Comment by winternett | Hacker News Reader

Comment by winternett | Hacker News Reader

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I think the most costly difference between cars is found in leather seats. Leather is often the best choice if you have kids and pets... In European cars, the leather quality is usually ages above leather in cars from Japan and China. you pretty much have to pay 60k or above to get a car with non-bonded (inferior) leather.

Options add value, in luxury cars, a sunroof and alloy wheels are pretty much essential, not getting one means negative value on resale.

The dealerships often mark up prices on cars just because... It always amazes me how many people think sticker prices are firm and fixed. I have never purchased a car in my life without getting at least $7k off the sticker price.

There are many walks of life. A self employed realtor, for example, can write off a car lease, and may need to regularly carry clients, so an expensive sedan or big SUV ends up helping them more. People are so used to projecting their own circumstances on evaluating everyone else when it comes to economics, benefits of financial decisions are always subjective.

> Options add value, in luxury cars, a sunroof and alloy wheels are pretty much essential, not getting one means negative value on resale.

I've heard the opposite, that options don't retain their value as much as the core of the car itself. It probably depends on the timeframe though.

I bought a 2011 Volvo C30 brand-new, with absolutely zero options. It was the cheapest car Volvo made that year - manual transmission, no extra-cost paint, nothing. I sold it last year and, looking at price guides, those nice options would have gotten me maybe an extra $1-2k. So sure, I could have spent an extra $5-7k to get a nicely equipped model, but there is no way I would have gotten an extra $5k back when I sold the car.

I'd concede that if you trade cars in while they're still quite fresh there might be some truth to this. If you have a really oddly configured 2-year-old luxury car, maybe it'd be "lot poison" without leather and a sunroof.

What I see is this.

When I bought a car in 2010 I had no problem finding a small car (industry reeling from 2008.)

In 2018 I went car shopping and found that both Asian and American car dealers had no small cars in stock (the usual state w/ American car dealers) and all sorts of excuses why they didn't.

Right after that they will point you a whole bunch of trucks and SUVs all in a row, all with deep discounts.

Looking at this, I'd conclude that car dealers want to sell big cars, not that people want to buy them.

(A retired ag economics professor I knew bought the $70k corvette that the chevy dealer had for show for $35k at the peak of the 2008 crisis.)

> not that people want to buy them.

Completely incorrect. The market demand for gigantic cars in the US is virtually insatiable. And will remain so as long as the price of gasoline stays around $2-3 per gallon. Once we see ~$6/gallon like what's common in UK for instance, cars will start to shrink again.

In my nearby family I think it is 50-50% if somebody has a compact car vs something large.

I remember a childless couple that went to a car dealer and got talked into a Chrysler Pacifica (monster minivan) at the steal price of $22,000.

I rode in it and it was the worst hunk of junk, the only car I've gotten seasick in. That car contributed to the implosion of their marriage.

American car makers have a huge incentive to sell 'trucks' because of this old protectionist law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

They make a bigger profit on 'trucks', so they can pay you discounts out of the premium they get.

Even with tax incentives and huge profit margins, the cost of a modern truck is still sometimes three times as much as a family car with the same seating capacity. It's the small social circle status symbol mentality which perpetuates it. Same mindset of people who collect hyper-expensive athletic shoes I feel.

Yes and no.

My brother-in-law has a big-ass pickup truck with a plow attached and he takes a chunk out his big-ass payment by plowing driveways in the winter. He has worked his way up building roads and really does use his 'truck' like a truck.

Curious:

> I have never purchased a car in my life without getting at least $7k off the sticker price.

What’s the mean and median price you’re paying? I assume for new cars?

I’ve never gotten more than that off anything under $35k sticker new.

I have seen a LOT more come off trucks that are stickers at $60k and sell for ~$45k which blows my mind they have that much markup.

> I have never purchased a car in my life without getting at least $7k off the sticker price.

This isn’t going to happen with high demand cars from Toyota or Honda or even F150s.

Exactly, certainly not if we are talking used cars in the Internet era. These dealerships are not pricing cars for $7k+ over auction price unless they rebuilt the title because it's going to show as a horrible deal on any internet site.

I was pretty much laughed out of two dealerships for trying to get $2k off sticker and they refused to negotiate much.

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