Venting. Cars

The real deals are on Craigslist if you are handy. Do a search filtered for 4wd vehicles, starting with the cheapest. Once you scroll past the dummies that list their price as $1-$30, you'll start getting the cars people are just trying to get rid of. Read the descriptions, you can tell a lot from reading between the lines. inevitably you'll find something that needs a deep clean and new brakes for cheap. I bought my son's 1999 jeep cherokee with 160k miles for 1200. We put brakes, some new front end parts on it, etc and tires. It would sell for 5k now.

Well: wait 2 month if you can…. Car loans in 2023 will be the new sub prime crisis of 2008. People can’t afford their loan and cars are getting repoed faster than ever before… Bank are starting to freak out with the number of default and will unload them for cheap asap. Dealers have bought used POS thinking they can turn a profit, and these are sitting on lots all over the country.

Over half of car buyers can’t qualify for the best rates on loan and some are presented with a 10, 12% rate on a 72 to 84 month, for a used truck at 70k…. No one can afford that.

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Originally Posted by ray1970

The optimistic side of me kind of smiles knowing my thirteen year old vehicle may be worth more than I paid for it eight years ago. Plus, I was considering selling my wife?s vehicle a couple of years ago and was hoping to get $2500 for it. Looks like it would be a bargain for someone at twice that much today.

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I hear ya. Our 08 seinna (58k miles) paid $13k from the original owner, when dealers wanted $18k + for a 100k mileage and up . Was offered $13-14k on trade in, towards a $40k unit [ROFL3]. We're driving all our vehicles in to the ground. Lowest mileage is 109k, highest on the 4x4 150- 160k . Even the 08 versa, hatchback with 120k (original owner) maintained will bring me $5k, easy, if not more. Especially when i post the window sticker showing 27-33 mpg.

Yep. Saw that when I bought my Colorado this summer. I wound up saying screw it and buying a new one. When a new one costs $40k and the used ones I was looking at were 4-5 years old and still priced at $36-38k, why not.

I wonder though if an economic downturn might actually increase the value of used cars.

If people lose jobs or have to take a pay cut, there is a bigger market out there for a $10,000 car than for a $50,000 car.

An older audi is cheap because they are crazy expensive to fix and work on. From talking to a mechanic friend, it sounds like BMW and Audi don't want their cars to run forever and thus be driven as older cars by middle and low class people. It's sort of like planned obsolescence, but with a darker, more shrewd motivation. Don't know if it's true or not, but it certainly makes a lot of sense.

Are car auctions a thing anymore?

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Originally Posted by leightoncash

An older audi is cheap because they are crazy expensive to fix and work on. From talking to a mechanic friend, it sounds like BMW and Audi don't want their cars to run forever and thus be driven as older cars by middle and low class people. It's sort of like planned obsolescence, but with a darker, more shrewd motivation. Don't know if it's true or not, but it certainly makes a lot of sense.

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Actually it's the opposite. European drivers (especially Germans) keep their cars on average 2.5 times longer than Americans. The difference is they service their cars at a much higher standard than Americans do. Americans want to pay for oil changes, tires and brakes and say screw the rest. as an example, A German will replace an Audi alternator as part of routine maintenance. They know how to care for the cars and they last.

Yes they are expensive to own. The reward is a driving experience you wont find in other import or domestic cars.

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Originally Posted by Rooskibar03

Actually it's the opposite. European drivers (especially Germans) keep their cars on average 2.5 times longer than Americans. The difference is they service their cars at a much higher standard than Americans do. Americans want to pay for oil changes, tires and brakes and say screw the rest. as an example, A German will replace an Audi alternator as part of routine maintenance. They know how to care for the cars and they last.

Yes they are expensive to own. The reward is a driving experience you wont find in other import or domestic cars.

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So I will start with some German to answer: Jein.

New cars in Germany are rarely purchased by induvials. They are company cars that are given as part of the compensation package.

The employer gets tax breaks. The employee gets tax breaks.

The taxes on a car that an employee pays is 1% of the original price of the car per month. Note that it never goes down. It is the original price. (this tax rate is much lower than buying the car with taxed money).

So, since employees pay on NEW price they dont want a car more than 2 to 3 years old because they are paying the same taxes for a 5 year old car as a brand new one. They then get sold (all over Europe) on the secondary market after 2 to 3 years. The companies lease the cars for 2 to 3 years.

This is a way that the Germans can pump up their new car industry and why you see so many new (90% German) cars on road.

I was in Germany last week and the company was switching cars around. The only cars available to me were two E-class Mercedes because they being moved into the car-pool for occasional use for the last year of their lease and the employees were getting new ones.

One of my co-workers had just taken delivery of his new mercedes the day before he picked me up at the train station.

What Germany has figured out how to do is legally subsidized their auto industry with tax code. It legal and not against tariff laws because the same deal is available for cars of any origin (Japanese, American,. French, German, etc). It works for them because visual estimation is 90% of cars in Germany are German cars.



Here is a quick link I found.
https://gted.net/2022/11/hidden-tax-...%20per%20month.


Another one
https://www.oeko.de/en/press/archive...her-schieflage

My company was in the market for a couple F650 26ft flatbeds. Dang hard to find. Everything used was $90k for 300k+ miles. That's insane.

Ended up getting lucky and finding two new the day they came in. Bought them both. Brand new cost $90k and currently putting another $20K in sides and a lift gate. $20K more for brand new than 300k mile used. I'll take it for the warranty alone.