@Rod_Knox You are exactly right about my parents having gotten their financial education in the Great Depression. Dad grew up literally dirt poor. His father was a tenant farmer who was killed serving as a deputy sheriff when Dad was still a young boy, so Dad had to drop out of grammar school to go to work to help support his mother and three younger siblings. My mom fared a bit better. Her dad worked as production manager at the Detroit plant of Bud Wheel from the mid-1920s, through the depression and WWII, until retirement about 1960. He was fortunate to keep his job through the depression although for a couple of years he was the only person left on staff for production planning. Mom remembered how he got literally physically sick each time he had to lay off any worker in either the office or in the plant and how he cried in relief with each time he was able to call someone back to work. Despite being a manager, he and my grandmother were never able to afford buying their own home until after the war. My folks started out married life in a one room uninsulated converted single car adobe garage of less than 150 square feet for which they paid $7 a week rent and that $7 was hard to come by. That 1956 Olds I mentioned was the first new car they had, after being married some years.
I am not sure used cars today are the real bargains they were in the 1950s and 1960s. Styles changed every three years or so and each new model year had different trim to distinguish it from the previous years model. The VW Beetle changed that. The VW Beetle did not go out of style.
The advantages of a new car is that one begins with new tires, a new battery, new brake pads and even new wiper blades as opposed to a used car. I would rather buy a bottom end new car as opposed to a higher end used car if both cars are offered to me about the same price.
My parents started a family before WW II, survived the war and bought their first house in 1947. They then bought a farm where I grew up. All without owing a car. The town I lived in in Europe had 4000 people and there were only a half dozen car owners; 2 doctors, a dentist, a grocer, o lawyer and a contractor. There were a number of trucks, mostly army surplus.
Frugality and managing money was drilled into me and my siblings from day one! By the time I went to college we had 2 cars, bought used and a truck and atractor.
One big consideration is that many used cars are former rentals. The rental companies often use their own body shops, and they may not report an accident to Carfax. The largest used car dealer in Florida; who sells mostly ex rental cars, has a long article on their website discussing how a clean Carfax doesn’t necessarily mean an undamaged car.
I thin a pre purchase inspection by a body shop i just as important as a mechanical inspection.
$83k a whole lot more than my condo in Wetchester (ok 20 years agoI)
I remember while working in essentially a big plant the ones with money were the ones that went around collecting bottles for the nickle deposit , the broke ones couldn’t be troubled 
[quote=“Docnick, post:16, topic:148730”]
If our next car of choice had a power seat we would by it, if course, but if it had a sliding roof it would be off our list.
[/quote]Why the fear of moon roofs and power seats??
I can see the fly by wire crap and cruise control being off limits (althoughImy last two cars had it I never even once activated it) , the touch screen for control is a hazard IMHO. Power seats, mirrors are a good thing.
I didn’t read this article and haven’t read all the comments. I did read an article in USA Today that I believe was from Consumers Report that I think this one is based on. I just skimmed it but really found the analysis a little off. For example they added the cost of payments plus the cost of depreciation to arrive at their annual cost. Depreciation is funny money and not an out of pocket expense. It is the reduction in value of an asset but meaningless until that asset is sold. One thing to keep in mind though is without someone buying new cars, there will be no used cars. I do and have done both and looking at total costs over a long period of time, I find very little per mile cost difference in the two. So I just think the article I read was not helpful but sure the higher the costs get, the more people want to find a way to reduce them.
Many manufacturers don’t even sell vehicles without those options. And I agree with Volvo…I’ve NEVER EVER had a problem with any of those items…even after 400k miles. Not a single problem.
Cars and trucks last must longer today than they ever did. And they run many more miles. They start better, run smoother, and are far more economical than our parents’ cars. If people lease them and drive them 48,000 in 4 years or 60,000 in five years and then turn them back for another, newer car on a lease, that car can be a very good value and a very reliable machine for a long time to come. Why not buy used?
Because of the operative word CAN.
I’ve bought many used cars, mostly well used and significantly depreciated.
If it was a choice between a two year old car and a new one, I’ll pay the premium to get a brand new one that no one has had a chance to abuse. In my experience, cars that get the worst treatment are those where people PLAN to get rid of them in two-three years where the cost of abuse isn’t realized in that time period…
Because of people like a guy I work with. Leases a new car every couple years. And NEVER EVER does any maintenance. This includes oil changes. He’s a very aggressive driver. When the lease is up the tires are almost completely bald. Never cleans it. He has McDonald wrappers laying on the floor from from the day he bought it. I’d never want to be stuck with one of his vehicles.
Probably related but I refuse to be silenced. I got my next to the last issue of Road and Track which I thought is pretty much useless to me. There is an article though talking about the loss of the wagons and now the loss of sedans and sportier models to SUVs and trucks. The writer claims it is because dealers order the cars and not individual customers. So they choose the cars that “THEY” want to sell not what the individual customer would like to buy. In Europe it was said it is the opposite because customers order from the manufacturer and wait for delivery, so the individual is the customer and thus more wagons and sporty models. I thought it was an interesting article. People pay a lot of money for stuff they like but when the excitement goes, they tend to look for cheaper alternatives.
Very simplistic answer by that writer. Dealers may order most of the cars, but it’s based on what is selling. Good dealerships keep close track of what vehicles are selling and with what options. They also keep track of what customers are looking for that they don’t have. Dealers aren’t making arbitrary decisions on what to order. If they did - they’d be out of business very shortly.
The other part of the equation is what the manufacturer is making. Manufacturers are doing this exact same analysis. The trick is knowing what the customer wants - when they want it. Companies that don’t do a good job at this die. One big reason GM has done so poorly in the past is because they weren’t building vehicles their customers wanted.
The flip side also can be true. Since many car models include free oil changes for the first 1-2 or even 3 years, the cars get serviced because it is free. The dealer gets to look the car over and updates and recommended service gets done.
People are also so concerned about getting slammed with a penalty for excessive wear and tear at lease car turn-in that they are completely detailed, tires replaced, ect. Our Audi was an ex-lease. The car had nearly new Audi-spec ($$$) Continental tires installed with only 31K miles on the car. The air and cabin filters and the oil were recently changed so likely the 30K service had been done. I changed the oil again, anyway - my OCD! 
It all comes back to that sage old advice… Have your mechanic check the car out before you buy!
One reason, among many others, that SUVs of any size have become popular among parents and grandparents transporting young kids is that getting car seats into or out of a vehicle and likewise getting kids into and out of car seats is less difficult with the height that SUV seats are at. I have multiple friends who like sedans for themselves but find an SUV more practical for transporting kids.
In past decades when those of us in the baby boomer generation were growing up many cars didn’t even have seat belts yet. Now law requires kids to be in approved car seats until a certain height and weight.
I personally don’t like how low seats in sedans are in recent years. But all SUVs except small models like RAV4, CRV, CX-5, and Forrester are uncomfortably high for me to climb in and out of. And small SUVs have a shorter wheelbase and less horizontal cargo room than a mid-size sedan and tend to have noisier, rougher ride (short wheelbase) and sway on curves and in wind (higher center of balance.)
So I think one reason for buyers opting more for SUVs than sedans is partly due to car seat requirements for kids, based on what friends tell me.
Also, with the increasing huge size of pick ups and larger SUVs truly blocking the view of traffic farther down the road for anyone driving a lower, smaller sedan I know many people who have given up sedans for SUVs just to see better in traffic.
Then again, I have related this tale here before-
My commute used to include a 1/2 mile stretch of gravel laid through a marsh. They would try to attend to it once a month or so but got tired of that routine as it was costly. Regardless, it was a potholed, tooth jarring, miserable stretch of washboard after a couple of days anyway. Most people went 5 mph over this stretch but many would go just as fast as the normal paved road. The abuse to the vehicle was astounding. I was always curious who would do that although I had my suspicions. One day, I caught up with a new SUV at the nearest gas station. Struck up conversation commenting on the expensive luxo barge he was driving. In conversation he revealed what I already suspected, he told me it was a leased vehicle…
I’ll drop back to my observation re the Peloton. A recently introduced device offering the buyer an astonishing amount of vim vigor and vitality(?) that sells for $2245. The man marketing the device is now worth $450 million. Surely there are dozens of devices equal in quality and offering similar results to motivated users at a fraction of the price but like a good snake oil salesman the Peloton man found just the perfect sales pitch for the device to the prospective customer to make owning one an absolute necessity. Likewise Subaru’s “Love-it’s a Subaru thing,” and GM’s “Professional Grade,” demonstrating that marketing geniuses recognize us as suckers for self indulgence who are obsessed with impressing others with our wealth, intelligence, success, etc., and using easy credit to feed our demand for immediate gratification.
Utility, practicality, reliability, safety and serviceability are good selling points but image and financing are the primary factors in most sales.
I agree with your idea about the SUV’s I know a extended family in my area doe’s a lot of family outing’s & once twice a year take a family vacation’s to the Smokey mountains the solved the SUV problem when one the family bought a school bus so everyone did not have to drive when they did this.
I’m sure you have people in mind but that sure doesn’t fit us or most of the ones we know. Sure we’d like a nice looking new vehicle, but like I said we wouldn’t by a Caddy or Lincoln because it would be too flashy. The guy next door has mucho money he’ll never be able to spend. He bought a new truck to replace his old one that looked identical. I asked him why he traded and he said he had 160,000 on his old one. Not exactly trying to look successful. When we bought our first new Olds in 74, we were a little embarrassed at having a new nice looking, great car, but then we said what we had been through and driven prior to that, we didn’t care what other people thought. We indulged ourselves. So the bigger, flashier, they become, the less likely we will be buying, regardless of the discounts or lease rates.