UTMC

So, my son has asked for my opinion on the purchase of a new car.

yes, new.

due to a peculiar set of biases he has, the following constraints apply:

must be new
must be import
must have auto tranmission
budget ~ $15K.

current contenders: civic, corolla, mazda3

he's driven a civic and was put off by the cockpit layout.
he has not yet driven a mazda3 as he's put off by its (slightly) higher price. he tells me he'll test one.

the question arose because he is extremely tempted by the current toyota offers, as all the bad press has sales down so they're making deals.

but we're both leery of toyota's drive-by-wire issue.

my advice: buy the corolla with a standard tranmission and learn to drive (shot down immediately [clearly i've failed in part of my paternal duties])

i have very little experience in this, since i've never purchased a new car, so i'm asking all y'all for some input.

so, questions....

are we missing any viable contenders ?
(he suggested hyundai; i shot that down and countered with ford focus)

are we making too much of the drive-by-wire risk ?

Drive by wire is no big deal. At least, not on the two VW's we have. No idea what they sell for new, however.

Why new, though? A 2-y.o. car won't depreciate nearly as fast as a brand new one. A pre-owned car has all the bugs worked out already, is less expensive, and will in all liklihood last just as long as a new car. Espcecially if it's driven as a first car.

I would have suggested a Saturn Astra...made in Germany. But they discontinued that, didn't they (unless there's a new one still lurking about a showroom somewhere).

No Nissans, Suzukis?

Current Ford Fiesta is made outside the US, too.

Honda Civic is the most reliable car of the lot. Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. One of my favorite 'real' cars.

Toyota Corolloa is a close second. Tell him to man up and learn to drive a standard -- it's just better. Period. (Especially for such teeny cars with such teeny engines.) Besides, it's cooler and he'll get more pussy.

Mazda 3 -- No opinion, other than I never saw a Mazda as a long-term courier car.

Hyundai -- I'll be honest, the Koreans are really figuring out how to build nice cars. Mishka and I rented one last time we were in Los Angeles and it was arguably nicer than our model-comparable Honda Accord.

Ford Focus -- I don't trust Ford cars worth a damn. Yes, they're cheaper to fix than Jap cars, but they need fixing more regularly. At least that's what I saw in the courier biz. That said, Ford TRUCKS seem to withstand the gaff pretty well. Additionally, I must admit a certain admiration for Ford not taking any bailout money, and I hear their engineering and quality control has improved greatly since I last really paid attention.

Has to be new?

And as for the drive-by-wire -- I'd wager that Toyota is going to be so goddamn paranoid for the next decade about all this that their cars will be wildly over-engineered in that department. That's what I (or any sensible person/company) would do, anyway.

--Jaeger

the "new" and the "import" are a bit of rebellion against his upbringing. as i mentioned, i've never purchased a new car, so he's spent his entire motoring life in domestic beaters.

to me, a car is a commodity. i usually buy three or four year old cars with ~30K on the clock then dump them at ~100K.

it may be a generational thing...my mom always bought new.

Jaeger wrote: And as for the drive-by-wire -- I'd wager that Toyota is going to be so goddamn paranoid for the next decade about all this that their cars will be wildly over-engineered in that department.

agreed...but that does not affect the units currently on dealer's lots.

Your son has some funny ideas about cars. Automatic!

Buying new, I'd get the Civic. You ever look at used Civics? They go for 2-3 times the price that their contemporaries get around here. There's a reason for that.

(My nomoto season cage is a 17 year old Honda Civic)

If someone asked me what car I'd like new...A new focus would be high on the list, it really is a solid car. But then again, they're all really fairly solid cars. Small, relatively inexpensive, four cylinder cars are all sorta similar and good. That's why I'd get used, at least a few years, otherwise you're literally throwing away money.

try a vw golf gti, jetta ..i love my jetta its a tank..

must be new
must be import
must have auto tranmission

Have you given him the "I have no son!" speech yet?

Staying out of it now...

-Rench

Gungnir wrote:try a vw golf gti, jetta ..i love my jetta its a tank..

not my speciality but a riding budy of mine had a jetta and had to sell it to switch to a focus after he had too much technical problems.

honda's and toyota's are still quoted as the most reliable care around here. Germans no so much.

(edit - and Yeah, I know, the focus is probably as much german as the jetta)

I liked my 2003 honda accord (new). Beat the crap out of it and it kept going. It was a tank. I decided it wasn't flashy enough for me and go rid of it. Bad idea on my part.

If he must have a new car, I would go with the civic.

If he's got $15,000 to spare... tell him to save half of it and buy a $7000 car.

why the hell, at that age, would you want to go in debt with a "new" car?

Does he want to go to school?
Does he want a little extra cash in the bank to take the ladies out?
Does he want to take a long summer vacation in the car?
Does he not want to feel trapped in a car payment?
Do you have the extra money to help him out if something happens and he needs you to pay his car payment?
What if he gets some girl knocked up and needs to take care of a kid? Who's going to pay for that car payment?

I am assuming he is under 25 and does not have $40,000 cash in the bank.


Buy a nice used car and save.

Dad, repeat after me.
Save. Save. Save.

i can only comment on half of your assumption: he's over 25 and well out of schools. dunno what he's got in the bank but i'm thinking whatever he has is gonna get blown on a diamond ring soon.

i have to admit to more paternal failures: he's mechanicly insecure and only partly comfortable with tools.

i can see it from his point of view, tho; he's tired of hand-me-down beaters, and all he's ever known are domestic cars (as we all know, the grass is always greener on the other side of an ocean).

a neighbour has a new focus, and i'm impressed. my own last experience with ford was a dog of a taurus (OTOH, my dad's '96 taurus is a fantastic car and still going strong with well over 100K).

a good friend of mine just got rid of a '94 accord; the car just would not fail. it was finally beaten to death in manhattan.

erosvamp wrote:If he's got $15,000 to spare... tell him to save half of it and buy a $7000 car.

why the hell, at that age, would you want to go in debt with a "new" car?

Yeah. What she said. Enough of this enculturated consumerism.

12ci wrote:i can only comment on half of your assumption: he's over 25 and well out of schools. dunno what he's got in the bank but i'm thinking whatever he has is gonna get blown on a diamond ring soon.

i can see it from his point of view, tho; he's tired of hand-me-down beaters, and all he's ever known are domestic cars (as we all know, the grass is always greener on the other side of an ocean).

Right. A few equations:

engagement = wedding
wedding = $-$$$ (amount depends upon the women)

less car = more money in the bank to do whatever

More money spent on ring = woman

money in bank + moderately nice diamond ring + moderately nice car = less stress

no money = stress

He is looking in the wrong direction. Think older... classic.

I will sell him a mechanically sound, beautiful 1951 Cadillac Series 62. $8,000.00 for him only, that is a hell of a deal. Beats the FUCK out of a focus... also, it would help him find a chick to put a ring on. Seriously... it is a glossy black pantie dropper.

If that isn't his bag... let him know that it is absolutely financially unsound to purchase a new vehicle unless he can GUARANTEE that he will drive it for 8-10 years. That is the only way to ensure that his wallet can endure the the initial depreciation that a new car takes when it leaves the lot. After that long... the vehicle would again become more valuable than it cost. Thereby turning it from a liability into an asset.

Tell him to buy something less than 3 years old, let someone else eat the depreciation of a new vehicle. It can save him at the very least 35% off the initial price of the car. So... if he insists on spending all $15,000 (which I would also not recommend) he can get a vehicle that is worth about $21,000 new. That would open up his options for getting a 'better' vehicle.

Tell him to buy a $7,000 car... run it into the ground... and all the while save for a much nicer vehicle.

Or, buy a used 3 year old SUV (Jeep Grand Cherokee... or similar) in anticipation of the possible additional family creation. (It isn't a very long stretch before the woman with a ring wants to give birth to something.) I hear it is a bitch to get a baby seat into the backseat of a hatchback.

I personally don't like any vehicles that are currently in production that cost less than $70,000... so I wouldn't spend more than $10,000 on anything new right now.

Also... tell him that real adults know how to drive stick. It is very important. Only being able to drive an automatic is a severe personal limitation. (True fact... I once didn't hire an artist because he didn't know how to drive stick, I later found out that he was kicked off a different project because he never did all of the work he needed to for things to be finished, only the bare minimum for things to be 'done'. Yeah... that is an extreme example, but I stand by my decision.) Manual is ALWAYS better than automatic. Life favors the prepared.

My two cents... but I am a cheap asshole with expensive taste.

Did I mention I used to sell new cars? Yes, one of my many careers.

We just traded in our '08 Civic LX for '10 Honda Fit Sport, reason: too many miles and I did not want to spring $500 for new rubber cause I'm broke and wanted new car anyway and 1.9% financing. Lately the quality of Civic ain't what it used to be, few blown motors, other issues, still better quality than Ford or Hyndai.

Civic was $17,800 new, paid $16,100 for 5 speed LX (middle of the road model) Traded it in with 45K, damaged bumpers etc for $9,800 - $6,300 loss over 2 years not bad considering the lease would cost me about $3,000 in mileage penalties. Dealer will spend $1000 on tires, paint and tune up and will try to sell it for $14K, incredible Honda resale value!

Fit Sport was $17,100 sticker, paid $16,100 only because there was $500 rebate to the dealer, Fit is a price leader and has less mark up, also it is actually made in Japan, unlike most of them in Ohio or Canada.

So if your kid has $15K budget (before sales tax?) he can only look at base models of either Civic or Fit. Most you can get off the sticker on the Fit ($15,700 for auto) would be $500 if there are no incentives, Civic probably $1000 off the base auto model ($17,100) which is already over budget. I'd still get the "one up" model for the cool things like USB radio jack for MP3' s and keyless entry.

Corolla is a great reliable car and I would not worry about fly by wire issues, but it is just a transportation, boring! Civic will drive circles around it, weird dash took a bit of time getting used to but it's an awesome handling car that gets 40 MPG if you don't exceed speed limit, lot's of room, and looks way better than Corolla.

For me there is no other automobile brand out there that I would consider purchasing.

+ a million on being able to drive stick, even if you don't want to drive one every day. You never know when you'll need the skill.

Out of that list, I'd get a Civic 5 speed or maybe a Subaru. I don't trust Toyota one bit to have found the root cause(s) of their problems nor to be honest about it, considering their widespread, near-decade long efforts to lie, manipulate regulators and sweep injury and fatality accidents under the rug to save money. The last thing I'd want to stick an inexperienced kid into is an automatic-equipped Toyota product.

Mazda 3s are OK but fragile around curbs and potholes. A sub- 5mph brush with a slightly projecting stone curb in my folks' 2007 3 series wagon cost me $1,800+ in bent rim, blown tire, bent suspension and damaged wheel bearing and the car has never been right since, in spite of being fixed by the best craftsman bodyman I have ever known. Too delicate for the real world IMHO; we won't be buying another.

I really really don't like modern VWs' overly complex design, cheap materials in hidden components and lack of reliability. About 10 of my customers had them, ranging from 1995-2004 (back when I owned my repair shop from 1998-2006ish) and they never stayed fixed for long.

Broken sunroof sunshields, glovebox doors and seat releases, constant check engine lights, cracked (unprotected, vulnerably low hanging, brittle, thin cast aluminum) oil pans, blown headlight wiring, bad temp sensors, bad window regulators, creaky seats, bad coil packs, engine fire recalls, dash fire recalls, seat fire recalls, bad mass airflow sensors, bad wheel bearings, blah blah blah. Terrible design, cheap materials where they were out of view, made as complex as possible and yet as utterly disposably as they could be. Repeat component failures were the norm, labor time is high, parts are expensive and often take a while to get.

Perhaps they have improved since then but I would never spend my own money on one until they book 5 straight years of Honda-like reliability.

A shame, really, as they look great, are good fun to drive and from the driver's seat they *feel* like a quality car without actually *being* a quality car.

If he's gotta have an automatic, stay away from any CVT no matter who the manufacturer is. They are generally unreliable, short lived, difficult to repair or rebuild properly and breathtakingly expensive to replace. Many automakers have tried them, and none here have been able to duplicate conventional automatic transmission reliability or lifespan so far- not Subaru, Saturn, Mini, etc. Honda came the closest in the original low-powered Insight 2 seat hybrid.

Oh yeah, manual trans is a given, you save almost a grand off the sticker price and having blown up about 6 automatics I will never buy a new car with one if I have a choice!

It's easy to learn how to shift, my wife did pretty much overnight, we got her a 5 speed car, I drove it home and next day she took it to work, no problems.

Also never owned a Subaru but having wrenched on them (did I mention I was a mechanic for almost 10 years?) I have all kinds of respect for them, Pattio's Impreza RS has about 230K on the clock, daily reliable driver!

There was a period of many blown head gaskets on Foresters but I think it has been fixed a while ago.

Impreza price however bites at $18,100 sticker

that's a funny turn in history, although I agree on the necessity to be able to drive a manual gearbox "just in case", with the new smooth and ultra fast computerised semi-automatic technology available (even without double clutch or paddle shifters), I would go for automatic on a utilitarian vehicle if I had the choice. you can still use the shifter, but they're just one pedal shorter.
but what do I know, I never had a car less than 10 years old.

</digression>

Jaeger wrote: Tell him to man up and learn to drive a standard -- it's just better. Period. (Especially for such teeny cars with such teeny engines.) Besides, it's cooler and he'll get more pussy.

Absolutely. I don't know how old your boy is, but he could be missing a possible employment opportunity if the would-be employer uses only manual tranny vehicles...

And if that rationale doesn't work, explain to him how dumb it is to get eaten by zombies because he never learned how to drive a manual transmission well enough to escape the approaching hoard.

Also - He doesn't need to drive a beater. Owning a "new car" is terribly overrated. Clean, slightly-used ones can be had for a song right now, and you don't have to suffer that "new car" tax that some states levy against you. Just sayin'.

I, of course, feel largely the same way as everyone else. One of my most expensive life mistakes was getting a brand new Toyota Tacoma, V6, extended cab, SR5, TRD, blah blah blah... I went in looking for a decent used one, and drove off in a truck with 3 miles on the odo, that in the long run wound up costing me more than I care to ever think about again.

Don't get me wrong, I fucking LOVE my truck. I've had it for nine years and plan on driving it until the wheels fall off (and can't be put back on).

At any rate, it's his choice, so whatever. My actual input is that my old roomie Dave had a 4 door, Mazda 3 hatchback. He could fit his entire (enormous) drum kit in it, and drove it from Santa Cruz to San Jose, 5 or 6 days a week, for a good two or three years. Highway 17 from SC to SJ is a fucking dog eat dog racetrack of fucked up pavement, and 35 mph turns that people like to try and take at 70. Dave was no exception. He drove the fucking piss out of that car, and it showed absolutely no signs of bother. It had a comfy and attractive cockpit, a good stereo, looked ok, was a quiet ride, and could fit five without anyone being too grotesquely uncomfortable.

That's all I've got for ya.

EDIT: This was on Shit My Dad Says the other day, and I think it applies here...

"Don't ask for my opinion then. I said congrats on the car, just saying nobody's panties are getting wet from a fucking Honda Accord."

Everyone's writing what they wish your boy would do, or wish how he thought, but none of that is worth a damn. The fact is, your boy wants what he wants, and there's no parenting failure on your part. He's his own man.

So everyone, go with what you got. he wants:

new, automatic, import, etc.

Given that, I'm with the Civic and Corolla people. I still like Toyota, regardless of the current microscope they're under. Fuck, by the press, you'd think ouir roads are teeminf with out of control Toyotas. They're easy to pick on because they're foreign and it's an election year. You're more likely to be struck by lightning than to be killled by an out of control Toyota. It's hysteria, and your boy should capitalize.

We loved our Camry. We love our Matrix, the first car we ever bought new.

Japanese over German (and I'm a Kraut) both reliable, Germans have bettter resalem, but it comes at a price: Germans are more $$ to repair.

Hondas have great resale value, but newer Toyos may really be a good bet right now because they also resell very well, and your boy can get one for cheap w/ 0 intrest.

If you belong to Costco, buy whichever car through them--it's $50 above invoice. AZrider turned us on to it--it's for real--basicallly fleet prices. Hell, have him spend the $30-40 to join Costco just for the car buying program--excellent, excellent. Especially if he doesn't like haggling. No haggling. $50 above invoice, Bubba--take it or leave it.

While the Toyota gas pedal problem has been mentioned:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03 ... ?art_pos=2
Whoever the DOT usually subcontracts for problem finding seems to be unable to do it - they need freaking NASA to find the problem.

Yap. Modern cars have gotten way to complicated.

I work at Midas and have for the last two years. The least money spent on repairs, and the least trouble I see come from Honda and Toyota.

I dont buy the whole electric throttle B.S. that has been the hype on the news. Its easily solved. (my car wouldnt turn off??????? it wouldnt go into neutral?????)

Ask him to look at the Matrix as well. Also the Vibe, its a toyota with pontiac rebadge.

Mazda are neat cars. They are just fun to drive.

Those Scion coupes are cheap and look great. Dunno how they run, but worth a look.

Scion is Toyota, I think. So they're either highly reliable or uncontrollably accelerating deathtraps.

I know many Very Happy Scion owners. They did not call it Toyota in case it flops, did not want to tarnish the brand, however in this case it's the Toyota name that might drag Scion down.

Sockpuppet wrote:Ask him to look at the Matrix as well.

The Matrix is basically a Corolla w/a different chassis. Like I said, we have one, and really like it, but because of rollover concerns, the visibility issues bug me, looking over my right and left shoulders, left especially, the blind spots are huge.

So I'd recommend this for any car he tests. Have him look over his shoulders and go in reverse, like out of a driveway or a parallel park. The huge blinspots at 7 anfd 4 o'clock are the only things that really bug me about our matrix. These things usually get overlooked when people test drive.

+1 from me about driving stick.

My Mom taught me how a looong time ago and when I drove tow truck there wasn't a truck my company had that I couldn't drive. Including the Freightliner 6 speed FL60 (that was a HUGE truck and damn it was fun when all the lights were flashing!)

Also, don't forget that even though he is over 25, not married + new car usually equals higher insurance. You might want to check out the cost of that before buying!

Just my 2 cents....