Americans can no longer afford their cars

For sure! I could write a novel about "everything else catastrophic about it" (and probably have by now, if you concatenate my previous Lemmy and Reddit comments on the subject), but that would distract from my point that the headline "Americans can no longer afford their cars" applies in more ways than one.

Shut your pie hole, I’m trying to mine lithium over here! /s

As a young adult who wanted to avoid debt, my rules were somewhat similar

1. Car must be used, for sale by private seller. Avoids dealership fees, warranty fees etc.
2. If I cannot buy it in full, in cash that day, I cannot afford it.

The sweet spot for me was buying cars in roughly the 6 year rage. Specifically Toyotas and Hondas. My last car was an '06 Accord and it was a fantastic car. Affordable to buy, no bullshit, cheap to repair and required repairs rarely, drove great, solid interior. I would have kept driving it for another 5-10 years easy if I hadn't moved to a country/city where driving is totally unnecessary.

My buddy bought it off me and did some minor things to it and is still happily driving as his daily commuter right now.

I live by nearly the same rules. No more than 3 years max, and a check in my pocket from my credit union. But I not afraid to go older if the vehicle is on hood shape and reasonably low mileage. Vehicles depreciate for age, condition, and mileage. I will take the savings of a 5-7 year vehicle if the condition and mileage are great. But they are hard to find, it often takes a couple months of looking.

I totally agree with your rules here, however I recently helped my mom buy a new car (2023 Nissan Murano) and while sitting with her in the finance room deciding on warranty stuff I realized that cars are mostly 100 interconnected computers on wheels. This means the most likely thing to break on a car is a computer. This is something only the dealer can fix probably. Because of this you can’t get the same kind of warranty on a used car, only new.

The warranty my mom on this new car is great and it will cover any kind of computer issue for years. If she had gone and saved a bunch of money by picking a used car from the same year or 1-2 years old she could not get that warranty, and if a computer issue popped up years later it could be terribly expensive.

190k miles and I feel the same about what my next purchase will be like. Bought this current car when it was 11 years old and had 75k on it. I can sell it now for as much as I paid for it in 2016.

I bought an 8yo car 2 years ago. It's just about to hit 100kkm on the odometer, and cost me a couple grand today as a result of the previous owner's lack of care/maintenance.

I've been upgrading/replacing things as I've been able to afford to, but this is the last car I buy (that isn't electric) as a result of the ridiculous pricing of vehicles today. I certainly couldn't afford the car I CURRENTLY OWN if I had to buy it today.

Also note I adore this car, otherwise I wouldn't be putting all this time AND money in, it would be one or the other (or sale :D )

Luckily for me public transport and emobility vehicles (scooters, bikes and skateboards, [I chose skateboard]) in my city are much better than the average in my country. Also regarding emobility vehicles I'm in one of the only states where they aren't banned (except on private property).

I'm hoping I get many more years of smiles out of my road legal track car, in the event I don't it will be sold (or stripped out for track only) and I'll just ride my bike more, it's faster and makes a better noise anyway.

On top of being much better for the environment, I hope EV conversions become commonplace very soon. I would much rather (regrettably) convert my car to EV than buy a purpose built one, I don't need GPS, lane keep, cameras, spyware, a giant tablet screen (otherwise known as a distraction) and a small fortune for every one of those components that fails. I just need instruments to tell me if the car is working as designed/intended.

Sorry for the wall of text folks, as you were.

I think statistically speaking the absolute best value is a 5 year old car that has been at least reasonably well-maintained. The vast majority of depreciation happens during those first 5 years.

For those that do need to finance a car, a three year loan term should be the maximum. I think you are 100% correct on that. There are people with car loans that have terms of 7 years. It's sad that people are setting themselves up for failure like that. If you can't afford the monthly payments on a 3 year term then you really can't afford the car at all.

I buy much older vehicles, know how to fix them, and generally will keep them a few years and sell them at a non loss. I've done this for nearly 25 years, never spent more than $1,000 to repair a vehicle in a year (only happened thrice in 25 years that I've come close to $1,000) and in all but those three times I've never spent over $500 a year in maintenance on any of them.

Never had a car payment. Always kept at least two vehicles. Before family life it was a daily driver and a sports car of some sort. I'd sell the sports cars before they'd even need a new set of tires. Never lost a dime on any of those. Camaros, corvettes, s2000, etc.

Learn to fix your cars and options get way nicer if you want to be cheap about it. A 12 year old car doesn't really depreciate that much if you keep it a few years. A 2009 will be found for about the same price as a 2006.

Currently I have an 08, an 06, and a motorcycle from 96.

I am exactly the same.

Leasing is like setting money on fire and using money to put the fire out. The only scenario it ever makes sense is vs buying and selling a car every 2-3 years.

Modern cars are extremely reliable, there isn't a good reason to need a new one in less than a decade unless it's involved in an accident.

Leasing is usually a worse choice financially. However it can make sense in a few scenarios such as having to always have a new car and business expensing. Now might be one of the few times it’s worth leasing, in the US for some EVs where a lease can take advantage of the full tax incentive but a purchase can not

Don't look up "rolling coal".

He isn't a tradesman. He is either an office worker or unskilled labor.

The only practical use I have ever seen in my life for those oversized pickups is in South East Asia I rode on one that had been converted into van to go up and down this shit road into the mountains. Moving people. So unless you make a living loading up 8 people at a time to bring them up a terrifying grade mountainside you don't need a vehicle like that.

LOL I adore how you got 12 downvotes for that comment. I have similarly been downvoted for saying that I prefer standard over automatic. People really do get their panties in a twist when someone talks cars.

Can we not with the body shaming?

But the topic here is new car prices.

And presumably, all the people paying these stupid prices, getting 60+ month loans, only focusing on payments, etc.

This has an impact on the user market as well.

Hard to find a decent manual in my area for sub-10, too. Lucked out on a 20-year old f150 with very little wrong with it for 4 grand, then another 4 grand to fix it up.

Would've spend 7 grand on a Ranger with a machinegun rod knock.

Cain’t git uh cuntry gurl wit no sissy moe bill.

I am tempted to save this comment just to see how accurate it is in ten years.

I am seeing way too many ads for diy shipping container homes. Yep, Amazon is going to corner the market when they age out their containers.

Pathetic.

Gotta buy the premium materials while supplies last

Let us take to the sewers, brothers. One day we shall return to the surface and bring the Vermintide

– and right up my chuff.

That's because Americans are fucking idiots that WANT these behemoths...

15 years ago, I'm worried about spending 25k on a car, my friend went out and bought a huge Chevy pickup that was over 40k...

Here's the twist, he made a quarter of what did...

Less than two years later it was repo'd.

Slippery slope aside, I think reducing unnecessary consumerism would be beneficial for our most vuneral populations. There would be a lower barrier of entry into the economy and more resources would be available at a lower cost for people who cannot afford them

Well, it's a mixed bag. There have been absolutely incredible advances in efficiency that do enable a lot of things to genuinely be much cheaper and accessible than they used to be, but some of that is also just the ability to throw external costs on other people (climate change, for instance). This is why things like carbon taxes are so strongly supported by economists.

Steak, for instance, is hugely subsidized by how little farmers have to pay for water, along with other government benefits. Flying has environmental costs, but those are reasonably quantifiable and, per flight and per passenger, not that insane as far as I understand.

I do think consumer electronics are a bit of a different story though. Yes, cheap labor plays a huge role there, but those labor costs aren't completely divorced from reality; the fact of the matter is that east Asian labor is actually chap. Ocean shipping and modern production plants are insanely efficient, though again climate costs need to be captured.

Of course, but it’s all those in the middle where we need better options. US has just a handful of cities with decent transit, but every large city should be able to. Then there are all the medium cities built around using cars: transit should still be a better option but works better with concentrations of people

It should be reasonable for a majority of the population to have effective transit, even in the US

So señor!

Comparing the amoritization of paying off a loan to the amount of debt held.

Monthly payments depend on loan term and interest rates as well as principal. I don't think that is a good way to determine whether you can afford something.

I haven't looked in 8 years. I am too afraid. Plan to just throw money at my existing car until I die.

Fortunately it's gotten modestly better in the last year, depending on what you're looking for. But yeah, 10 months ago when I was looking there was virtually no advantage to getting 2-3 year old models of the car I was looking for. Ended up getting a new one for the first time in my life (lucky enough to be able to afford it, though I had kept the previous one for 10 years partly saving up)