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this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Cars. Expensive cars require more frequent and complicated maintenance and repairs than cheaper cars. They over engineer them on purpose in order to make it unreasonable to maintain them in the long run. They don't want their brand sullied by old versions of their cars driven around by poor people.
When I was in college, I admired my boss and his BMW. He then told me that it was a hand-me-down, and he spends a few hours a month maintaining it because there's always something that breaks and he can't afford to bring it into the shop every time.
He joked on a few occasions of just giving me the car after a year, and after a while, it felt like a cry for help rather than a joke.
kinda reminded me of,
when i signed up for a "driving safety training" course.
we had a particapant, with a brand new bmw,
that went from exited to salty as the course went on
for example,
when we tested our cars traction control (breakin without steering while one side of the path was slippery)
his car was the only one, that didnt stay straight by itself.
Admiring a car is such a stupid thing to do. I'm not trying to attack you, just saying. I've done it in the past. It's just so stupid.
I mean there's a lot of engineering, design, and art that goes into a car. And I feel it's kinda natural to admire a high performance machine. I'll admire a tractor or a train also.
100%
What an insane point to make. If you're a car person then of course you'll admire others' cars, even if you're not, they're often great bits of design and good fun in the right setting.
It's only stupid if you then go out and try to get something to compete with it for more than you can afford to spend. I have no idea what the poster you replied to is talking about.
NGL I sometimes drool looking at a train and how it's built.
I might be trainsexual
I think the term of art these days is that you have a 'trains agenda'
The problem is buying a thing whose primary purpose is utility, then paying more for esthetics, while desperately trying to forget that 99% of them will not last 20 years. If I buy a high quality dining room set, it will also have a lot of artistic consideration and could reasonably last hundreds of years.
I'd 100% disagree. Aesthetics are hugely important, especially in things you use every day. It's dumb to go into debt for it or otherwise ruin your life over it but if you have to use it every day you might as well enjoy it.
Also 99% of cars not making it to 20 years old is an absurd thing to say. The average age of a car in the USA is 12 years. Vehicle sales per year haven't changed that much. That means about half the cars on the road are over 20 years old.
And a dining room set lasting centuries? Technically possible but like not if you actually use it every day.
I have never once thought to myself, "This driving experience is so much better because this car is so pretty!" Better handling, more power, smoother ride, more comfortable interior, sure, all those things improve the experience. I'm also aware this is an opinion, where people will have different experiences, but unless you live in your car I can't imagine paying extra solely because you enjoy what that extra brings. The reasoning that causes this simply doesn't make sense to me, although I acknowledge that it happens (a lot).
And while the 99% number is incorrect, it is about as absurd as the 50% claim. Upon actual research rather than my gut instinct, this site puts the number of cars on the road after 20 years at 24%. Note that the weather where I live is harsher and the average age of cars is about a year less than in America, and that the distribution doesn't follow a normal curve so that percentage could be a few points lower where I live.
That site is geo-blocked in my region so I have no idea what it says but I'd just like to point out that
A: the USA actually exports a huge number of used cars so the average life of a car sold in the US will actually be longer than the average age of a car in the US.
And B: without a significant number of cars way older than 20 years old, there's no way for the average age to be 12 years old and only 24% be over 20 years old. So a bunch of that 24% have got to be 50-60 years old. Either one of the stats are wrong or a significant portion of cars are lasting way longer than either of us were guessing.
Also you can appreciate the experience more just because of the aesthetics of a product. This is a well documented phenomenon. If it's not your thing fine, not everyone has to like the same things. I find for example fancy dinner sets to be ridiculous. Doesn't mean that I think people who own them are dumb for liking them. I have friends who break out their grandmother's china for Thanksgiving. I'd never do that but it makes them happy so good on them.
Edit: whoever wrote that blog post really doesn't want any darned foreigners reading it. They not only block non American IP addresses, but also Archive.org, VPN addresses, and Google cache.
Here's the link on archive.org.
A: That may be but I doubt that huge number is significant relative to the approx. 280 million vehicles currently registered in the US or even the approx. 12 million new cars sold each year, so it is basically a rounding error. I looked here and it mentions America exporting about 2.5 million cars between 2015 and 2018, so between 600k and 800k per year, so that's about 6% as many as the new cars sold each year. So yes, that might change things by a percent or two either way.
B: Sorry, but that isn't how statistics (or averages) work. If you work out the numbers in that link, and weight the numbers for the bracket that includes 12 years, you get either 37% or 56% are under 12 years. So it's definitely possible for it to be 12 years. If you draw a curve based on these numbers you will notice a fairly sharp rise, then a long tail, with 12.3 being just past the peak. That gives a lot of cars between 12 and 20 years, leading to the averages we're seeing.
I would argue that ultimately, the only reason we use money is to enjoy our lives more than we would otherwise.
Personal enjoyment over time is then probably the most important reason you could spend extra on a pretty or fast car. I threw in the “over time” because obviously plenty of people spend way too much on cars that they think make them happy in the short term, but make their life worse in the long term.
Cars as entertainment devices are super expensive, no doubt. Consider a $20K price bump for the performance vehicle versus a few grand for a gaming setup that will also last several years. But, for some people it’s still worth it. Like right now I drive a cheap sensible car (11 year old Mazda 3), but in a few years when I upgrade, in think I want to get a performance model. I prefer working in the office, and I work close to home with a fun windy hilly country road between here and there. I’m thinking electric dual motor sedan would be real nice.
Admiring in and of itself is fine. And I'm very much in the "FuckCars" camp (not in the sexual way).
People might take stupid actions or make stupid decisions out of their admiration, but that's a different matter than the admiration.
Hard disagree!
Are you saying that you've owned both cheap and expensive cars, and that your favorites have always been the cheap ones? That they've been more reliable, more comfortable, better-riding, and better-driving? Or, at least, no worse than the expensive ones?
Yes, more expensive cars are more expensive. They often have a higher cost of ownership. And, sometimes, brands really fuck up and cut corners they shouldn't, and result an reputational harm that takes years to recover from, long after they've fixed the production issues (c.f. Audi in the early 00's). But, IME, it's usually worth it, if you can afford it.
Cheap cars definitely are more reliable if you pick the right brands. On all the other points it just doesn't make enough of a difference to me to justify the enormous cost increase.
Our $10k used Camry is still kicking ass over ten years later and hasn't ever needed work more extensive than replacing leaking struts. The reliability truly is astounding.
EDIT: But, let's not talk about my camera-buying habits lol
Ah, that's the perfect hobby if you really hate having money 😅
Our 2016 (new) BMW has never had a major issue. Our 2014 (new) Volvo - which cost half what the BMW did, has almost never not had something going wrong with it. We bought a new Altima many years ago that was less expensive than the Volvo; we had it for several years and it was fine, but it was still in the shop more than this BMW (but less than the Volvo).
The issue isn't so much reliability, but what it costs when there is a problem. Fixing the Altima would certainly be cheaper than the same repair of the BMW. The Volvo TCO is higher than the BMW or the Altima.
I also think you have to be comparing similar years. My sister - who's 20 years younger than me - is still driving a 1996 Nissan 240SX, and it's in great chat wasn't a "cheap" car when it was new, but still. I think cars from last century were more robust.
The repair cost is ultimately the most significant, that's true.
We'll have to see how statistics play out in the long run: that's where the non-anecdotal evidence for Toyota's supremacy comes from.
There's not going to be a huge difference between something like a Toyota and a Mercedes other than cost and reliability. You're paying for the brand.
I disagree as well. I think it'd be pretty obvious to anyone who's sat in each the difference in comfort, ride quality, material choice, technology, and drivetrain refinement between a Corolla and an AMG.
I would still buy the Corolla though for the reliability - or better yet, a Lexus which kind of has both.
This person has never driven a Merc.
There's a difference between Toyota and Lexus
You can buy a decent spec Highlander for $40k.
Mercedes is an outlier. Try comparing Toyota with Lexus, Nissan with Infiniti, Chevy with Cadillac, or Ford with Lincoln. In all of these instances, the luxury marques have equivalent or better reliability than their economy counterparts.
Of course, whether or not the reliability and features are worth the cost is a different question entirely. (I generally lean towards no.)
Lol I don't think the reliability difference between Lexus and Toyota is measurable. If anything I see way more old Toyotas on the road than I do old Lexuses. But that may be just because less were produced.
Lexus is made by Toyota, just an fyi. To your point, a lot more vehicles are built with the Toyota badge than the Lexus badge. Options and creature comforts separate the two. Most (maybe all) of them share the same platform with each other.
I'm well aware :) I don't think that really changes anything of what I said though. Them being owned by the same parent company doesn't really change anything other than the company culture of reliability, but even so Toyotas are more well known for their reliability. Luxury cars are also inherently less reliable just due to the fact they have more parts and also newer technologies for the luxury aspect that sometimes haven't had all the kinks engineered out yet.
100% agree here. They all need maintenance, but higher end ones have pricer parts and less common, affordable after market parts. Cars are for the most part a utility and a cost center. You want to minimize your cost and maximize your value gotten out of it.
I despise cars as a status symbol, because again it's just going to turn into a rust bucket like the rest of them at the same or worse rates, but also it just sets people up for failure in the lives just tens of thousands down the drain, literal years of work, for something's that's nearly worthless by the time they pay it off.
Lolol you just going to ignore that brands like Porsche are consistently in the top 3?
Expensive cars mostly fail because people who can't afford them don't do basic maintenance. The only real German brand when any reliability issues are Merc.