Cash for Clunkers
I've been checking out the Cash for Clunkers program. I'm seriously considering participating. I would never normally get $3,500 to $4,500 trade-in for the 1993 Explorer I'm thinking of trading in. On the other hand, the Explorer is paid for, runs good, looks good.......
I'm wondering how many other readers are considering taking advantage
Cash for Clunkers
Fuel Economy Ratings
Summary of Car Allowance Rebate System - Cash for Clunkers Voucher Qualifications
.
Minimum Fuel Economy for New Vehicle*
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Passenger Car -22 mpg *
$3500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 4 mpg
$4500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 10 mpg
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Light-Duty Truck - 18 mpg *
$3500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 2 mpg
$4500 Voucher - improvement of at least 5 mpg
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Large Light-Duty Trucks - 15 mpg *
$3500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 1 mpg or trade-in of a work truck
$4500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 2 mpg
.
Commercial trucks
$3500 Voucher - Trade-in must be at least pre-2002
I'm wondering how many other readers are considering taking advantage
Cash for Clunkers
Fuel Economy Ratings
Summary of Car Allowance Rebate System - Cash for Clunkers Voucher Qualifications
.
Minimum Fuel Economy for New Vehicle*
.
Passenger Car -22 mpg *
$3500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 4 mpg
$4500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 10 mpg
.
Light-Duty Truck - 18 mpg *
$3500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 2 mpg
$4500 Voucher - improvement of at least 5 mpg
.
Large Light-Duty Trucks - 15 mpg *
$3500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 1 mpg or trade-in of a work truck
$4500 Voucher - Mileage improvement of at least 2 mpg
.
Commercial trucks
$3500 Voucher - Trade-in must be at least pre-2002
Comments
I had two sweet clunkers I would have loved to have used, but gave them away.
I like my 95 pick-up too much to get rid of.
Not that I'd be interested in flushing my money down the toilet on a brand new car, anyway...
Few will qualify for this program.
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My major problem is the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor). She really, really likes her Explorer. We were looking at a Honda Fit and she likes it, but she is emotionally attached to her Explorer. Logic, such as the Fit has better safety features, better overall reliability, and a lot better gas mileage, have little influence. I guess I should be thankful that she isn't the type that wants a new Beemer (not like that would actually happen).
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I am actually getting rid of my newer '05 car and getting something OLDER that has paint that was applied properly, fenders and doors made of something other than thinner than thin sheetmetal, something without so many cheap plastic parts, etc. etc.
Sorry, but for me, airbags and mileage just ain't worth it.
My next car is going to be from the late 60's or early 70's. I don't want black boxes for insurance companies to use in order to invalidate an accident claim, etc.
I used to drive late 1950's Mopars around downtown Seattle in the earl 1990's, but then parts became scarce for them and I eventually sold them off in favor of something more "modern".
What a mistake!
I have since seen the error of my ways and am unloading the '05 this week and buying a car that won't depreciate any further and is easy to work on.
The fuller interpretation: if you were responsible and bought an older car (or drove your brand new car for years and years) with anything resembling reasonable gas mileage, then you get to pay for the most irresponsible members of society to buy a slightly less fuel inefficient new truck. Congratulations.
I understand what you are saying. I get it. Those who were already acting responsibly with respect to non-renewable resources / environmental concerns, can't take advantage of the program, even if they wanted to.
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Please do me a favor and name one.
My last two cars were an '02 BMW and a '05 Lincoln. They both paled in comparison to the older cars I own/have owned in terms of regular maintenance chores and options that don't break at 20,000 miles.
I didn't buy a Kia or a Hyundai, FWIW.
I just can compare the '05 Lincoln to the '95 Lincoln I owned and the '95 was a lot more substantial in paintwork, bodywork, coachwork, interior appointments, etc.
And don't even get me started on the crap BMW is putting out these days compared to their earlier work.
It's like the Porsche Cayenne... Who in the heck thought a Euro Import Sports Car marque needed an SUV version? Doesn't that completely go against what the marque was originally about?
The stuff being made today is JUNK, regardless of price point.
If you disagree, then give me a brand that uses substantial sheetmetal, excellent mechanicals with minimal regular maintenance, systems that don't go haywire at the smallest sign of battery discharge, excellent coachwork with top quality materials AND installation, switches, motors and relays that are made to last more than the warranty period, etc.
I am amazed that BMW puts out such a substandard product compared to 40 years ago.
The ball is in your court.
When I went to their factory a few years back (a few do-hickeys I designed were going into them to control mundane things like wipers and HVAC) it was difficult not to drool on the production line. The sparkling clean production line, with its beautiful shiny floors you could eat off of...
Photographs do not do that car justice. It is a truly fine piece of engineering and manufacturing. Which is not to say that it's worth the $580,000 sticker price, but still...
...wait, what were we talking about?
My wife has an 2003 Lexus IS300 that has 85K miles on it. We bought it brand new for the same price as we could get a somewhat new one for ($31,000 @ % 2.3% We could have paid cash, but 2.9%?? ) Other than fluid changes, tires, and just last weekend when I put new brakes on it, it has needed not had a single component failure. This car has every option available on its model year including the factory navigation. When I drive it, I drive it like its stolen so it has been abused a little.
I owned several older cars in my late teens, and I got very good at working on them because they were always breaking. I will not own another old car again.
Lincoln's are garbage (not sure about new ones) and 2000-2005 BMW's were pretty much a liability after 60k ,miles.
Personally I wanted her to get a 330i at the time, I am glad she chose the Lexus.
Try driving the Cayenne Turbo S and tell me that that beast shouldn't have been made.
I dont know why they have the Cayman, but the Cayenne is one of the best handling SUVs on the road, maybe just short of the FX
how about one of these?
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 . . .
You're missing the point. I am not disputing the handling or speed of the vehicle. I am just saying that it goes against what the marque was designed to be.
While we at it, why not make a Porsche Station Wagon with fake wood panels on it?
A Porsche is supposed to be a sports car, NOT an SUV.
As far as the Lexus goes, I checked those out, and was VERY unimpressed with their SUV over the X5. I think the X5 is a well designed car from an aesthetic point of view. Where it fails is in the mechanicals and electricals. And the new ones just look like recycled X3's, which is really an abomination, in my view.
Cheesy LCD displays on the Lexus just don't cut it for me, sorry. If you are going to go digital, at least do it properly. And the center shift on the Lexus looks like they stole it from a Qwest minivan.
BTW, the Lincoln got sold yesterday and I am putting my money into something much easier and cheaper to maintain.
My '95 Lincoln had 176K on the clock when I sold it. It had a bullet proof motor and tranny that needed minimal maintenance to keep running, regular fluid changes, tuneups, etc. I only sold it because it got hit in a parking lot and I decided to take the insurance money, buff it out and sell it to someone else.
Regardless, the next time you are washing your wife's Lexus, check out the thickness of the sheetmetal and report back to me. Most cars today you can dent the fenders just by pushing hard on them. And the rest of the car is made of cheap plastic bumpers and fascias.
It's not just the mechanicals and electricals, it's the crappy paintwork application, the poor wetsanding done at the factory, the poor body panel alignment, etc.
Cars today, unless you really step up to the plate, just aren't assembled or designed for longevity. They want you to have to buy a new one every four or five years so they design them to only last that long.
Let's see how your Lexus does at 150K ok?
But hey, to each his own. I just would rather own something that is easy to work on, solidly built and assembled and is going back up in value, rather than going down, and doesn't look like every other four door sedan on the road. Hence my return to an earlier period in motoring.
I can't remember hearing about any cars from the 70's that could do that on the original drive train.
I think that you are confusing expensive, with reliability. Hyundai has been in the top three in reliability for several years.
You know, I looked at Kias and Hyundais at one point to see what they were all about. The problem I had with them was that everything felt cheap to me. The door handles, the switches, the clock, etc. Plus, with the Hyundai, once you start adding on the optional extras, they hit almost 40K before you know it (e.g. the Veracruz).
Nice cars, but not worth the money from where I am sitting. And it's not because I am biased against Japanese or Korean manufacturers. I just think they are overpriced for what you get, but I am finding that is true of ALL manufacturers, hence my return to much older cars from sellers with all maintenance history, etc.
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.
You've got selective memory about Win95/Win98. The kernels on those were far from rock solidly engineered and would allow applications to crash them. When the apps crashed the kernels, the FAT filesystem would get corrupted due to random buffer cache writes not being flushed to disk and the disk being left in consistent states. Over time the box would basically degrade until netscape started to crash all the time, then you had to wipe the box and reinstall from scratch to get it stable again.
And that was without playing video games on the box. That was my work box that basically did nothing other than netscape and work-related apps for calendaring and stuff and win98 couldn't keep up with that (and win95 was really a horrible pile of shit, i don't need to go back to those days -- win98se2 was at least halfway stable and would take longer to degrade).
That just means that a lot of impressive work went into the 'engineering', but doesn't mean that the thing won't start having fiddling little problems 10 years later with all the 'clever' stuff engineered into it that will cost a ton of money to replace all the custom engineered parts.
With the stuff that I use cave diving, it is all simple and bulletproof and isn't 'clever' at all, and is mostly how divers were diving 30 years ago and avoids all the plastic shit most recreational scuba manufacturers have engineered into their gear in order to impress the easily impressed. I actually want to stay alive, so I want something simple that works.
Similarly, when I compare and constrast the way NASA built the space shuttle and the way that the Soviets/Russia just kept on refining the Soyuz space capsules, you've clearly got an example in the space shuttle of a bunch of 'clever' people building something that is too complicated to be successful.
I see this at work at lot as well engineering systems where a simple system that has served system admins for the past 20 years is eschewed in favor of some complicated vendorware that nobody properly understands how to use, but has all the bells and whistles, yet fails to accomplish really basic features.
Similarly, a lot of cars out there have way too many plastic and electronic bells and whistles, which are just more failure points for 10+ years down the road.
On the other hand, though, cars these days do handle a lot better, and the basic engineering of the drivetrain of japanese cars (hondas and toyotas) are way better than american cars in the 1960s. I'm also not entirely sold on sheetmetal being so important, particularly since it makes the car more rigid in a collision and doesn't absorb energy. I'll also take airbags as well. Not every piece of engineering done in the past 40-50 years was bad, its just that all the progress has been wrapped with a bunch of plastic and electronic crap that breaks.
Very nicely put!
If you are going to design a neat gadget/option for a car, then make sure it will work flawlessly for years, not months.
Has anybody actually looked at how thin factory paint is on cars these days? It used to be that paint could withstand the abuse of rocks, birds, car doors, etc. Worst case scenario would require you to buff out a color mark, etc. Nowadays, you try to buff out a factory paint job and you are into the primer before you know it if you are not exceedingly careful.
That really came as a shock given the advances in paint technology over the years.
But then, just like new homes, the thinner the paint, the more profit to be made.
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.
I don't like flimsy things. Call it a personal preference, I just don't like items that feel cheap and thin. Today's cars feel cheaply made compared to earlier years.
It's like washing machines and dryers. I am still running a Maytag matched set in Harvest Gold (way hey!) that was given to me in 1994 by a fellow I worked with. It is probably from 1975. They are dead simple to work on, I am not destroying the environment through mining of metals and the drilling of petroleum because I haven't bought a new set and have no plans too. I checked the new ones out last year when I was in the middle of a home remodel and was spending lots of time at Lowe's, Home Depot, etc. I was shocked by the cheap plastic parts and cheap metal used in them.
Planned obsolescence is the term that comes to mind. Nothing is made to last anymore. From sealed units that cannot be rebuilt to engines that are not made to be worked on without pulling them out of the car. It's all designed to force the consumer to buy another one in five years or less.
Look at TV's. Burned out pixels have to be at a certain ratio before the warranty kicks in. How about producing a product that doesn't have burned out pixels? Can't do it? Then you shouldn't be selling it.
Manufacturers would be happiest if their items broke before you left the showroom, forcing you to buy another one, lol!
I am looking for items that are substantial, well built and made to last, and I find today's products to be lacking.
But what you posted spoke to me about the volume and 'impressiveness' of the engineering effort and not the simplicity. I'd prefer to not see the superficial evidence of a lot of "engineering", i'd prefer less engineering and to have it all just be bulletproof, stupid and simple and work well.