First it was “the HUMMER H2 is better for the environment than the Prius.” Now it’s big cars in general are better for the planet– and your wallet– than small ones. “Small cars don’t last,” automotive analyst Dennis DesRosiers tells wordsmith Barbara Righton of Macleans. “They fail to retain value, utility or desirability.” Babs connects the dots. “Small cars are less durable. First off, they are built lighter. Secondly, they are cheaper, so they attract younger drivers who tend to maintain them poorly. They have a lower resale value, which guarantees they won’t trade hands many times before they are scrapped, and they’re more likely to be written off by insurance companies if they are involved in serious collisions. In other words, ‘the useful life of the vehicle’ is as short as their wheel base, according to Erich Merkle, an automotive consultant with Crowe Chizek in Grand Rapids, Mich.” Quite aside from the fallacy of the argument (I’ll let the Best and Brightest make the case), do I detect some kind of weird sneering thing going on? Indeed I do. “Merkle advises consumers to buy a mid-sized car that is a couple of years old and hang onto it. That way they can sit contentedly and watch the parade of tiny cars in their neighbours’ driveways come — and go.” [thanks to rpn453 for the tip]
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“Small cars are less durable.”
Someone forgot to tell Toyota, Honda, Nissan, (recently) Hyundai, GM (all their vehicles are equally problem prone), Ford (only their larger vehicles burst spontaneously into flame) and Chrysler (their large cars suck as much as their small ones.)
“they are cheaper, so they attract younger drivers ”
Isn’t the average age of a Corolla buyer 45? And don’t young people usually buy used cars? I know I did, and still do.
“They have a lower resale value”
Than what? Last I checked, Mercedes, the Lincoln Town Car, and pretty much every truck and SUV depreciate faster and have lower resale value than small cars.
“they’re more likely to be written off by insurance companies if they are involved in serious collisions”
Well, yeah, small cars tend to be mangled when they hit SUV and trucks… don’t small cars tend to be safer for their occupants?
What a load. My daily driver is a 1989 Civic that has outlasted many a bigger, fancier car on my block. The cost per mile is about as good as one can get, so why not push the car well past 200,000 miles? I suspect that one reason why the Civic has had a good repair record is because it lacks all the fancy features of more expensive cars . . . that can go haywire with age. I bought the car from a secretary who maintained it meticulously (with the records to prove it). As for resale value, that doesn’t matter when a car gets this old — you just drive it into the ground.
All that said, I’m glad I’m not in the market for a used small car right now because the prices are way too high and the choices more limited (at least in my left coast small town). In some cases it makes more sense to buy new.
My Miata has not had a single major repair in over 14 years of daily driving. If he had argued that no one should buy a car too small to live with for at least ten years if they can help it, then I’d go along with that. But there is no reason a “tiny car” can’t last as long as the average barge on the road.
Two words: MINI Cooper.
Wait, wait. He was talking about the Cobalt, right?
Young people will be back buying to used cars (i.e cars that they can truely afford) now that it takes more than a heartbeat and a drivers license to get a loan. Especially now that the
sponsored leases are history.
The ONLY comment I agree with here is to buy a used car (okay, so the article recommends a used MID-SIZED car) and hang onto it until the wheels fall of it. That makes fiscal sense, especially if you can buy one for cash and pass on the financing. But the rest of this is rubbish…pure and simple. My son owns a 1997 Toyota Tercel I’ve oft commented on here…180k and the engine/tranny is completely original! Cheap? Throw away? Not even close. The day he goes off to the Naval Academy is the day I take that little sucker back and start driving it back and forth to work.
I found it ironic that this post was sandwiched between Martin Schoerer’s posts on the Toyota iQ and the Mitsubishi iMiEV.
MacLeans? The Canadian magazine? They *have* noticed that small cars almost always top the best seller lists up here, right?
Sounds like he was trying to jump-start a self-fulfilling prophesy. There are no physical reasons that smaller cars are worse economically or environmentally. Younger people buy them and maintain them worse? So, if younger buyers bought mid-size, would they maintain them better? Lighter? would putting lead in them make them more reliable?
Sure culturally small cars get the short end of the stick… in the USA, this isn’t the case in Europe and Japan. This is just small minded provincial propaganda. Wharrgarlbl
To paraphrase Maximum Bob, this is a crock of excrement.
The only thing I agree with is that small cars are, as a class, more frequently involved in insurance collision claims relative to their numbers on the road. Sort of a “duh” though, because you know what happens when Ram and Yaris collide.
Wow, I find it hard to believe that this was in Maclean’s. I disagree as well though. My parents had a ’94 Accord for 11 years that still ran fine when they sold it privately, and I’ve owned an ’85 Jetta that I got rid of when it was 15, and an ’89 Jetta that I got rid of when it was 14. Both Jettas still ran fine though and had over 230000 miles on them. I got rid of the ’85 model because it wasn’t compliant with US standards (Canadian car), and I sold the ’89 because I had bought an 03 TDI. I sold the ’89 for $1200 on Ebay. I bought it 4 years before and I paid $1250 for it. So I effectively lost $50 over 4 years. I’d say that’s pretty good resale for a 14 year old car. I think this article is just a load of crap meant to fill space in the magazine.
I, too, laughed at the comment about small cars not lasting.
Gee, I wonder why we still see so many classic VW Beetles on U.S. roads, some three decades after they were last sold as new vehicles in this country?
Seems the very biased author has an agenda and that is propping up large vehicles. Wonder if the president of the SOA wrote the draft for this. Let’s see:
– Bigger vehicles take much more resources to build using more metal, plastic, energy, waste, etc.
– Bigger vehicles take more gas / diesel to move increasing our dependence on oil, adding more pollution and carbon dioxide emissions.
– Bigger vehicles are less agile and often cannot avoid an accident as a smaller car can; thus increasing more damaged vehicles and repairs or the need to purchase a new car.
– Bigger vehicles have lost substantial value in the last 3 years due to gas prices making them actually cheaper to buy used.
– Bigger vehicles are not more reliable unless they are made by Detroit b/c they did not care to make smaller cars in the first place.
My neighbor in nyc has a 94 civic with over 350k on the original engine. The engine has never required more than maintenance and oil changes and has never been rebuilt. The rest of the car works as well, although it’s not a looker (14 years of street parking is rough), it runs great.
You can write a letter to the editor (link at the bottom). Let them know that they have no credibility when they publish unsubstantiated, pandering drivel like this.
While buying a slightly used mid-sizer is a better bang-for-the-buck proposition, this is a strange argument. More to the point, it only works when you compare the service needs of taxicab drivers, cops or other high use fleet vehicles.
For everyone else, the car isn’t the problem, its the owner’s neglect of the vehicle.
ANY vehicle.
If you changed the argument to be just about domestic small cars then I’d give it more credence (based om personal experiences). Even then though it’s not 100% true.
Yep, if you live in Michigan, where most of the cars are domestic, then you might see his point.
There are lots of cheaply made, small cars that don’t last. However, does a BMW 5 outlast a 3? A Camry outlast a corolla? I don’t think so.
OTOH, I would guess that a bu will outlast a cobalt, and a fusion will outlast a focus.
The real steal is a 2 year old body on frame SUV that will outlast you if well cared for.
Wow. That’s all kind of stupid.
In this world, it must be nice. Buy a big car, and the banks would be rushing to offer you car equity lines of credit.
In other words, ‘the useful life of the vehicle’ is as short as their wheel base…
That’d be pretty neat, wouldn’t it? Buy a car, drive it six feet down the road, then replace it.
Um, don’t Civics and Corollas and the like have the lowest total cost to own over the life cycle? Also, how are younger, poorer, and/or financially responsible people supposed to afford the big behemoths? I’m 44, make decent money, and yet I drive a Civic LX. From a personal finance standpoint, I’m still not sure how $30K+ cars became commonplace given our median or average incomes, especially here in the poverty-stricken South.
For a young person just starting out, or a family who isn’t rolling in the dough, even a mid-size car (say, an Accord) is getting into the mid-20s and would be a huge financial burden. Even a slightly used one might be more than their budget allows. And people like to eat and have shelter, we’re funny that way. We have to get to work etc. too.
What a bunch of drivel.
Right now I’m thinking that any car over $22K is more than people can spend. That pretty much puts everyone into small car territory.
What exactly do they mean by “outlast”?
Do they mean; undriveable? unsafe? broken? you’re bored with it?
I can see people becoming bored with small cheap cars or them being uncomfortable for some and those people buying new larger cars but won’t the small cars be sold used?
I think I see more old Cavaliers and Neons than any other car more than 10 years old.
How many people here see someone in your area who has a Toyota Tercel that they’ve had forever?
Heh. I’m reminded of the old beat up Corolla in front of me a couple of years ago (it was a station wagon – that’s old). There was a sign in the rear window that simply said “475,000 km.”. ‘Nuff said.
Bigger=Gooder
I’m on board :-P
Who is Dennis DesRosiers? Taking his ridiculous statement into consideration, I am guessing he is a water head. Look up the trade in value of a 1999 Honda Civic and a 1999 Dodge Ram. Let me know how that treats you for retained value. I am positive a Civic is built better and will easily outlast a dumpy POS Ram.
Doesn’t Maclean’s have any fact-checkers?
I think the gist of what he’s saying is that small cars aren’t as desirable long-term, so people replace them more often.
Actually, I think that you could use two events in the life of a car as it’s economic end.
First, you could say it’s over when it’s parked without intent to drive again, either in a junk yard or not. It may be restored later, but that’s not likely.
Second, you could say it’s essentially over when the car reaches the point that costs to keep it running are no longer a good value. This can result in the junkyard, but doesn’t always. Many times the ability to keep your own junker running is more attractive than to replace it with someone elses junker that they say is in better shape. The devil that you know theory.
I think larger, nicer cars are more likely to see life extended through the latter instance than lower end compacts. The Beetle was a good exception to this because you could almost always keep it running cheaply, and it had a certain cachet that modern civics and corollas lack.
Derosier is well-known up here as an industry shill. He comes up with (horse) nuggets like these at regular intervals. How he maintains his credibility I don’t know, probably the same way that the rest of the industry does. TTAC would do well do a hatchet job on him.
Pur rubbish. Of course there would be a portion of the American population that would buy into it.
Hands down my small cars have outlasted their larger domestic cousins. Trying hard to compare apples to apples here. My cars vs the cars of friends and family. Too many variables though to say this is total fact (my care vs their care).
Listen, I’m quite satisifed with a car that lasts 250K miles from a compact.
The real trick is to keep them from getting ugly – a problem that ALL cars have regardless of their size.
How does a car loose utility exactly? Does the trunk in smaller cars shrink as time goes on?
From a personal finance standpoint, I’m still not sure how $30K+ cars became commonplace given our median or average incomes, especially here in the poverty-stricken South.
Anybody with a pulse financing, long terms of 7 years, and leasing, combined with a lack of fiscal education. People just look at what the payment is and get a car based on whether or not they think they can afford the payment.
You see what happens when you don’t focus your business?
MacLeans should stick to making toothpaste.
Glad to see I’m not the only one thinking this article is ridiculous! My mind was so scrambled I couldn’t even finish the magazine after reading that. I know many people with many years and many miles on small cars, and the resale value on them is excellent in my part of the country.
Dennis DesRosiers is a “mouthpiece for hire” of the Canadian auto industry, and will spin anything auto related, any direction his paycheck dictates. Last year he was famous for saying that there was no pricing difference between Canadian and US autos! Gee, I wonder who put him up to that?
http://www.desrosiers.ca/
From another website:
Industry analyst Dennis DesRosiers said although he’s not familiar with the Zenn car, it’s difficult to “jump all of the hurdles” to get an electric car on the road because each province and state has to approve it.
“It’s a real dog’s breath of a problem,” said DesRosiers.
Huh? Can’t someone translate the dog’s breath comment?
Call me crazy, but I agree with this article. I think so because I am a grease monkey/junkyard rat. And from that, I know that small cars do indeed get poorly maintained because since they are cheap, people to see them as disposable. Second, whenever I go to the junkyard, the biggest majority of cars I see in the cars section are small cars. The only times that I see bigger cars there in numbers similar of that of the small cars is either if they are known for life-ending defects (ie, the 1986-1999 Ford Taurus and their tendacy to eat through transmissions), sold heavilly to fleets (Chrysler Cirrus, Plymouth Breeze, Dodge Stratus), or both (Ford Taurus again.)
So, again, I agree with this article from my experience of working on cars. It is true, small cars (at least American ones) pile up sky high at junkyards because they are either abused by owners and because they are sold heavilly to fleets. When they get old, people view these cars as disposable . I know that because I inherited a Ford Escort from my brother, and I spent all summer fixing it because he treated the thing like a cheap hor and failed to do the most basic maintainence. When I got it, the brakes were shot, the park brake was rusted solid, there was a giant hole in the floor just under the driver’s feet, the insulation was dragging on the pavement, the interior was a pig sty, one tire was low, the windshield had three huge cracks in it and it was leaking coolant. (The thing was in great condition when he got it, so I know this all came from his extreme negligence) I just finished fixing ALL OF THAT. He got a 98 Buick LeSabre (Low mileage grandma special), and he has been vigilant about maintaining and keeping it up. He treats his low milage, new-ish LeSabre great, but he treated his 100,000+ miled 93 Escort like a cheap hor. I rest my case.
The media run around quoting Desrosiers all over the place. I can’t figure out where the hell he came from, or why he’s considered to be such an “expert”.
Even so, this asinine comment of his finally exposes his bias, which is the same as that of most “working” auto journalists – go where the bread and bribery is and never mind honesty and fairness.
In other words, make like our politicians.
Actually, as my father used to say, ALL cars are bad “investments.” That is to say – unless you’re referring to a rare fluke such as a desireable collectable – they’re not investments at all, but in fact they are a depreciating asset.
Of course, that little issue has never stopped me from buying these wonderful depreciating assets and enjoying every single minute of driving them…
Put me down as one of the guys driving an old Tercel.
Are the junkyards filled with Cavaliers and Escorts and whatever the hell Chrysler was selling at that point? Yeah. But the Corollas and Tercels and Civics and Accords and CRXs are still around, for the simple reason that running one of them into the ground is a significant feat.
And, with newer cars, it’s a similar story. A well-engineered car isn’t going to turn into a beater as easily, no matter what it costs or how it’s maintained.
And, at this point, when a good chunk of the domestic’s lineup can be had for fire-sale prices, size doesn’t have a huge relationship with price anymore. In another 10 years, the junkyards are going to be filled with Dodge Rams, not Honda Fits.
ctoan, you do make a good point.
Again, from having a 2nd gen Escort in my family for 13 years, I know that it is a well engineered and reliable car. I believe that their heavy sales to rental fleets and perceived disposability is the main reason why so many are junked out. Or their owners forgot to the timing belts. Either one. But from owning an Escort I know that at least the 91-96 models are very durable cars. I own and drive a 93 Escort wagon right now.
Again, when they are perceived as disposable (sold heavily to fleets, and whored off the lots at fire-sale prices), they will be treated as disposable. Perhaps thats why the causalities pile up on the American side of the economy car line, while the Japanese ones are still running around on our roads – well, the ones who haven’t rusted into piles of rubble yet.