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Comment by balabaster | Hacker News Reader

Or more X comes at the cost of A and B. Car companies have a terrible habit of making options packs where you have to choose between stupid arbitrary things such as:

- Auto-dimming rear view mirror

- Compass

- Blind Spot Information System

- Heated seats

- Heated Wing Mirrors

- Decent sound system

There is no reason you shouldn't be able to have all of these things together on your vehicle, but they say "Hey, you can have one option pack or the other, no compromises!"

Would I want a vehicle with more X? Absolutely I would. I would have one in a heartbeat if it also came with A and B but it does not. And given the asinine requirement I must choose, I will take A and B over X... even though I really want X.

If a vehicle came with A, B and X, I will take it over any vehicle that is missing one of those features.

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The worst one for me is leather seats.

"Oh, you want safety and comfort features X, Y, and Z? We've got them, exclusively available in our EX model. And you even get leather seats!"

But I don't want leather seats, and I will never buy a car with them. I wear shorts in the summer and I hate it when my legs stick to the seat.

If I can get a car with X, Y, Z and cloth seats, I'm in. But that can be hard to find.

Thought I'm the only one with this problem. Leather and leatherette are disadvantages to me - wish I could go with a premium cloth option and not have to sacrifice a more powerful engine, CarPlay, etc.

I once had a Peugeot with "sport leather seats", or something - it was a rather nice coarse woven cloth in some synthetic material in the centre, and nice leather everywhere else. Awesome.

In my current car, I really wanted the adaptive cruise control, but opted out because of the mandatory leather seats in that trim.

likely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcantara_(material)

It's not Alcantara, it is combination of cloth and leather, with leather on the sides and cloth in the center.

My current car has it, it is great. It was also option named sport seats.

FWIW, look at VW and Subaru. Both often offer their mid-tier packages with cloth, but most amenities. My Golf Sportwagen 4Motion S is cloth, no sunroof, but with heated seats and basic driver assistance/collision avoidance.

As a shorts-wearer with a car with leather seats, I have sympathy. You can always fold a towel on the seat in the summer. ;)

Maybe it’s just because I live in Texas so it’s always hot, but I don’t mind the leather seats. One advantage I think they have over cloth is the fact that they do hold their temperature better. Pair that will cooled seats and you have a nice match. Sure, it’s hot for a minute, but more comfortable in the long run.

That said, you should have the choice of what you want.

Many many years ago, I was shopping for a new car. I found one model where I could get a manual transmission, but it didn't include a tachometer. To get a tachometer you needed to upgrade to a package with the automatic transmission. The stupidity of that choice turned me off on that brand for about 2 decades.

There is no reason you shouldn't be able to have all of these things together on your vehicle

Really? Because I thought of three just while reading your comment, and I don't even work in manufacturing. Reduced SKUs, ease of manufacturing scheduling, and some package options might exclude the options of other packages (you can't get heated seats and cloth seat coverings as one example). I'd even argue that they could be good reasons, as creating the packages you'd like add expense and it has been (hypothetically) found that customers won't pay the extra.

OTOH, though I don't spend a lot of time perusing automotive options packages, of the ones I've looked it appears that the packages are additive. You can have package A, with X, Y and Z. You can have package B, which has X, Y, Z, and the addition of W and X for an additional $900.

This is its own problem. I want one feature of package B but package B costs +$$$. I don't care about the other features package B also comes with (in other words, provide $0 of value to me), and the feature I want isn't worth $$$.

As a result, I don't buy package B, or even don't buy the car at all and go to another comparable model.

I had no opportunity to explain why I didn't buy package B to the manufacturer, so do they even realize they're missing out because of that? I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I want one feature of package B but package B costs +$$$. I don't care about the other features package B also comes with (in other words, provide $0 of value to me), and the feature I want isn't worth $$$.

It's been ages since we've purchased a new car, but can't you just check the box for "$FOOBAR" after checking the box for Package A? Our Leaf was pretty much pre-built with few choices outside of packages, but we did that with our Scion. Additionally, though my BMW motorcycle came with a "package", I could still get stuff a la carte. I'd just have to wait for BMW to build it and ship it, instead of riding it home that day. (Or in my case, the dealer has the a la carte items on the shelf. They sent me home with the taller windshield in a box, for example, and I bolted it on myself.)

OTOH, I'm using a motorcycle, an early-adopter electric car, and a quirky little off-brand Toyota as examples. Probably not the best examples for sussing the average car buying experience.

Sometimes. There's lots of variations though, some companies only offer specific trim levels, others appear to offer individual options but then you'll run into "That option is only available options x, y, and z, and is not compatible with w. Include x, y, z and remove w?".

Ah, okay, thanks for the insight; as I said, it's been a while since I've dealt with this. I shouldn't be surprised now that I think of it. Want $HOT_ITEM (say, CarPlay)? It's included in our $2000 luxury package! Except I just want the CarPlay, which can't cost two grand. sigh, fine, sell me crap I don't need so I can get the crap I want. Sounds kinda like a bill going through Congress. :-)

It's exactly like a bill going through Congress. Except usually with the bill going through Congress, the items you don't want are quite a lot more toxic.

> you can't get heated seats and cloth seat coverings as one example

Is this example supposed to be a true fact? I have cloth seats that are heated.

To further support this claim, I bought my car specifically because it offered heated cloth seats.

Car manufacturers are idiots. I want a small car because I live in a city, but I will never buy a small car with a sunroof, because I am tall and that space comes out of the inside of the car. So many features are bundled with sunroofs it is absurd. I would have probably spent 5 grand more on my car if I could have gotten features without getting a sunroof.

They literally could have charged me the price of a car with a sunroof and given me one without a sunroof and I would have been pretty happy.

I have cloth seats that are heated as well.

I drive a 2015 Chevy Volt with the non-premium package (i.e. no backup camera, etc.) because the premium-package comes with a shiny white center console which is downright blinding in the sunlight.

The premium package also comes with leather seats which, when it's in the severe negative degrees, you really REALLY don't want.

It was true ten or twelve years ago, and don’t think car dealers were lying. I think what’s changed is the switch from resistive wires to carbon panels. Heated wire with cloth seats would probably leave griddle marks on your ass. :-P

So, yeah, my example might be dated.

Even more dated, IIRC my first car, an 83 model, had heated cloth seats. I am sure a 93 model I had did have heated cloth seats, and it is a bit more than 10 years since 93 ;)

I just bought a new car. And these lines of reasoning I am reading seem tremendously alien to me. My previous car was 12 years old. I didn't switch from it to something else because my car was fine. I never even looked at what was available during the intervening decade+. Since the day I drove my new car home, I've not looked at a single car (at least not one which I'd ever be able/willing to buy).

People don't sit around just waiting to switch to the model that has more of what they want. They only change their situation every few years or in response to things like collisions or whatnot. And purchasing a car is quite a maniacal process in 2017. Car manufacturers seem to have hired web designers that have profound mental problems and who never attempt to use their own sites. They fight you at every step of the way, making even something simple like finding out what cars the automaker sells a tremendous challenge. And once you do know exactly what you want, it still takes hours and hours of experimentation with the site before you can accurately navigate to find it. I was often reduced to screaming laughter at how stupendously bad the sites were.

And that doesn't even begin to tackle the antiquated dealership system which is just ludicrous at this point. Luckily I didn't need to nickle and dime the dealership and was willing to just walk in and ask them if they were willing to do a grand or so over the TrueCar average price for the car for the region and so I didn't have to fight them. I can't even imagine what the experience is like overall for someone who is looking to save money. I'm single and have no kids. My prior car worked well for over a decade. I was able to approach car buying as 'I want to find something that I like the looks of and is dripping with gadgets and whose payment won't be more than my mortgate'. Even being that open to various possibilities, they still managed to make it an exercise of pain.

I'm certainly not going to considering undergoing that pain again any time soon, even if they do come out with a model that gets 5% better gas mileage or whatever.

> People don't sit around just waiting to switch to the model that has more of what they want.

Sure they do. Tons of people do.

There are tons of people that upgrade their iPhone the day the new one comes out not because their old one suddenly broke that day, but because they want new things.

There's an entire side of the industry - leasing - that specifically caters to people that just want to get a new car every few years.

Lots of people will be looking at the new cars with CarPlay and Android Auto and be seriously considering an upgrade.

Porsche allows you to order a vehicle with any collection of options you like. But you'll pay for it and have to wait while they build it.

Most consumers don't have strong preferences in vehicles and will sacrifice a lot in order to get a good deal on something they can drive off the lot today.

I thought all cars were like this? When I bought my car (a Mercedes) I told them the options I wanted, paid for it, waited two months while they built it, and they gave it to me.

I could have bought showroom cars (or pre-built cars) at a discount, but none had the options I wanted.

I did this. Paid $1000 at order time. waited 3 months (taking bus while waiting). car came in on a Sunday. went to get it on Monday. the dealer had sold it to someone else. no recourse.

that was bwm of hawthorne

Wow, that's scummy. Over here you have bought the car and it's yours, they can't just sell it to someone else.

Good deal for $1k. :-)

I think I had prepaid around $1.5k or so actually.

At least you know you chose a good set of options. It just flew right off the lot.

Did they at least have the decency to refund your $1000?

Legally, they'd have to refund him for the $1000...

of course they refunded the $1k. They didn't pay for the 3 months of going without a car in West Los Angeles nor the 3 more months of having to wait if I ordered again.

I really wish the laws were such that I could more easily get the car directly from the factory like Tesla, no middleman. I know with BMW you can actually order a car, pick it up in Germany at the factory , drive it around Europe and they'll then ship it to the USA for you. No idea how much extra it would cost and not sure I want to drive in Europe vs taking public transit but at least I'd get my car

https://www.bmwusa.com/european-delivery.html

> No idea how much extra it would cost

I thought the "European delivery" scheme's attraction was that it is cheaper than buying the same car in the US - because you are driving it around Europe, it's imported as an used car.

Correct. Also it doesn’t count against the dealer’s allocation, so the dealer is more than happy to help you order precisely what you want.

We picked up our 328 wagon in Munich, great experience.

I did exactly that. It actually costs about 5% less. And driving the German Autobahn or some twisty mountain roads in The Swiss Alps is an unique experience.

Did you not sign a purchase contract when you paid your deposit? I know I did when I ordered my car - it stipulated that the car will be ready for collection up to 30 days after delivery to dealership, and the dealership can't sell it in that time.

When I bought a new car I did this. The salesman warned me that the weird combination of options I wanted was not popular. I bought it anyway.

When it came time to sell the car, the salesman was right :-) When you buy an unpopular mix, you pay twice - once for the options, and again when you have to sell the car at a discount because of those options.

The cars on the lot tend to be the most popular option combinations, meaning the most sellable cars at the most profit. The dealers aren't fools.

Over here, we don't have packages at all, as far as I know. You can either get one of the cars the dealership built for you, or you can make your own, but the pre-built cars aren't based on any package, they're just what that specific dealership picked.

Some other premium brands will also do custom orders, at least for certain vehicles in certain places. But most mainstream brands only want to sell what's on the lot today. Try placing a custom order for a Honda CR-V in a USA dealership and they'll probably laugh at you.

Porsche's difference is that they don't lock things down to options packages (bundles, i.e. Mercedes' Premium Package I/II/III). If you want the digital instrument cluster on your new E-class, you get the fragrance system along with it in Premium Package II even if you're ordering a custom build. The limitations are really noticeable when you start looking at wheel options with most manufacturers.

Porsche just throws a massive options sheet at you and lets you go to town. You get the exact car you want on a granular level. On the other hand, that's also a disadvantage. If you have deviated stitching everywhere else and tick off the "Steering Column Casing in Leather" option instead of "Steering Column Casing in Leather with Stitching in Deviated Thread" the steering column, Porsche will accept the order but won't substitute the stitching for you. You get exactly what you order, good or bad. And there have been some pretty ugly combinations ordered in the past. Want a Miami Blue exterior, matching wheels in the same, a bright red leather with acid green stitching, wood trim, a carbon fiber shifter, etc.? You can order it. You really, really shouldn't. But you can. You'll also pay for it. The average customer will order something like $10-15k in options, and more Porsche buyers special order compared to other brands. Porsche dealers tend to have less inventory on hand as a result as well.

> get a good deal

Correction: Something they perceive as being a good deal.

Virtually nobody goes to a car dealership and leaves with the vehicle they want at the price they wanted to pay and a large percentage of people are probably confused about what exactly they end up with and how much they ended up paying for it.

> Virtually nobody goes to a car dealership and leaves with the vehicle they want at the price they wanted to pay and a large percentage of people are probably confused about what exactly they end up with and how much they ended up paying for it.

I did! I was buying a very slightly used 2015 model, the 2016 models had just gone deep discount (9k off sticker price), I was able to use that to drop another 2k off the price of my 2015.

Good car buying experiences do happen, admittedly not that often. Having correct timing (knowing when models go on clearance) and being willing to comparison shop across all dealers around the state (and neighboring states) is key to getting a good deal.

I did as well. I specifically found an ex-demo vehicle, so it only was 3 months old but it knocked off 20% off the original price. Effectively, the dealership took the initial depreciation hit, not me.

Just bought a car and wish I was better prepared, but that's on me. They get you in so many ways. I think I won 2 rounds out of 5, so I don't feel too bad. Love my car though (VW GTI).

How about something as simple as a spare tire?

Having been unlucky enough (twice) to have experienced sidewall tire damage, the one deal breaker for me on a new car is the absence of a spare tire and/or a well in the trunk and the option to buy one.

Every year, the number of automobiles that have a spare tire or the option to even have one in the car shrinks. I'm assuming this de-contenting has to do with making the car lighter to improve fuel economy?

In my mind, a "tire inflation kit" (aka an aerosol can) or expensive-to-replace run-flats have limited benefits in general and absolutely zero benefits when it comes to sidewall damage. I would not want to be in the middle of nowhere with the wrong kind of flat in a car without a spare.

> I'm assuming this de-contenting has to do with making the car lighter to improve fuel economy?

Correct.

Additionally, the spare tire well can make a noticeable difference in the undercarriage drag. I know a number of people have removed the spare tire well on their Imprezas and improved their mileage by more than the amount they got when they had just taken out the spare itself.

Of course the spare tire well has some weight to it, but pictures I've seen of the delete do make the car appear more aerodynamic from beneath.

And also - in my car(Merc) if you order the Premium HK speaker system the spare tyre is replaced with a subwoofer + tyre repair kit.

The full size spare in my current car has been transferred from my two previous cars, I swapped it for space saver spares that came with the newer cars.

The problem is that some of the newer cars don't even have a well for a spare, so then you have to deal with the spare eating up trunk space.

I'm amazed it isn't full of dry rot by now. Tires don't last forever.

I'm kinda surprised that the diameter of the full-sized spare tire matches the diameter of the tires on all three cars. It would seem unlikely given the variability of rim sizes and tire aspect ratios across cars over time.

Most people mean spare tyre already attached to a wheel and probably inflated when they say spare tyre - eg it's ready to go. There seems more chance that the wheel can be swapped between vehicles.

Same make and model family [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mondeo

As much as I hate it, with manufacturing you can kinda understand it, because economies come from scale, and it's probably not feasible (or too time consuming) for car manufacturers to serve you every single out of the 2^N combinations of N features that you might want.

That's why you get trims, and then packages within those trims.

It works fine if you manufacture after a sale. Just look at millions of computer options. But, the current car model is to make a car then find a buyer which means you really want a small number of popular models.

Tesla is the largest exception, but even they limit options.

But they rarely ever offer a vehicle with all the options. It's either base model, option pack A, option pack B. Rarely do you get the chance to say you know what, just slam all of those in there. Give me top of the line everything... except auto-dimming rear-view mirror, compass and and blind spot information system.

The things that they make you choose between are ridiculous. It's like they put all the features on lottery balls, spin the bucket and pick 6 at random for each package and that's what you get. At least make the feature packages make sense

Usually they do, it's just that that option is quite expensive and you might not care about some (or most) of the features you get in that option. It's particularly bad if you anti-care about some of the options. For instance, if you are opposed to having leather seats, you can't get the highest trim, coz leather seats are a feature there.

For eg. Honda Accord 2018 with all bells and whistles starts at $33.8K while the lowest one starts at $23.5K. There's a good chance that a 40% increase over the base price will put that car out of the budget of a lot of people.

I suspect they spend a lot of time designing these packages.

From their perspective it should be setup like cable subscriptions. So, different segments buy the same package for different reasons.

> From their perspective it should be setup like cable subscriptions

You are standing in the maze of twisty little options, all of which suck.

Yea, for a real world example.

Acura TLX has the option for automatic cruse control, lane followings, and automatic breaking. It has a second option for blind spot detection and several other things. Want both? They have a third option that includes both plus some other stuff but it costs even more.

I mean why blind spot detection as part of the safty package when you can charge 3x as much to include it.

I suspect that you are mistaken and that they put quite a bit of time into those options packages.

Generally what I find is that they make a point of scattering the desirable features across packages in order to make you upgrade to the superset.

Auto-dimming rear view mirrors are the greatest invention ever. They should come standard on all cars.

Assembling a computer with 10-15 modular parts (Motherboard, RAM, Graphic Card etc.) is very different from assembling a car when a lot of the features you want need extra hardware and software inside the car.

And as much as I like Tesla, I don't think they are yet at a stage where they can be used as an example of what is possible in the manufacturing world at scale. And they hardly offer any many options. AND, some of their options are just software switches that can be flipped whenever you want the upgrade. That's possible for the model S because it's a very high margin car.

You can design things to be somewhat modular.

Car companies love to have things like "All season floor mats" that can be quickly swapped out at the dealership and sold with a high markup.

Something like 99% of all the cars purchased new are spec'd by dealers, not by customers. So the problem really wouldn't be solved by allowing you to select some combination of features for a totally unique vehicle. You're just going to walk onto the lot anyway and pick from what's there.

Or order it from the factory with exactly the spec I want... but 99% of people are too impatient to wait for a vehicle to be delivered from the factory and most dealerships don't give them that option because they want what's on the lot gone.

I get it. It's easier to shift vehicles if they all conform to some common spec because then there's nothing that makes worlds different. You pick this spec or that spec, end of story.

But I've played this game too many times with dealers and I just can't be bothered any more, which is why I drive an 8 year old Volvo that is good enough. Would I like a new car? Of course, I'd love a spanking new truck, but the glory of driving off the lot with a brand new vehicle that's not quite exactly what I wanted just isn't worth the loss of the 30% of value as I leave the lot and certainly not the tediousness of talking to car sales people for a day while they fuck around upstairs trying to stress me out.

I'll bring my laptop and use your WiFi to work. I'm quite comfortable helping myself to your endless tea or water from your service department waiting room while I'm in your showroom. No, I'm not giving you the keys to my vehicle which is parked outside your lot on the street so you can't box me in, and here's a photocopy of my driver's license which is plenty adequate for your needs, the original stays in my wallet. Now fuck off and do your job and if you're not back here with the keys, ownership papers and plates to a new car matching the spec I specified by the time I'm finished this user story, you won't find me still sitting here. You wanna play games, play them with someone else.

I've never had a dealer decline to let me order a car. What they won't do is discount it as heavily as something they already have. A lot of folks don't see the cognitive dissonance in wanting to order exactly what they want (that the dealer knows is their perfect car or close to it) but expecting to get those huge discounts they could get on the oddly optioned puke green car that's been on the lot for 75 days.

LOL how else do you think you'd see these puke green shitboxes kicking around our streets? Nobody actually likes those colours do they? There's a reason it's been sitting on the lot 75 days :P

It depends where you go. Many dealers now do flatly decline custom orders due to the way it impacts their allocation.

You don't have that option, not in the US.

German cars in the US have option packages, you can only choose from what they offer. Sure, if it's not on the lot you can order it or request an allocation or something, but you cannot specify the precise options you want if they're package-only.

Many Subaru options are dealer-installed so the only option you'll have beyond what comes bundled with your trim package is things like roof racks and fog lights that can be installed by a dealership employee.

Are they imported from Europe ? If so I would understand why you can choose only what they offer.

In Europe (for European brands I mean) you don't have such an issue, as long as you are willing to wait a long time to have it delivered, ( I know people that have waited 9-10 months for their VW only because they wanted a specific color) ).

In the US, regardless of where a car was built, you typically have very few options choices. There's not a significant difference in ability to choose on my made-in-Germany Golf and a made-in-Mexico Golf.

I think, over the years, shoppers in the US have shown time and time again that they simply don't care, so these choices have been taken away from those of us who DO care.

Because they have to keep the assembly line moving they make these dumb packages. If they had to hand build each option they couldn't make cars as fast and cheap as they do now. IF they made them modular to accommodate for this on the assembly line, the price would go up. This is why I don't care for or put much effort into specking cars. I get the minimum and work around the lack of features by adding them myself.

Scion did this. They allowed you to choose any option you wanted and add it individually. They didn't really do packages, at least not when I bought one. They also did the pure price thing where you didn't need to shop around at all. And of course the brand died because consumers don't actually seem to want this.

And of course the brand died because consumers don't actually seem to want this.

Eh, the brand probably died for a lot of reasons. I think primarily because Toyota missed the demographic mark. Initially the brand was the less expensive, "hip" brand for the younger crowd (because a Toyota owner's club meeting would look about as gray as a Grateful Dead concert). We saw one before they were available to purchase in the U. S., and placed an order with the local dealer while the Scion-specific showroom was still being built. A few months go by and ours comes in. We, of course, look for other drivers who bought the quirky little box. Ya know what? The other drivers looked a lot like us, with a little gray in their muzzle. Didn't pay much attention to the xAs and xDs (conventional compact cars), but it looked like all Toyota did with the xBs was shift the market from Camrys to xBs.

Cheap car is cheap. Young people and older people can both appreciate that. I still miss the cheap utility of my second gen xB. It wasn’t the best car but it worked well as a little hauler. I still see it around town sometimes, now that I sold it.

Rolls Royce lets you pick and choose options and fully customize your vehicle.

But then, you pay for that freedom...

Can you say X comes at the cost of Y and Z? A and B in the previous example were products. Y and Z in your example are attributes of the products A, B and C. Pedantic, but less confusing.

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