How Do You Do It?
My wife and I are replacing our worn out 12 year old car and starting the shopping process. It’s involved the standard review reading, word of mouth collection, and now visiting dealers.
It’s interesting to me how one of the biggest expenditures for most people has resisted so much of the Big Data “innovations” promised a decade ago by McKinsey. We haven’t been swarmed in the past few years by targeted marketing encouraging us to look at cars, there haven’t been special incentives showing up in our inboxes. And when we’ve gone to dealers to look at cars, the pitches have been pretty haphazard. The sales force is definitely not a well oiled machine.
Which makes sense. Big Data promised that hyper-targeted marketing messages could drive people to buy at much higher rates, but I think car dealers figured out it was just a waste of time.
What’s Your Thinking?
So when you’ve bought a car, how have you done it? Are you lucky enough to be able to buy from a relative who is a master mechanic and sells great quality, lovingly restored used vehicles? Do you research like crazy based on Car and Driver, Edmunds, Consumer Reports, and more?
Do you just buy the base package new, or do you order specially customized?
Or, if you’re following the lead of many younger people and forgoing owning a car, how do you buy bikes, or kayaks, or other forms of transportation?
And if you don’t own a car but go by rideshare or taxi, how do you plan your trips? Do you factor in the different times when surcharges kick in and try to plan trips to combine errands to keep costs down? Or do you just jump willy nilly onto the app and go? And if you rideshare a lot, have you noticed anything about the cars?
Anything Else?
I’ve noticed that small SUVs are almost indistinguishable from station wagons of yore, but nobody wants to admit it. Inventory of most vehicles is still way down. Salespeople seem less robotic and slick than in the past. Dealer profits are clearly still heavily focused on financing and shops.
So here’s a place to share your thoughts, Deadsplinterdrivers, on the car obtaining process. Love it, hate, or just muddle through it? Thinking of looking soon, or happy where you are?
If I could find a 1987 Plymouth Reliant or 1988 Dodge 600 (which are essentially the same) that was in decent to great shape I’d buy it and treat it the way 80’s dudes treat their mid-life crisis Cameros they only drive once or twice per year in the summers.
That’s an interesting choice. 🤨
I once rode in a late 60s era Mustang that was in good shape. And I can see how they were crappy cars, unsafe, lots of thin metal, basically a V8 stuck in a tin baking pan.
But that was a beautiful car, if all you wanted to do was drive it 50 miles every month.
You’re a couple of years too late:
https://jalopnik.com/at-4-800-is-this-incredibly-low-mile-1987-plymouth-re-1845781952
I bought a new Subaru Forster last summer. I love the car but the purchasing process was ridiculously complicated. It took over four hours and I was paying for the car in full so there wasn’t even a loan to deal with. I bought the pet seat covers which they installed before selling me the interior protection package so I had to take the car back the following week to have the seat covers uninstalled then reinstalled. They managed to scratch the front of the car doing the exterior protection so that was another trip to have the paint fixed. I hope I never have to buy another car again.
Yes, those early trips back and forth to the dealer for the inevitable readjustments are something I’m not looking foward to.
Oh, it turns out to maintain the warranty you need to get the passenger’s side mirror cleaned and lubed with a special solution and you’ll need to spend six hours in our waiting room….
I have an eight year old Kia Soul which I love. We bought it when it was just us two and the beloved doggo. Now we only use it when taking two or less kids along with us. We had to buy a new car last year to be able to safely fit three car seats. We opted for a new hybrid SUV because a used hybrid AWD minivan was going to cost us the same price! The wait-list for a new minivan is two years. Now whenever I see one on the street I think “Incognito luxury vehicle”…I never would have predicted that I would be bitter and jealous of minivan drivers.
It wasn’t that long ago that Kia was a joke, but they seem to have really improved in terms of reliability.
I bought a Hyundai Ioniq five years ago because my Prius was hemorrhaging its fuel efficiency, and I wanted another hybrid that was a bit more . . . uh, pleasing to the eye. It’s served me well, although I really hope this whole deal with not installing CD players gets reversed someday. It does have a push-button ignition, though, so it’s one of the handful of Hyundai models that (along with Kias – sorry, Zeitgeist and blue) doesn’t entail any car theft fears because of that stupid fucking trend on Tik Tok.
Mine’s push button start too. So I think I’m good unless the thieves get a signal booster. A Kia Soul was stolen a couple of blocks from my house, last year. Fucking kids and their TikTok.
I have always been a fan of Japanese cars, in the past they always seemed to last longer and have less maintenance issues than American cars. Now that many Japanese cars are made in the US & many American cars are made in Mexico, that may be changing. My last cars have all been Hondas, Subarus, and Mitsubishis. I despise dealing with dealers so always tried to find friends or friends of friends that made the experience more tolerable and I wouldn’t get bullshitted. My best experience was with a neighbor on my Honda Civic. He was the manager and told me “I don’t want to keep you here all day, here is the car you want and the best price I can give you.” That was a 2006 Civic I still drive to this day and it has been one of the best cars we ever owned. I am now about ready to give up that Civic and go EV. I did research for years and got in line a couple of years ago. Finally it is about to pay off & I finalize my build next month and hopefully get it a few months later. I am very excited to finally not settle for something, no sales people & all the pricing is straight forward.
Here’s my car being built
Yikes! I feel bad for the people who just got T-boned and need a car ASAP.
Unfortunately supplies of new cars are really tight now and even waiting a couple of months is kind of pushing things in a lot of cases.
I heard it is getting easier to get new cars again but in demand ones the dealers are messing with people & trying to drive up prices. Our area is getting saturated with EV’s.
I would love to get a plug in/hybrid EV, but right now the combo of supply chain and tax credit issues mean that the models we might get are anywhere from 3 months to 15 months from being available, so we’ll probably just get a regular hybrid.
I guess the good thing is in when we’re looking at another in a year or two, the options may be better.
Happy Birthday! @emmerdoesNOTrepresentme 🎂
Yes!
No joke: I don’t choose the car as much as the car chooses me. I buy from private parties, so when a great deal drops in my lap, I make a move.
Thanks guys!
Today was a pretty great birthday, ngl–at least as a “grown-up” birthday😉
I was able to get over to the U before the snowstorm, and pick up Dad’s ashes–we had yesterday *and* today off at the school district, and the Anatomy Bequest Program folks had yesterday off, so it was the perfect day to schedule the pickup.
I took him over to the Ronald Mcdonald House, where we stayed when I was a kid going to Shriners, before my back surgery, and got a couple pictures over there, for the scrapbooks I’m planning to do for dad’s siblings. I also drove over the the U of M’s Institute for the Developing Brain & got a couple more pictures–the Institute is where Shriners was, back when I was a kid and we came down here so often.
After that, I ran out to the grocery store that always has *some* sort of meat on a huge discount (they’re a franchised location of a regional chain, and I’m pretty sure that they have a deal with the Supervalu Warehouses, to buy pallets of close-ish dated meat, before that meat “tips” and has to be donated or sold to the discounters).
Got “loaded” (and fully cooked!) Potato Sausage for $1.99 each, and some 1# chubs of Hot Italian Sausage for 99 cents each, and some skin-on/old-fashioned hot dogs for 5.99, snd a pork loin roast so I’m set on meat for a couple weeks at least!😉
The pork roast will be made into this;
https://www.myneworleans.com/comfort-by-the-bite/
And while I was shopping, the school district announced that we’re going to be out of school for at least Weds & Thursday, so I get an additional two days off (WITH pay!😁🤗💖), which was why today was pretty darn AWESOME, from a grown-up perspective😁😁😁
And because wd had the days off, and I saw how swamped the store I was at was, I called *our* store to see of they’d like some additional help… they did, so I worked 6.5 hours tonight, and will do another 7+ tomorrow, with the possibility of more on Thursday. Not too bad, all things considered!
And I tonight I found out that the folks at the U *did* send the email to let us know what Dad’s body was used for–apparently, “his whole body donation supported emergency medicine training, orthopedic studies, as well as atherosclerosis research.”
So some good stuff, and I found out that Mom wants to donate *her* body, too, so she and I are both going to fill out our paperwork together sometime next week😁💝
Car-wise, usually i try to do a bit of research by calling up my mechanic cousins & asking “which vehicles are solid and which should I absolutely stay away from (and I ask my regular mechanics the same general question, after explaining what I’m looking for, too), so that I know what to avoid, first of all.
Once I know what to stay away from, I try to start looking up the dependability of the motors & transmissions of the ones I’m interested, looking to see what the “bugs” & quirks are, of the various models I’m interested in (like how in the last couple generations of the Pontiac Grand Prix, there was a known issue with the original metal used in the 4th gear of the transmission, and lots of Grand Prix’s had to have the tranny rebuilt to replace that gear! It would usually be FINE for a ong time, as long as you monitored it closely, but as soon as your mechanics started to see “shavings” in the pan when you had that all-important yearly Fluid & filter change, you KNEW to get the thing in to a transmission shop to get her rebuilt with the newer, stronger 4th gear!)
My biggest things are that I want a decent motor & tranny. I don’t particularly care how she *looks,* as much as I care that it’s dependable and solid for driving in rain, snow, & icy conditions.
I don’t buy new, because 1. I can’t afford that, and 2, I just can’t see taking the hit of the depreciation as reasonable for my position. Instead, I buy used, and drive them into the ground, honestly😉
I’ve basically driven out/worn out *every* vehicle I’ve ever had, with WELL over 200k miles on each of them… except the one that was totaled from the hailstorm–and SHE was 100% on her last legs, and close to dying when I lucked out & she got totaled–giving me a down-payment, instead🤣
As for buying? Basically, once I narrow down the type of vehicle I want & can afford, I start looking for one in my price range, with the sort of mileage I’d like. From there, it’s calling dealerships to ask about the one I see, then narrowing it down more & more, to the one I end up getting.😉