… for ultra-luxury cars. Now’s your chance to score a used Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, or even a Lamborghini for half of what you would have paid for it last year! What, you still can’t afford it? Neither can I, but that’s a huge drop in price. Imagine if you were super rich and wanted to sell your 3 year old car, and find it is worth half what an identical 3 year old Rolls Royce sold for last year. We can find it amusing since we aren’t selling cars like that. Here’s the article if you want to read it.
Just because the buying price is halved doesn’t mean the ownership costs are affordable. There are multiple reasons why those luxury cars depreciate so hard. The luxury cars that are affordable to maintain also depreciate much slower.
Here’s my theory. Prices of used cars generally go through a u-shape curve vs time. They are expensive when nearly new, then bottom out in the 10-20 years old range, then start to increase in value beyond 20 years old, older than 20 in other words, as potential classics and (even older) out-right classics. Comparing the price of a 2004 today vs one year ago, you’d expect it to be priced less today. On the other hand comparing a 1964 model, you’d expect its price today is more than one year ago. It depends on what slope of the curve is being considered.
A few cars increase, most just go to junk value. You can buy plenty of '64 plain jane 4 door sedans for not much $$.
1 Like
I’ll take “Things I’m too poor to ever have to worry about” for $500, Alex. 
I guess if you can afford a Rolls, you don’t have to worry about resale.
But a lot of premium brands seem to be similar. People want new ones or classics. A year or a few years old is just old hat.
2 Likes
@George_San_Jose1, so that is why you are hanging on to your Corolla ?
1 Like
It’s all about status symbols and taxes I’m sure. Lord Pickadilly’s accountant calls the dealer and arranges to have the proper car delivered and in the mean time takes care of all the details. Then Lord Pickadilly spends the afternoon playing golf and when it’s time to leave the new car is waiting with all the proper badges and documents and the old one disposed of.
I believe that the UK automobile taxes have unintentionally evolved to make the ‘classics’ much more fashionable. But who could ever figure it out other than the lawyers.
Only a very few cars do this. Folks that bought the last Pontiac Fieros found this out the hard way. They thought this would be a good collector’s car so they spent $15,000 for the last of the 1988 models (by far the best) and then kept them wrapped up in storage for 30 years to find that a perfect condition car is now worth $20,600.
That is a 1.1% return on the investment or a loss of about $13,800 due to inflation. Ignoring, of course the storage costs.
Supercars are the first things to go when rich people get financially or socially nervous. And rich people have a reason to be socially nervous right now, which means they’re going to want to cut back on conspicuous over-consumption.
That doesn’t mean they won’t still over-consume, but they’ll do it behind the gates of their mansions, not out in public where the general population can see them and get angrier.
1 Like
Feigned humility is better than no humility at all @shadowfax.
I heard that a certain highly placed individual once asserted that only for the lack of a little humility he would be PERFECT.
But with a little luck that city-state at Belle Isle will give the haughty a place to consume conspicuously in perfect harmony with their likewise afflicted neighbors. And surely the idea will catch on with similar utopias cropping up at the edge of urban waste lands all across the country.
1 Like
Those cars really don’t do anything for me regardless of the low price. I just don’t like their styling, and who wants to buy a new car and ride in the back seat all time reading the financial times. Speaking of conspicuous consumption though, what do you suppose those dresses cost at the Tony awards?
Those English though . . . hafta make everything complicated and PC. When the kid was over there for a semester and working, we were laughing about the TV police the other night. They’d ride around in their trucks looking for anyone stealing a TV signal that hadn’t paid the TV license tax. Then if you didn’t feed the electric meter, the lights would just go out when your time was up. Pay as you go like a car wash. Even in the hotel, the heat would be turned off from 10 to 5 am as if no respectable person would be up after 10. Not to mention those special silver trays to present your toast on in the morning instead of just putting it on a plate. Something wrong over there and the cars are just the indicator. I’m not going to put my order in.
While it’s obvious what you’re trying, and failing, to do here, I’ll humour you: Generally nothing. Fashion designers loan the dresses to the actresses hoping to get publicity.
So they’ll just wear the $10,000 dresses that they had to pay for inside their mansions, but as long as they are free, they can wear them in public? OK, makes sense to me. Maybe Rolls will get with the program and start donating cars so rich people will want to take them out of the garage? When I was in Italy I wanted to get a hand tailored suit. I thought I deserved it but then balked at the price. The only thing they are good for is to wear at funerals anyway. I gotta go now and lay some more floor tile. It’s in a room nobody but me will see-now that’s inconspicuous consumption. Heh heh.
Are you unclear on the definition of the word “loan?”
Just off the top of my head I’d say “loan” means the temporary use of. Permanent use would not be a “loan” but a gift. Safe so far? Now a “purchase” on the other hand would not be a loan or a gift. So back to it would be OK to wear a “loaned” $10,000 dress in public and it would not be conspicuous consumption, but not OK to have purchased the dress and worn it in public which would be conspicuous consumption. Maybe I just missed the whole message of “rich people hiding their wares in their mansions so that they don’t appear to be consuming conspicuously which is now socially not acceptable or PC” to paraphrase what I thought you meant. Where does a house become a mansion anyway? 5000, 10000 square feet? Gotta be some “authentic” rich people though like the ones driving 5 year old Buicks talked about in the “Millionaire Next Door”. I gotta go. Buttons pushed.
Now you’ve decided that some guy with millions isn’t a “real” rich person because he drives a supercar? You sure have some funny ideas.
Well I wouldn’t buy one of those cars anyway and certainly not to impress anyone. My neighbors would not be impressed anyway 'cause they likely would not know what they are. Now a big boat or something-that would be impressive whether it leaked or not, just parked in the driveway. I don’t know if boats have become socially unacceptable yet though. You can get a leaky big boat pretty cheap.
Expensive cars depreciate at a much faster rate than inexpensive cars. In his book,“What You Should Know About Cars”, published about 1963, Tom McCahill had a friend that purchased a new Cadillac and another friend that purchased a new Volkswagen Beetle. Four years later, both vehicles at accumulated the same number of miles and were both in top notch condition. Both were worth the same amount as used cars even though the Cadillac cost three times as much as the VW when both were brand new.
A person who buys a luxury car brand new is looking for prestige; a used car buyer is seeking transportation.
Odd how some here seem to have a chip on their shoulder against “the rich”. It’s all relative anyway. Most of us here are “rich” compared to people in some other countries. I personally could care less if a wealthy person wants to waste their money on high end luxury things. I suppose I’d consume a little more conspicuously if I had more money too. Rolls Royce still probably wouldn’t be on the menu, though.
1 Like
I don’t care what other people do with their money. However, I had a colleague, who along with his wife, had a really good income. They both had professional jobs, had no children, had inherited a good sum of money, and yet had to file for bankruptcy. Indirectly, we all pay when someone files for bankruptcy
Now, I used to think I was rich when Mrs. Triedaq would hand me $2.50 at the first of the week before I retired so I could join my geezer friends for coffee in the morning. Coffee on campus was 50¢ a cup. One of my friends found that we could get coffee at McDonald’s for 25¢ a cup with our senior citizens’ discount. Every Friday, I would blow the $1.25 I saved on a cinnamon roll. I should have saved that money for retirement. Now, in retirement, I have to go to the mission for a cup of coffee. Like many working people, I didn’t think ahead to the future.
My parents and Mrs. Triedaq’s parents lived through the depression. Their values rubbed off on us. We have what we want, but we don’t want a lot. If a person who enjoys driving buys a BMW for its handling, I am happy for them. I am happy for a person who can afford it, buys a Corvette. I have different tastes. I might buy an old Austin Healey bug-eyed Sprite in my old age (I am only 77, so I have a little wait until I become old). I loved driving the Austin Healey Sprites and MG Midgets where one really used the gears in the transmission to maximum advantage with the relatively low powered engine. I might lower myself to accept a Mazda Miata, but I really don’t want the luxury of roll-up windows as opposed to the side curtains of the Austin Healey bug-eyed Sprite.