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> and makes no effort to understand that many people cannot afford the quality goods the author can

A study done years ago found that the reason poor people stay poor is because they always buy the cheapest option so any money they save up ends up getting used right away to replace something. A never ending cycle of buy cheap/replace broken cheap stuff.

>For example, I use to drive sports cars and convertibles, but now I drive cheap econo-boxes. Why? They tend to be more reliable, less expensive per mile to maintain,

The point of buying quality is that it is cheaper to use and maintain. I think you're doing an apple/orange comparison here. Your sports cars were probably on the low end (and the quality end is probably just not attainable by working class people) while your "cheap econo-boxes" are probably higher on the quality scale for their class. You weren't being cheap here.

I know plenty of people who do go cheap with cars: they buy old used cars so they can do the repairs themselves. And every weekend that's exactly what they're doing: repairs. If they ever stopped and counted up their costs in time, parts and eventually replacing with another clunker they could probably lease a BMW cheaper.

Which study was that? I've heard the same thing mentioned several times but never seen the actual source.

It's an old study, I believe written in the UK. I read it in paper (don't remember if it was a magazine, book, or excerpt).

You can eat your cake and have it, too. I have never spent more than $5000 on a vehicle, and I have only ended up with one lemon. Sometimes I do mechanical work myself, but only because I enjoy it. The rest of the time, I spend the money on a decent mechanic. I still come out ahead cost wise, even if you count my time, trouble, and other intangibles. Even better when you realize that my vehicles suffer virtually no depreciation.

A few hours of research and a $100 inspection prior to purchase will ensure you good odds of buying a reliable vehicle. There are no guarantees, but you can get pretty damn close. If you aren't comfortable with your own judgment, I'm sure you know someone who can advise you.

If you do choose to buy new (or relatively new), an 8-10 year ownership should be your goal. It usually takes that long to get real value for your money.

Source please?

This is something I've never understood.

Considering that a new car loses a huge chunk of its "value" the second you drive it out of the car dealer's, if you're buying new the only sensible strategy is to drive it nearly into the ground. If you have to pay a wrecker to take it away, I agree, you may have taken it too far. But unless there are obscure tax reasons, I can't see any benefit to flipping cars regularly.

The warranty. Every time I've tried to follow your intuitive logic here I've ended up spending more per month to keep the car usable. Personally I view cars as a tax that I just have to pay, so I get the (long term) cheapest I can that uses as little gas as possible.

You're probably right, if you're buying new.

I once read about a strategy that made a great deal of sense to me, and that was to buy a 2-3 year old used car from a new car dealer, and sell it after 2-3 years to a private party.

There were all sorts of good reasons for that, some of which may no longer be valid, but some of the reasons were that a 2-3 year old car still had a lot of value but was at the end of it's steep price depreciation curve, and that the new car dealer didn't actually know how much the car was worth, they just knew that every day it sat there was another day of insurance they had to pay for, and sort of more proof to them that the car was not worth much. Also, by buying from a new car dealer, the car was probably in pretty good shape, the worse cars they had gotten rid of, the rest they had fixed up and cleaned up at rates that you or I couldn't get.

Because of that, with good negotiation, you could, in a sense, capture much of the profit the dealer had just made by giving the former owner of the used car a terribly low resale price followed by selling them a high priced new car.

They just made 20,000 by cheating the former owner on both ends of his deal. They don't know how much the used car is worth, but they are scared of it sitting there, and if you know how to price it, value it, and negotiate for it, you can get them to go very low on the price just so they can move it off the lot. You could in fact buy it for far below market rate. That was the theory then. And my own used car purchases showed that to be reasonable.

The claim was that by buying so cheaply a good used car from a dealer, you could sell it in 2-3 years to a private party at a good market rate, but probably very close to what you had paid for the used car 2-3 years earlier.

So... This strategy has actually worked out very well for me. And kept me in some very fun, relatively high end convertibles, starting with a Saab Turbo 900. Buying used cars from new car dealers seems to be a winning strategy.

But you have to remember to flip them. And that's been hard for me to do, in part because like an idiot, I drive too many miles to work, and have no time for selling cars to private parties. But if you're going to put a lot of miles on cars, I think you do need to either flip them or drive them to death, which is one reason I recently bought a low end econobox.

the new car dealer didn't actually know how much the car was worth

This statement confuses me. When I talk to car dealers, I notice that they always refer to the NADA guide to determine the worth -- even if you think that the blue book is too high, the sales guy certainly knows exactly what the car is worth, and would rather lose the sale than drop significantly below that price. I conclude that insurance and lot space must not be major costs per car.

Dealers make far more profit on used cars than they do new. Because of that, they are often much more willing to negotiate down if it's a tough-to-sell car that has been on their lot for an extended period of time.

There have been some amazing improvements in car safety and crash worthiness just in the past few years (at least at the higher end of the market). This has been driven by stricter government standards and widespread publication of safety data.

The thing is, it's really hard to quantify how much that extra safety is actually worth in terms of reduced risk of injury or death for a typical driver. If a QALY is worth, let's say $200K to me, then how many QALYs am I theoretically saving by trading in a 10 year old car for a new one? I would love to see a web application for this.

I agree.

The way I see it there is a price/value curve where it's worth buying things at both ends.

At the high end you're paying a premium but you're getting a well designed and constructed item, which should last you a long time.

At the low end you're buying cheap crap but you're paying peanuts. You know there's no high end features, that it's not well made and if it breaks you just throw it out.

But in the middle you're paying more than the cheap stuff but you're mostly still getting crap, although here's it's likely to be 'branded' crap. Same thing as the cheap stuff, just more expensive.

So buy at both ends of the scale, not in the middle: buy cheap and get what value you can out of it, buy expensive and appreciate its value for a long time.

eh, several comments have gone on about the sears brand 'craftsman' wrenches. I like them too, but they are solidly in the middle of the price curve for tools. I also like kingston ram for my servers; Much like Craftsman tools, the stuff is good enough to get the job done and has an excellent warranty, but it's far from the best money can buy.

I think the top end usually has a huge 'you must be rich' price premium that doesn't usually make sense unless you use this tool all the time.

(Of course, we're both falling in to the trap of evaluating a product based on it's price positioning, which, I think, is quite often a mistake. The evaluation should be based on what you are paying for what you are getting, not based on where in the price curve your particular tool lies, I think.)

There is a cost to just throwing things out, even if its externalized. This cheap stuff has to be landfilled and much of it doesn't break down for thousands or millions of years. Many of it is also harmful to the environment, impacting and shortening human lives, including yours.