The High Cost Of That New Car Smell
By Eric Peters, Automotive Columnist
Turns out high quality and superb reliability are not such good things – for the car companies, anyhow.
The word is out that you don’t have to sign up for five (or six or seven) years of crushing monthly car payments — plus the insurance, plus the property taxes — on a brand-new car in order to drive a trouble-free, looks-like-new car. Because today’s used cars are that good.
Because today’s new cars are that good.
After a solid quarter century of really working at it, the automakers have achieved the Nearly Indestructible Car. The make/model hardly matters. Treated even semi-decently, most any car built after about model year 2000 can be counted on to go for 200,000 miles or more of mostly trouble-free driving. The best ones are barely broken in with 50,000 miles on the clock. Clutches that once burned up in three or four years now last 10 — or even the lifetime of the vehicle. Engines are built to such close tolerances and with such precision that they still feel as tight after eight or ten years of service as they did the day they were first fired up.
It is truly miraculous.
And you can buy such a four-wheeled miracle for half the price of a new one — and enjoy almost all of the perks of the new car with virtually none of the former downsides of buying used. (Ok, you may have to accept a stain on the carpet.)
It’s an ironic — and economically devastating Catch-22.
For years, Detroit especially was relentlessly hectored about new cars that began to smoke and use oil at 40,000 miles, paint that faded within three years of leaving the dealer’s lot and bodies that began to rust before the final payment was sent in.
Well, they fixed all that. Problem (for them) is they’ve undercut 90-plus percent of the reason for buying a new car.
And it’s showing.
Even before the economic implosion, new car sales were stagnating — while the number of used cars in circulation was increasing. Partly, this is because used cars just last and last and last.
Go back to the ’80s and before and it was fairly rare to see a car more than about ten years old still in service as a daily driver — because by then, most were unreliable junk and ready for the crusher.
Today, about a third of all the cars on the road are eight years old or older (according to AAA) and still going strong. Cars 12-15 years old with 150,000-plus miles are everywhere. And they still have plenty of life in them. Like the Energizer Bunny, they just run and run and run and run.
Is it any wonder that people are holding onto them? Especially these days, when any sane person not already a member of the plutocracy is being very careful about spending money they don’t absolutely have to?
The men and women inside the car industry know the situation — but how to fix it? They can’t very well start making crappy cars again. It would just give people yet another reason to hang onto Old Faithful indefinitely.
Making new cars a better deal, financially, would definitely help — but that, too, has become an impossibility. It’d be great if you could order a new car and skip the airbags, for example — and save yourself about $2,000 off the sticker price. But Uncle Sam won’t allow the automakers to do that. The government would rather see the automakers go bust than allow them to make economically sensible marketing (and engineering) changes to their products.
Localities that hammer new car buyers with confiscatory property taxes (which can be $1,000 or more every year for the first several years if the new car in question is a high-dollar one) aren’t going to ease off, either.
Neither will the insurance companies — which make the most money writing full-coverage policies on heavily leveraged new cars — not older, paid-for cars whose owners can choose a bare-bones liability-only policy and save themselves thousands of dollars.
So, there’s no good way out of this thing — not for the automakers, at least. The assembly lines could be turned off completely for the next ten years and it would have very little meaningful effect. Transportation would not be impeded; vast sums would be saved. Only that new car smell would be missing.
And for more and more of us, that’s just not worth paying full freight for anymore.
Comments?
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It is nice to see that Eric is still promoting unsafe driving and hoping for more fatalities on the roadway. He believes like NMA does that safety should be optional. Get rid of the airbags and kill a few more thousand people. How about seat belts? You could kill a few more thousand by making them optional also.
Damn right, Randy100! You tell 'em! Who needs freedom of choice and personal responsibility when we can simply count on the government to tell us what's right, and blame them when I drop hot coffee on my lap!
You know, if I fall down, I could get hurt… why aren't we telling people to wear helmets and pads all the time? Think of all the lives we could save!
For that matter, standing upright is dangerous… let's make it illegal! Everyone should have to roll on the floor to get around… hell, we already have an internet abbreviation for it: ROFL… and with the laughter, we'll all be happier to boot! It's WIN-WIN baby!
schwinn as usual you are a stupid idiot. The people that buy the cheapest cars and cheapest used cars are the very young drivers. You know, the ones that get in the most accidents and drive the fastest. You know, the ones you want killed.
Randy100,
Calling people names will not strengthen your position.
It may not strengthen my position but it is the truth. I do believe you and schwinn are actually the same person with two Ids.
Randy100,
Do you have any proof?
"It may not strengthen my position but it is the truth. I do believe you and schwinn (sic) are actually the same person with two Ids."
IMO, ideally people would buy the car that best met their needs.
Some people may not have sufficient funds to buy want they want and may have to settle for what they can afford.
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I NEVER EVER want to hear anyone from this organization say how low the death rate is now because if it was the way that NMA wants it there would be thousands of more deaths each year.
IMO, the simplest solution is to stop visiting the NMA website.
(Do you have any proof regarding this statement?) :-Þ
Yes M1THRAND1R I forgot that you have not learned to do any searches for information yourself.
The solution rather than not visit this site is to get the people to tell the truth although an impossible task.
Read the article below carefully because it answers a lot of your questions you have been asking: http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/safety/articles/…
Yes M1THRAND1R I forgot that you have not learned to do any searches for information yourself.
The solution rather than not visit this site is to get the people to tell the truth although an impossible task.
Read the article below carefully because it answers a lot of your questions you have been asking: http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/safety/articles/…
What about me? Am I them too?
I mean, am I *him* too?
Wait, no… Let's try "Am I me too?"
I was wrong the first time. Schwinn is not smart enough to have more than one ID.
Schwinn8 are you a libertarian? Because that's what it looks like. I applaud your views for the gov't to get the hell out of the way. Let the free market truly be free. Oh and what was that PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?! OMG we'll all die if we do that? After all our Parents are the gov't and we are all children that don't know how to run our own lives. Thank god the gov't is there to tell me that I MUST buy health insurance or I'll die or have massive debt!. Thank God the Gov't is there to tell us we need air bags and have to wear our seat belts. Cause after all who wants to wear a seat belt? I mean they are so uncomfortable and I love that adrenaline rush of not being strapped in cause I could die, but i can't do that because the gov't says it's unsafe. Thank god the gov't is there to tell us that illegal drugs are bad because they are illegal. I mean Marijuana, that devil drug, has never killed anyone. Thank god the gov't says I can't have any. Oh wait hold on, puff puff, cough cough. Thank god for the neighborhood weed dealer in the local highschool. Thank god the gov't is there to tell us to not to heroin or coke. Oh wait hold on. Doc my back really hurts, can you help me out. Thanks for the prescription for Oxycontin (synthetic heroin). Thank god the gov't is there to put red light cameras up cause after all people run them all the time on purpose because they love getting into accidents by running lights. We really do need a camera to make sure no runs a light again. Thank God the gov't is there to give us assistance when we are too poor or lazy to get a job. After all they will eventually get out of poverty right? Thank God the gov't is there to drive up the debt of the country to what is going on $14,000,000,000,000. Man I think if I had a debt that big I would have to file for bankruptcy. But no they think we need to spend more. We're going to spend our way out of the recession and the debt will go down right!?
Man thank god the Gov't is around because they have done such a great fucking job treating us like children and making us all go broke.
So what does the debt of our country have to do with you being too stupid to wear seatbelts and want no safety standards for cars. Drive a motorcycle and go for it. Make sure you find a state that does not require glasses or helmets.
I'm certainly not a democrat or republican. Libertarian is the closest I come to any known party, though there are some things I don't agree with them on.
I won't bother agreeing with your statements one at a time… mostly because they are what I agree with anyway. But I am all for personal responsibility.
Personally, I believe that anything ANYONE does shouldn't affect others… in other words, specific to driving, if you pull onto the highway, you should be driving such that you don't require the other people on the road to speed up, slow down, or move… you should be "invisible" to them.
Money issues cloud many such blanket-statements (no helmets, no seatbelts, for example… because when they are injured the hospitals still pay for their care, so the rest of society has to foot the bill in the end)… but I'm sure there are ways to mitigate that which are better than forcing everyone to follow yet another pointless law.
What's wrong with making airbags optional equipment? My little Geo Metro from 1993 is probably slightly safer than a motorcycle and yet it is still very popular to drive due to its economical factors.
gkisystems small cars can be very safe with the proper safety equipment and design. It is good that the governent is smart enough to make safety devices required because if they were not required many people would not buy them. Why? Most people say that only accidents occur to someone else. Why then are there thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries each year? Read my link above from Edmunds