less room or more expensively with more room, most choose cheaper. So yes, there are customers who would rather be packed in than spending more money on a ticket.

This guy gets everything absolutely right. The one thing he misses is that amber lights matter a great deal for pedestrians, especially in areas where all driver might not universally obey pedestrian cross walks (which is everywhere I’ve ever been): A pedestrian trying to cross in front of a car can clearly see if…

You think that the designers were sitting at a conference table, arguing over “A” or “B” taillight design for hours, going over aesthetic merits, usability, costs, and every minute detail, and then a PHB-type exec walks in, asks for an update, sees the two designs, and says “let’s just do both” before continuing on to…

Yeah, I wish the best and I’m hoping that they’re able to leverage their new partnership to get back into having a fuller portfolio for sale here.

Yeah, but they could double their marketshare and be a rounding error for Honda sales in the country.  Don’t get me wrong, I like that they sell the cheapest car in America, and I think their CUVs are unnecessarily demeaned considering that they’re clearly better than some other entries in the same price range (like a…

THOSE RED DIALS.

Yeah, absolutely. On top of everything else, insurance companies are, in my experience, very bad about explaining coverage, either before or after you’ve purchased.

Hub caps show its a base model which sold for just under $16k new.

Right - we don’t know the loan details, obviously, but it’s pretty hard to see how she’d have been that under water using standard auto loans (whether new or used). KBB lists the fair market range for a base soul as $6,700 to $8200, and it’s very hard to see how the car, which was like $16k new, would still have a…

Came here to say this and I’m glad someone beat me to it.  Hyundai/Kia really hide that in the fine print.  Most of their lineups are pretty affordable, and I’d bet a lot of buyers cross-shop new Kias with say, used cars (Kia and other makes), but it’s an important factor to consider.

That really depends on someone’s financial situation and willingness to take on risk themselves. Now, it seems this car was given to a teenager, which increases the chances that it’d be in an accident, so I’d have thought gap coverage would be a good way to manage the risk.

We don’t know if she can or can’t afford the car. Cars in general are much more reliable than they were a few decades ago, and so there’s no reason to expect that a new car you buy today (or bought in 2012) shouldn’t be on the road in 10 years, unless you put a crazy number of miles on it. That means you can “afford”…

right, in a way, the shocking thing is that Trump has gotten away without caring about the “appearance of impropriety:” Not releasing tax returns, saying he will “step back” from the business with his name on it. Previous Presidents put assets in a blind trust, in part so that they couldn’t be aware whether a specific…

Exactly. There also isn’t a specific law saying “no collusion,” and the probe isn’t about collusion per se, it’s about Russian interference into the election.

It’s been really impressive how Mueller has seemingly been both so methodical and so swift moving; there’ve been a lot of indictments very quickly all things considered.