Fuck Cars

If they haven't been trapped by a ridiculous car deal, then theyll be trapped in any number of another Money Traps that have been deliberately engineered into society: Health Care, College Tuition, Student Loans, Rent, Gambling Apps, Expensive Consumer Crap, Streaming Platforms, Luxury Phones, etc. Probably several simultaneously.

The entire point is to make us spend every penny before we die, and not leave any sort of inheritance to give the next generation a leg up. And if we get to the end of our lives with a little nest egg left, they know you'll get sick, and they'll get to drain every last penny.

Funny thing how my grandma died in the care center, the month before her money was set to run out, after a lifetime of her and my grandpa carefully investing and saving. They took it all.

I managed to get a Mercedes C-Class for under 300 a month, was 3 years old at the time, with 140k km. APR was under 4%... Until Putin attacked Ukraine anyway, after that EURIBOR went up and so did my rate lol, must've been about 8% APR at peak (interest rate was around 6%). Best car I've ever had and the monthly payment was low enough that it easily made up for all the time I spent in the garage on all of my older cars.

You bought a Golf GTI that had 193.000 km on it and it still drove for 5 years?

We went backwards. Had a 2015 Fit which needed work on the VTC and other electronics, and the new cars have too much unneeded stuff that can fail, and surveillence in the infotainment system, so we traded it down to a 2004 Echo.

The car looks and runs like new, and I can fix whatever breaks.

If it had a timing belt on that engine, and hadn't been changed already, then yes it needed a timing belt.
Its a preventative maintenance part. You don't want to run it till it breaks then fix it, because a broken belt can mean valves are down (open) and piston is coming up for a interference crash.

• Dealers jack prices way up
• High prices allow them to give ridiculous trade in value
• Trade ins scrapped or exported
• Sky high used car prices due to constrained supply
• Buyers forced into new cars

See how that works?

Know what? People used to be able to understand contracts. This is what’s happening. People are so dumbed down, they don’t even know what they’re signing. Welcome to the USA , and soon to be Alberta, Canada

Theres a variety of factors here. For one, more and more people are rolling their already stupid high loans into their next loan on a new used vehicle. So that is driving up the overall price. Second is that the new car market average price is well over $40k on average. Since people who cant get a new car have to buy used, then used car prices will creep as close to that point as they can regardless of actual vehicle values. The actual value of the vehicle is irrelevant in a country where cars are a necessity for the majority of people. What dealers are selling is the opportunity to have a vehicle more than the vehicle itself, and so they are gouging the shit out of people who have no reasonable alternative outside of buying on the used car market

What's not to understand? The system here is literally setup to create consumers and it does a great job.

I suspect you have never been to the US. It is HUGE. You cant get anywhere without a car, and most cities have terrible or no public transportation.

The last car I bought cost me $1000 :( A 2002 Jetta Vr6. Lasted me three years (purchased in 2018) before the head gasket needed to be replaced.

We went into the pandemic with beater cars costing $500-$1000. Now? A shit beater starts at $3000. It blows my mind. I know I am getting old, but christ.

In much of the US, the bus routes (if they exist) don't serve everywhere and only run once an hour or two. And biking on the roads is essentially signing your own death warrant with the lack of bike lanes and driver antagonism towards cyclists. Everything is so car-centric that not having a car consumes an undue amount of time and safety.