“I just don’t get it? How can you like THAT thing?”

A former TTAC contributor was busy berating my questionable tastes. I had written an article called, “Choose Your 20 Year Sentence” where you could have any vehicle in the world… with a few small catches.

You had to maintain the vehicle yourself for 20 years from the ages of 20 to 40, it had to be a new car back in the day that cost no more than $25k (in today’s dollars), and you had to use it as your exclusive source of auto transportation.

Like all ‘mature’ men who prioritize fashion or function, I had an inkling of what my modern day choice would have been. It nearly shocked the hair off of my friend. Who we shall simply call Paul Niedermeyer.

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When do wholesale prices equal retail prices?

Think about it for a second. When do the prices of a consumer good become so expensive that there is virtually no markup?

Here are a few scenarios that I can come up with… given what I’ve seen at the auto auctions these days.

1) Extreme shortage of product and too many wholesale buyers.

2) Most everyone buying the product is financing it to sub-prime customers who only care about ‘the monthly payment’.

3) You have enough seasonal dealers, overseas buyers, and funny money that the laws of economics no longer apply.

Now having said that, I ended up buying five vehicles at one sale recently. My purchases were…

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I once had a vehicle that sat on my lot for over 9 months. It wasn’t anything too bad. A 1998 Plymouth Grand Voyager in the tannest shade of brown. But no one wanted the thing.

I couldn’t figure it out. Did it have too many miles on it? Did brown all of a sudden become the new purple, orange or lime green? It did have four doors instead of the three door minivan albatrosses that were common during the pre-Y2k era. But I couldn’t get so much as a nibble on it for months on end.

Denial can be a hard pill to cough up. Lo and behold, this is what I figured out.

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Do you know what a biohazard is? Different industries have different standards for the word. In the auction business it means any vehicle where the occupants blood stained the interior. A few drops. An open gash. If a person had the misfortune of bleeding or dying in their car, it will be announced at an auction as a ‘Biohazard’.

Most of these vehicles are sold at’salvage auctions such as Copart & Insurance Auto Auctions. The general public feels queasy about these vehicles for good reason, and I always thought it would be a neat idea to group some of these cars together and have nearby high school students and DUI offenders visit the carnage.

Then again, maybe biohazard vehicles should be exhibited for a far broader audience.

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The Chevy Volt has probably been the most over-reviewed vehicle of modern times. You want some insights on a Volt? Go here, here, and here without ever leaving the homely confines of TTAC.

Then there are hundreds of reviews from other sites throughout the web and beyond. From Mommy blogs to the more conventional auto enthusiast locales, the Volt has been given tons of exposure and tens of millions of dollars in marketing.

Yet it flounders. GM decided to temporarily shut down the Hamtramck factory so that demand and supply can begin to balance themselves out. What happened? Did GM shoot right past the goal of mainstream tastes? Did the irrational exuberance of corporate marketeers transform the promise of the Volt into little more than a cynical plea for corporate funding?

I don’t believe the Volt deserves that much credit, or criticism. If you want to explore the strengths and shortcomings of the Volt, just look at the car for what it is.

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There used to be a long line of cars going in the direction of my childhood home.

My mom, bless her heart, used to observe the speed limits with enough zeal to make Ralph Nader blush. “Do we drive 25 miles per hour? No! We drive 20. That way we are always obeying the law!” Needless to say, I have managed to steer free and clear of her driving habits for well over 20 years.  She thinks I’m a control freak… when the truth is she’s just too damn slow.

The slow issue got me thinking about speed limits back in the bad old days of the 1980’s. Between reading various auto magazines at the back of my high school classes, I used to daydream about a better society. Not about serving your fellow man or envisioning world peace. But one where drivers like my mom would just get the hell out of my way.  One where the observance of all motoring laws would be based on reason and logic, rather than the short-term needs of a ravenous revenue seeking police state.

A beautiful driving utopia where asphalt and heavier right feet would march in unison towards a quicker commute. Where speed limits would be anywhere between 10 mph to 20 mph higher than today’s superficially low limits. Where a speed limit would indeed become a speed limit.

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Ah, the good old days. When  a young Kadett could be crude and lewd. A Chevette Scooter could exemplify 14th floor parsimony with it’s cardboard cutouts,  and the Yugo was justifiably bombed out of existence.

A bad car was a known commodity back then. But what about now?

Everyone cribs each others specs and suppliers these days and the results are… well… middling.

For example, is the 2012 Kia Rio a bad car? Jack Baruth says, “Hell No!“. Motor Trend says something in the lines of “B-Class Economy Just Got Better!” and then puts it dead last in a recent comparo (along with putting the Hyundai Accent first.)

Who is right? Who is wrong?

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Way back in the Clinton Era, two compact pickups battled each other to an inch of their amortized sheetmetal. The Ford Ranger, which had been the ruler of the small truck roost since 1983, and the Chevy S-10 which fought equally valiantly with rebates, market incentives, a branded clone in the form of the GMC Sonoma, and even a rare-for-America four door configuration.

Not to say the Ranger didn’t resort to many of the exact same tactics. Ford was just as busy trying to crank out the supersized and super-profitable trucks and SUV’s as the General did at the time. These compact pickups were considered a bridge to what both automakers sought for their respective brands; to attract the long-term loyalist who would forever buy the ever higher profit vehicles… preferably on a lease or finance deal.

Price competition became fierce in this segment and profits were minimal. Was it even possible to have big profits for small pickups? Not in most cases as far as the manufacturer was concerned. You could price the top of the line models right near the cost of a base Explorer or Blazer by the late 90’s. But only a salesman with the talent of a Jack Baruth could routinely push them out the door.

By the time America started to head towards the ‘ bigger is better’ buffet line, both vehicles offered very similar… well… everything.

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A little over 12 years ago I got married. It was a bargain basement wedding that overlooked a beautiful lake on one side, and my mother-in-law’s house on the other. At that time I was all of three months into the free market free-for-all that is the auto auction business.

No bid calling at that point. No buying of vehicles on the side. Not even some grandiose plan to turn my auction and automotive interests into an enduring career. I just went for auctioneering tryouts at the sales and, with enough recommendations from friends in the business, hoped for the best.

My first job was to be the ringman. The guy who says, “Yep!” while pointing to a professional car buyer at the auctions. For two to three hours I took my two degrees at Emory and put them towards their most relevant use at the sales… “Yep!!!”

My daily performances may not have been Hamlet on Broadway at that time. But it was a living and a surprisingly lucrative one that has now spanned nearly 2,000 auctions and over 100,000 vehicles.

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We live in a conservative country. No, I’m not talking about the politics. Or our style of dress for that matter. I’m talking about our taste in cars.

This is a land where Camcords have reigned supreme with the occasional Taurus thrown into the mix. We like simple lines. Drop dead reliability. Plus a heaping load of quietude when it comes to highway and in-town driving.

The Cruze comes from a long line of ‘good enough’ cars. The Cobalt, pretender to the market leaders of a few years ago, was usually good enough for rental fleets and those who valued the deal over the car. The late 90’s to mid 2000’s Malibu was likewise a rental fleet special which only enjoyed a healthy retail following during the Clinton era.

As for the Cruze? Well that’s a different story. It is a market leader and probably is more responsible for GM’s recent image enhancements than any other vehicle in their lineup. Which brings me to a simple thought. Why?

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Over the last 5 years, my family has driven various Toyota and Honda hybrids for well over 100,000 miles. A 2003 Civic Hybrid, two Priuses (01 and 05), and a 2001 Honda Insight.  The results? About 50 mpg. Lots of complements with the 1st generation Insight in particular, and a driving experience totally devoid of high revs and Baruthian thrusts.

The good news is we’ve saved about $6000 in gas costs. For a family of four that can add up to a lot of alternative forms of excitement. We’re talking long vacations. Cheap cruises. IRA’s and 529’s.

Well OK. These aren’t the types of excitement that truly make an auto enthusiast. But for 98% of the driving that we do,  the hybrids have served as a brilliant way to keep us on a better financial path during this nasty recession.

There is a down side to those rosey financials. We still spent well over $6000 in gas. That money will be going, in part, to the Arab dictatorships and the Russian mafia. Not to go too deep into the ideological and religious morass. But as with many of you, I would strongly prefer to minimize our financial and political involvement with these forces.

Enter the Leaf. Can this all too known electric car solve our long-term oil dependence? Or is it a future footnote of automotive history like GM’s EV1?

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Back in 1994 I bought my first and only new car. A 1994 Toyota Camry. It wasn’t anything special. 4-cylinder with a slushbox. No spoiler or leather. Nothing even remotely as advanced as a CD player or a premium sound system. But it did have one luxurious affectation that few other vehicles of the middling variety had at the time. A sunroof.

In the beginning I used it all the way long day. Sunny day in Atlanta? Plenty of them here, and a sunroof was the icing on the proverbial cake of a nice day. Open it up. Let the fresh air in. Enjoy the drive when the traffic is good.

But then I started long-distance commuting. Then I got married. Then we had kids. Pretty soon that hole on the top of my car was used as often as my old hiking shoes. It was there when the moment was right. Those moments though would stretch to months and eventually a year and change.

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One fond memory I have of the pre-recession era was cheap cars. A pristine 1992 Mercedes 190E in a garage kept red that I bought for $1000.  The  two year old 2002 Infinit Q45 that I bought for $23,600 and sold for $32,500. Heck, even the beaters.  Old late 80’s Town Car’s and Crown Vic’s with only 80k or so. The last of the good Saab 900’s. Volvo 240 wagon’s that had been given Volvo OEM components from day one. All of them I bought for $500… or less.

It had been a great time to be a used car dealer and an automotive enthusiast. I sold over 150 vehicles in a space the size of a driveway and had plenty of time to travel, do some local bid calling, and begin my writings at TTAC.  I was a happy man.

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Back in the Clinton Era I worked as a financial analyst. My job was to make numbers dance on a computer while the masters of all things corporate made their decisions. It was brutally boring work. But when you’re only 23, you figure this rite of passage is just part of being a grunt before finally making it headlong into middle management.

I hit the middle management level a little over a year later, and then took a LOT of time off. Two hour lunches. Random walks in the middle of the day. I created Excel macros for most of my work and left the rest to other grunts in the corporate machine. I focused my spare time towards three things: cars, social life, and investing.

The first two were naturally interesting. The final one was about seizing opportunities and figuring out where, beyond Wall Street, I could develop a niche.

Since then I’ve made hundreds of loans and finance deals. Cars, new businesses, even real estate. It’s worked out well… but that’s only because I usually insist on collateral.

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It’s that time of year again. Tax season always results in a wave of frenzy for good cars at the auctions. This Thursday evening I voyaged down to a public sale where bargain hunting folks with tax refunds commiserated with dealers and wholesalers.

The returns were beyond the imagination.

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