This week is the third and final installment of our QOTD series about cornering the used car market and finding the most bang for the buck.
We’re going all out for this finale, and giving you plenty of money to shop.
Find News by Subject:
Category: Question of the Day
Like faces in the community, the passing of each year bring the appearances of new car models and the disappearance of old, familiar ones. Product changeover is constant. Picking up a just-released model ensures you’ll be seen driving a “new” car until refresh time rolls around, or, if you’re something of an oddball, until the unpopular vehicle that tickled your automotive fancy gets prematurely chopped from the lineup.
It’s nice getting into a model that’s destined to look relatively fresh for three or four years, but it’s also nice getting a deal and saving yourself some coin when dealers want that old (and possibly executed) model gone. Would it bother you to find yourself in the second camp? Read More >
With average transaction prices marching steadily northwards, thanks to the outsized Monroneys of pickup trucks and large SUVs, the internet is awash with digital ink bemoaning that the “average” American can’t afford a new car anymore.
We’ll leave that particular fulmination for another day. Now, however, we’ll put a question to you: with ATPs in the mid-$30k range, let’s round it up to an even $40,000. What single car, truck, or SUV would you buy for that sum?
If you haven’t noticed, disillusionment is spreading rapidly through the population, and it’s afflicting young people the most. It’s based around a particular inequality in America that people in overseas countries can’t quite fathom. To them, it’s hard to believe Far Western governments would deny their citizens such a freedom.
We’re talking about the Suzuki Jimny, of course — a wee little Japanese body-on-frame, live-axle, two-door utility vehicle that’s just now entering its fourth generation. It debuted in 1970. A week’s perusal of social media posts tells me a subset of youngins don’t want glitzy show cars and promises of autonomous driving and touchscreens as wide as a sumo wrestler’s midriff. They want a small, basic, considerably inexpensive utility vehicle with respectable ruggedness and capability, but they can’t have it.
No. Fair. Read More >
In last week’s Part 1 of this three-part QOTD series, we asked you to scan through the old brain box and offer up good examples of used cars for the budget-minded motorist, keeping your purchase within a stringent $8,000 budget. Today you’ll get a more generous sum of money, but you’ll also find yourself subject to heightened buyer expectations.
Let’s pick out some really tremendous used cars.
“Peace is not absence of conflict,” Ronald Reagan once said, “it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”
And so it goes on the world’s roadways, highways, and, depending on your relationship with the neighbors, driveways. After the engineers are done gauging line of sight, measuring stopping distances, and calculating the necessary roadway width and angle for safe passage of a vehicle travelling the speed limit, we’re left to battle it out on the infrastructure laid out for us by city planners.
It’s a lot of responsibility. Maybe one day, perhaps sooner than we think, we’ll look back on such times and wonder how our betters at city hall or the legislature allowed us the ability to fend for ourselves on the road. Men and women, children and youth. Each depending on the closest person in their vicinity to not kill them.
Inevitably, conflict arises. And, increasingly (or so it seems) we’re facing conflict between motorists and a new breed of traveller: the disruptor. Read More >
This weekend, someone raised their bidder’s number at Barrett-Jackson in Las Vegas when the auctioneer asked for $58,000. It wasn’t on a Hemi ‘Cuda convertible. Nor was it on a tasty ’70 Chevelle SS. It was on the 1997 Acura Integra Type R you see above.
After buyer’s fees, the new owner shelled out $63,800 for what may very well be the lowest-mileage ITR in existence. Do you think collector’s tastes have shifted? Maybe permanently?
As you read yesterday, Cadillac’s had its fun in New York City and is returning home to the Detroit metro area. Warren, specifically. It probably wouldn’t be fair to say it was chewed up and spit out like a naive bumpkin who travels to the big city, only to suffer the horrifying aftermath of decadence and experimentation. This isn’t Midnight Cowboy.
Nor can we say, without access to some internal info, that is was raging success. The brand remains a work in progress. There’s vehicles on the way that likely still would have been on the way had former brand president Johan de Nysschen, et al, stayed in Detroit. Does the name “Cadillac” ring with a more appealing timbre among the tony enclaves of coastal America? Doubtful.
Let’s assume for a minute that the Greyhound bus carrying Cadillac just pulled into the station, a cold rain falling over the terminal. How does the brand let its friends know it’s back in town? Read More >
This week marks the first of a three-part QOTD series where we’ll discuss everyone’s favorite topic here at TTAC: used cars. And for this first installment, we’re on a tight budget.
There’s no debating the fact that I draw far more inspiration from older, classic designs than futuristic ones. Hardly progressive of me, I know. While some want nothing more than to gaze upon an autonomous egg and envision a life where the act of driving gives way to the act of commuting, face buried in smartphone, to me that sounds like a vision of Hell.
That’s why last week’s Peugeot e-Legend concept — an unabashed nod to an attainable French coupe of the 1970s — grabbed my attention. It absolutely looked the part, yet incorporated all of the things we’re supposed to lust after in 2018: autonomy, electric propulsion, etc. Compare the e-Legend to Mercedes-Benz’s Vision URBANETIC. Two takes on the future; one desireable, the other terrifying.
What Peugeot and its “Unboring the future” tagline attempted to do was show we needn’t abandon our emotional connection to a car just because it doesn’t burn gas. Just because it drives itself some of the time. But can anyone trust this rosy vision? Read More >
This weekend, Matt brought us news that Porsche is dumping diesel power in wake of the debacle at Volkswagen. Once widely used in Europe (and sometimes widely coveted in the States), diesel fell on hard times after the emissions fiasco.
“Porsche is not demonizing diesel. It is, and will remain, an important propulsion technology,” said Porsche Chief Executive Oliver Blume.
Think he’s accurate? Or do you think other manufacturers will ditch diesel?
You might as well call this post “QOTD: Devil’s Advocate Edition.” I was prepared to feel furious by the time Ford CEO Jim Hackett’s Thursday appearance at the Midwestern Governors Conference wrapped up, and there was good reason why. The subject of the conference involved that dreaded word: mobility.
How will automated technologies change the way we live? That’s what participants wanted to talk about, and you can bet that Hackett was front and center, gabbing about his favorite topic. How will technology alter the way we travel, the way we drive? The hashtag #MGASmartland filtered through my Twitter feed. Certainly, the talk had all the makings of something I’d find depressing. Time to find that red Barchetta and a barn to hide it in.
It didn’t help that the first Hackett quote I saw emerge from the conference was a tired trope urbanists (read: car haters) trot out on a regular basis. Read More >
In yesterday’s Buy/Drive/Burn post, we presented three coupes that are sporty, agile, and have over 500 horsepower. Yet each of them fell short of qualifying for supercar status. But why? In today’s QOTD, we’ll spend some time determining the characteristics which separate regular sports cars from supercars.
We’re playing a name game today, and as luck would have it, there’s no wrong answer to this question. As we’ve told you before, Ram has a midsize model on the way, ready to (eventually) do battle with Chevrolet’s Colorado and Toyota’s Tacoma and Ford’s long-awaited-but-not-really-new Ranger. Yes, there’s other midsizers to contend with, too.
Plenty of mystery still surrounding this vehicle, but it’ll apparently appear in roughly two years’ time, suppliers say, and it’ll sport a frame, not a platform. What it doesn’t have right now is a name, or at least one that Fiat Chrysler’s willing to reveal. That’s where you come in.
Just a word of warning about one potential name, though… Read More >
There’s not a soul in here who doesn’t, from time to time, go and make a nuisance of themselves in a dealer showroom. I’m not talking about wasting the time of the sales staff, or even helping themselves to copious amounts of free coffee during scheduled maintenance. No, I’m talking about simply wandering through the showroom, looking at all the metal merchandise.
Today, it’s easy. Drive or hoof it down to the brand of choice, examine whatever’s caught our fancy at this minute, and hightail it back out again once the Dealer Principal starts giving you the evil eye. It wasn’t that simple as a kid though, whether it was thanks to being chased out by surly managers or simply living far enough away that one depended on the parental unit to drive them there.
Which brings us to today’s question: what was the first car you remember seeing in a showroom? Given the photo above, one shouldn’t have too much trouble guessing my answer.
Recent Comments