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EDIT: A fellow in central Indiana on the Studebaker Drivers' Club website just in the past two weeks paid $954, including water pump and tensioners. He said "the book" said 5.8 hours labor but the tech took fully ten hours--and he said he had done ten or twelve of them on PT's before. The independent shop stuck to its original estimate and said the 5.8 number is a pipe dream. The owner of the PT is a regular customer of that shop. Like me, the PT is his daughter's car.
Someone here had tried to tell me how "thrashy" they thought the engines were, then later copped to admitting he had never even ridden in one yet driven one.
The PT's 2.4 is notably rougher at idle and noisier at acceleration. That said, the seating position is more comfortable I think and it swallows a lot of college luggage. The turning circle is larger than the Cobalt and the gas mileage is worse, though. Still, it has been a good car for the price paid and my daughter has put over 52K miles on it in not-quite six years.
I do look forward to buying another hobby old car, when daughter no. 2 is done with school.
The worst seat in my bottom-feeder Cobalt is the right front, as it is low to the floor and adjusts only back and forth, and reclines (of course). The driver's seat adjusts up and down (tilt), thankfully. I do love the satellite radio, which is built-in. Of course, I pay for the service but I love it. The only options I specified were body side moldings, floor mats, and ABS.
Speaking of side moldings--is it only GM, or is everybody else no longer offering protective side moldings, even as an option? Looking at the new Malibu, and it couldn't be flatter or plainer down the side. I doubt I could own one for a week without parking lot rash.
I miss side moldings, metal door-edge guards, and metal bumpers with protective rubber strips and bumper guards. There I go, being an anachronism again.
Uplander, I feel your pain! I think side moldings are rare these days. And of course they've often been body color, which means that they aren't protecting anything if they can be chipped. I usually try to park (especially my right door since there is always a driver in a car on the right) either with no space on my right, or on the left side of a space so that the right door is lowered in risk of a ding.
Bulbs are getting up there - you can easily pay over $1,000 to replace an LED headlight nowadays. So instead of messing around with the bumper and all the other parts, just give me a front clip that really does clip on and send the old one back to Omaha for refurbishing and reuse. Ten minutes and I'm back on the road.
But in this surge, some automakers are increasing sales by counting new cars bought by their own dealers as sold, raising questions about whether some segments of the auto industry — a pillar of the nation’s halting economic recovery — are as healthy as they appear.
Kia, BMW and Nissan have all encouraged their dealers to buy cars themselves and then offer the vehicles as used models, sometimes with only a few miles on the odometer, internal company memos to dealers show."
A Dance Between Dealer and Carmaker on Lifting Sales (NY Times)
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2015 Subaru Outback 3.6R / 2024 Kia Sportage Hybrid SX Prestige
This isn't a great practice because the customer will see two cars side by side, in different colors, both 2015s, but one will have a $2000 discount, since it has a few miles and maybe 3 months' less warranty. So the customer wants the brand-new car in the color he likes to carry the same discount as the other one.
How to get a used car for a fair price? Why are they all overpriced?
What about BMWs? Would the "used" ones not qualify for that free service for the first three or four years?
Automakers Miss March Sales in Sign Rapid-Growth Era Ending (Bloomberg)
QUIZ: What is the average amount today of a new car loan?
QUESTION 2: What percentage of auto loans today are 6 and 7 years?
76%?
But you may be right - got job growth and the DOW is pushing 18,000 again. Even Las Cruces has a boom feel to it and this is a poor state.
NOOOO, 76% would be crazy percentage for 72 and 84 month loans (thankfully). But it's about 33%.
I thought it was just me and three other guys who paid cash for cars.
Now how many of you have ever paid cash for a house? The house I'm in now, purchased in May of 2011 as a Hud foreclosure, I pulled the money from my 401k and paid cash. Fourth house I have bought over the course of my long life. Amazing difference when you pay cash, you would not believe how simple and cheap the closing can be. "Death to mortgage companies" is all I can say.
I can get pre-approved for an auto loan in the amount of $50,000 over the course of one morning at my credit union. This at 1.59%, for 72 months. The other credit union I belong to is a little slower, takes one to two days for pre-approval, and they charge 1.99%, but they go out to 84 months.
Now $50,000 for 72 months at 1.59% would amount to about $728 per month, a very affordable house payment. But you can’t do that. I talked to the lady who runs my credit union about this, and she is as frustrated about it as I am. She believes absolutely that a home loan like this would be much more secure than an equivalent loan on a new car. But that isn’t permitted. The mortgage industry long ago “bought” laws protecting them from competition, and now …
Kinda reminds me of what Tesla is going through right now, with all of the laws protecting car dealerships.
The best deal I could find on a mortgage was 15 years at somewhere over 3% interest, with closing costs of over $3,800. Really? Over $3,800? This makes the “doc fee” on a new car purchase look paltry, doesn’t it? And it pretty much amounts to the same thing, profit.
So I pulled the money from my 401k. Unbelievably easy to close on a house when you pay cash. Walked in with a cashier’s check, signed my name twice (that’s right, twice), and left in less than 10 minutes.
I did not pay for title insurance. I was buying the house from the federal government (HUD), I doubted they were ripping me off. I did not pay for an inspection, my brother and a good friend of mine went over the house very carefully. I’m fully confident they did a better inspection than a “professional” would have done. And I did not pay for a survey. The house was built and sold in 2006, with the federal government guaranteeing the mortgage. What are the odds that the property lines were off? Pretty slim, I would say.
With property having gone up lately, I can see how people mainly just overlook these exorbitantly high fees and charges. When property values go down, I can see how the house of cards easily fails as it is better to just "walk away" than pay all these fees! Of course, putting 20% down will keep most from walking away, but they are still doing 0% down loans for people out there.
On the buying side my closing costs were actually reasonable given the "credit" on loan fees I got with my rate that essentially made it "free." I shopped my purchase loan rate and costs around several banks to make them compete. Appraisal was waived, but get this, there's like a $150 waiver fee to avoid the $450 appraisal fee. Aside from small houses in CA costing a fortune, my other main expense is property tax on that house that costs a small fortune.
As is obvious, I don't buy expensive vehicles--even the new ones.
Since my original post on this subject, I have received an offer on a property which has been on the market for nearly 9 months (soft housing market here in Houston due to falling oil prices, etc, etc). The buyers have pre-approved credit, and offered to pay the asking price (which has been dropped twice over the course of time), if I would pay $6,000 of the closing costs. I had to stop and think, but I would have accepted an offer of $6k less than asking, so why not? The contract (what I have seen so far) says something like "up to the first $6,000 of the closing costs". I asked my realtor, and he said, "Yeah, expect to be out $6k."
Which makes me wonder what the total closing costs will be.
If I go to the Edmunds Car Finder and click on 2016 models, I get 517 hits.
If you consider the Kia Rio sedan to be the "same" car as the Kia Rio hatchback, then that would whack the overall number of separate cars down quite a lot.
Now I do have friends out in the country and their options are limited and internet service is poor. Using data over a mobile phone is their best option.
It won't be long until you won't be able to get your car updated overnight while you sleep unless you have "fast enough" bandwidth. Guess I can go park at McDonalds and force the update.
Analysts anticipate the industry to have sold more than 1.51 million car and trucks last month, a roughly 4 percent increase from a year ago that would top the April sales record of just over 1.5 million in 2005."
Fooled me - I thought sales would be easing this year.
GM down 3.5%; FCA, Ford report modest gains in sales (USA Today)
25% of auto loans are extending 6-7 years, and some are going 8. Average loan is 5.5 years, highest ever.
What exactly do they mean by "daily rentals"? Are they talking about fleet sales to Hertz, or something else entirely?
NASA's budget --- approx $19 billion.
Evidently that's a good thing in this case. GM is chasing margins, not market share.