Do You Own a "Car?"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

in what world is it “stupid” to stop making things that don’t sell and lose money? the automakers are in the business of making vehicles to sell. They’re not obligated to lose money making cars for people to argue about on the internet (but not buy.)

check out the likes of Jalopnik and The Truth About Cars sometime, and read the comments. Bunch of whiners who piss and moan how the car companies won’t make them a unicorn brown diesel Miata station wagon with a manual transmission, then elsewhere will brag about how they never buy any car newer than 5 years old because depreciation is for suckers.

122

Technically I am a car owner. My SO and I jointly own my pickup and his car. I hate driving his car because of the reduced line-of-sight and low ground clearance. The only time I drive it is when my truck is in the shop, or I’m taking his car in for service.

123

I owned a station wagon then a Chevy Astro minivan then 3 Nissan Quest vans in a row. Now I drive a Prius and could never think of going back!

I no longer have kids to carry. I no longer have as much large equipment to carry. And I really love the increased mileage and smaller footprint on the street.

For the first few weeks it was irritating not to be able to see over most of the traffic on the highway but one very quickly adjusts. What a fantastic car this is.

124

I bought a new-to-me Mazda 3 hatchback on Black Friday a week ago. It’s my second consecutive Mz3HB. The previous one was a 2004 that I traded in at 152k miles. It was the best car I’ve ever had: sporty, reliable, vaguely cool looking, plenty of room in the back. The ‘new’ one is a 2013 and the technology updates during that nine year gap are astonishing. They’re both the top trim package, Grand Touring with apparently all options. Bluetooth, nav, rain sensing wipers, keyless entry & start, heated seats (god, so nice), heated mirrors, fancy active traction and stability control, headlights that turn with the steering wheel, blindspot monitoring. Back in 2004, these were all only in the reach of high end luxury vehicles. Nine years later, available on my entry level Japanese four banger.

Whoa, I hope it wasn’t a 1969 Daytona. They’re quite rare and valuable. I had two 1989 Dodge Daytona Shelbys with intercooled turbos. Pretty cool cars.

I just filled up on Friday for $2.30/gal. That’s pretty cheap, even over here. This was in Illinois which (looks) has about the country’s 12th highest fuel tax at 19 cents a gallon, not including the national tax of 18.4 cents.

125

I like owning a car.

I’ve owned a truck before, and only used the bed a handful of times. It would’ve been easier to just borrow or rent a truck for those situations. It isn’t like I have to move large furniture very much.

I prefer a sedan, having all that interior space is nice.

But having said that, in a truck the heating & AC work better since there is less cubic footage to climate control.

But overall a sedan is much nicer.

126

People do. There are drivers who seem to take it as a personal affront when you change lanes out from behind them, scoot past them, and move back over in front of them.

127

Our first Honda, a 1986 Accord, made it to 254K, so to the moon and about 6% of the way back. We gave up on our 2000 Accord just a few thousand miles short of the moon. Our 2009 Accord is well over halfway there.

128

I drove pickups for quite a few years, for work, then had a couple of SUVs. All gas guzzlers. I now drive a Civic which is a gas miser.
I could never go back to anything bigger and watch that gas pump ring up a hundred dollars of gas on a fill up.

129

I have a Volvo V60. I like having the space for my two dogs in the back, but it is not huge. Saying that, it’s still more room than most mid-sized SUVs I’ve seen, and that’s a big part of my choice. Ok, there is more line-of-sight from the higher position in an SUV, but they don’t seem as sleek as my station wagon.

130

Not sure what the point is here or what the OP is getting at, but hey, it is MPSIMS, so it doesn’t really need to have a point to be gotten to :slight_smile:

Yes, I own a “car”, two of them actually, which categorization is different from “truck/SUV” which is currently by far the biggest selling category of new vehicle sales in the US.

The cars in question:

2007 Acura TSX (with a manual transmission, at that), coming up on 148,000 miles
2000 BMW Z3 convertible roadster (also MT), now at over 101,000 miles

I bought these cars used, after many years of driving an 2008 Acura MDX and 2003 Subaru Forester. The SUVs are far more utilitarian, but boring as heck to drive. Heavy, sluggish, fuel guzzling, etc., and being as I live in NYC, difficult to street park, and for the MDX I also get hit with a fairly large “Truck/SUV” surcharge to park in most downtown parking garages (in Manhattan, or even in Philadelphia).

I still have the MDX (I gave the Forester to my daughter last year when she needed a car for college), I just drive it the least. I reserve it for family road trips with >4 ppl or when we have a lot of luggage, and when parking will be free and easy (i.e., we’re leaving town). Every time I drive it after a long period of time in the other two vehicles, I feel like I’m driving a stagecoach!

The Acura TSX is my daily driver, which means I have racked up by far the most miles per year since buying it 2.5 years ago, … about 5,200 miles a year. (My “daily drives” are typically 10 miles a day total.)

GM and Ford getting out of the “car” business in retiring production of various long-running sedan or coupe models with declining market shares reflects both the growth in popularity of SUVs/Trucks, but more particularly, the preference for foreign cars. Honda and Toyota are actually selling MORE sedans than ever, even as the total market share of sedans is declining.

And in the Truck realm, the domestic brands are still king. People brag about their Ford F-150s or Chevy Rams; when’s the last time you heard of a Tacoma fan group?

Around the NYC metro area I still see plenty of cars - they still outnnumber trucks and SUVs; I rarely see a non-commercial pickup truck - but if I see an American made sedan, I assume it’s either a rental car or a disguised police car.

131

I have a car ('18 Impala) and a truck ('09 Ford Ranger). The truck only has 42k miles on it since I hate driving trucks and don’t when I have a proper car to drive. I don’t get why people want to drive huge 4 door pickups and giant SUVs that get less than 20 mpg on the highway.

132

My last two cars have been Subaru Foresters, which are really mini-SUVs/crossovers or something of the sort. I’d originally planned on getting a Legacy or an Outback, but it turned out that the Forester had all the options I wanted at a lower price than the other cars, so Forester is what I bought.

I rarely have to worry about powering through snow, but when I do, it’s aces. And the visibility is pretty awesome; there’s very little obstruction. And given that I, too, am short, having a little extra height above ground has been useful for seeing a bit further up the road.

133

I mind when people accelerate madly when the light turns green and then move in front of me and then stop accelerating when they hit 45. I know that’s the speed limit but my Prius is most efficient at 49 and 39, NOT 45, and it’s more dangerous to go 39 in a 45 than 49 in a 45, even in the rightmost lane, and if I’m going 49 in the left lane I will have people tailgating me guaranteed. (Still might in the right lane, but not guaranteed.)

134

I still have my sweet chariot, 2003 Ford Taurus SES I bought in 2008 with 83126 miles on the clock. Now it has 100325 miles on it.

That’s 17199 miles in 10 years. :cool:

135

Sorry for the hijack, but how on earth do you know that your car is more efficient at 39 and 49 than at 45?

136

"Sorry for the hijack, but how on earth do you know that your car is more efficient at 39 and 49 than at 45? " Probably by reading the car’s instant mpg readout on the dashboard.

“People brag about their Ford F-150s or Chevy Rams; when’s the last time you heard of a Tacoma fan group?” Bolding mine- there’s no such thing as a Chevy Ram.

137

NO THEY ARE NOT.

don’t make shit up and present it as fact.

The Accord and Camry are all on downward trends too, just not as fast. The Sonata has absolutely tanked, with sales looking like they’re going to be just over half of what they were in 2016.

Accord:

2014 388,435
2015 355,557
2016 345,135
2017 322,655
2018 262,444

Camry:

2014 428,606
2015 429,355
2016 388,616
2017 387,081
2018 314,346

Sonata:

2014 216,936
2015 213,303
2016 199,408
2017 131,803
2018 96,413

That’s your definition of “more than ever?”

138

General internet discussion and cars is a funny thing, at least the sites I go to. How consistently out of whack it is with general (US) consumer reality. The always pay cash (like 10% of the market; I’ve always paid cash, but at least I realize it’s me that’s unusual). They love manuals and not just in certain performance cars but generally (along with 5% or less of the rest of the market). They love sedans apparently (30% of the market in US) and can’t understand the ‘stupidity’ of US makers not to make small ones at a consistent loss. They love used vehicles because new ones are for suckers (in a 17mil new vehicle a year market), etc.

With that said, market conditions for vehicle sales in the US (and not necessarily less in various other countries) are a weird combination of all kinds of regulatory and political constraints along with consumer preference. If the US domiciled makers wanted to emphasis smaller sedans, and still tied to legacy costs of the UAW even after the bankruptcies/restructurings of ~10 yrs ago, they’d do it by importing the cars…but would take all kinds of political heat for that and especially now. The foreign factories in US still have lower costs so it’s not the same equation, and also, paradoxically get less political heat for importing some or all of particular models. Then there’s the irrational way in which CAFE standards are enforced depending the arbitrary distinction between ‘cars’ and ‘light trucks’. Then there’s the legacy ‘chicken tax’ high tariff on some light trucks, etc.

And as for 'when we start really fighting climate change and gas taxes get hiked a few $‘s’ that is simply not gonna happen. Look at France exploding in protest over a little more fuel tax. Not to derail, but it’s an obvious political reality that climate change will not be addressed by massive reductions in GHG emissions if it costs a lot. The voting public will not stand for it, maybe anywhere but certainly won’t in the US. And that’s not going to be overcome by just ramping up climate alarmism. CC will be addressed by a combination of new technologies which allow great reduction at low cost to the extent that happens, direct climate engineering, and adaptation. Car makers would be stupid to consistently lose money assuming fuel prices in the US will soon escalate dramatically. That could happen for various reasons, but it would a stupid bet to make with one’s own money and malfeasance for public stock car company managers to make that bet with shareholder money. OTOH a longer term bet on non-IHC vehicles could pan out, and that’s at least ostensibly par of GM’s rationale.

139

Former SUV sheep checking in. We aged out our 2 Foresters and now have 2 Mazda 3’s. Great cars, ridiculously great mileage. Extremely fun to drive and reliable. And reasonably priced.

So many chimed in who live in climates where an SUV makes sense or are frequent campers. Naturally such a vehicle makes sense for your situation.

I’m grousing about the people who do not camp, live in warm weather climates, and buy a bulky item maybe once a year, and for that alone think an SUV makes sense. To them maybe it does, but it does not make common sense.

Wanting to see better? Well that’s what starts the SUV craze because suddenly everyone has to have that ability, and then before you know it, vehicles will get bigger and bigger until you’re driving hummers and tractors…

140

another issue I have is that people seemingly have very poor memories, and parrot how “screwed” the car companies will be when gas goes back over $4/gallon. for one, it wasn’t high gas prices which sent GM and Chrysler into BK. Second, we’re not talking about people buying 10-15 mpg vehicles. CUVs only generally have a 1-2 mpg penalty compared to the cars they’re based on. Third, gas is still in the $3 range in areas of this country, and has climbed near $4 in the recent past, and people seemed to realize that $4/gallon is still not that expensive.