It's not a fair comparison. These cars could never pass current emissions or safety standards and you wouldn't tolerate the lack of reliability or maintenance requirements, probably.
CROSS-COUNTRY IN an xA?
Hmmm....could we re-drill the seat mounts and give ourselves another two-three inches? Other than that, it would be no sweat for the average driver IMO. Seats are comfy, AC works, good radio, esceptionally nice highway ride, and 400 mile range per tankful. What's not to like? Sure we'd pick a BMW 750iL if we had a choice :P
a couple of years ago, i rented an echo. toyota superiority myth completely disapeared. it was better than a whatever the kia ford was or a metro, though. shifty, i'm getting 400+ miles per tank with my focus, 27 mile round trip. what size tank does the Xa have?
2024 Ford F-150 STX, 2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
I see an occasional Omni/Horizon here in Chicagoland. The few that I see are generally in really good shape.
The Horizon was a really fun car to drive. Great pep for a subcompact. And the handling in the snow was phenomenal. I could head up the steepest hills in Cincinnati and make it without a lot of effort.
Compared to the Chevette or the Toyota Corona station wagon that I was driving, there was NO comparison.
Reliability - built with absolutely none. Something was always wrong with it.
Durability - even less. The carpeting on the floors wore out in 60k and 3 years. The nameplate fell off the first time that we slammed the hatchback. The door handle broke off.
My dad had a Horizon when I was little. He LOVED it, he still talks about it. He's always raved about how good it was in the snow, he upgraded the shocks so he could toss it around a bit, and he always drove it flat out. Maybe because of my age, I don't remember it breaking down a lot....but I do know what happened to it, it was in the junkyard by the time it was 10 years old due to massive mechanical failure of some kind.
Of course, he also had an Audi 5000 around the same period that he also claims was a great car, and we all know how those ended up.
I do remember it would leak at the rear hatch, and fill the back seat area up with water...the car was maybe 4 years old by this time. That might not be good.
went 416/417 on my last 2 tanks. put about 13 gallons each time. trip odometer reads 405. i expect the low fuel light to go on at any time. plenty of room for me in the front, but crowded with 4. in another year or so, i might look at something the next size up.
2024 Ford F-150 STX, 2023 Ford Explorer ST, 91 Mustang GT vert
Oh yes I can remember many times parked on the street being plowed in I was always able to drive out without digging out. I remember one time when I was cleaning off my Omni and these guys came up and offered to dug me out for a price (they had been doing this all morning). I said no and they stood by and watched hoping I would get stuck and I drove out with no problem. :shades:
Reliability - built with absolutely none. Something was always wrong with it.
I had a computer go out on mine that was covered under warranty other than that nothing went wrong until I hit about 100-110K miles the I started having electrical problems, but none mechanical.
Durability - even less. The carpeting on the floors wore out in 60k and 3 years. The nameplate fell off the first time that we slammed the hatchback. The door handle broke off.
Never had those problems.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
We are now talking about the new small cars rather than defending them. which for one of our forums is a giant step forward. Admitting that the strong suite of a sub compact would be commuting or city driving is reasonable. We also by default realize that they also make owning two cars a practical necessity.
Our trip down memory lane points out another truth. we have had smaller cars many times in the past and they all have grown to Civic size or better. I have no doubt they could design a suspension on a Smart sized car that was soft enough to make it ride smoothly. But bumps, cracks, expansion joints and different surfaces all go against the short wheelbase cars when we are driving at speed on any distance. For people like me living in a mountain area the lack of HP hurts on some of these new smaller cars as well.
The question seems to come back to this; what makes the small cars we get grow? Why is it considered an improvement when the new Civic is two inches longer and has another 10 hp more than the old one. What made the old sub compact sized Accord grow into the new mid sized Accord? I am sure there were people that were satisfied with the old Accord and its size. The only problem is there are never enough of them to support the manufacturing of them for a very long period of time.
In this case I have to agree with Shifty. If they ever bring the Smart to the US people like Nippon might buy one but I would find it hard to believe it would ever sell much better than 30k units a year. At those levels a vehicle would have a hard time lasting in the US market. Unless you have a very specialized niche car anything less than 100k in sales a year seems to be considered a flop.
I think the reason that in the past subcompacts always grew was that they were so bad and needed improvement. The current array of fab little subcompacts need only incremental improvement. There is no longer a gap between a subcompact and a Civic or Corolla that is easily discernible. The gap has gotten very subtle.
So IMO the subcompacts won't morph into larger cars, because they don't have to---whereas an old Metro or Aspire or Suzuki Swift or Mazda GLC were in desperate need to evolution.
Do cars always need to evolve into bigger and stronger? Not if they are near perfect----behold the Miata!! Maybe in all these years it grew 2 inches and a few HP. It did not become a Mustang, and those who tried to make it a Mustang ended up with a Frankencar.
With today's subcompacts sporting so many accessories and decent performance from the speed ranges of zero to about 80, they don't have to grow. You don't like your xA, you just buy a Matrix and you already have a larger xA.
You no longer need feel poor driving a subcompact. Just like power steering and AC filtered down to the common man years ago, so today has well-optioned quality in a low price car.
If they ever bring the Smart to the US people like Nippon might buy one but I would find it hard to believe it would ever sell much better than 30k units a year.
As I recall, the sales target is 20,000 a year for the new model. I don't think they'll have any trouble hitting it, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them double it if they can keep the supply up. 100k a year is unreachable for probably 90% of the vehicles sold in the US today, yet their builders offer them anyway.
that subcompacts grew was probably simply the fact that the Japanese were expanding into territory that was new to them. If you go back in time to, say, 1969, there probably was not one Japanese car that could directly be compared to a domestic car in size.
Fast forward to 1976, and something like a Honda Accord was about the size of a Chevy Chevette. And that was as big as it got for Honda. And the biggest Toyota Cressidas and Datsun 810/Maxima were still considerably smaller than the smallest domestic compacts of the time. Well, maybe a Corona might have been almost as big as an AMC Hornet or Ford Maverick.
However, as the years went by the domestics downsized and the Japanese slowly got bigger, so there was more overlap. Still, by 1985 something like a Maxima or Camry was about the size of a Cavalier, while a Cressida might have been almost as big as a Dodge 600/Plymouth Caravelle or Chevy Celebrity. And from there they just got bigger, until we got to the point that a Camry/Accord/Altima type car has become THE mainstream car of choice, and with space efficiency advancements is probably about as roomy as your typical midsized 60's car
Also, instead of coming out with new models, the Japanese tended to just keep making their cars bigger, to the point that they'd reach into a larger size class. Instead of keeping the Accord a subcompact and coming out with a new model above it to serve a different type of buyer, they gradually enlarged the car over the years, bumping it into the compact class and then the midsized class.
And truth be told, cars like the Accord, 2006 Camry, and Altima actually ARE close to the EPA's cutoff for the full-sized designation, 120 cubic feet of combined passenger/trunk space. I want to say the Accord is 103/14, the Altima is 103/16, and the '06 Camry was 102/17. I think the latest restyle actually ended up making the '07 Camry a bit smaller in interior/trunk dimensions, although it still seemed fairly roomy to me.
Also, as much as we might complain about cars getting too big these days, I wonder if they're really just reverting to a mean? For example for the most part, cars in the 40's weren't that big. Then they started getting too big in the late 50's, but by the early 60's we had a whole slew of compacts, and many of the bigger cars lost a few inches too. In some cases though, the public thought the cars had shrunk too much (1962 Dodge/Plymouth, 1961 Olds 98/Buick Electra, 1963-64 Chrysler) so later in the decade cars started to grow again. Then by the 70's, they really were getting too big, and in most cases were bigger than they had ever been in the 50's. So we downsized again. And much more drastically than in the early 60's. But maybe we went too far too fast, and many of the cars just ended up TOO small. So by the late 80's and throughout the 90's and today, cars have started getting bigger again. It's been much more gradual, though.
For example, if you compare what was considered a compact car in 1960 (Falcon, Corvair, Valiant) to what a 1975 compact was (Dart, Nova, Valiant, Granada, Maverick, etc), that was a huge jump. But nowadays we consider Corollas, Mazda3's, Cobalts, etc compacts, and they're really no bigger and not a whole lot heavier, for the most part, than something like a 1984 Citation, Tempo, Aries, Stanza, Camry, etc. They're better built though, than those 20 year old cars. That's not something you could say about your typical 1975 compared to its 1960 ancestor!
Part of the Japanese cars' growth was the acceptance of larger cars in the Japanese market. Their most popular cars are still US-subcompact sized, but there's a whole class of cars underneath that... but the luxury cars are US-midsized, with a few limo-like full sized luxury cars too. I'd say they drive more US-midsized cars than Europeans do.
still severely restricted by width? I seem to recall that they'd mount the mirrors fairly far forward on them, and that was because the mirrors had to be mounted further inboard for clearance reasons, as they'd stick out too far on the doors.
In this case I guess it is going to be a wait and see proposition for me. History has shown more than once that sub compacts do indeed come to our shores and time after time they get bigger or more powerful or fail. Happened with the Prelude. Even the now famous VW got evey bit as big an engine as a air cooled opposed four with that design could. To the point of the push rods being the weak link. The Mini looks like a maxi compared to the old mini. And next year the new mini will get even more power. Hasn't even been out that long. I'll will wait and see. But you know as soon as they offer a 130 hp motor in a xA I will be happy to bring it up.
Okay, but you know, we don't need 130HP in an xA any more than we needed 200HP in a Miata. It's more than fine the way it is. We aren't hauling scrap iron here. Driven with any kind of attention, an xA should easily keep up with or beat a base Mini with the MINI'S 200 extra pounds of weight. They are very close in HP and torque.
I'd rather see them do a little more aerodynamics to the xA and re-gear it to be a bit more leisurely on the highway rpms...or offer a 6-speed. I think the current engine can pull a 6th gear I really do--but not at 2,000 rpm. After all, torque is a function of displacement and we only have 1.5 liters here.
Maybe a 1.8 liter and a little more HP would be ideal....say to 115HP, like the base MINI, but with greater torque.
Maybe. But in 2002 the MX 5 Miata had 142 HP and in 2006 in has 170. In 1994 it only had 128 HP. Edmunds list the standard Mini with 115 for 2005 and tells us it will be getting 150 for 2007. That is the base Mini by the way. the engine is the same size but with more power. we will get a great chance to see how this works in real life because there is a possibility they may make the 115 HP and option in case no one wants more power. I'll start holding my breath now. The bottom feeder 2006 Civic DX 4 door comes with 140 HP standard. In 2002 the same car had 115. Tell me which cars have not gotten bigger or more powerful in this class. Even the Kia Rio, I know it isn't a good example of a Quality sub compact, is 100cc bigger, and has another 14 HP over the 2002.
I know it is a different subject but what happened to all the compact trucks? The last company that tried to bring them back was Subaru and that project tanked. big time.
I'm guessing the main reason they keep upping the horsepower is that people want it, whether they actually use it or not. Maybe it's like an automotive version of penis envy or something? My engine's got more hp than yours!
However, every blessed time I try to merge onto the highway with my 21 year old, 4200 pound 165 hp weakling of a pickup truck and constantly get held back by someone in their sub-15 pound-per-hp vehicle (regardless of size), because they're too timid/self-absorbed/stupid/etc to speed up and merge correctly, the fact that most people just don't need all that horsepower gets driven home, time and time again.
As for compact trucks, I'd consider the Baja to be more of an El Camino/Rampage class of vehicle. A car-based truck. "Cruck?" "Trar"? This type of vehicle was never more than a niche vehicle anyway. And the Baja tried to break new ground by having a back seat, as well. The result was a bed that was too small, a back seat that was unusable, and an overpriced clumsy looking vehicle that just didn't seem to do anything right.
Closest thing to what I'd consider a compact truck these days would be the Ford Ranger. It hasn't been changed substantially in ages now. And FWIW, I don't find the Colorado/Canyon to be much bigger than the S-10 was. IIRC, towing/hauling capacity on the Colorado actually went down, compared to the S-10! The Dakota, Tacoma, and Frontier definitely seem midsized today though, although in some cases they're getting to the point that they seem pretty inefficient. For example, the Dakota feels all big and bulky and cumbersome to me, and not much smaller than a Ram. Yet it seems to have much less interior room and can't hold the proverbial 4x8 sheet of plywood flat. It's like you get most of the bulk of a big truck but without the versatility, and IMO might as well just spring for the bigger truck.
I kinda see it with the Tacoma/Tundra, too. Except in this case, the Tundra's kinda small for a supposedly full-sized truck. It's like a midsized truck that they found a way to stick a full-sized bed on. I don't like the driving position, though. It's like they took the seats out of some cheap compact and put them in this truck. You sit on the floor, almost more carlike than truck-like. The Tacoma's much more comfy IMO. Seat seems higher off the floor, better-padded, and much better legroom. My only issues here are that the steering wheel doesn't line up with the seating position, and I sit too close to the door, which makes for a bit of a squeeze with elbow room.
I agree that they add HP and even size for just the reasons you stated. People want and buy them. Not everyone wants them that way but enough that the manufacturers see it as a simple way to increase sales. I don't see this reasoning changing anytime soon. The cycle is quite simple. A manufacturer introduces a new sub compact and it meets with some sales success. Another manufacturer decides to try their hand at the same class car and they meet with some success. Finally a third manufacturer enters the fray and they all reach the saturation point of that class car. Not hard to do with cars selling in the 1 percent bracket. The manufacturer selling the fewest cars decides they want to take sales from the other two so they make their new offering with another 10 to 20 hp. Low and behold their sales increase. To counter this manufacturer gives their little entry car more HP and increase the wheel base a bit to make it ride better.
Yes the Ranger looks to be the closest to a compact truck. However I have owned three of the origional compact trucks. A courier, and Toyota SR and a D-50. The I have also had a 92 or 94 B-2300 and the Ranger is a lot Bigger than the first three compact trucks I had. I am willing to bet the Next Ranger will be bigger still.
Bingo! A good driver can literally crawl up the back of most cars on the highway with that "measly" 103 HP. Many drivers don't know how to merge on a highway, they don't accelerate at the bottom of hills, they "short-shift" like crazy even with a stickshift. A typical Italian in his Fiat could dominate an American highway with 1/3 the HP of his rivals.
All that is accomplished by giving people more HP might be to feed their already lazy driving habits.
But you're right boaz, it's a marketing tool. If Carmaker A boosts HP, carmaker B has no choice. And HP is a great marketing tool.
People don't always buy what they want, they buy what they think they want and then find out they probably didn't want or need---which of course is what makes them buy something ELSE. Perpetual dissasisfaction is the key to marketing, even if the marketing is "noble", aka a hybrid. Next year it'll be a better hybrid, as if somehow your old hybrid didn't do what it always did. Your dish soap is "more" biodegradable and your new bike is .3 tenths of a lb lighter. This will surely make the peddle to work a dream.
Isn't that the cliche? Sales is selling something that people need toilet paper) and marketing is selling them something they don't need (take your pick).
Who needs more HP today? Maybe contractors, logging companies and police pursuit cars?
"Admitting that the strong suite of a sub compact would be commuting or city driving is reasonable. We also by default realize that they also make owning two cars a practical necessity"
Nope, we don't agree there. Perhaps a preference, yes, but for folks without kids, FAR from a necessity.
It's just that Americans are so used to wasting (space, hp, resources, you name it) from the training they have had in the last 50 years, that they can't shake the habit.
But yes, the small cars certainly shine their brightest in commute and city driving. I'll bet most of us posting here have a work commute, as do the majority of the driving public. So we should see the subcompact class turn into the dominant one for sales within a few years!! :-P
(just kidding on that last line, boaz) :-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
that I could probably deal with a subcompact for about 80% or more of my driving these days. Heck, I just came in from riding around on a 1990 Montgomery Ward tractor for about 3 hours. So if I could put up with that, I could deal with a subcompact if I had to. And I wouldn't have to worry about the yellow jackets, either! (luckily I only got stung once when I ran over their nest, but DAMN does it hurt!) :sick:
Oh, I thought you guys would get a kick out of this. My coworker, who's not exactly the sharpest knife in the Ginsu set, recently shared this revelation with me. She mentioned that while she wants something with better fuel econony, she says she'd be embarrassed to ride around in something like a Toyota Corolla! :confuse:
Here's the real kicker though. Right now she's driving a 1999 Olds Silhouette minivan! It's white, and has this big brownish wavy decal on the side that tries to make it look sporty, but really makes it look like something a senior citizen would drive! In fact, she got it from her mother, who's in her 70's.
What's that old saying about how those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? :P
FWIW, I don't think I'd be embarrassed to drive something small like a Corolla or smaller car. My biggest issues would be comfort and that vulnerable feeling. Yeah, I can fit in a Corolla, Yaris, etc. But that doesn't mean I like it. I can fit on a yard sale kitchen chair too, but a nice, padded Lazy-boy recliner is still going to be more comfy. And when you're used to bigger cars, it's just hard to shake that vulnerable, pants-down-around-your-ankles feeling when you're surrounded like bigger vehicles on the highway. Kinda like that episode of "Speed Racer" where that dude in the little Pacer-looking thing started having a nervous fit just before the Mammoth Car smeared him into the side of an embankment. :surprise:
As for car size and city driving, well maybe DC is a different story, but I have no problems driving my '85 Silverado around down there. In fact, my roommate with the '06 Xterra went into the hospital, in Georgetown, and I've been going down there regularly to cheer him up, and I've mainly been driving the pickup. I tried driving his Xterra a few times, but just started getting leery. I don't know if people avoid my pickup more because it's big or because it's old, but I've noticed that with the Xterra I'd have many more close calls with the local idiots. They tend to give the pickup a wider berth, though. And as for parking, despite about 3 1/2 feet more length (~212" versus ~178") I don't find the pickup any harder to parallel park. Probably simply because I'm used to it, and therefore just feel more comfortable driving it.
FWIW, I don't think I'd be embarrassed to drive something small like a Corolla or smaller car.
I don't think the image problem with subcompacts is that they're SMALL cars. Heck, some very nice, high status sports cars like the Lotus Elise are extremely small.
The image problem is that subcompacts are CHEAP cars. You drive up in one, and people think that's all you can afford. They don't usually take a moment out to realize that you're doing the environment a favor, for example, unless said subcompact is also a hybrid (i.e. Prius), which is why hybrid small cars enjoy a higher status than subcompacts, despite the fact that some non-hybrid subcompacts are almost as fuel efficient as hybrids.
All in all, its very sad, and reminds me of that Passat commercial (not that I'm a fan of VW), where you have various people in their cars leaning out the windows and shouting various silly (but oh so true) things through megaphones:
"Because I make more money than you!... because I make more money than you!..." "Because I'm compensating for my shortcomings!... because I'm compensating for my shortcomings!..."
It's the SNOB factor, i.e. the ever-present $$$-awareness, that really hurts the subcompact segment, IMO. Which is why they're almost always marketed to college-age kids, despite the fact that the segment has improved to the point where a lot more middle-aged folks could and should be using them.
But hey, who cares about reducing our dependence on unstable foreign oil sources and helping out the environment, when you can have a car that instantly advertises your yearly income, such a boon to the insecure. Woohoo. :sick:
we will have a perfect test of my contention when the new Mini comes out. The 150 HP engine will be the standard and you can step up to the 170 or option out for the 115. The question is not now getting people to buy just what they need it is seeing what people buy. It the 115 HP doesn't get ordered it will be easy to see what people want.
I fully admit that when there were just two Scions imported here I liked the xA much better. If it would have been easier to get or test drive I might have considered it. But no sooner to they release it than we saw it was rejected by the very target they aimed it at. Yes, I know and agree picking a target and then letting the target know it was picked was foolish but they did it none the less. As a result the target group just didn't bite and it now looks like a slightly older group may be showing interest. I still would get a xB or drive one to a dog fight but they do have a lot more room than a traditional sub compact. The tC I like. looking at the Fit,Yaris and Versa I see a lot of hope for the Versa. But only the Fit looks to be a sub compact, maybe. I think that the price point will have a lot more to do with how well these cars are accepted rather than their small size. But like I said before, we should have a pretty good picture by this time next year.
Well, even the toilet paper makers have fighting words like "my toilet paper is softer than yours!" ;-) I'm not aware of softer toilet paper being a necessity, but it sure feels better ;-)
People are always in pursuit of something "better," however the "better" is defined. When the economy is doing well (i.e. per hour labor cost is equivalent substantial amount of oil and metal), the material cost of making and operating a larger car is minimal compared to the cost of making and running a smaller car, but can sell with much fatter profit margins.
That is exactly right. The tiny end of the market is very small, and room enough for a couple models . . . once the segment is saturated, the only way out is getting bigger. The jumbo end of the market, like Excursion, suffers a similar fate, in reverse.
The demand for those extreme ends of the market is heavily influenced by the hourly-wage to oil price ratio. The cost differential between making a small car vs. a large car in a similar facility is not that great, nowhere near as great as the sale price differetial . . . because the labor cost is more associated with parts-count. When economy is doing well, wage-to-oil price ratio is high, people can afford to live large, literally; and vice versa.
Every few decades or so, another nation or group nations get industrialized and get in the global car market, that's when another generation of subcompacts get introduced because suddenly really cheap labor becomes available for carmaking, small cars can be profitable again. German/Brits in the 50's, Japanese in the 70's, and now Koreans and soon Chinese and Indians. Initially they all face uphill battle and often get laughed at (VW bug, Toyopets, Excel, etc.) but they just have to wait for the next economic downturn to give them a break in the market place, first in the tiny end of the market, then move upmarkeet as economy improves again, then wait for someone else to undercut their price in the next merry-go-around.
Market shift to small cars is not really something to be celebrated; it just means, wage-to-energy price ratio has been dropping. It's the downhill side of an ecnomic cycle.
Yes, my point exactly. But in more detail. That was the crux of the article I posted earlier. When things are bad either in our economy or our fuel supply these cars pop up like weeds. Once we get some hint of stability people start moving upscale and the sub compacts go with them. At least that is how I see it from a historical perspective.
1. The latest crop to show up are all Japanese, which is not a country just industrializing or getting into the global auto industry.
2. New models like Yaris and Versa would have needed probably two years' lead time AT LEAST to bring to market here, which time scale predates the inflated gas prices by a year (or more in the case of the Yaris and Fit).
Now as for the energy-to-wage hypothesis, I suppose that one has some merit, but think of it: what if we have seen the end of gas below $2.50/gallon? Suppose it spikes to $4 next summer? Suppose $3/gallon becomes the new gas price floor after that?
In that case I suppose you can expect the wage-to-energy ratio stay suppressed. There aren't more people graudating from college each year, there are less, as a percentage of the population.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
1. Cars like Yaris and Fit are designed and engineered to be ultimately built and sold in places like India and China.
2. Gas price has been on the rise since the end of 1999.
I'm not sure what college education has to do with any of this; more college graduates would just mean more college graduates competing for the same declining wage premium. I do agree that income level measured in gallons of gas per hour of wage may indeed be on the down slope for a while . . . Those cycles tend to be pretty long. The previous half-cycle, uphill climb, lasted from 1982 to 1999/2000, so it's only fair to expect a downhill slope lasting almost as long, and we are only 6 years or so into it, with perhaps 11 more years to go. I just don't understand why such collective misery is cause for celebration.
Isn't that what they have said after every gas increase? First it was raised to .75 a gallon and the Bug was going to be with us forever. A buck and a quarter and we were never going to see a car bigger than the Accord. we did get twin turbo charged Mazda's and Nissans during that time however.Two bucks and SUVs and Trucks will start dropping like flies, however they SUV truck market hit 50 percent during the buck fifty era, and 3 bucks and we will never recover. But what if we start getting our companies to pay for our gas? What if part of our wages is a fuel allotment. Aren't there other ways for us to get back to a better standard of living?
Of course the other point of view is we are entering the age of Mad Max and sub compacts are simply a sign of that. But then even at 7 to 8 bucks a gallon I only saw a few sub compacts in London. What is up with that? They do have diesel I guess.
well, you've seen how well it has worked making healthcare premiums a part of our wage package. And you could argue that as a society we have more of a handle on healthcare premiums than we do on the wildly fluctuating price of gas. Many of the companies running the healthcare biz are non-profits. Not so, the oil biz. And at least with healthcare, an employee could perhaps just decline it if they really wanted to save the money. People might be more attached to putting gas in their tanks and driving their cars than having health insurance, who knows.
Anyway, I was merely responding to two points I thought were worth contending. Large cars can also be efficient in the hybrid and diesel age, and who knows, In 20 or 30 years, we may have mass-produced fuel cell-mobiles.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Yes, health care is a good point. And you are right, we might not recover this time. But I wonder how three bucks a gallon translates compared to wages today?
well, you've officially floored me. I am chuckling inside. So driving a subcompact equates to living poor eh? Well, it is this type of bias that the manufacturers and the advertisers may never overcome. I say bias, which is perhaps a loaded word, but what I mean is pre-conceived notions.
Now for all the people who are so wrapped up in their cars as to be hyper-conscious of the image it gives them, "as big and shiny as possible" will be the only acceptable choice ever. But those folks are going to pay more and more for that privilege in the coming years, and I am not just talking about paying in money. Also convenience.
boaz: well, I'm currently struggling to keep my gas expenditures under $200/month, even with 80% of my driven miles per month in my 40 mpg Echo. Which tells you how much I drive, eh?! And that represents something like 4-5% of my gross pay, or about half of what they lay out for my health insurance each month. In the last few years, they haven't increased the healthcare cap enough for me to avoid having to make a contribution, and I assume the same would be true if they gave me a gas stipend in lieu of pay. And with the way gas spikes overnight in some cases, I would imagine a gas stipend negotiated on an annual basis could easily become worthless in a matter of months. Give me the pay, I say, and I will just have to walk more if the gas prices ever reach really crippling highs.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
You know who Those who advocating more should be driving sub compacts are essentially advocating more should be living poor."
this is perhaps the most ignorant thing I've read on this board.
If you advocate spending more on a car than you can afford, say, buying a luxury car or SUV when you don't need one, THEN you're hoping people live poor. Advocating an efficient reliable car under $20,000 is advocating for economic sanity.
Now be nice. Opinions are just opinions and all are valid.
Is this really an issue of Reality vs. Perception all over again?
Are today's subcompacts really "cheap"? REALLY? Do the doors close with a reedy THWANG and vibrate like tin foil? Do pieces break off in your hand? Does the hood or roof "oilcan" up and down as you drive down the road? Do the engines buzz your rearview mirror? Do broken-down Yaris', Fits and xAs litter the roadways of America?
Or is this just a perception foisted on us by inborn prejudices from the past? Do we look at a Fit and some of us see a 1986 Hyundai Excel?
SAFETY -- ditto. Can anyone prove statistically that you are more "vulnerable" in a 2006 Honda Fit with front and side airbags than you are in a 1994 Cadillac not so equipped? How could you prove this? Is there any good science on the fatality-to-vehicle-weight ratio being linear and direct? Doubt it.
And let's say there WAS good science, that smaller cars WERE in fact more "vulnerable". Vulnerable to what? Big cars? Well then, why don't we call big cars "killers"? Why don't we have a safety campaign that says "Improve auto safety nationwide. Don't drive a big killer car!"
How did subcompacts become the bad guys and big high HP cars the paragon of virtue?
Why does everyone smoke in old movies and not anymore? Why is littering now punishable by huge fines but once was a totally acceptable thing to do?
These assumptions about what the best car is....these are all up for grabs because some may be purely perception-based, and don't really make sense.
(I remember as a bat swinging little leaguer reading an old ad for Camel cigarettes I think it was, where Mickey Mantle or one of those legendary players is telling readers that cigarettes relax him before a game. I believed it).
I can think of the quote from some article somewhere, talking about small cars.
"I'd hate to be rear-ended by a Yukon in one of those." to which the response was "Well, what *would* you like to be rear-ended by a Yukon in?"
Larger cars and trucks have far worse handling and vision than smaller cars - at the average consumer level. They give the illusion of personal safety, but at the expense of safety for everyone else on the road.
Thank you! My thoughts exactly, for the most part. And it's funny how long it takes to change perceptions in America. Some people are locked into thoughts and perceptions of a quarter century ago, and won't even reconsider them today. This is in fact what the domestic car fans say all the time is the failing of the folks who prefer imports, and to some extent they may be right on the mark.
But brightness's comment (it seems to me) is 100% related to image, the image a car projects. Size and power do convey to passersby that you had more money to spend on a car, simply because more of each does cost more in America. I think the subcompacts, thanks to the "Japanese revolution" of the last 30 years, have reached the level where their image is NOT solely one of poverty-stricken buyers driving substandard cars simply because they couldn't do any better. But neither are most of today's subs cars that convey the image of super-success, CEO and real estate agent material in other words.
It is important to consider image, because many people do prioritize image above all other factors when choosing a car. I think these days the market has evolved, however, to the point where there are more buyers prioritizing more pragmatic factors like fuel economy, total cost to own, and safety.
In fact, in the price range of the majority of today's subcompacts, I can't think of a single car that has an image of overwhelming power and success. I mean, we are mostly talking about a group of cars selling under $20K.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Is the notion one needs a car at all, let alone a car of a certain size to live a complete life.
I have been living happily - at a standard most in the past could not and many even in today's US can not attain - and do not own a car at all.
I have nothing against possessions. I have a music system and several watches worth more than many autos. What works or what does not work for ones lifestyle should be a personal decision.
I know many people who are caught up in the race to get a large status vehicle, a macMansion with the right address, fashion statement vacations, the works. Some are happy. Many are, and probably always will be, dissatisfied. They do not seem to realize they are caught in a race with no finish line.
After heartily agreeing with you, I would add that unless I lived in the city of San Francisco or on the island of Manhattan (as I hear you do), I would find my lifestyle inhibited without a car. IMO, those are the ONLY two places in this country with a public transportation system sufficient to meet most of my transport needs (not to mention both having a well-developed network of Zip rental cars for those short trips when you would like to use a car).
As for me personally, I thoroughly and totally discard the idea of buying a car for image. If I ever found myself allowing that to enter the decision-making process, I would pause to consider what was wrong. I have no need to try and project some image to the world using my car. I suppose if I actually carried clients in the car that I wanted to impress, like real estate agents do for instance, then maybe I would have a change of heart. But that is a very small percentage of the population. (and it aint me!) :-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
I'll agree with Shifty too. In fact, I would say driving some leased lower lux car looks pretty dopey - the poserfied attitude is pretty easy to spot, especially among those in my general age group, who are often pretty big posers.
We get a hefty amount of poser wannabes at the Land Rover store. Luckily as Rover does not subsidize their leases hardly at all so these people are out of luck. You should see their face when they realize a BASE Range Rover(not that there really is such a thing) on a low mileage lease works out to almost 1,500 dollars a month with 3,000 to 5,000 dollars down.
Poser: But but I can lease a 7 series which costs more for $899 a month and just $2,999 down.
ME: Sorry Land Rover offers no incentives on their vehicles you have to pay to drive one.
San Francisco public transit generally sucks, and if you are in the right neighborhoods, you can manage owning a car, no problem. It's a lot easier to park and drive than the really big cities. San Fran is only maybe 600,000 people. San Jose is bigger than we are. Impossible areas to own a car would be like North Beach.
The subcompact is perfect for a city like San Francisco, as it allows you to sneak into those little spots between two driveways that most cars don't quite fit into. And I don't relish hurtling down some of those extreme hills in a 5,000lb SUV.
NATURAL SELECTION: It may be, that as American life changes, certain external effects might cause the evolution of new species. Some of these effects might be a) increased traffic and less parking (survival of the smallest?), b) higher and higher fuel prices (survival of the thrifty?) and c) maturation of the baby boomers who no longer drive families around.
Yeah, Mercedes is like that too. When I was window shopping, the salesman was trying to get me into cars that were more than my annual income. I won't go that way...it's insane. I remember sweetheart (699 or 799) lease deals on S430s last year. But as I drive a relatively low mileage, it'd be a very expensive car rental for me indeed. And the availability of 84 and 96 month terms helps the posers too. I'm more than happy with my non-current-model car, and the fintail I bought for $1500 when I was in high school.
The poser vehicles of choice here are E-class and 3ers and 5ers. Local lots are full of 3 year old E-class lease returns, and you can't throw a ball without hitting a leased 3er around here.
I suspect if I didn't have this MB obsession, I would be more than happy to be in a Fit/Yaris/other unassuming car. My sister is very non-ostentatious nowadays...she drives a Focus ZX5 and she thinks it is great, she has no desire to move up. Her finances are better for it.
Comments
CROSS-COUNTRY IN an xA?
Hmmm....could we re-drill the seat mounts and give ourselves another two-three inches? Other than that, it would be no sweat for the average driver IMO. Seats are comfy, AC works, good radio, esceptionally nice highway ride, and 400 mile range per tankful. What's not to like? Sure we'd pick a BMW 750iL if we had a choice :P
shifty, i'm getting 400+ miles per tank with my focus, 27 mile round trip. what size tank does the Xa have?
The Horizon was a really fun car to drive. Great pep for a subcompact. And the handling in the snow was phenomenal. I could head up the steepest hills in Cincinnati and make it without a lot of effort.
Compared to the Chevette or the Toyota Corona station wagon that I was driving, there was NO comparison.
Reliability - built with absolutely none. Something was always wrong with it.
Durability - even less. The carpeting on the floors wore out in 60k and 3 years. The nameplate fell off the first time that we slammed the hatchback. The door handle broke off.
What is scary was that there were worst cars.
Of course, he also had an Audi 5000 around the same period that he also claims was a great car, and we all know how those ended up.
I do remember it would leak at the rear hatch, and fill the back seat area up with water...the car was maybe 4 years old by this time. That might not be good.
plenty of room for me in the front, but crowded with 4.
in another year or so, i might look at something the next size up.
Oh yes I can remember many times parked on the street being plowed in I was always able to drive out without digging out. I remember one time when I was cleaning off my Omni and these guys came up and offered to dug me out for a price (they had been doing this all morning). I said no and they stood by and watched hoping I would get stuck and I drove out with no problem. :shades:
Reliability - built with absolutely none. Something was always wrong with it.
I had a computer go out on mine that was covered under warranty other than that nothing went wrong until I hit about 100-110K miles the I started having electrical problems, but none mechanical.
Durability - even less. The carpeting on the floors wore out in 60k and 3 years. The nameplate fell off the first time that we slammed the hatchback. The door handle broke off.
Never had those problems.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Our trip down memory lane points out another truth. we have had smaller cars many times in the past and they all have grown to Civic size or better. I have no doubt they could design a suspension on a Smart sized car that was soft enough to make it ride smoothly. But bumps, cracks, expansion joints and different surfaces all go against the short wheelbase cars when we are driving at speed on any distance. For people like me living in a mountain area the lack of HP hurts on some of these new smaller cars as well.
The question seems to come back to this; what makes the small cars we get grow? Why is it considered an improvement when the new Civic is two inches longer and has another 10 hp more than the old one. What made the old sub compact sized Accord grow into the new mid sized Accord? I am sure there were people that were satisfied with the old Accord and its size. The only problem is there are never enough of them to support the manufacturing of them for a very long period of time.
In this case I have to agree with Shifty. If they ever bring the Smart to the US people like Nippon might buy one but I would find it hard to believe it would ever sell much better than 30k units a year. At those levels a vehicle would have a hard time lasting in the US market. Unless you have a very specialized niche car anything less than 100k in sales a year seems to be considered a flop.
So IMO the subcompacts won't morph into larger cars, because they don't have to---whereas an old Metro or Aspire or Suzuki Swift or Mazda GLC were in desperate need to evolution.
Do cars always need to evolve into bigger and stronger? Not if they are near perfect----behold the Miata!! Maybe in all these years it grew 2 inches and a few HP. It did not become a Mustang, and those who tried to make it a Mustang ended up with a Frankencar.
With today's subcompacts sporting so many accessories and decent performance from the speed ranges of zero to about 80, they don't have to grow. You don't like your xA, you just buy a Matrix and you already have a larger xA.
You no longer need feel poor driving a subcompact. Just like power steering and AC filtered down to the common man years ago, so today has well-optioned quality in a low price car.
As I recall, the sales target is 20,000 a year for the new model. I don't think they'll have any trouble hitting it, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them double it if they can keep the supply up. 100k a year is unreachable for probably 90% of the vehicles sold in the US today, yet their builders offer them anyway.
Fast forward to 1976, and something like a Honda Accord was about the size of a Chevy Chevette. And that was as big as it got for Honda. And the biggest Toyota Cressidas and Datsun 810/Maxima were still considerably smaller than the smallest domestic compacts of the time. Well, maybe a Corona might have been almost as big as an AMC Hornet or Ford Maverick.
However, as the years went by the domestics downsized and the Japanese slowly got bigger, so there was more overlap. Still, by 1985 something like a Maxima or Camry was about the size of a Cavalier, while a Cressida might have been almost as big as a Dodge 600/Plymouth Caravelle or Chevy Celebrity. And from there they just got bigger, until we got to the point that a Camry/Accord/Altima type car has become THE mainstream car of choice, and with space efficiency advancements is probably about as roomy as your typical midsized 60's car
Also, instead of coming out with new models, the Japanese tended to just keep making their cars bigger, to the point that they'd reach into a larger size class. Instead of keeping the Accord a subcompact and coming out with a new model above it to serve a different type of buyer, they gradually enlarged the car over the years, bumping it into the compact class and then the midsized class.
And truth be told, cars like the Accord, 2006 Camry, and Altima actually ARE close to the EPA's cutoff for the full-sized designation, 120 cubic feet of combined passenger/trunk space. I want to say the Accord is 103/14, the Altima is 103/16, and the '06 Camry was 102/17. I think the latest restyle actually ended up making the '07 Camry a bit smaller in interior/trunk dimensions, although it still seemed fairly roomy to me.
Also, as much as we might complain about cars getting too big these days, I wonder if they're really just reverting to a mean? For example for the most part, cars in the 40's weren't that big. Then they started getting too big in the late 50's, but by the early 60's we had a whole slew of compacts, and many of the bigger cars lost a few inches too. In some cases though, the public thought the cars had shrunk too much (1962 Dodge/Plymouth, 1961 Olds 98/Buick Electra, 1963-64 Chrysler) so later in the decade cars started to grow again. Then by the 70's, they really were getting too big, and in most cases were bigger than they had ever been in the 50's. So we downsized again. And much more drastically than in the early 60's. But maybe we went too far too fast, and many of the cars just ended up TOO small. So by the late 80's and throughout the 90's and today, cars have started getting bigger again. It's been much more gradual, though.
For example, if you compare what was considered a compact car in 1960 (Falcon, Corvair, Valiant) to what a 1975 compact was (Dart, Nova, Valiant, Granada, Maverick, etc), that was a huge jump. But nowadays we consider Corollas, Mazda3's, Cobalts, etc compacts, and they're really no bigger and not a whole lot heavier, for the most part, than something like a 1984 Citation, Tempo, Aries, Stanza, Camry, etc. They're better built though, than those 20 year old cars. That's not something you could say about your typical 1975 compared to its 1960 ancestor!
Compares to the Chevette - which could be immobilized in 2-3" of snow, it was a joy.
I'd rather see them do a little more aerodynamics to the xA and re-gear it to be a bit more leisurely on the highway rpms...or offer a 6-speed. I think the current engine can pull a 6th gear I really do--but not at 2,000 rpm. After all, torque is a function of displacement and we only have 1.5 liters here.
Maybe a 1.8 liter and a little more HP would be ideal....say to 115HP, like the base MINI, but with greater torque.
I know it is a different subject but what happened to all the compact trucks? The last company that tried to bring them back was Subaru and that project tanked. big time.
However, every blessed time I try to merge onto the highway with my 21 year old, 4200 pound 165 hp weakling of a pickup truck and constantly get held back by someone in their sub-15 pound-per-hp vehicle (regardless of size), because they're too timid/self-absorbed/stupid/etc to speed up and merge correctly, the fact that most people just don't need all that horsepower gets driven home, time and time again.
As for compact trucks, I'd consider the Baja to be more of an El Camino/Rampage class of vehicle. A car-based truck. "Cruck?" "Trar"? This type of vehicle was never more than a niche vehicle anyway. And the Baja tried to break new ground by having a back seat, as well. The result was a bed that was too small, a back seat that was unusable, and an overpriced clumsy looking vehicle that just didn't seem to do anything right.
Closest thing to what I'd consider a compact truck these days would be the Ford Ranger. It hasn't been changed substantially in ages now. And FWIW, I don't find the Colorado/Canyon to be much bigger than the S-10 was. IIRC, towing/hauling capacity on the Colorado actually went down, compared to the S-10! The Dakota, Tacoma, and Frontier definitely seem midsized today though, although in some cases they're getting to the point that they seem pretty inefficient. For example, the Dakota feels all big and bulky and cumbersome to me, and not much smaller than a Ram. Yet it seems to have much less interior room and can't hold the proverbial 4x8 sheet of plywood flat. It's like you get most of the bulk of a big truck but without the versatility, and IMO might as well just spring for the bigger truck.
I kinda see it with the Tacoma/Tundra, too. Except in this case, the Tundra's kinda small for a supposedly full-sized truck. It's like a midsized truck that they found a way to stick a full-sized bed on. I don't like the driving position, though. It's like they took the seats out of some cheap compact and put them in this truck. You sit on the floor, almost more carlike than truck-like. The Tacoma's much more comfy IMO. Seat seems higher off the floor, better-padded, and much better legroom. My only issues here are that the steering wheel doesn't line up with the seating position, and I sit too close to the door, which makes for a bit of a squeeze with elbow room.
Yes the Ranger looks to be the closest to a compact truck. However I have owned three of the origional compact trucks. A courier, and Toyota SR and a D-50. The I have also had a 92 or 94 B-2300 and the Ranger is a lot Bigger than the first three compact trucks I had. I am willing to bet the Next Ranger will be bigger still.
I think a lot of the "this car feels underpowered" sentiments come from people driving those equipped with torque converters...
All that is accomplished by giving people more HP might be to feed their already lazy driving habits.
But you're right boaz, it's a marketing tool. If Carmaker A boosts HP, carmaker B has no choice. And HP is a great marketing tool.
People don't always buy what they want, they buy what they think they want and then find out they probably didn't want or need---which of course is what makes them buy something ELSE. Perpetual dissasisfaction is the key to marketing, even if the marketing is "noble", aka a hybrid. Next year it'll be a better hybrid, as if somehow your old hybrid didn't do what it always did. Your dish soap is "more" biodegradable and your new bike is .3 tenths of a lb lighter. This will surely make the peddle to work a dream.
Isn't that the cliche? Sales is selling something that people need toilet paper) and marketing is selling them something they don't need (take your pick).
Who needs more HP today? Maybe contractors, logging companies and police pursuit cars?
Nope, we don't agree there. Perhaps a preference, yes, but for folks without kids, FAR from a necessity.
It's just that Americans are so used to wasting (space, hp, resources, you name it) from the training they have had in the last 50 years, that they can't shake the habit.
But yes, the small cars certainly shine their brightest in commute and city driving. I'll bet most of us posting here have a work commute, as do the majority of the driving public. So we should see the subcompact class turn into the dominant one for sales within a few years!! :-P
(just kidding on that last line, boaz) :-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Oh, I thought you guys would get a kick out of this. My coworker, who's not exactly the sharpest knife in the Ginsu set, recently shared this revelation with me. She mentioned that while she wants something with better fuel econony, she says she'd be embarrassed to ride around in something like a Toyota Corolla! :confuse:
Here's the real kicker though. Right now she's driving a 1999 Olds Silhouette minivan! It's white, and has this big brownish wavy decal on the side that tries to make it look sporty, but really makes it look like something a senior citizen would drive! In fact, she got it from her mother, who's in her 70's.
What's that old saying about how those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones? :P
FWIW, I don't think I'd be embarrassed to drive something small like a Corolla or smaller car. My biggest issues would be comfort and that vulnerable feeling. Yeah, I can fit in a Corolla, Yaris, etc. But that doesn't mean I like it. I can fit on a yard sale kitchen chair too, but a nice, padded Lazy-boy recliner is still going to be more comfy. And when you're used to bigger cars, it's just hard to shake that vulnerable, pants-down-around-your-ankles feeling when you're surrounded like bigger vehicles on the highway. Kinda like that episode of "Speed Racer" where that dude in the little Pacer-looking thing started having a nervous fit just before the Mammoth Car smeared him into the side of an embankment. :surprise:
As for car size and city driving, well maybe DC is a different story, but I have no problems driving my '85 Silverado around down there. In fact, my roommate with the '06 Xterra went into the hospital, in Georgetown, and I've been going down there regularly to cheer him up, and I've mainly been driving the pickup. I tried driving his Xterra a few times, but just started getting leery. I don't know if people avoid my pickup more because it's big or because it's old, but I've noticed that with the Xterra I'd have many more close calls with the local idiots. They tend to give the pickup a wider berth, though. And as for parking, despite about 3 1/2 feet more length (~212" versus ~178") I don't find the pickup any harder to parallel park. Probably simply because I'm used to it, and therefore just feel more comfortable driving it.
I don't think the image problem with subcompacts is that they're SMALL cars. Heck, some very nice, high status sports cars like the Lotus Elise are extremely small.
The image problem is that subcompacts are CHEAP cars. You drive up in one, and people think that's all you can afford. They don't usually take a moment out to realize that you're doing the environment a favor, for example, unless said subcompact is also a hybrid (i.e. Prius), which is why hybrid small cars enjoy a higher status than subcompacts, despite the fact that some non-hybrid subcompacts are almost as fuel efficient as hybrids.
All in all, its very sad, and reminds me of that Passat commercial (not that I'm a fan of VW), where you have various people in their cars leaning out the windows and shouting various silly (but oh so true) things through megaphones:
"Because I make more money than you!... because I make more money than you!..."
"Because I'm compensating for my shortcomings!... because I'm compensating for my shortcomings!..."
It's the SNOB factor, i.e. the ever-present $$$-awareness, that really hurts the subcompact segment, IMO. Which is why they're almost always marketed to college-age kids, despite the fact that the segment has improved to the point where a lot more middle-aged folks could and should be using them.
But hey, who cares about reducing our dependence on unstable foreign oil sources and helping out the environment, when you can have a car that instantly advertises your yearly income, such a boon to the insecure. Woohoo. :sick:
I fully admit that when there were just two Scions imported here I liked the xA much better. If it would have been easier to get or test drive I might have considered it. But no sooner to they release it than we saw it was rejected by the very target they aimed it at. Yes, I know and agree picking a target and then letting the target know it was picked was foolish but they did it none the less. As a result the target group just didn't bite and it now looks like a slightly older group may be showing interest. I still would get a xB or drive one to a dog fight but they do have a lot more room than a traditional sub compact. The tC I like. looking at the Fit,Yaris and Versa I see a lot of hope for the Versa. But only the Fit looks to be a sub compact, maybe. I think that the price point will have a lot more to do with how well these cars are accepted rather than their small size. But like I said before, we should have a pretty good picture by this time next year.
People are always in pursuit of something "better," however the "better" is defined. When the economy is doing well (i.e. per hour labor cost is equivalent substantial amount of oil and metal), the material cost of making and operating a larger car is minimal compared to the cost of making and running a smaller car, but can sell with much fatter profit margins.
The demand for those extreme ends of the market is heavily influenced by the hourly-wage to oil price ratio. The cost differential between making a small car vs. a large car in a similar facility is not that great, nowhere near as great as the sale price differetial . . . because the labor cost is more associated with parts-count. When economy is doing well, wage-to-oil price ratio is high, people can afford to live large, literally; and vice versa.
Every few decades or so, another nation or group nations get industrialized and get in the global car market, that's when another generation of subcompacts get introduced because suddenly really cheap labor becomes available for carmaking, small cars can be profitable again. German/Brits in the 50's, Japanese in the 70's, and now Koreans and soon Chinese and Indians. Initially they all face uphill battle and often get laughed at (VW bug, Toyopets, Excel, etc.) but they just have to wait for the next economic downturn to give them a break in the market place, first in the tiny end of the market, then move upmarkeet as economy improves again, then wait for someone else to undercut their price in the next merry-go-around.
Market shift to small cars is not really something to be celebrated; it just means, wage-to-energy price ratio has been dropping. It's the downhill side of an ecnomic cycle.
2. New models like Yaris and Versa would have needed probably two years' lead time AT LEAST to bring to market here, which time scale predates the inflated gas prices by a year (or more in the case of the Yaris and Fit).
Now as for the energy-to-wage hypothesis, I suppose that one has some merit, but think of it: what if we have seen the end of gas below $2.50/gallon? Suppose it spikes to $4 next summer? Suppose $3/gallon becomes the new gas price floor after that?
In that case I suppose you can expect the wage-to-energy ratio stay suppressed. There aren't more people graudating from college each year, there are less, as a percentage of the population.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
2. Gas price has been on the rise since the end of 1999.
I'm not sure what college education has to do with any of this; more college graduates would just mean more college graduates competing for the same declining wage premium. I do agree that income level measured in gallons of gas per hour of wage may indeed be on the down slope for a while . . . Those cycles tend to be pretty long. The previous half-cycle, uphill climb, lasted from 1982 to 1999/2000, so it's only fair to expect a downhill slope lasting almost as long, and we are only 6 years or so into it, with perhaps 11 more years to go. I just don't understand why such collective misery is cause for celebration.
Of course the other point of view is we are entering the age of Mad Max and sub compacts are simply a sign of that. But then even at 7 to 8 bucks a gallon I only saw a few sub compacts in London. What is up with that? They do have diesel I guess.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Anyway, I was merely responding to two points I thought were worth contending. Large cars can also be efficient in the hybrid and diesel age, and who knows, In 20 or 30 years, we may have mass-produced fuel cell-mobiles.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
You know who ;-) Those who advocating more should be driving sub compacts are essentially advocating more should be living poor.
Now for all the people who are so wrapped up in their cars as to be hyper-conscious of the image it gives them, "as big and shiny as possible" will be the only acceptable choice ever. But those folks are going to pay more and more for that privilege in the coming years, and I am not just talking about paying in money. Also convenience.
boaz: well, I'm currently struggling to keep my gas expenditures under $200/month, even with 80% of my driven miles per month in my 40 mpg Echo. Which tells you how much I drive, eh?! And that represents something like 4-5% of my gross pay, or about half of what they lay out for my health insurance each month. In the last few years, they haven't increased the healthcare cap enough for me to avoid having to make a contribution, and I assume the same would be true if they gave me a gas stipend in lieu of pay. And with the way gas spikes overnight in some cases, I would imagine a gas stipend negotiated on an annual basis could easily become worthless in a matter of months. Give me the pay, I say, and I will just have to walk more if the gas prices ever reach really crippling highs.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
You know who Those who advocating more should be driving sub compacts are essentially advocating more should be living poor."
this is perhaps the most ignorant thing I've read on this board.
If you advocate spending more on a car than you can afford, say, buying a luxury car or SUV when you don't need one, THEN you're hoping people live poor. Advocating an efficient reliable car under $20,000 is advocating for economic sanity.
Is this really an issue of Reality vs. Perception all over again?
Are today's subcompacts really "cheap"? REALLY? Do the doors close with a reedy THWANG and vibrate like tin foil? Do pieces break off in your hand? Does the hood or roof "oilcan" up and down as you drive down the road? Do the engines buzz your rearview mirror? Do broken-down Yaris', Fits and xAs litter the roadways of America?
Or is this just a perception foisted on us by inborn prejudices from the past? Do we look at a Fit and some of us see a 1986 Hyundai Excel?
SAFETY -- ditto. Can anyone prove statistically that you are more "vulnerable" in a 2006 Honda Fit with front and side airbags than you are in a 1994 Cadillac not so equipped? How could you prove this? Is there any good science on the fatality-to-vehicle-weight ratio being linear and direct? Doubt it.
And let's say there WAS good science, that smaller cars WERE in fact more "vulnerable". Vulnerable to what? Big cars? Well then, why don't we call big cars "killers"? Why don't we have a safety campaign that says "Improve auto safety nationwide. Don't drive a big killer car!"
How did subcompacts become the bad guys and big high HP cars the paragon of virtue?
Why does everyone smoke in old movies and not anymore? Why is littering now punishable by huge fines but once was a totally acceptable thing to do?
These assumptions about what the best car is....these are all up for grabs because some may be purely perception-based, and don't really make sense.
(I remember as a bat swinging little leaguer reading an old ad for Camel cigarettes I think it was, where Mickey Mantle or one of those legendary players is telling readers that cigarettes relax him before a game. I believed it).
"I'd hate to be rear-ended by a Yukon in one of those." to which the response was "Well, what *would* you like to be rear-ended by a Yukon in?"
Larger cars and trucks have far worse handling and vision than smaller cars - at the average consumer level. They give the illusion of personal safety, but at the expense of safety for everyone else on the road.
That's the problem that needs to be overcome.
But brightness's comment (it seems to me) is 100% related to image, the image a car projects. Size and power do convey to passersby that you had more money to spend on a car, simply because more of each does cost more in America. I think the subcompacts, thanks to the "Japanese revolution" of the last 30 years, have reached the level where their image is NOT solely one of poverty-stricken buyers driving substandard cars simply because they couldn't do any better. But neither are most of today's subs cars that convey the image of super-success, CEO and real estate agent material in other words.
It is important to consider image, because many people do prioritize image above all other factors when choosing a car. I think these days the market has evolved, however, to the point where there are more buyers prioritizing more pragmatic factors like fuel economy, total cost to own, and safety.
In fact, in the price range of the majority of today's subcompacts, I can't think of a single car that has an image of overwhelming power and success. I mean, we are mostly talking about a group of cars selling under $20K.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
A Bentley turbo or Ferrari, no.
So if there's no status with any vehicle anymore up to maybe $50,000 or more, why not drive a subcompact? There's no status "penalty" anyway.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
I have been living happily - at a standard most in the past could not and many even in today's US can not attain - and do not own a car at all.
I have nothing against possessions. I have a music system and several watches worth more than many autos. What works or what does not work for ones lifestyle should be a personal decision.
I know many people who are caught up in the race to get a large status vehicle, a macMansion with the right address, fashion statement vacations, the works. Some are happy. Many are, and probably always will be, dissatisfied. They do not seem to realize they are caught in a race with no finish line.
After heartily agreeing with you, I would add that unless I lived in the city of San Francisco or on the island of Manhattan (as I hear you do), I would find my lifestyle inhibited without a car. IMO, those are the ONLY two places in this country with a public transportation system sufficient to meet most of my transport needs (not to mention both having a well-developed network of Zip rental cars for those short trips when you would like to use a car).
As for me personally, I thoroughly and totally discard the idea of buying a car for image. If I ever found myself allowing that to enter the decision-making process, I would pause to consider what was wrong. I have no need to try and project some image to the world using my car. I suppose if I actually carried clients in the car that I wanted to impress, like real estate agents do for instance, then maybe I would have a change of heart. But that is a very small percentage of the population. (and it aint me!) :-)
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Poser: But but I can lease a 7 series which costs more for $899 a month and just $2,999 down.
ME: Sorry Land Rover offers no incentives on their vehicles you have to pay to drive one.
The subcompact is perfect for a city like San Francisco, as it allows you to sneak into those little spots between two driveways that most cars don't quite fit into. And I don't relish hurtling down some of those extreme hills in a 5,000lb SUV.
NATURAL SELECTION: It may be, that as American life changes, certain external effects might cause the evolution of new species. Some of these effects might be a) increased traffic and less parking (survival of the smallest?), b) higher and higher fuel prices (survival of the thrifty?) and c) maturation of the baby boomers who no longer drive families around.
The poser vehicles of choice here are E-class and 3ers and 5ers. Local lots are full of 3 year old E-class lease returns, and you can't throw a ball without hitting a leased 3er around here.
I suspect if I didn't have this MB obsession, I would be more than happy to be in a Fit/Yaris/other unassuming car. My sister is very non-ostentatious nowadays...she drives a Focus ZX5 and she thinks it is great, she has no desire to move up. Her finances are better for it.