Cash for Clunkers

[Racket]

[Racket]

[deejayoh]

[redmondjp]

Dj,
You laugh, but I had friends who owned both of those cars you pictured. They weren't that bad for the time. Were they of the same quality of the Datsuns and Toyotas (The Vega beat the Civic to the marketplace by a year) of their time? No, but as American cars go, those were far from the worst, and they were cheap and easy to operate and maintain. No $1500 headlight-leveling modules hidden underneath the dash like most Lexus vehicles have now.

All brands of cars have had massive improvements in reliability and in reduction of necessary maintenance over the past 30 years, but the flip side is, when maintenance is necessary now, it is MUCH more expensive (100K mile tune-up, timing belt, water pump, belts, tensioners, fluids, etc can easily hit $1500-2K) and much more difficult to accomplish by the vehicle owner or casual mechanic. As was mentioned in a previous post, many cars today are like computers--they are great for the first few years, and then you are better off simply disposing of it and buying another one before incurring major cash outlays. Forget about doing most of your own work on it besides changing oil and brake pads. And replacing a set of tires on a new car can easily top $1K--yuck!

I cut my teeth working on 1940s-1970s cars, went through a diesel car and VW phase, and have graduated to late-model Japanese cars, so I've seen the full spectrum. Just bought a 2001 Buick Lesabre with deployed front airbags that I'm repairing (just for fun, and to get a nice late-model 72K mile-car for less than $2K that I'll probably end up giving away to a family member).

The sad thing is, the quality of the Japanese makes has been on the decline for the last ten years and most people don't even realize it--Honda and Toyota are riding on the perception that they are the only game in town, just like the (former) Big 3 did for decades. Personally, I think that the build quality of Japanese cars peaked in the early to mid 1990s. After this, their focus was not on building a better car, but on cost reduction. Witness the removal of sound-dampening materials from the later-model Japanese cars. My 1997 Civic is MUCH louder inside the vehicle, both in terms of engine noise and road noise, than my 1987 Civic was. What's up with that? And the Civics they sell today get worse mileage on the highway than my 1997 Civic does on its worse day in the city! Huh???? This is progress? And Honda has had MAJOR problems with automatic transmissions in many of their cars from the late 90s into the mid 2000s. Witness my 2001 Odyssey, 106K miles, on its third Honda-supplied transmission (you don't want to buy one of those either--$4-5K installed).

Kia and Hyundai have been making major strides in quality over the past five years, and are doing to Toyota and Honda what they did to the American car companies from the 1980s through the 1990s. More power to them! Check out a new Kia sometime for kicks and grins, you'll be surprised at the quality and value.

But back to this 2001 Lesabre I've got. It rear-ended somebody's truck and the truck's trailer hitch went into the grille and caught the top of the hidden bumper, causing minor overall damage to the vehicle that could easily be repaired. BUT . . . both front airbags deployed (which probably wasn't necessary at all in the first place). List of airbag-related items required to be replaced: Both front airbags ($700 ea), top of dashboard ($400), Windshield ($300), frontal impact sensor ($150), airbag "black box" secret data recorder and control module ($500), dealer-only reprogramming of said module ($150—you can't even use a good module from another car, it has to have the VIN match that stored in the other modules on-board or it will lock up), labor to change all of the above-listed items ($500 – you have to take apart half of the interior including both front seats just to get to the airbag module), and guess what? This perfectly-good car that has less than $2K of easily-repairable front-end damage is now totaled, due to (likely unnecessary) airbag deployment.

If they had hit the same thing with a 1975 Chrysler New Yorker instead, it would have caused even less damage to the vehicle, no airbags would have deployed, injuries (if any) would have been the same assuming seat belt use in both cases, and the car would have been repaired and back on the road. And there would be no black box recording pages of data such as how fast you were going at the time of the accident, whether you were on the brake, and so on. Oh, GM won't even give you access to the data contained in the airbag module after an accident—you can sent it into a third party and they'll download the data for you for $250.

How is this good for the environment when we are trashing cars (literally smashing them, putting them on a ship to China, where they shred the metal and burn off all of the non-metal items like rubber, fabric, plastic, and so on) just because of the latest technology that is supposedly better? Yes, cars in many ways are better than before, but Big Brother is on board with you now, and heaven help you if you run into the workbench at the end of your garage and pop any of the airbags!

I've often thought of getting an older car myself (no emissions test, easy to work on, can fix it myself if it breaks while I'm on vacation, will continue to operate after an EMP event, can get lifetime vehicle plate with no annual tab renewals, etc). There's something to be said for the older iron. Much like I'd be perfectly happy to have Windows 95 still running on my home computer—it did everything perfectly well that I need to do now at home, and MUCH faster than any of today's operating systems do. Hmmm . . .

[PublicEnemy#1]

[Racket]

[cheapseats]

"I didn't buy a Kia or a Hyundai, FWIW."

I think that you are confusing expensive, with reliability. Hyundai has been in the top three in reliability for several years.

[PublicEnemy#1]

[PublicEnemy#1]

Like I said, to each his own,

You and your family like newer Japanese cars for the reasons you have given. I disagree with you on that.

I know several Valiants and Darts with Slant Sixes that have gone 300K or more on the original engine. My last Valiant I sold with 200K on the clock with a 318 to a kid that needed a cheap car at 16. He was in my neighborhood and he offered me $300 for it. I gave it to him for $250 spread over a few months. Who knows where it is today, but I paid $600 for the car with 50,000 on it and drove it everywhere. I guarantee you I had way less per mile maintenance costs on that than on your sister in law's Camry or your Lexus.

It's just a means to get from point A to point B and I think I can get a better car with a luxury interior, easy and cheap mechanicals, solid paint and body work, and something unusual and unique for far less than your Lexus is costing you.

I will have to search for it, and I recognize it will take time, but I will have fun doing it. I just don't think today's stuff is very impressive, regardless of manufacturer, for the reasons I stated, which is why I am heading back to the older stuff again.

[lamont]

[lamont]

[The Tim]

[PublicEnemy#1]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

PublicEnemy#1, what's the obsession with "sheetmetal"? It doesn't make any sense. Statistically (as opposed to everyone thinking up their favorite anecdote), cars last much longer today than they did 20+ years ago. You might not like that cars are more complicated and made of lighter material, but they are (on average) flat out better. Manufacturing quality is also vastly improved almost across the board.

Also, you're not considering the true cost of ownership. Cars are much cheaper than people, and a lot of those enhancements that you despise have actually been made to better protect people in accidents.

I will agree that I would rather have the older/rock-solid tech in many optional features. E.g. unless the motor and switches and wires needed to roll up/down my window are designed to last 300,000 miles, I'll just take the old hand crank. Thank you very much.

[PublicEnemy#1]