bluefoxicy

What if everyone refused to buy a new car?

What if people were convinced that a brand new car was too expensive? Financially crippling? A used car is a better deal: you can get one for $8000, put $2000 of work in it, and have like ... a Mazda 6 AWD $30,000 car that'll last 5 or 8 years, with like 70,000 miles on it to start, for $12k. Maintain it well and it'll last good enough.

Switching all your minor commuting over to bike will take so much load off the car it doesn't even have to be a good, reliable car. Get a crap $2000 junker that you can make run for maybe 30,000 miles and it lasts 3-4 years!

B. Carfree

That's a slippery slope. We never did use cars for minor local trips. Slowly but surely, we began extending our definition of "local". Eventually, if we wanted to drive anywhere the battery was so sure to be dead we just gave up on the whole notion of keeping a car just for those trips that were long enough to justify using one. We just rent one when the need arises (usually to take disabled friends to out-of-town medical treatments).

Strangely enough, I do own a car. My insurance company covers it for $20/year plus $1.50/day of use. For that price (plus $30/yr registration) I get about that much off my homeowner policy plus liability coverage when I rent a car.

CommuterRun

What you say makes sense for the individual who can take the advice and shape it to suit their own purposes of having a car.

However, in the grander scheme of things, if everyone took this advice, in 10 - 15 years everything on the road is 10 - 15 year old technology and getting 10 - 15 year old fuel efficiency. No new technology would have been introduced if no new cars were sold. Actually, if no new cars sold for that long, the new technology would never be developed. There would be no demand.

I-Like-To-Bike

The immediate effect of all the customers for new cars switching to buying used instead would be to drive up the price of used cars. Supply and demand, ya know; ever hear of it?

KD5NRH

Huh? Find a mechanic with a few taken-under-lien vehicles to get rid of and you can have a decent sedan with a freshly-reworked drivetrain for a tenth of that.

KD5NRH

You mean like the 50MPG (actual) 1989 Geo Metro, and 1990 Suzuki Swift instead of the 40MPG (ideal conditions) current model Focus?

Most of the new technology in cars in the last decade has been in the stereo.

irwin7638

I don't think it's an issue. I have for years advised my clients to buy 4 year old cars to eliminate the depreciation. People still spend the money because cars are not transportation in the US, they are a primary means of self expression and social identification.

Marc

Zaneluke

400-900 bucks a month on a car is not financially crippling.

There is only one thing that smells better than a new car.......

bluefoxicy

I owned a Pontiac GTO for about 5 days and the only thing I could think of was thug boys trying to look cooler than they are by having mad wheels bro. It caused me massive distress: it just wasn't me. My Mazda 3 is nice, but I do wish it was RWD instead of FWD. MX-5 Miata would have likely been better.

Are you a financial adviser?

For 5 years. I'm in a position where if I lose my job, I lose my transportation. I make it the 10 miles here or there on my bike, but more is ineffable. I could be saving up an additional $700/mo instead of trying to knock down my car loan in a few short years. If I lose my job, I have enough paid ahead to coast for a while; but I'll drain my funds paying car insurance and rent and food by December, so if I don't find a job in 3 months I'm screwed.

Job has to supply enough income to pay $850/mo rent + $100/mo utilities + $200/mo food + ~$500/mo car payment; I can probably live without phone. Sans car payment, I can spin myself out longer on a temp job, McDonalds or whatever it takes, due to increased savings and decreased obligations.

If I had gotten a cheaper car, say around $5000, I would have paid it off long ago. I'd now have over $10,000 extra in the bank, minus excess spending (likely around $2000-$3000 more than I spent anyway in the past year). I could live on that for about 30% longer.

I've been struggling to get out of debt since I bought the damn car. I'm worth less than nothing.

irwin7638

You are not alone bluefoxicy. I work as a financial advisor helping small businesses develop benefit and retirement plans. Consulting with their employees' individual needs I have found more money going up in smoke over new cars than anything. Basically you have to expect a new car to lose 2/3 of it's value during the first four years. So during the four year term of a 600pm car loan, $400 pm is going to cover depreciation alone. A middle class family cannot afford to spend money that way.

Marc

bluefoxicy

Not just the depreciation, but also the interest: I paid $6000 in and $4000 went to interest? The next $6000, $2000 went to interest ... when all is done, 1/3 of what you pay is interest, so you get a $20,000 car for $30,000. I don't do car loans anymore. This is also why I don't own a house. :|

chipcom 

you make it cheaper for me to buy a new car...thanks!

chipcom 

it smells even better when you pay cash!

DataJunkie

400-900 a month isn't crippling? Please...
I am almost finished with my last ever car loan. Screw this noise.
If I want another car I am paying cash. Car loans are a waste of money.

joewey

Oo-er careful now, GM will need another bailout with this sort of talk.

DataJunkie

Then they should build more affordable cars that don't fall apart when you kick a hubcap.

chipcom 

hub caps are soooo 20th century

invisiblehand

Hah! This was the first thing that went through my mind. Interestingly, all ... or just about all .. of the accountants I know lease their car.

Dan The Man

My '91 Civic still gets 45 miles to the gallon. It's pretty hard to beat that even with a hybrid.

mnemia

I would never buy a new car, for the most part. It's much smarter, in my opinion, to let someone else take the first big depreciation hit when you're dealing with any expensive depreciating asset. I've always bought lightly used cars (2-3 years old) that were in great shape but cost half what they would new.

But then, I'm pretty practical about my transportation. I view a car as a means to get from Point A to Point B, when it's the most practical way to do that at a given time. I don't care at all what it looks like or how flashy it is.

dynodonn 

I saw what the affects of Cash for Clunkers did to the price of our local used car prices when close to 700,000 cars and trucks where taken out of the used car market nationally. One could only imagine the upward price spiral of used cars and trucks if millions of new vehicles went offline.

Bekologist

In about 30 years, America looks a lot like Cuba?

dougmc

The 2011 Prius is way safer than the 1989 Geo Metro. All those safety measures add weight which reduces the efficiency of the car -- and while we may argue we're going the wrong way on that, the recent reductions in traffic fatalities in the US suggest that it's working.

The 2011 Ford Focus weighs 2800 to 3240 lbs with a 160 or 247 (!) hp engine.

The original Geo Metro weighed 1367 to 1653 lbs and had a 49 or 70 hp engine.

The Focus is a fairly decent performing car -- small, but like a low end sports car. The Geo Metro was an extreme economy car. Really, the Prius would be a better thing to compare to the Geo Metro.

I doubt that's true. While the radio certainly has all sorts of new features -- music players, gps, rear-view camera, etc. -- so does the engine, transmission, etc. The Prius was the first mass produced hybrid -- but it came out in 1997, so maybe it doesn't count. But beyond that, they're always adding all sorts of new embedded computers and such in cars. There's new forms of steel being used today (this sounds cool for bicycles too, by the way), new emissions controls, etc. Most of this stuff is less obvious than what's in the radio (not being in your face all the time), but that doesn't make it less important.

As for the premise of this thread, it's a dream. People will not as a group refuse to buy new cars. Cars are too convenient, people like them. And if people didn't buy new cars, they'd buy old cars, which would go up in value until they cost as much as new cars -- and people would stop whatever the reason was that stopped them from buying new cars. And if people stopped making new cars for some magical reason, well, the demand would go up, and prices would go up, and people would start making them again.

fuji86

I thought that was the evolution of it anyway. I'm not forced to buy a new car, that option is there, just like buying used. I choose the latter, same could be said about a bike too. I can get the new one or go out to the used and reconditioned rack and choose one from there, even go on CL to buy a rarely used & newer bike or one that is 7 years old and has been rarely and infrequently used. If you have to buy unused, then expect to pay what the seller/dealer is setting as the price or go thru the negotiating process to get what a better deal ?

fuji86

I take it that's the CRX HF ?

https://www.edmunds.com/honda/civic-crx/1991/
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/7474.shtml

If fuel economy was the main & perhaps only concern, that's all I would need even today as well. I'll take the risk of not having an airbag. Haven't needed an airbag ever to this day, so to me $ 20-25K is absurd for a car, but the Federal laws requires these things now, for all of those that tailgate and hit other things, the cars today have to be better than the motorists buying them, somehow prevent and save the stupid one's from themselves ?

I had one of these back in the day, fuel economy looks about right too. I could get a little better if I babied it, as much as 40 on the highway. I don't think I ever was able to get better than 32 city though. I could be really gentle and get 5 mpg more. But I was pretty hard on the pedals back then. Gas was about $1/gallon.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/172.shtml