Yeah if someone I knew was INSISTING on a brand-new car but had a modest budget, I’d tell them to go to Mazda or Hyundai. The only places right now where I feel like a base-trim car at the bottom of the lineup has ANY value proposition, but you’re also still in the $20k range nowadays.

BUT- you sorta proved my point by…

I think you’re missing my point...
I’m not arguing that people should buy 15 year old 150k shitboxes. Not arguing against it either, it’s just not related to my point.
I’m also not arguing that people shouldn’t buy new cars at all.

I’m arguing that the value proposition of an entry-level, base trim, budget car from the…

I think your math is a bit disingenuous- after delivery, dealer, and registration fees you’d be awfully tight trying to get a $17k car home for $300 a month with only $2k down. $350 is probably more realistic.

But if our price point was $17k, I’d still point someone towards a lease-return 2021 mid-trim Seltos or…

Other than the visibility and the ergonomics of the back seat, the ZDX is a truly wonderful car. It’s quirky and out-there, but it still drives great and is reliable as hell. And considering they made fewer of them than the original NSX, I’m really surprised there isn’t more of a cult following!

Absolutely- but I will say I don’t think we have to play the binary of “new car vs used >10 year old car that needs work” - My main point is that I think people could be in a car that doesn’t require much more work than a brand new car, but is nicer, better equipped, and better to drive than any base trim new car and…

And that works for some people! My dad is one of those people. He drove base-trim white Honda Accords from 1992 until 2018. Only two cars.

For me, at least- and for how I see and value cars -I would have rather paid the same money for a high-trim used Civic with a radio and more power and gotten even just 10 or 15…

There is a charm to the entry spec once it’s no longer a necessity. My friends and I always joke about each of us “50/50-ing” a car: Find the cheapest possible base trim lightly used car for $10k and put $10k of mods into it. What could we create? It would be fun.

Absolutely true, I fully agree- But I think people underestimate how reliable of a used vehicle they can get. Finding a nice, recent year, used car for the new-normal ~$20k entry for a new car is NOT a challenging prospect.

I really believe that, with a little bit of work and patience (which I absolute recognize is…

The gas is a fair point, but I got frustrated with my new-car-buying-options and threw my hands up in the air and went fully off the rails. I would stand by my point and just recommend people make a less ridiculous decision than I made.

The smart decision I ALMOST made before I fell in love with my stupid bubble-butt…

Since I bought mine functionally sight-unseen, I actually spent $2500 on the extended warranty, and whether or not the timing belt had ever been done was one of the things that wasn’t clear. Got it back to Arizona and I told my mechanic to tear the thing apart- if he couldn’t come up with at least $5k worth of shit to…

I’ve come to like the subtle, slightly blobby styling on the Air...
But this just looks like a Lincoln Corsair and a Chrysler Pacifica had a baby they’d rather forget about.

I’ll take some heat for this, probably, but brand new examples of base-trim budget sedans/hatches. Nissans jump to mind, but probably because they’re particularly common in my neck of the woods.

It screams “I wanted a new car but I can’t afford one and my pride wouldn’t let me just buy a decent, reliable, lightly-used…

If I were Rivian or Tesla or whatever, I would include the AM radio hardware with only basic shielding. I’d bury it away in the UI somewhere under a toggle for “Emergency Radio” and have the vehicle automatically enter a limp-state that keeps power below the interference threshold when the user requests the emergency…

Don’t worry, it wont.

Okay but, again- the ENTIRE Russian car market is about as big as California, not the realistically available market share to the EU and the US. And that’s just based on sales volume, not value of each sale. The average new car price is 10-20% higher in the US and EU than in Russia, and even higher than that in…

“Even if the market is the size of California, any car manufacturer will die for such.” - The ENTIRE Russian market is the size of California. It’s a fucking fever dream to think that US car brands could ever even achieve EQUAL market share to Russian, Chinese, and European brands in Russia, so the feasible market cap…

In 2021 there were about 1.5M reported new car sales in Russia, but in 2022 that number dropped by nearly 60% to about 0.6M new car sales.

This makes the entire Russian market fall somewhere between Pennsylvania and California in terms of yearly new car sales.

Of the ~$13B in non-Russian cars they imported in 2021 (in…

I mean, they’re losing $10k-$40k per car depending on who you believe and which method of calculation you agree with. If they were selling through a dealer network you’d NEVER be able to get one for less than $100k, so right now there’s not a lot of negotiation because the prices are, by all rights, already better…

I bought an R1T. Pretty much your only negotiation, if you’re financing, is Rivian’s finance partner vs shopping around for your own loan.

And by “negotiation” I mean that you can say “well I have a bank that will give me X.XX% with only $YYk down” and they’ll go “sick! Sounds like you should go with them!”

See when I read “pump switching” I thought this was the old trick where the pump you take is actually the pump for the other side, so the pump you swiped your card for is actually in the car across from you, pumping gas against your card, while you start pumping gas against whatever paltry $5 the other person pre-paid…