Tbh this is largely consumers’ faults. I know so many people who make a lot less money than I do and have similar needs from a vehicle but they still go out and buy big ass trucks and SUVs that cost 2-3x what my car would today. Yes there are systemic problems at play but ultimately the American public are not very good at making good decisions.
Mass transit systems yet? No? Okay, I’ll check back in a decade after this problem has gotten substantially worse.
I get so sick of dealers advertising “$20,000 off! Only $499/mo” for overpriced cars no one wants, when $20K is larger than my entire vehicle budget and the max monthly payment I can handle is $150. My car is 20 years old and it’s paid off, and I plan to drive it forever if prices aren’t going to go back to reasonable levels.
hugs Civic si
you’ll get all the motors and transmissions you need, widdle guy.
My last car was a civic si. It was a great car.
There was a whole line of outstanding Civic models for a while there. I miss the Del Sol.
I just want a small car I can work on myself. 30 years ago, I could maintain my own car, do some shadetree mechanics…
But all cars today are meant to be black boxes. All need proprietary tools and computers to do almost anything.
Dear Santa, could I have a 67 camaro.
Kias just a few years ago were copies of late 90s cars at a price reflecting that and low complexity making them efficient to maintain. Take a Kia now, it’s just as expensive as everything else and will be scrapped in 8 years when one of the $2000 proprietary led assemblies fails.
I’m still chugging along doing maintenance but yeah it’s getting ridiculous. Just as a metric: service manual length.
My motorcycles: ~800 pages
My 2010: ~1800 pages
My 2016: ~13500 pages
I fear to see a more modern vehicle. I don’t own anything newer.
A lot of the page increase is all the diagnostic code debugging. Modern vehicles have way too many computers.
I have a gearless (fixie) bike since last Summer, I don’t even have a manual for it, not do I really need one.
Before that I had a fancy e-bike which nobody but the manufacturer could fix. Even bike shops would warn “We can fix the mechanical parts but we don’t touch the electronics, if it fails while we fix it, it’s on you.” and basically saying they would prefer not to fix it.
Now my bike is so basic I don’t care and I think it’s even safer from potential robbers.
So… in my own experience, less is more! It’s less maintenance, it’s less money, it’s less temptation for others, and ironically enough in this specific case it’s even healthier. I use it everyday, from Sunny spring to rain and snow, it just works.
Simplifying is empowering.
I’m very pro simplifying, but you’ll take my freewheel from my cold dead legs. The only part of my bike that I struggle to repair is I still can’t true a wheel despite trying many times. Well also a broken frame
Ah, pesky tiny ball bearings but honestly it’s not so tricky, mostly patience. Also I did welding workshops so naively confident I could actually make a frame, not a good one though! I’m a bit too lazy for all that though so… now I just ride :D
FWIW nobody should use a fixie rather than a freewheel unless they absolutely genuinely want to… because the first moment of inattention initially, being a bump on the road or just a turn they’ll fall over the bike. After a few cold sweats though then it becomes automatic again, no thinking, just riding, and it’s genuinely fun.
I’ll take more complex computers over trying to get KE-Jetronic to run properly any day of the week lol
Honestly, things have gotten easier for me with the extra computers. Usually if something electrical is wrong, there’s a code for it. Can’t blindly trust the code of course, but it’s usually a good place to get started when doing diagnostics.
Tough segment. There are examples like https://kilow.com/pages/la-bagnole of a cheap, small car but it’s basic utilitarian. It is NOT a status symbol. It’s equivalent to a cargo bike or long tail bike : it’s not sexy, it’s small range, you can’t bring lots of people or furniture, it’s JUST to go from A to B, mostly in small city or on the country side (if the roads are safe enough).
Meanwhile cars keep on being advertised, and thus mostly perceived, as something to travel with, to show of, to protect oneself and your family against the “others” as dangers on the road. Cars keep on getting bigger, higher and consequently heavier, polluting more (yes, even EVs, at least for pollution come from tires erosion on roads) and the acceptance window keeps on moving up.
Until laws get in place, like in Paris, to make SUVs expensive due to their impact on ourselves and our environment, car companies will keep on pushing for whatever makes the most money.
Cars keep on getting bigger,
(US) I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that “small” trucks are starting to shrink again. Seems they finally hit critical mass.
I remember when the Toyota Tacoma was a truly small truck (up through the late 1990s, maybe early 2000s?). If I’m not mistaken, the 2015-2020ish Tacoma is the size of the 90s Toyota Tundra which was a “big” truck at the time. It’s stupid. I need a truck but I don’t need a $100,000 tank with a quad cab and a useless fucking tiny bed. About 75% of the people I know that buy those huge quad cab trucks actually need a minivan because all they use it for is shuttling their kids around but, of course, minivans aren’t “cool”.
… now I’m getting off topic but minivans are freaking awesome. Assuming the seats are stowable or removable, you get a ton of (enclosed) cargo space (more than those stupid quad cab trucks with tiny beds) and can optionally move a lot of people or a lot of cargo. They are fantastic for road trips if you need more space than a typical sedan.
This is one of the things in life that makes me irrationally angry. Give us small trucks that are actually small.
75% of the people I know that buy those huge quad cab trucks actually need a minivan because all they use it for is shuttling their kids around but, of course, minivans aren’t “cool”.
Yeah… honestly I would go much further. I’d say 90% of people do NOT need a truck and 90% do not need a car either. They might want one, and that’s perfectly fine, but I bet if people were to actually check their GPS data for the last year we would see a very obvious pattern : 9-5 on the ring road from home to work, picking up kids, grocery, etc. Yes, there WILL be few trips to a warehouse, yes there will be a trip to the country side (but not off road) but that’s NOT the normal traffic. That something that could, just for the pleasure of it, be a rental that is adapted to it. I think there is a huge gap between how people IMAGINE themselves driving versus their very boring daily life. They get a car or a truck for the person they want to be, not who they actually are.
To be clear, to anybody who DOES actually need a truck and do use it as a truck, or somebody with a wheelchair and needs an SUV to haul, please, pretty please those cars are made for you! Do buy one! It’s for all the posers out there though that it’s NOT ok.
minivans are freaking awesome. Assuming the seats are stowable or removable, you get a ton of (enclosed) cargo space (more than those stupid quad cab trucks with tiny beds) and can optionally move a lot of people or a lot of cargo.
Which is why people in trades who actually work use vans, not stupid pickups.
(US) I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that “small” trucks are starting to shrink again. Seems they finally hit critical mass.
I fucking pray this is true. All I want in a vehicle is a late 90s style pickup with a single cab and a full bed to drive on the highway. I don’t need passenger space, I don’t need ridiculous ground clearance, I don’t need an engine powerful enough for towing. I just need something to haul furniture and lumber around in, maybe some yard waste if I ever manage to afford a house. Bonus points if it’s electric.
If nothing like that comes out I’ll just keep driving my Honda civic until it disintegrates and borrow my dad’s shitty Colorado when necessary.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re currently still huge. But I saw a 2024 or 2025 Tacoma a few weeks ago that looked a fair bit smaller than the previous year models. I’m hoping we’re on the rebound and that they’re going to continue to decrease in size. Guess we’ll see but I’m hoping so too.
I will say that I love a (tiny) extended cab - Toyota calls/called them the “access cab” and on the old (early to mid-90s) S10’s I had I think they called them a “king cab”. Having space in the cab to store tools, camping/emergency gear, etc is really nice. There are ““seats”” there in the Tacoma, presumably to get around the chicken tax, but they are horrible to use as such. The ones in the old S10 folded up into the side walls which was awesome. They were out of the way but available for the 0.0001% of the time you needed them and those actually weren’t too horribly uncomfortable since they faced the center of the vehicle instead of forward.
Yeah the ones with like a 1.5 cab aren’t terrible but I don’t want something that’s dedicating a whole ass second seating area for passengers when I don’t ever drive other people around. Being able to fit an entire desk/bookcase/bedframe in the bed is far more important to me (and being able to get it out without having to climb because I’m short as fuck).
I’m told that Americans only want big expensive cars but for some reason the government felt the need to slap 100% tariffs on small inexpensive Chinese cars.
Because Chinese cars are priced at a loss to corner the market and put competition out of business.
Meanwhile VW and other manufacturers make smaller more affordable cars, but they don’t sell them here.
nobody buys them. sales for such vehicles are tiny compared to larger cars.
it doesn’t make sense to sell subcompact cars if you only sell 5000 of them a year.
That’s because the goal isn’t to sell you a car, it’s to saddle you with a $50K debt obligation they get to sell off.
Exactly. If they were incentivised to encourage the best vehicle for the customer they’d be talking most people into a subcompact or minivan
Hurray! The GDP is saved!
You should try not tariffs.
Car prices were on the rise long before the tarrif crap. Yes the tariffs continue to make it worse, but this was a trend already! As long as people are willing to pay 50 grand for a rav4 with leather seats they will continue to pump their numbers up. I know VERY few people that drove a car more than 10 years old, their afraid it will break down on them when the reality is their newest 700$ /mo POS techno trash on wheels will be dead long before my 87 gives up the ghost.
The symbol for this are the run down ranch houses near me that look like dumps but they have a $70K truck in front.
I have an electric golf cart that I can take on any roads 35 mph or lower, I’m saving for a lithium upgrade so I can go farther than 15 miles round trip. I had my last vehicle stolen when cars were not available at the beginning of COVID. I bought a mini van to replace it, it cost twice what I wanted to pay but I have to have a good vehicle for the family and a sedan just wasn’t realistic. Luckily insurance also paid out over twice what my stolen vehicle originally cost me because of the market at the time. I love my mini van but I usually only drive it once or twice a week, most of my daily trips are in the golf cart.
Cars from the late 80s and early 90s are still fine today if produced; relatively safe, good fuel economy, air-conditioning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_(fourth_generation)
Heck, 4/5 people would be happy with a side by side ATV as a form of transportation in urban/suburban areas. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
A golf cart is suitable for at least 50% of people currently driving in cities, as the majority of small cars are just grocery getters. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
Something is fundamentally wrong with the transportation; size, power, cost of cars.
A golf cart is suitable for at least 50% of people currently driving in cities, as the majority of small cars are just grocery getters.
A signficant portion of Florida uses Golf carts in closed communities.
The Honda fit is the best urban car I’ve ever driven. Street parking? No problem. I can fit a bike in the back or put my rack on for two. It seats 5 just like an suv. Great milage. Sure I wish it was electric and had android auto but otherwise it’s amazing. Hell it handled a drive across the country stuffed completely full with stuff we didn’t want to risk in a shipping box
Cars from the late 80s and early 90s are still fine today if produced;
Unfortunately they can not even be bought used because they’ve all rusted through (Japanese ones anyway, others are hit and miss)
relatively safe
Citation needed, they’re usually missing most of the new safety features, that’s why they can be so small and light
good fuel economy
Maybe if you’re in the US where diesels are the devil and everything has to be a truck. Modern cars have better fuel economy at even twice the weight. You can get similar or better highway fuel economy out of a 2.5 tonne Audi SQ7 tdi compared to a small 1 tonne 90s Honda Civic. Diesel of course helps a lot in that regard. But if a huge ass performance SUV gets similar mileage compared to a 90s ecobox, imagine what a normally sized modern car can do.
air-conditioning
Was by no means standard on those, at least in Europe. Be lucky to have heated seats in a 90s Japanese ecobox, AC was nearly unheard of, and wasn’t standard even in the 00s.
That’s not even getting into emissions, which are the reason you don’t get these cheap and simple 80s and 90s engines anymore. Now you need EGR to manage NOx, catalytic converters to manage CO2 and if it’s a brand new car, even petrol engines need to have particulate filters.
Heck, 4/5 people would be happy with a side by side ATV as a form of transportation in urban/suburban areas. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
A golf cart is suitable for at least 50% of people currently driving in cities, as the majority of small cars are just grocery getters. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
Do any of these even have proper heating? Or like how do you demist the windshield between September and April when it’s too cold to drive an open vehicle and too humid to not have heating and ideally AC to reduce humidity in the car?
They just look like nice summer toys.
Citation needed,
Physics. Force = mass X acceleration. Heavier vehicles are harder to turn, harder to stop.
Modern cars run wider tires and have better brakes, also ESP works some serious magic. Stopping distance is actually better than it used to be for most vehicles. Also suspension setups are more advanced, meaning tires are actually touching ground more of the time. This makes cornering better.
Then add airbags (not really a thing in a lot of late 80s and early 90s cars), real crumple zones, etc.
Barring stupid ass American trucks with zero visibility, vehicles have gotten safer over time. It’s slowed down now, but still getting slightly better with driver assistance features, like blind spot detection, etc.
In urban environments an old 1980s car is fine, you can’t really get into a high speed collision in a city.
Highway driving is statistically safer, so you can get away with a 1980s car on a highway.
Rural driving is o.k.-ish, if you are away of your surroundings on a rural road.
It’s the sub-urban, specifically, the ex-urban environment in N.America that posses the most problems for driving an older 1980s car with limited safety features. People really speed on the wide, 6 to 8 lane, suburban streets.
Highway driving is actually where things like ESP and airbags matter most IMO. ESP can save your ass on unexpected black ice in a curve and airbags can save your ass when some oncoming assface decides to fall asleep and drift into your lane. Most highways in my country are not separated, so that’s pretty dangerous.
The Honda Civic has had the same fuel economy now since the late 80s https://www.fuelly.com/car/honda/civic at 30mpg The VTEC engine has been computer powered for the same time, and has used a Catalytic converter that whole time. Only now, with an electric motor for first gear, do we see any mpg improvement.
The main safety feature, is that they gotten heavier.
15-minute duration, covering approximately 9.3 miles at an average speed of 18.6 mph" https://en.phongnhaexplorer.com/qna/travel/what-is-the-average-distance-of-a-car-trip.html#gsc.tab=0 Most cars don’t even heat up in that time, an ATV or golf cart would be fine.
The Japanese haven’t actually advanced much in the automotive industry in recent decades, so I’m not surprised there.
And yes, extra airbags, bigger crumple zones and noise insulation add weight and since.
My 2019 C class did about 60 mpg extraurban and it’s significantly bigger. 30 sounds about right for urban. Cars have gotten better. Hondas? Ehh.
Even my diesels have started heating up the windshield in 5 minutes at most. You let it idle for 2 or 3 while removing the snow anyway. Or use webasto. Petrol engines of any real size heat up quicker so they don’t usually need such things.
The only real breakthrough has been hybrid, for mpg and efficiency. I suspect internal combustion engines will be around for some time, but almost all cars will move to hybrid (hopefully plug in hybrid).
Cars heat up quickly now because, aside from the heat from the car engine, many have small electric heaters to overcome the first few minutes of cool air in the cabin and on the windshield. But all this tech comes at an expense to cost, simplicity, and repair-ability.
N. America really needs more public transit. Better trains between cities. Legislating pick-up trucks so they are safer to pedestrians. Allowing smaller companies to manufacturer cars, to break up the monopolies.
Direct injection becoming commonplace has done a lot too, espegially with piezoelectric injectors that can do multiple injection events per combustion cycle for diesel. Modern transmissions have more speeds, quicker shifts and less efficiency loss with fewer moving parts.
Hybrid in comparison doesn’t do much for mpg unless it’s plugin hybrid which of course can be a true game changer.
Resistive heaters aren’t particularly fancy or expensive tech, but that’s irrelevant, 90s cars also heat up fast (since the engine thermal efficiency is usually worse), I’m more interested in the UTV comparison here since you literally can’t drive without heat here half the year.
Agreed on the transit. But is there any real need for new car manufacturers? It’s very expensive to get started with a new one.
There’s exactly one thing America needs to get smaller and cheaper cars. Proper taxation on fuel. Right now there’s no incentive to sell cheap small cars if everyone wants a brodozer and crossovers are seen as tiny.
For some reason most of America decided that they needed a massive truck or SUV that could haul a semi trailer yet their needs 99.9% of the time are short trips and buying groceries.
Americans didn’t decide it. Loophole in fuel efficiency laws ties the fuel economy footprint to carriage size. So to get around this, the manufacturers started making the cars larger, wider, and boxier. It’s why even small sedans are several inches wider than they used to be, when you can find them at all.
Well you need to BE SAFE and walking is SCARY.
Something about companies lobbying for less tax on huge cars.
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Paying massive tariffs could be part of the problem.
- Make car dependant infrastructure for every single city or town
- Refuse to innovate, build only “luxury” models
- ???
- ProfitSimilarly with housing. Why make cheap starter homes when you can make so much more with “Luxury” homes and condos.
It cost nearly the same to make a luxury unit as a stripped down one. Most of the cost is labor. Spend 5 k in fancier materials and get 50k for the unit.
And yet use the same cheap materials in the “luxury” ones that you would have used in the cheap ones anyway!
I follow some home inspectors who post videos from their new home inspections, and holy crap the things they find are ridiculous. Like, construction companies should lose their licenses bad.
I visit some partially built homes from time to time, and recently saw one just after it had been inspected. On one wall, on the insulation, the inspector had scrawled STUD? In red felt.
The stud was completely missing from the wall. It was just an empty frame filled with insulation. You’d think someone would have noticed earlier during construction, but obviously the actual contractor had just let the day labor go to town and never bothered to review their work before inspection.
A lot of times, it’s the contractor cutting corners and hoping no one notices.
lol, that is 100% every australian apartment built in the last 15 years. the window frames are plastic and the cladding is combustible… but it’s got Italian tiles and “European appliances” so it’s an “executive suite”. that will be $1.5million fuck you very much.
Similar to literally every market that involves ‘things’, as we transition from failing liberal capitalism to horrifying technofascist neofeudalism (aka cyberpunk dystopia).
The next step is… well they won’t lower the luxury prices, everything becomes renting, loaning, etc, even further and harder… untill you end up with bundled subscription plans / leases on a diverse array of physical things, as we currently have with bundles of online services.
We literally going to transition to a subscription based model for just being alive.
… unless enough people actually do something effrctive about it.
Other wise, the K shaped economy becomes a === shaped economy. You’re either on top, or you’re not, and you’re basically treated as a kind of cattle; raised, milked, then expended whenever it is most profitable to do so.
There’s a difference between “cheap” and “inexpensive.” Mcmansions are cheap.
People wanted those mcmansions and rebuilds jack up prices. Now those massive suburban mcmansions are getting old in the tooth and no one wants to buy them. They are realizing they need to build smaller homes finally. We’ll probably see more townhomes with shared structures (walls/roofs).
Before they were building mcmansions and charging a fortune for them. Now they’re building sardine cans and charging a fortune for them. Much better.
- Force you to rent an apartment
- Refuse to build anything affordable, only “luxury” models
- ???
- Profit
- Capitalism
- ???
- Planetary Doom
Don’t forget the government cutting funding for affordable housing projects.
Amateur hour, my government funds ‘affordable’ housing projects that cost 300 grand and immediately turn into overpriced rentals.
I recently read an article about “affordable” apartments being constructed an hour or so away. 900 SF, one br and bath, $2200, in a right to work, $7.25/hr minimum wage state.
that sounds cheap to me. where i live a new 1bd/1bath will be closer to 3000-3500
crappy leaky roach filled basement apartments go for 2200
What’s minimum wage? These are “low income.”
At least housing is actually being built, but I know what you mean. Theres no real affordable housing near me and the wait list for what little is available has been closed due to budget cuts.
Sorry I didn’t get that, did you say you wanted an even larger pickup truck?
Can you jack up the front so I can’t see and put a bar on it so I can kill anyone I hit? Thanks.
We’re way ahead of you! Our engineers have worked tirelessly to come up with an extra flat front that maximises impact with unsuspecting pedestrians
Can I get it angled to ensure they’re swept under? I don’t want to risk them hitting my 1’ of windshield
Thanks to the invention of debt, we can continue taking from the poor what they don’t even have!
They do have it. It’s the value they generate while working. That’s what we’ve always taken, regardless of the exact financial tool used.
- Cede sedans to Japanese car companies.
Even they aren’t selling them as much in the US any more. You don’t really see many new Accords or Camrys any more, you see CR-Vs and Rav4s.
Step 1: oligopoly. Step 2: Make less stuff, make it worse, and make it more expensive. Step 3: Use the wealth hoarded that way to make it easier to become a monopoly.
Unsustainable grift is unsustainable? Wow I’m shocked.
