My new favorite game is:
When the news says “high prices”, replace it with “low wages”; “inflation” with “paycuts”.
The whole economy starts to make a lot more sense.
Yeah I mean even just go to BLS inflation calculator and put in car prices. Cars are cheap, but if federal min wage was equal to min wage in 1960 (and this is by official stats) it would be able $16 an hour. Cars are cheap, we’re getting shafted on pay like hell. Hopefully tech moves so fast it just blows everything out of the water. Hopefully not literally. Hopefully not hell on the other side. Time will tell. But my backup is a shotgun to the forehead so I got my backup plan lol
Please don’t have my backup plan. Truly a “if it’s hell on earth” situation. It just gives me mild comfort I can extinguish at least my human consciousness is necessary. Lol
Someone make this a browser extension
Laughs in late 90s model Astro van and early 2000s Toyota Camry.
I have a coworker who did a frame off (yes, they had a partial frame) restoration of their astro van. Some of those astro van people are really into them.
I mean, they are cool as heck on the inside. I can see why they would be into them.
Didn’t they come with an awd v8 version?
AWD, yes. V8, not sure. I think they share some underpinnings with the s10, so even if they didn’t come out of factory with one it wouldn’t be a hard swap.
AWD, yes. V8 is an extensive mod.
Every car I have ever owned since I started driving in the 1990s, I have driven until I can’t anymore. Either they got too old and broke down or something was just so expensive to fix that it wasn’t worth it or someone totaled it. All of them have been bought used as well. And I plan to do it again with my 2016 Prius. I’d love to own an EV, but no way am I going to look into getting one until the Prius isn’t driveable any longer. If that’s more than 12.6 years, so be it.
Drive it until the frame is toast is what I do, then I buy the same car used and the old becomes a donor.
I’m in your camp. Take care of them and drive them into the ground.
I feel like driving a car into the ground isn’t taking care of it…
300k miles, then engine swap!
where I like salt gets the body before the engine goes. I have 220k on one and it is starting to rust through.
Frame and body repair, or get a donor car!
Nice in 220. What car you got?
Town and counry minivan.
I can understand the lure of buying a new car. They’re neat and shiny and have features your car doesn’t. But it’s so wasteful and unnecessary. It’s not like upgrading a computer because it won’t work with any modern software and you won’t be able to use the internet. A model A Ford can drive on the same roads as a Tesla assuming it’s been maintained.
It also won’t drive you into a train against your will.
Macroeconomically, it’s not wasteful because cars find new life in resale. It’s definitely wasteful to your pocketbook to get a new car every 5 years.
Right, but only the first buyer gets to decide what’s produced. So someone buying new dumb pickups every two years is flooding the market with gas guzzlers and this results is much more waste than someone doing the same with Camrys. That’s not the same definition of waste that you used though, but I wanted to chime in because the new car buyers define the future used market.
I have an 04 canyon and it’s ran great with proper maintenance and some repairs. Modern vehicles should last a long time as long as you put the needed maintenance into them
My baby turns 24 this year 🥹
I seriously have an emotional attachment to my car at this point. Driving something for so long, I’m going to be sad when it bites the dust. I’m shooting for another 10 years or until it hits 300k miles.
Wow 24 years and still under 300k? Impressive
I was fortunate enough to live very close to my job for a number of years. Now I wfh so she doesnt get a lot of mileage these days either.
I’m daily driving a 32-year old car. I have no interest in something newer. AMA.
Please tell us more. Make? Model? Any modifications? Your history with the car?
It’s a blue 1992 Mazda Miata with a hardtop. I’ve owned it for about 7 years. No mods besides basics like a bluetooth radio and a short fixed antenna (instead of the factory retracting whip antenna). Maintenance is easy and replacement parts are dirt cheap. Recently replaced the clutch master/slave cylinders for about $40 worth of parts. A set of four tires can easily be found under $400. It averages around 26.5 miles per gallon in combined city/highway driving and I got 32 on my last long distance highway trip.
Ah man, I wish I lived in a climate where I could daily an NA Miata (or any other classic).
Are you in a rust prone area?
I love my Miata but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to daily it. Especially in winter.
I live in a 7a USDA Plant Hardiness Zone, so it gets down to around 0°F and salt is definitely used in the winter. However, if I drove a different car, then it would be the one to get the additional wear and tear. Seems more cost effective to limit the exposure to one vehicle.
Also, I’m not one to baby my belongings. I mentioned the car is blue from the factory, but it’s currently rocking a used red front bumper cover and hood after a front-end collision. In another example of my vehicular abuse, I had to replace the power steering rack after a failed attempt at a creek crossing. Water got in the original one and it started getting crunchy. Parts aren’t too expensive though, so it was fixed with a $400 remanufactured unit off eBay.
7a is barely getting salt in the roads.
Fair, but I think I highlighted my other abuses. Salt isn’t the only enemy, sometimes it’s myself.
Or perhaps people are starting to realize that you don’t need a new car as soon as your 5-year loan is paid off.
I do okay financially; if I wanted a new car, I’d buy one. I bought mine brand new off the lot 15 years ago, and I intend to keep driving it until I can no longer repair it. Why would I possibly want to buy a new, 5G-connected, spyware-infected plastic shitbox when what I have works perfectly well and probably has another 100k miles of life with a few minor repairs and maybe an engine swap at 2-300k or so?
Only reason Id buy a new car is to get a full electric, affordable, nontesla that has more than 150 horsepower.
Only reason I am thinking of replacing our car is because a BEV would pay for itself fairly quickly if I hear back from a job I applied to that has a 50 mile round-trip commute. Gas alone would be an extra $1000 per year compared to our current 11 year old vehicle.
I’d personally wait a bit as the market is trending down from the high prices during COVID and manufacturers are slowly rolling out more and more incentives again.
There are a good amount of incentives for EVs honestly. My state is also giving a more inclusive rebate for them.
Car payments are a poverty trap. I haven’t had one in a decade. Buying a used car for cash is such a better deal anyway. I do need suckers to get those 1-2 year leases though to make my cars cheaper.
How to sound like a boomer without saying you’re a boomer.
“It’s just more stuff to break! I don’t need none of that wifi or internets and touch screens or whathaveya”
What a strange take. In fact most highly technical people tend to want simple unless they have enough money to treat things like cars as toys.
I guess you didn’t see the recent article that studied all the information manufacturers collect on you in these new generation of vehicles. Some notable ones are Nissan and Kia collecting information on your sexual activity and six companies collecting your genetic information all for what? So you can control Spotify from your infotainment screen?
Not wanting unnecessary “features“ that are just thinly veiled spyware that overcomplicate every aspect of driving is not a boomer opinion. Wanting buttons you can feel without looking for instead of a giant screen that has automatic updates and needs to have access to your cellphone for basic functionality is not a boomer opinion.
Knowing that tacking voice activation onto every ‘smart’ device, including vehicles, is just an excuse for companies to record everything you say for their shitty marketing isn’t a boomer opinion.
In my experience doing tech work, boomers love that shit and fall for all of it, and it all fucks up in some way much more quickly than should be allowed.
I’m not OP, but if wanting cars that have physical buttons and cars that don’t charge me subscription fees makes me a boomer, then I guess I’m a boomer.
Okay techbro
Ya if you don’t like pissing your money away that makes you a boomer!
Sick take chief.
For sure. I had my last car for 20 years until it finally NEEDED to be replaced. And my current car I’ve had for five years. After paying it off early, I’ve enjoyed not having that payment, and I hope it lasts just as long as my last car.
CarPlay and radar cruise control are worth it for commuting imo… but beyond that I don’t care.
2021 civic I’ll be driving into the ground thank you very much.
I frequent the Bay Area (Cali) and wouldn’t dream of taking a car without some semi-autonomous driving features. Sitting in traffic while the car brakes, accelerates and steers is the best.
As a lover of manual transmissions, I think that would make me feel very strange.
It’s takes sometimes an hour to go 15 miles up hills on 680 in the bay. My competition clutch car can help me enjoy the canyon roads, but my “self driving” car can take care of my “grindset” driving.
I used to drive all around the Bay Area with my Honda del Sol. Ah, good times. I miss my twenties.
Installed CarPlay in my 2011 car. It’s awesome and still no car payment.
Same, my 2013 Sonata Hybrid has ~80’000 miles (130k km), paid off yeeeaaarrrsss ago, no problem with it, why change?
Pretty much the same here only 12 years ago. I remember telling my dad I made the final payment and his immediate reply was something along the lines of, “Now you can trade it in and get something new again”. I learned long ago not to take financial advice from that guy lol.
Due to cost or reliability improvements? Or both? Because cars are definitely operational a lot longer than they were 25-50 years ago.
I’m cool in my 2009 with no payments for what I do.
I buy or lease every 3-4 years. Why? Because I can. I’m doing my part to make sure to eat the depreciation hit for people who want to buy them on the used car market and drive them to the wheels fall off.
There’s definitely good arguments for this, for some people, although I do believe many are making a mistake.
There’s an even better argument for leasing an EV, since the technology is changing so rapidly. A prime example is the upcoming shift to NACS chargers in the US. From the larger perspective, it’s an even better idea to help jump start the used EV market
Two of my my recent leases were/are EVs for that reason.
Good news for a bad reason.
Seems about right. I rather continue keeping my current vehicle (2016) well maintained than to get a high interest loan with a overpriced price tag on a new OR used vehicle.
Seems right to me as well. I do buy new but always kept them until repairs cost more than the car is worth, generally 10-15 years in.
I’m sure someone willing to either do the repairs themselves or risk spending more, could keep my cars on the road even longer
Even if money is no object, in many ways 10-15 year old vehicles may be the sweet spot in terms of decent features without sacrificing privacy.
I don’t want a monolithic touchscreen (zero physical buttons) with apps, integration, cameras on me in the cabin, data collection and harvesting etc. For that reason I will stick with a decade plus old car.
I watched a video that basically points this out. People have already figured out how to make the most optimum vehicle about 10 years ago, hell probably before, but because we live in a capitalistic society, manufacturers have to keep “innovating” and raising prices and adding useless features that create more problems than convenience. Touchsreens in cars are a perfect example: 1 - At first they were used to display radio and connect to gps, but are now overglorofied phones that have basic car features buried behind menus and laggy screens 2 - Distracted driving was already a problem with texting and driving. So lets put a giant screen on the dash where you can watch Netflix (while I doubt you can while driving, the fact I still gotta look at a screen to turn my wipers on in a flash of rain is a major flaw) 3 - Its a new source of revanue, you’d be stupid NOT to put a screen in your car. All that juicy data, waiting to be collected and sold. If Watch_Dogs taught me anything, its that making our world smarter only makes us more vulnerable. 4 - We were able to get around WITHOUT a screen in our car. A phone mount, a bluetooth adapter, and a dashcam make my 2012 mini cooper feel like a 2025 modern smartcar. Sure it sucks that I had to buy the external upgrades, but I’ve still got modern conveniences like seat warmers, AC, cruise control, traction control. (The only feature I can give Tesla is Self-Driving mode, which is still in beta, so you’re more of a test subject and not a paying customer) 5 - (This is a personal rant) A screen looks fancy, until you realize its actually cheaper to call it a software problem, rather than manufacturing dedicated switches. Making it even harder to repair, since your mechanic now has to learn to code, alnogside manual labor if a part is broken.
The only benefit I see in buying the latest car is if you’re worried about the car being overworked. Aka its legit old and undrivable, but the way I see it, its cheaper to fix your old car over breaking your brand new cybertruck before its off the lot.
Finally waking up to the con
I bought my current car, an '08, for $7000 in 2014. I paid it off in 2017 and havent had a car payment in years, its been a dream. I get car envy and fantisize about buying a new car but then i look at the prices and im content with currently paying $0 a month
it’s* been a dream
Also an 08. I am fine. Plan to keep it going as long as I possibly can and then buy an EV.