Find Reviews by Make:
No, its not a recall. But not surprisingly, he’s trying to sell you service for your Ford. Service has always been the big profit center for dealers, and nothing has changed in almost one hundred years.
To put those prices in perspective, multiply them by twelve. Try getting a new fender installed on your Fusion for sixty bucks. Or a tune up for twelve bucks and “a small charge for materials”. Fifty bucks to rebuild your front end suspension. While you’re at it, have your engine and transmission rebuilt for under $300, parts included.
(hat tip to Ray Charlton)
13 Comments on “A Card From Your Dealer Arrived…A Bit Late...”
Read all comments
For a a little bit of more perspective, Model T cost around $300 in the twenties. Inflation adjusted price is around $3500.
Yeah, but the interior was full of hard plastics and the material grains didn’t even match. Cheap, cheap, cheap!
“and many can be driven one, two, three or even four or five years and even longer”
Apparently the Model T had a similar life expectancy as a 2000 Chrysler model.
Cheap shot. My 1998 Neon has 200,000 miles, is still on its original clutch, and I’ve spent $700 in repairs in the 85,000 miles I’ve owned it, and it has averaged 38 mpg overall. I’ve driven six Mopar minivans past 250,000 miles with minimal repairs, just the usual wearing parts, tires, struts, brakes.
Closer to that of a Toyota.
The $5 labor charge to overhaul the front axle is the daily wage of the factory workers who built the car in the first place.
“…fenders $3.50 to $5.00 and labor charge $1.00 to $2.50..” It’s the ratio of parts cost to labor cost that caught my attention. Now, parts costs is typically much less than labor. Of course, today’s fenders don’t just bolt on like they used to.
Twotone
“THIS SIDE OF CARD IS FOR ADDRESS”
Really, they had to be told that?
That card must have been a standard Ford corporate piece produced for dealers to send out. Recently I was at a local Ford dealer’s 100 year anniversary (Tiffany Ford, Hollister, CA) celebration and one of their exhibits was that very same old promo piece, but with their dealership’s name on it.
Over the decades, dealers have lost a lot of service business to both independant shops and especially chain service places. Most people, once their car is out of warranty, wouldn’t even consider going to a dealer for service. Maybe not even while it’s under warranty.
Service is still a profit center, but nothing like it could be.
Dealers are charging $90-$110 an hour for service while paying their mechanics $20. Nice mark up. If there is a problem with the fix, the mechanic often has to fix “his mistake” for free. Independent service centers are usually $20-30 bucks an hour cheaper.
Bottom line, if you can figure out how to turn a wrench yourself, you can save a bundle of cash. It took me about 2 and a half hours to change the front struts on a ’99 Avalon. The rear was trickier and took me twice as long. Had to remove the seat and cut some frozen strut bolts off. In all it was maybe 8 hours of labor (including the time it took me to look up, and order the parts.) The local service shop estimated it would charge between $450 to $650 to do the job.
This is also why it is important to understand the ALL the cost dynamics of owning a older car. It might not be much of a saving for someone who is afraid to change brake pads because the tiniest things can get real expensive real fast. If you aren’t at all mechanical it is essential to find a good mechanic who understands the value of the car and isn’t going to put a brand new starter on a car with 200,000 miles on it (like a dealer will.) Otherwise, a person is probably better off selling their car when it runs out of warranty.
As a retired North Dakota farmer, this postcard is interesting from several facets.
The price of wheat back then was three times today’s price, when measured in constant dollars. Even when adjusted for increased yields, it would have taken the production from fewer acres to buy and repair a vehicle.
Although the inflation index for 1928 (the year of the postcard) was 12.5 to one, by 1933, deflation caused by the Great Depression had raised that to 16 to one. In North Dakota, we say there are three great crop years, 1918, 1942, and next year. In 1918, wheat prices were high and the crop was so good, that my father-in-law’s parents could pay for their new farm house from the profits of one year’s production from a quarter-section of land (160 acres). That’s not possible today.
That $3,500 real price for a Model T shows why automobiles took over personal transportation. Maxbass and Bottineau are 40 miles apart, a pittance of distance by North Dakota standards, but they were not on the same rail line. The Model T provided isotropic, schedule free transportation.
Roads were terrible back then, but the Model T’s high ground clearance and narrow tires on spoked rims allowed it to dig through the mud to reach firm ground farther down and be able to keep going on roads a modern 4-wheel drive couldn’t handle.
It’s interesting too that the postal address required no more than a name and town. My father-in-law once received a letter meant for him but with his name totally mangled and addressed to a town 40 miles away. Luckily, a North Dakotan’s sense of community is geographically expansive, and the creative postmaster forwarded the letter to the correct post office.
“To put those prices in perspective, multiply them by twelve.”
I would pick a higher number, because for years the true pace of inflation has been under estimated and recently our penchant for huge budget overruns has pushed real inflation even higher but it hasn’t been reported officially. Problem is, I don’t know what higher number to pick. Maybe someone here has a better guess.