Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks

Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by moltar on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:23PM (#35646551)

You can still find plenty of amazing vehicles, in great condition in the South of Europe. The weather there is great and cars don’t deteriorate as much. I see plenty of Toyotas and Hondas from pre 97 models. They still cost around 3-4 K EUR probably because they are such an easy maintenance that they will still drive for another decade and that’s priced in.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by Glawen on Thursday April 20, 2023 @05:54PM (#35646942)

It is just cargo cult. The value of these old Toyota and Honda makes no sense. I was looking to buy an old Toyota because of the hype on internet, but there are not a lot of them being in Europe, and 70% of them had an engine issue (threads holding head gasket were missing, common issue on aluminium engine).

At one point, I pondered buying a Toyota previa with this head gasket issue for 3K and planed to repair it myself. Fortunately I got my sense back and bought a Renault Scenic with no issue at all, 2K and I managed to have also the timing belt replaced. Yes, internet thinks that because it is a French car, it will crumble. Well internet, so far it had no issue and its head gasket is intact.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by fooker on Thursday April 20, 2023 @11:03PM (#35649347)

Yep, the post pandemic cars from Toyota and Honda especially have been having terrible quality and QA issues.

I've seen a new 2023 4runner with weird panel gaps, unnecessarily stiff handling (compared to a 2020 model), and sunroof motors stopped working after rain.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by jmrm on Thursday April 20, 2023 @06:01PM (#35647039)

Please, don't buy our cars here in Spain. Most of people here, specially young people, cannot afford a new car with our 1100€/month after taxes of mininal wage and our 350€/room /month (in cheap places) on the flats we usually live.

With that situation, we usually buy cars before 2005 or so, and we pay those 3k to 4k euros in those, and usually with over 250 000 km (155 000 miles). Depending on the model, they even can be more expensive than people would think: A late 90s Nissan Terrano would cost from 6k to 7k, and my current car, a Korean one that cost about 13k in 2012, now cost from 9k to 11k (unless it has too much mileage or isn't in a decent shape).

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by sk0g on Thursday April 20, 2023 @07:13PM (#35647783)

That sounds extremely high for what it is. The second-hand car market has probably gone insane over there as well though

Here in Australia I bought a 6 year old Citroen DS3 for about EUR 5.5k, and it had around 60k km on it. Now I was looking at ~3 year old Golf GTI/R, and you can get them for about a 5% discount over buying a brand new one... Why.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by imp0cat on Friday April 21, 2023 @01:23AM (#35650051)

The old one was mk7 and the new one mk8? That would explain things.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by sk0g on Friday April 21, 2023 @05:08AM (#35651362)

This was at the end of 2021 or beginning of 2022, so the Mk8 wasn't out yet. Mk 8 models are also a bit more expensive, so the discrepancy would be a bit better in that case, I would imagine. Out of curiosity, are the Mk8s not too well received, or are Mk7s preferred?

I don't mind the change, but my current car works and I might as well hold out for an EV like Cupra Born or Peugeot e-208 personally.

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by imp0cat on Friday April 21, 2023 @07:57AM (#35652439)

Mk8 is a great car IF you don't mind touch screens and touch controls for everything instead of traditional rotating knobs and buttons.

Unfortunately, a lot of people can't get over this change, so the Mk7 is considered a "peak GTI".

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Re:Rural Americans are importing tiny Japanese pickup trucks by abfan1127 on Friday April 21, 2023 @09:36AM (#35653533)

Japan has very high taxes to keep old cars. Here in the US, we have a "JDM" or Japanese Domestic Market where people import older engines and transmissions compatible with American market Japanese made vehicles. This is why people in the US seek out old Japanese market vehicles and parts.

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