I think the most costly difference between cars is found in leather seats. Leather is often the best choice if you have kids and pets... In European cars, the leather quality is usually ages above leather in cars from Japan and China. you pretty much have to pay 60k or above to get a car with non-bonded (inferior) leather.

Options add value, in luxury cars, a sunroof and alloy wheels are pretty much essential, not getting one means negative value on resale.

The dealerships often mark up prices on cars just because... It always amazes me how many people think sticker prices are firm and fixed. I have never purchased a car in my life without getting at least $7k off the sticker price.

There are many walks of life. A self employed realtor, for example, can write off a car lease, and may need to regularly carry clients, so an expensive sedan or big SUV ends up helping them more. People are so used to projecting their own circumstances on evaluating everyone else when it comes to economics, benefits of financial decisions are always subjective.

> Options add value, in luxury cars, a sunroof and alloy wheels are pretty much essential, not getting one means negative value on resale.

I've heard the opposite, that options don't retain their value as much as the core of the car itself. It probably depends on the timeframe though.

I bought a 2011 Volvo C30 brand-new, with absolutely zero options. It was the cheapest car Volvo made that year - manual transmission, no extra-cost paint, nothing. I sold it last year and, looking at price guides, those nice options would have gotten me maybe an extra $1-2k. So sure, I could have spent an extra $5-7k to get a nicely equipped model, but there is no way I would have gotten an extra $5k back when I sold the car.

I'd concede that if you trade cars in while they're still quite fresh there might be some truth to this. If you have a really oddly configured 2-year-old luxury car, maybe it'd be "lot poison" without leather and a sunroof.

What I see is this.

When I bought a car in 2010 I had no problem finding a small car (industry reeling from 2008.)

In 2018 I went car shopping and found that both Asian and American car dealers had no small cars in stock (the usual state w/ American car dealers) and all sorts of excuses why they didn't.

Right after that they will point you a whole bunch of trucks and SUVs all in a row, all with deep discounts.

Looking at this, I'd conclude that car dealers want to sell big cars, not that people want to buy them.

(A retired ag economics professor I knew bought the $70k corvette that the chevy dealer had for show for $35k at the peak of the 2008 crisis.)

> not that people want to buy them.

Completely incorrect. The market demand for gigantic cars in the US is virtually insatiable. And will remain so as long as the price of gasoline stays around $2-3 per gallon. Once we see ~$6/gallon like what's common in UK for instance, cars will start to shrink again.

In my nearby family I think it is 50-50% if somebody has a compact car vs something large.

I remember a childless couple that went to a car dealer and got talked into a Chrysler Pacifica (monster minivan) at the steal price of $22,000.

I rode in it and it was the worst hunk of junk, the only car I've gotten seasick in. That car contributed to the implosion of their marriage.

American car makers have a huge incentive to sell 'trucks' because of this old protectionist law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

They make a bigger profit on 'trucks', so they can pay you discounts out of the premium they get.

Even with tax incentives and huge profit margins, the cost of a modern truck is still sometimes three times as much as a family car with the same seating capacity. It's the small social circle status symbol mentality which perpetuates it. Same mindset of people who collect hyper-expensive athletic shoes I feel.

Yes and no.

My brother-in-law has a big-ass pickup truck with a plow attached and he takes a chunk out his big-ass payment by plowing driveways in the winter. He has worked his way up building roads and really does use his 'truck' like a truck.

Curious:

> I have never purchased a car in my life without getting at least $7k off the sticker price.

What’s the mean and median price you’re paying? I assume for new cars?

I’ve never gotten more than that off anything under $35k sticker new.

I have seen a LOT more come off trucks that are stickers at $60k and sell for ~$45k which blows my mind they have that much markup.

> I have never purchased a car in my life without getting at least $7k off the sticker price.

This isn’t going to happen with high demand cars from Toyota or Honda or even F150s.

Exactly, certainly not if we are talking used cars in the Internet era. These dealerships are not pricing cars for $7k+ over auction price unless they rebuilt the title because it's going to show as a horrible deal on any internet site.

I was pretty much laughed out of two dealerships for trying to get $2k off sticker and they refused to negotiate much.

While it’s true that automakers are driving up their trim levels for margin purposes they also have to contend with supply chain complexity and legislative complexity.

So if 80% of people want automatic windows and 15% of the remaining don’t care one way or the other it makes sense for a carmaker to deprecate manual windows to remove a part set.

Similarly I don’t want a fancy av system in my car, but the law requires a backup camera so standardizing on a single screen powered by ever more complex av software only makes sense for the car maker.

Counterpoint / Devil's Advocate: By reducing the amount of options (e.g. giving the buyer the choice between electric or manual windows), they reduce their own costs. With enough scale, for the manufacturers at least, electric windows are only tens of dollars more expensive per car than manual ones.

Actually 10,000 mile oil changes extend engine life. Your least wear is between 8,000 and 9,000 miles, and not opening the sealed area where the oil is keeps dust out Even checking your oil lets a little dust in and is harmful - not as harmful as running low on oil but still harmful and to be avoided if you don't need to!

The oil change industry wants you to think otherwise because they make a lot of money selling needless oil changes. Much better to put in a good oil and a good filter, great oil might be more expensive but the engine will last longer.

You're correct, the oil change is actually a high-stress event for any engine. Doing an oil change every 3k miles is actually very wearing because--even for a split second--there is possible metal-on-metal contact as the oil pump reprimes itself.

But engines are very different today than they were 15-20 years ago. They are machined with blueprint accuracy such that clearances are very fine and the resulting break-in period is very short if its needed at all. Additionally, most new vehicles use synthetic or synthetic blend motor oil which is much more durable and retains detergents for much longer service intervals.

I use the best oil I can find and do two oil changes a year unless there's a more driving than usual during a period. Generally, the service interval on my car is ~ 7500 miles, though 10k would not be a problem.

Manual Windows (And Transmissions) can actually be more expensive (in an industrialized nation, the labor to install the additional pieces is more than the cost difference of motors/electronics/etc)

> They also tell customers “hey you can wait 10,000mi before changing oil”. That kills engine life, and they know it.

Depends. Some MFGs are still very strict about oil changes.

You're right that the trim 'bundling' is to drive up price though. Nowadays you can't get 'just' a sunroof if you want one, you need to pay for -all- the other stuff.

I live in europe, so it may be different here/there.

The cars here in ads are shown as very cheap (but zero extras). Want cruise control? 300eur. Want powered back windows? 200eur. This? 500eur. That? 300eur.

So a car with a price of 12.000eur is 15.000 just after the basic necessities for a comfortable ride (without heated seats, adaptive cruise control, sunroof etc). Automatic transmissions are usually the most expensive 'extra' here.

All those things are usually covered by warranty (~5years for most).

And most cars here need oil replacement ("service done") every 15.000, 20.000 or even 30.000 kilometers (a bit under 10k miles a bit under 20k miles). I dont't know why americans like changing oil so much. I had an old hyundai last 320.000km that way (service every 20.000), until it was too rusty to fix (engine running without issues).

Can't really blame them though - alot of these 'high tech features' (bluetooth, led lights in the floor, yadda) cost the manufacturer like $5 and can either be sold as $2000 packages or used to 'keep up with the jones' in the same category/price/etc. Far better to add the extra to your lineup for $5 than have a customer buy the other model because you didn't have some feature

There are a lot of very affordable cars, but according to this article people are purchasing beyond their means via financing. Here's a list from mototrend of 10 vehicles starting between $15k-20k https://www.motortrend.com/news/top-10-cheapest-new-cars/

I recently jumped from a nice 2002 Subaru to a recent year Mazda. The Mazda is the 'top' trim, which I wanted, but lacks an autodimming mirror like my Subaru.

I get that simple cars are cheaper but I'm real disappointed that such a new car, top trim, is lacking such a basic feature (at least to me) from a car built almost 20 years ago.

This is another reason for the Uber/Tesla/Lyft vision of the robotaxi future. If a service can provide both the cost-effectiveness and autonomy of a taxi network, there's a generation of tech-savvy buyers that will be grateful to take the car shopping/ownership costs out of their lives.

That may be true, but outside of eliminating labor cost of the driver it’s hard to see how it’s significantly cheaper. And even though vehicles are a depreciating asset, there’s often a point when depreciation stops.

I’d really like to see how these services compare with the costs of running a cheap used vehicle in the majority of the US.

manual windows require more moving parts

Yah but they don’t burn out.

You're right - the handles just break off instead. :shrug: