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I'm all for frugality, but with a newer car you're getting vastly improved crash safety. Over the years crash safety ratings have gotten tougher and tougher. You can browse the IIHS crash rating history for the Camry (or any other car) and you can often observe that when the IIHS introduces a new test, cars often perform poorly on it (high likelihood of injury) initially, but get better later on. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/Toyota/camry-4-door-sed.... This is it's own piece of mind.

Ya but, for 25-40k!? Newer than 92 sure, but no need for new

And also active safety driver aids which prevent accidents in the first place. If you can afford a new car, by all means you should.

Most of the safety driver aids seem to paper over incompetency and the fact that people can't put their phones down while operating a deadly vehicle. Been driving for 20+ years and no accidents. I also mainly drive older vehicles without any such tech save for ABS. Stay focused on the task at hand and be responsible. If you cant do that, then surrender your drivers license and use an alternative transportation method.

> Been driving for 20+ years and no accidents

That is luck not skill. Humans are not good drives and never can be.

> Stay focused on the task at hand and be responsible.

That helps. It would help some more if you would also get updated training - safety engineers have discovered a lot of things over the years that few people know.

> That is luck not skill. Humans are not good drives and never can be.

This is a stretch. The better argument is that the best human reflexes can't react to others' stupidity with the speed and precision modern safety mechanisms can.

>That is luck not skill.

It's both. Even if an accident is the other driver's fault, there are plenty of cases where driving more defensively would have let you avoid it.

But yes, there's luck too. If you're sitting in traffic at a red light and someone drives into you, not a lot you could do to prevent it.

Luck is enough. The average road is about 2 accidents per million miles. https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/operating/osss/highway/acci... so if we assume the OP doesn't drive drunk he is isn't enough above average to claim skill based on the evidence we have.

More importantly, the OP should not claim skill even if he has some: that leads to complacency. If he claims luck he is more likely to admit he isn't perfect and thus pay attention to changes in what he best practice for driving. What he was taught in drivers training 20 years ago assuredly has some things that we now know were wrong, and it didn't even cover some things we now know is important.

I don't think bluGill is entirely wrong ( as indicated by the downvoting ), the average driver believes they're better than the average, which isn't possible. But, I'm sure, the average person is much better than then average _some_ of the time, and they're thinking about their best when they rank themselves -- I think this falls into the same reasoning as, 'we judge others based on their actions and we judge ourselves based on our intentions' -- intending to drive error free is likely much more common than actually driving error free

But, it also sounds like, some of the driver assist features aren't so good yet either ( reading many of the other comments in this thread )

I've anecdotally found that the improved safety features have led to near-crashes for me, simply by making the auto behave unexpectedly.

Most notably this happens when I'm driving down the freeway, and the car thinks something is in front of us that isn't and randomly slams on the breaks.

It has also happened when other negligent drivers have started merging into my lane (where I am), and the vehicle slams on the breaks, against my better judgement of slamming on the gas to avoid the collision because it would have been safer.

My daily driver is old and has no security features, and modern rentals are a nightmare for exactly those reasons.

Also, what's with the newer cars randomly beeping at me to communicate instead of presenting an actual sentence of information? Almost all the time I have no idea why the safety features are engaging because they only communication is a beep of some kind, leaving me confused and taking my eyes off the road to look for some supporting message in the car's interface.

That doesn't show you are getting vastly improved crash safety.

Only looking at injury data in the real world would show that.

It's my understanding new cars are not significantly safer than cars from 10 years ago.

>It's my understanding new cars are not significantly safer than cars from 10 years ago.

How did you come to that? The new cars are new and there's no real world statistics for them yet, if you only go by real world data.

I haven't found the safety data, but was very surprised when my new car was way cheaper to insure than my old one. I assume the insurance companies have the data.

This may not be safer as in better crash resilience, but safer as in you have a backup camera, and side sensors for changing lanes.

Not entirely surprising - the biggest change in car technology over the past few years has been the inclusion of driver assistance features and liability is the most expensive component of auto insurance.

I wonder how much of the new car being cheaper to insure was the liability only portion of the insurance vs the comprehensive. How much of your risk is seen as so much greater by insurance companies as likely to be at fault in causing an accident in a ten year old car vs new.

> Only looking at injury data in the real world would show that.

What if technology in the newer cars (adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, etc.) prevents injuries altogether?

I have a 2000 BMW 318ti beater car, the clear coat is peeling but mechanically fantastic. The crankshaft sensor was causing random misfires which I replaced. Otherwise all stock, it's fantastic and freeing. I can floor it and it doesn't go anywhere. upkeep is cheap, oil change when it asks me to. light compact car i've only done brakes once 6yrs ago and it looks new still... the only downside are the plastic parts which sometimes let water in. Those I'm replacing.

> I can floor it and it doesn't go anywhere.

This is a difficult sentence to parse. Shouldn't you want the opposite from a car?

High powered vehicles have a tendency to cause sudden acceleration.

Sudden acceleration is a contributing factor in many vehicle crashes.

High powered vehicles don't have a tendency to cause anything.

Driver input causes sudden acceleration. Having access to more power is not an inherently dangerous thing. Poor driving ability is a dangerous thing - though I agree that more power can compound that danger.

I drive a 480bhp 1800kg car. It takes active involvement from me in multiple steps to "take off" or 'suddenly' accelerate, and when it does so, the whole car is configured to _increase_ its stability as its speed increases.

That said, if I were to aggressively accelerate when the road conditions are in excess of what the stability aids (and my fallible human skillset) can counter - which from experience is a high bar for modern DSC (oil, ice) - then I would crash and power would be a contributory factor. But from experience I can say that a small front wheel drive car will have 'let go' far sooner under those same conditions.

High-powered cars, by virtue of their expense, tend to have more comprehensive and capable driver assistance features both tech and mech (you're not going to find a limited slip differential on a budget super mini car)

Under-powered cars have trouble effectively matching carriageway and motorway speed in the short slip roads that are common in the UK. A 1 litre, >80bhp car is fine for city/town and village driving. It is not an appropriate vehicle for motorway or NSL carriageway driving. Anything that has no ability to out-accelerate a HGV maintaining cruise speed to join a motorway has no business being on the motorway.

> Poor driving ability is a dangerous thing - though I agree that more power can compound that danger.

That’s exactly what he meant.

Sudden acceleration has saved me from an accident or two. There are times when it’s better to accelerate out of an something rather than brake.

living my dream! I've been driving for 25yrs now? never got to accelerate out of an accident even once. would've been really cool lol what was the situation like? like people swerving into your path?

Nothing major - one was an inattentive driver in a parking lot headed my way and at least one more was avoiding a deer. If there's a pack of deer stopping can often be a bad idea as they're get spooked enough to run right in to your car and cause damage. It's happened to me twice.

sorry my bad, let me try again, it doesn't go anywhere "unintended". I've driven some cars that are psychopaths, while fun they're most unsuitable as a beater. Minimise risk/cost the whole way is the beater life!

Agreed. I'm firmly in the boat of "expensive things own you" so I avoid owning them. I do try to take care of what I have but don't obsess over things that can and do happen.

That said. I did get rid of a perfectly good 2002 Camry to buy a Mustang Mach e about 14 months ago. It was pure indulgence and I'm still smitten. I try to take care of it, but don't park across 2 spaces an extra 200 meters away while at the grocery.

> no more paying comprehensive insurance

Assuming you can afford to replace it on your own if you need to, this one really adds up.

When I removed comprehensive coverage, the lady from the insurance company audibly said "wow" before telling me my new yearly rate. It dropped quite a bit. Over 50% decrease IIRC.

In Australia I changed from comprehensive to third party property damage, fire and theft and my rate changed from $950 to $240/y. For a $5000 vehicle! (NB: first and third party medical insurance are covered by rego and Medicare).

More generally, it usually doesn't make sense to have insurance for anything where you could comfortably afford to pay for the bad thing out of pocket if it happened. For me that means 3rd party liability coverage, yes; comprehensive coverage, no.

As a brit where at least 3rd party insurance is a legal requirement,I consider that everyone should be fully comp. It's not just your car you're damaging, it's likely another car and potentially legal fees and loss of earnings.

Even if insurance went optional I'd still go fully comp, as the cost of a new car is not what I need if I'm already financially struggling due to injury

That’s liability insurance, not comprehensive.

In the US you either have to have liability insurance or be very wealthy. Bill Gates has no need for insurance after all.

In the US, auto insurance policies are split into 3 buckets: collision, comprehensive and liability. Comprehensive kicks in for events which are “not collisions,” so tree falling on the car, theft, etc.

You are required to have liability and collision coverage in most states, but comprehensive is optional. People often drop it from their policies to save on the premium. I have tried doing that on one of our vehicles over the years but have barely realized any savings so I’ve ended up keeping it on the policy. Seems like others have fared better.

No state requires collision. If you've got a rust bucket, no reason to cover your own car.

Oh, good point

Remember, a single data point does not indicate a trend

Indeed. I've been doing similar research myself and was surprised at how highway driving can disadvantage EVs. They'll never be as expensive per mile as an ICE vehicle but I found the fact I spend most of my commute at 80mph significantly decreased the savings.

I mean, driving at 80 vs 70 will also vastly decrease your ICE mileage, it's just less noticeable until you go to fill up.

I mean, driving at 80 vs 70 will also vastly decrease your ICE mileage

It definitely increases the drag, but after spending a week driving at 70 the difference in mileage was almost unnoticeable. It helps that I have a small, aerodynamic car that's geared high instead of a truck or blocky SUV.

I find that very hard to believe, given that drag increases with the third power of velocity. By almost unnoticeable do you mean that you didn't notice it, or did you robustly measure and compare?

It's entirely possible, even likely, the lack of difference is due to age-related efficiency losses at lower speeds rather than not losing efficiency between 70 and 80. There's also the fact I'm running AC on max in very hot weather, which maximizes the loss due to AC and increases the amount I save by shortening the trip and thus reducing the amount of time the AC is running.

My overall trip efficiency maxing out at 70 was 31mpg, and 80 was 27.9mpg.

> after spending a week driving at 70 the difference in mileage was almost unnoticeable.

In dollars, the additional amount you pay to drive an ICE faster is considerable:

https://afdc.energy.gov/conserve/behavior_techniques.html#:~...).

"For light-duty vehicles, for example, every 5 mph you drive over 50 mph is like paying $0.18 more per gallon of gas (based on the price of gas at $2.63 per gallon)."

Even that is a simplification. Air resistance increases exponentially with speed, so the jump in resistance (reduction in efficiency) is much greater from 70-80 than from 50-60.

Also, gas is a lot more expensive now, so the additional $0.18/gal could easily be doubled or tripled at today's prices depending on where you live.

> It helps that I have a small, aerodynamic car that's geared high instead of a truck or blocky SUV.

According to consumer reports, even a very gas miserly Toyota Yaris loses 4mpg going from 65-75mph. It's probably double the efficiency loss if you go to 80mph. Can't cheat physics.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2009/09/tested-spee...

I applaud you for not taking the bait on the Model 3, which is overrated, but I cannot fathom purchasing an appliance car like a Camry. You can’t possibly enjoy driving it. Why not at least a Honda?

Perhaps because nearly all car trips are those in which they are mostly acting as an appliance as central to (presuming here) American life as AC is in most of the country.

Personally, I’ve never driven a Camry and thought, “this is awful”, but rather “this is totally fine and wow, great mileage!” In a similar vein, its status as an abundant vehicle with many parts out there and being generally reliable are all similar and useful things I’d consider before buying a new washing machine or whatever.

My first car, in the early 00s mind you, was a 1989 Camry Wagon and boy did I sure love that thing. Great utilitarian car that could fit friends, got great gas mileage, and basically required no upkeep.

I now drive a 2000 4Runner that has actually gone up in value from when I bought it 12ish years ago. I’ve had two people in the last two years drive by randomly and ask if I was selling.

One of my all-time favorite Onion headlines: Toyota Recalls 1993 Camry Due To Fact That Owners Really Should Have Bought Something New By Now

https://www.theonion.com/toyota-recalls-1993-camry-due-to-fa...

They're even reliable in the way they break down. Parts are cheap worldwide, every mechanic ever can work with them, and the service life of components seems to be staggered such that you only get a couple of issues a year even on a 20 year old model like mine. If you think all is lost at 500,000km, just buy a new engine for like $1000 and sail away in your little Ship of Theseus that refuses to die. The purchase price is so low and the maintenance so consistent it's like you're renting it.

If you are struggling to build your self-worth through a car or think you need to spend $50k to get that, try fixing an old Camry yourself for dirt cheap, and then see how you feel. No need to fight for right-to-repair laws either, just buy a part anywhere and clean or replace it according to the manual, which is just a 1000 page PDF on the internet of every possible repair. (Although my next car will be electric, because of climate change. Sorry Camry.)

I really hope an electric car model will take up the mantle for reliability and repair ability. Toyota is lagging hard in the EV space. Maybe those Chevy Bolts will last a while? Or the Kia EVs? Probably the F150s, but I'd prefer a compact.

I have more hope for EV repairability than for e.g. iPhones. Notice that right-to-repair laws followed tractor owners, not iPhone owners. The farmers felt the pain first. It's simply more important for a vehicle, where replacing is not nearly as cheap.

You can already buy random EV parts online. As automakers make more models and source more common parts for their cars to do this competitively, this aftermarket gets better and more useful. A fairly promising thing is the apparent popularity of EV conversions and home-brew EVs, so perhaps there will be some competition for e.g supplying full-on computer control systems with some serious capabilities. There are also more modifications people will conceivably want to do on their cars. I know someone whose petrol ute has a fridge under the canopy, powered by a solar panel on the roof and an extra battery. Nobody is out there drilling a hole in their iPhone to add a headphone jack, because it would be really bad, but you can do all sorts to cars without ruining the whole experience. The complexity and variability of what people want their cars to do leads to modifications and that demand will have to be met somehow. It's also the kind of strange demand that cannot be met by the big automakers alone.

As for reliability, I hope the market will continue to speak pretty loudly with their wallets on the importance of that. People care about it now, I have no reason to believe they'll stop.

I hope to see the next Mad Max movie as a visceral depiction of a wind, solar, geothermal, BEV, desalination tribe defeating the carbon tribe.

In replay of the recent election in Aus.

That would probably be Tesla? I suppose it depends on your definition of repair-ability. Telsa has a high degree of parts compatibility and seems able to keep even the older 2012 era Model S repaired.

There are a lot of high mileage Teslas out there. Most of Tesla's negative reputation seems to be people complaining about fit and finish (paint, panel gaps). The actual mechanical reliability seems to be quite higher than a normal ICE car. However EVs are still pretty new so long term data is still being collected.

No, the data shows that Tesla vehicles generally have terrible reliability. A Toyota Prius hybrid is far more mechanically complex than any Tesla EV, yet the Prius is far more reliable on average.

http://www.truedelta.com/car-reliability

But Tesla still sells well for other reasons, so apparently they don't have to care about product quality.

I'm having a hard time navigating that site and getting any data out of it. Is it considered a reliable source of information? It seems to only have data for the first generation Model 3 from 2018. They also seems to count stuff like replacement of the 12v battery.

The writeups of high mileage Tesla's that I have read have not mentioned very many repairs - and that seems to be the general consensus on the owner's forums.

Note that software updates are also considered 'recalls' on Teslas now.

one data point on a high mileage model 3 : https://electrek.co/2020/09/26/tesla-model-3-high-mileage-ex...

Consumer Reports has more recent data. Tesla is next to last. The potential for EV reliability is there, but Tesla has missed it with incompetent engineering and sloppy assembly.

https://www.statista.com/chart/23586/average-reliability-sco...

Teslas seem to have a reputation of being locked down and requiring first party repairs. As an example, Tesla charges extremely high fees for its repair documentation to shops.

Considering how many Teslas have been shipped, a postmarket community forming around the vehicles seems likely. I just don't know how successful it will be when the manufacturer is so hostile toward third party repairs and tinkering overall.

I don't doubt they are reliable cars, though. So are Apple computers and phones.

I literally said it's a 3rd car, what makes you think one of my other two cars isn't something fast and fun, that runs on premium gas and eats through expensive Z rated tires? Its per km cost is considerably higher. Maybe I don't want to use it for like, buying groceries at Costco, and with two seats it's not very much good at all for picking up family members with luggage from the airport.

Our only car is a 10-year old 7-seater powered by a 1.4 liter turbocharged petrol engine (Opel Zafira Tourer). An entirely utilitarian choice, I'll buy something fun when the kids grow up.

What I have come to realize though is that most people couldn't drive quickly in corners if their life depended on it.

And that there is nothing more satisfying than watching a Tesla or Audi become a small dot in the rearview mirror on a highway onramp or a switchback road, when the emblem on your trunk says "1.4 EcoFlex" and your bumper sticker says "Baby on board".

Sure, you'll get passed when the road straightens out again, but both them and me know that I've won.

What, does buying a more expensive car give you access to a different set of traffic laws? My 106HP Yaris is more than capable of breaking the speed limit and coming off a stop fast enough to slam me back in the seat.

Theoretically, no. In practice there's definitely a different level of scrutiny applied to beat up old cars (fishing magnet), a brightly colored sportscar (revenue ticketing magnet) or a bland sedan or crossover (mostly gets ignored unless you're doing something crazy).

A car is an appliance. Why does it have to be fun?

It's a moving chair that gets me from A to B

A very utilitarian view. People aren’t all beings of pure logic, though. Some people have fun in their cars and use them for purposes other than pure transportation.

They do indeed, but that doesn't mean it has to be fun for everyone. Some people enjoy cooking, but that doesn't mean everyone has to make every meal into a banquet.

>Why not at least a Honda?

Go out and actually drive the cars in this class and they're pretty much all the same. Honda build great cars, but let's not pretend you hop in an everyday Civic and it'll blow your socks off. They are very pedestrian.

We bought a Mazda3 because my wife didn't like the sight-lines in the Civic. YMMV.