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Jeffreyg, that's the type of reasoning I used over the summer when I needed to get a new gas tank for my truck. It ended up costing something like $885 with labor and everything, but I figured it beat the hell out of a monthly payment! One thing I did though, was have the mechanic give me an honest assessment of the truck first. He said the frame and suspension and everything still seemed solid, and the rust on the cab is still pretty superficial. Engine and tranny are still solid, too. So I decided to bite the bullet and get the work done.
Amen to that. Sure there are good used cars (I haven't been taught to say preowned yet)out there, but they don't give em away. With 6% 5 year financing and price wars going on I prefer brand spanking new. No mystery as to what you're getting yourself into. I want to go 4-5 years with only oil, tires & brake pads required and then sell it. The Japanese cars seem to handle this order well.
If i had a little time, i'd look into euro-delivering a 330i or a s60R (~35K in either case) , or maybe if i met a few of my personal goals, treat myself with a boxster or z4.
dave
I will take the bait.
1) If I can buy a vehicle with about 50k miles for about $6-8 with an original acquisition price of $20k (my normal targets), I can bank the rest for any potential repairs.
2) If I buy a used car, I don't need to finance the vehicle and pay the finance co. a lot of money.
3) I buy most of my vehicles from corporate fleets (and often from my own). Therefore, I have a complete record of service which is fully documented down to the oil changes.
4) I have two mechanics that love to come with me, look at the cars, and on occasion, even negotiate the deals for me. And they are real good negotiators, even better than I am, as hard as it is to admit.
I generally take the car to 150k miles and sell it to one of my employees for $500.
If I spend all that money for a NEW car, that is money that is gone forever. Personally, in the 25 years I have owned vehicles, I have never spent more than $700 on a single repair.
That is my method but there are others that work well for others.
Oh, one more thing. When car deals are "great" for NEW cars, it tends to flood the market with USED cars.
The game was steered towards a Pittsburgh victory and it was rigged. Bought off. Illegally.
The NFL is a league missing integrity.
The Seahawks were the better team by a longshot and somebody needed to win more cash than they already had. So they rigged the game. I'm serious. It was obvious.
There will be an evening up of that mistake.
In the meantime, the best car to buy is a Kia, which is made by Kia Motors of South Korea.
Oh, did you know the best students in the world are from a nation called South Korea? It's true, and you know that at least some of those bright students go to work for Kia Motors of South Korea.
Rock to some crisp Foghat or Guess Who and enjoy spending that bought-off victory betting money, dudes.
Yeeeeeee-haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!
2021 Kia Soul LX 6-speed stick
Probably. Look, I have a friend who bought a 1992 Toyota Camry. He buys ONLY new cars and holds them forever. In 2000, he started putting money in a mutual fund - $300 a month to buy a new one. The car is up to 160k, his mutual fund just passed $40k, and his vehicle keeps chugging along (except for the oil leak which he left in MY garage).
He says he is leaning toward a Lexus, but he'll eventally buy a Toyota Corolla (which is the same size as his current Camry).
I keep hearing bad things about the Altima ... I would check that out before buying.
Seattle must have some great vineyards. Because for the last week, it has been the land of whine ... and whine ... and whine ...
Right now Hyundai have the best cars on the market with the best warranty, roadside assistance and price but things may change when the Chinese come out with their cars.
Honda seems to have forgotten its customers if it doesn't pick up quick it will be in trouble.
-somebody is smart. You "get it" pal. I said in a earlier comment that the typical foreign car buyer is looking for the best priced car with warranty and service on the market. Hyundai is closing the gap on Honda and Toyota really fast and I believe the Chinese and India in 5 years will be right there.
I'm not just saying that to be a smart [non-permissible content removed]. I mean it. How are the Japanese going to compete against them ????? GM, Ford, Chrysler have buyer loyalist while a foreign car buyer might buy an accord one year and in 3 years buy a camary since it's a improvement. Now he/she might buy a Hyundai Sonata since it is the best deal on the market.
- Am I on to something ????
Rocky
I don't think you're on tho something other than what is already known. Millions of people wouldn't dream of buying a Korean car, or even a Japanese car. Just not in 'em.
The Chinese and Indian cars will get bashed huge, kinda like Hyundai and Kia is now. Maybe it'll wear off, but I doubt people in this country will flat out accept something cause its cheaper. That's Hyundai/Kia's selling point. If they were priced the same as a CamCord nobody would buy 'em, unless, of course, stockmanjoe.
Ain't capatalism great !!!!!! :P
Rocky
Azera a poor man's S-class? I think that's somewhat delusional.
2 different personalities. I'll explain briefly:
Friends who buy foreign cars:
Look for best car in that segment.
Factor in price, resale, gas milage, quality, consumer reports and biased car mag editors opinions.
Mostly college degree buisness/service/professional employees with middle to upper middle incomes.
Friends who buy American cars:
Want automobile that has good performance and styling and is american made. Feel they are patriotic, some ex-military, The car was cheaper do to promotion, local dealerships had Big 3 brands for ease of service,
Some are college educated, most are blue collar workers, farmers, some service industry. Buy the brand because that's what his/hers family has always baughten.
Lower middle to middle incomes. A few upper middle.
Rocky
That's what a editor from Motor Trend was quoted in an article. I however agree with you fintail
Rocky
Maybe the mall folks?
Friends who buy American cars
Maybe the Wal-Mart crowd?
Good one pal.
Rocky
- Am I on to something ????"
I think it's more likely that you are on something, rather than onto something.
GM, Ford and Chrysler are all losing market share. They started losing it in the 70's to Honda and Toyota at the lower end of the price range. Now, just when Honda/Acura, Toyota/Lexus, Nissan/infiniti, etc have moved into the middle, upper middle and upper price segments, in comes Hyundai and Kia to offer new competition at the lower price points.
And you think this is good for the not-so Big Three? Wow, what a wild extrapolation, apparantly based upon the assumption that the loyal "buy American" segment will ignore these new offerings.
Perhaps there are some loyalists that will stubornly stick with American cars. But by your own demographic analysis, they are a diminishing market segment. If the survival - let alone the viability - of the Big Three depends upon the loyal lower middle class, how can you remotely call that a good thing??
In my opinion, if any American car company is going to SUCCEED in the future, it needs to WIN back middle, upper middle and upper class, college educated consumers who are NOT "buy American" loyalists. They need to do it by designing and building far better products that appeal to this (growing) demographic. Not by some voodoo wishful strategic mis-thinking that even more competiton will benefit the big Three and hurt Honda and Toyota.
May I remind you. Honda and Toyota know how to compete, and win. The Smaller Three don't.
BTW he's a computer engineer. I'm trying to convince him to buy a Big 3 car. But it's not likely to happen.
Rocky
P.S. Last time I checked GM was #1 in January at 25% market share :P
Last time I checked, Porsche made a few billion more than GM. As a matter of fact, Porsche made more profit on selling me ONE 911 than GM did from their 25% market share. :P :P
habitat1, I'm not saying it's going to play out this way for sure. I do however believe strongly in the possibility of a asian car war that is competing for the same buyers in the largest segments. Your not going to see a Hyundai SRT-8 anytime soon.
Rocky
Rocky
One more question ? How is it that Porsche has been able to make the same boring designed cars for the last 25 years and it get's called marvelous (911) ?????????????????????????
Rocky
No. Porsche is essentially a privately held company controlled by the Porsche and Piech families.
link title
"GM has enough cash in their coffers to right a check for Porsche."
I think you meant "write a check" and GM couldn't afford to buy a base Boxster after they first paid off their legacy health care and pension costs with that coffer money.
"How is it that Porsche has been able to make the same boring designed cars for the last 25 years and it get's called marvelous (911)"
Actually, it's closer to 35 years, I believe. Why don't you try driving one? And if you don't get it, that's fine. I could have just as easily substituted my former Honda S2000 into that profit comparison equation.
Lamborghini I guess has kinda joined the Porsche crowd until recently.
Rocky
Boy, you are just an endless flow of inaccuracies tonight. Go back to the Porsche link and check out their financials. Porsche spends more on R&D as a percentage of sales than ANY other major car manufacturer on the planet. And that does NOT include expenditures for their racing teams.
And the state of the art Corvette still uses pushrod engines.
Again, this isn't about why Porsche is so profitable, but why GM isn't. And I think if you cooled off and stepped back, you might see some merit in my suggestion that appealing to and winning back my demographic would help the Big Three a lot more than wishfully hoping for foreign competiton to beat up each other.
What's wrong with buying a car you trust? Trust seems to be what a consumer values most. Trust, relates to dependability. Many of the Honda and Toyota owners, are past owners of the domestics. Some of these past buyers have been literally burned by the domestics. What company did they turn to? Toyota and Honda. At that time, Honda and Toyota were starting to offer dependable vehicles. Vehicles that can last long, that will give you little or no trouble. This is when Toyota and Honda started to earn the trust. Trust lead to repeated buys.
These stereotypical foreign buyers are simply buying a brand that they trust. Many of these buyers don't want to take another risk that may result in a repeat of their experience with the domestics.
Toyota and Honda are still offering good products.
Oh yeah, my next car (second car) may be:
Mazda3, Honda Civic or Hyundai Sonata
I'm deciding between whether I want a sporty compact, or another family sedan.
I'm the oddball in the group - I'm on my 2nd Mercury Grand Marquis, and I do all my own maintenance, other than I decided not to kill myself replacing lower ball joints on my old 94.
I buy them 2-3 years old previously owned by elderly people (currently drive an 02 LSE), and run them until I get the itch for a newer one. Damn fine vehicle - will buy one more before Ford does something stupid and replace it with some unibody crackerbox design.
In the realm of Accords and Camries, maybe you only have to be the best for 10 years, and famous people don't have to drive them, to convince people to try them out.
Image comes by being the best for a long time. Apparently you don't agree on what's best in a car, but c'mon, you gotta admit your coworkers cars are very different from yours, and a lot of people prefer that other feel. If your car and their cars traded badges, they'd still prefer their cars.
Buying something with the best image generally does get you the best product. Of course, it might be the best in an aspect that's useless to you...
This is kinda like the SUVers who thought that was what they needed, and then came to realize what they got themselves into, and are now taking a bath to get out of these behemoths. A minivan could have served their purposes so much better, but the big SUV that towers over your car is a power trip to many, even tho they can't manuever 'em in parking lots.
But image is what was purchased.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
-- Survey participants rated from 0 to 100 the importance of various factors in selecting a new vehicle. The average new-vehicle customer considers "Made in the U.S./Canada" (43) less important than most of the other factors typically considered decisive in selecting a vehicle: e.g., reliability (93), safety (85), price (76), styling (70).
-- One-sixth of the survey participants considered "Made in the U.S./Canada" critically important (100 rating) for their new vehicle and, more generally, always try to "buy American" when they go to a store.
So there you go: people want a reliable, "safe" car first and foremost. Price and styling are also factors, but not quite as important as reliability or safety.
Seven years ago, "buying American" was relatively unimportant to most people, not just college graduates and yuppies. I would bet that the number of those who prioritize buying American has declined since this survey wwas conducted.
If the Big 2.5 want to sell more passenger cars to the average consumer, rather than simply dominating the truck and fleet markets, then they need to prove to Joe Sixpack that their cars are consistently reliable.
Rather than build the occasional reliable Cadillac and Buick (read: old guy's cars, a demographic that is aging and shrinking), reliability needs to be a priority within the bread-and-butter mid- and small-sized segments in order to challenge the Accord, Camry, Corolla and Civic.
Instead, we find that the most recent Consumer Reports survey of small cars puts the Civic and Corolla at CR's highest tier ("much better than average"), while the Focus is merely "average" and the Cobalt is at the bottom of the pile as being "much worse than average".
Why should anyone in his right mind buy a car that has "much worse than average" reliability when reliability is his highest priority? Only a misguided faux-patriot who believes in corporate welfare could support that. Since the average consumer isn't in that camp, we know where this is going...
Rocky
How can you call somebody who buys domestic cars a faux patriot ???? I do believe the playing field should be equal. Don't you ???
How is domestic automotive and domestic manufactoring going to compete with child slave labor. The big corporate cowards export the buisness to Malaysia and the plant managers beat there workers on the assembly line. After one drops they beat another one into his place :sick: I guess I'd rather have faux-patriotism, then faux-morales.
Rocky
Is there something that prevents the Big 2.5 from engineering a better car that serves customer needs? I must have missed the memo that informed GM engineers that their mission was to design a car such as the Cobalt that would prove to be inferior right out of the gate.
How is domestic automotive and domestic manufactoring going to compete with child slave labor.
Is Honda using slave labor to build cars in Ohio? Is Kentucky using whips and chains to build Camrys in Kentucky?
And aren't both of these companies paying their American workers more than Ford is to its workers at the Fusion plant in Hermosillo, Mexico?
Do you know for a fact that Honda/Toyota employ child slave labor? References please?
How about competing with the Camry produced at Kentucky? Or with the Accord produced at Ohio? I have visited the Kentucky factory and did not see any children working. In fact, labor is so expensive in Japan that it is actually cheaper for Japanese firms to produce cars in the US, some of which are exported back to Japan.
I understand that Japanese markets may not be as open as US markets but that is no excuse for producing sub-standard cars in the US.
Yes when you have more expenses than your competitor, your already a step back because of the price point.
I must have missed the memo that informed GM engineers that their mission was to design a car such as the Cobalt that would prove to be inferior right out of the gate.
-Alot dumb people buying those inferior Cobalts. How dare they.
Is Honda using slave labor to build cars in Ohio? Is Kentucky using whips and chains to build Camrys in Kentucky?
My god it's damn close. The physical skills test my good friend took in San Antonio, he said was the hardest thing he ever had to do. They told him you will be doing work like this for sometimes 12 or more hours.
And aren't both of these companies paying their American workers more than Ford is to its workers at the Fusion plant in Hermosillo, Mexico?
Yes you are absolutely correct.
- Q to U :-Isn't Ford paying their workers more in Dearborn, than Toyota is in Tijuana, Mexico plant where Toyota makes the "inferior" <-
Rocky
References are by former employees interviewed with the UAW/IUE doing interviews with workers that collapsed or were fired.
-I was going to put in for a Job at Toyota until I heard the horror story's from my father and others.
Rocky
Interesting -- if Ford and GM are such victims of their cost structures, where did they previously find the funds to invest in Mazda and Fiat, and to acquire Saab, Volvo, Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Land Rover? Perhaps you should compare this to Toyota and Honda's (lack of) acquisitions track record, and consider whether the Big 2 chose the best growth strategy.
Alot dumb people buying those inferior Cobalts. How dare they
Many of these "people" are actually fleet buyers, such as rental car companies. If you removed fleet sales from the equation, you'd see that Impalas and Cobalts lag further in popularity than they already do.
Isn't Ford paying their workers more in Dearborn, than Toyota is in Tijuana, Mexico plant where Toyota makes the "inferior" ) Tacoma ????
Convenient for you to forget that most Tacomas are built at the GM-NUMMI plant in California and in Indiana, and that an additional plant is to be built in Texas. Meanwhile, we all know that the Big 2.5 are firing far more Americans than they are hiring.
Businesses that put themselves in that position... die. It's natural, and I don't see the value in fighting against that.
GM is doomed to an eventual trip to US Bankruptcy Court in the next decade. For 25 years, they have had an unsustainable business plan which will NOT work with their rapidly declining market share.
Toyota produces vehicles with fewer hours of engineering and fewer months of development time with fewer defects while investing less capital and making customers happier.
GM has for years tried to cover its lack of productivity on the backs of its suppliers. As more and more of the suppliers are in Chapter 11, this is no longer sustainable.
As a GM customer (and a fleet manager), getting drivers to select a GM vehicle - when they have a choice - is highly unlikely. The designs are generally so dated that people prefer to spend a few extra $$$ and select a Toyota, Ford, etc.
The Texas plant is going to be Tundra only from what I've heard. The Big 3 still employee a far greater number of Americans than all the Asians/Koreans combined. Ford is currently working with the UAW to help the american workforce out with a buy out.
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060207/AUTO01/602070418/1148- /AUTO01
When this happens to the U.S. HOYOTA because of the Korean(HYUNDAI mainly), Chinese, India, invasion will the "Hoyota" workforce going to get a buy out or severance package with money for schooling when they lose their jobs within the next 20 years ????? - I think you already know the answer to that one.
Yes it's been a sad year for the Big 3 and all it's employees both management and blue collar whom used to make good money and had secure jobs. We can put the blame on the unions and management.
The fact is the American workforce has proven it can compete with the foreign competition when their is a level playing field.
Rocky
Rocky
You have yet to show that the playing field isn't level.
You seem to believe that Honda and Toyota somehow "got lucky" or didn't earn their success. Has it occurred to you that each company builds a consistently and predictably reliable, reasonably priced product (i.e. what Joe Sixpack wants), and that the Big 2.5 would have never been this vulnerable had they bothered to do the same?
#2 If a toyota employee whispers union they are automatically fired. That has happened to some of the employees the UAW has interviewed. So Toyota is basically breaking U.S. law by not allowing the workforce the right to organize a labor union. If the UAW or IUE were allowed to organize the workforce in the Hoyota plants then it would be a much more level playing field.
Mazda has a union labor workforce building the Mazda 6 in 2 plants in the U.S.
Toyota has one organized UAW plant which builds the Tacoma in California. However Toyota went to Tijuna Mx. to eventually make the majority of the Tacomas in Mexico if the UAW asks for better compensation.
Rocky
What does that have to do with the Big 2.5 losing market share in the US? How does that explain why Americans prefer Honda Civics to the Ford Focus?
Had it not been for the voluntary quotas that restricted imports during the 1980's, Detroit and Dearborn would probably have even less market share.
In any case, do you honestly believe that large fuel-inefficient US vehicles that barely fit on Japanese roads would sell well in Japan? If we won't buy them, what makes you think they would?
My guess is that he means well, but has taken to spewing out false accusations with no merit, because the real facts don't support his position.
I almost want to be able to say to the Big 2.5, "Look, fix the problems with your products and make them more appealing to my (upper middle class, quality oriented, driving enthusiast) tastes and I will do my part and give them fair competitive consideration".
But when I see guys like Rocky, unwilling to accept and admit that the problem resides here at home and not with an unlevel playing field, child labor and Porsche getting a free ride on R&D, I am tempted say "The hell with it, let the Big 2.5 become the Big 0". I am providing for my family by working my [non-permissible content removed] off. I am not going to support someone else's by buying an inferior Big 2.5 product when they don't want to be serious about looking in the mirror to fix the problems.
Rocky, here's a quiz. Tell us what the actual tariff rate is on U.S. autos being imported to Japan?
Not all the big 3 cars are inferior. Some might seem that way and I will agree they aren't particularly competitive. example: Pontiac Grand Prix Vs. Lexus IS 350 or BMW 330i.
I could see why anyone would rather own a Bimmer over the Pontiac Grand Prix(no brainer). It's (BMW) an all around better car.
However if you take the Buick Lucerne against the Toyota Avalon or Lexus ES then I do have a arguement against you on which one is the better car. Especially in top trim.
Rocky