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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

> Strong luxury share – at 18% of sales – helps push the industry average price higher.

I bet people who would have otherwise bought cheaper options are buying whatever they can get. In years past many of these cars probably sat on the lot for a year and sold at a healthy discount.

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Yea, the climate has me concerned if i need to buy. My current is a 2014 Toyota Prius, bought new and drive little. I had wanted to get another 10 years out of it, but now i feel like i need to get another 10 years out of it. This climate is crazy.

I love this car though. $24k with no interest, been fully paid off for a long time - was a great buy and has been rock solid. I hope i can get a deal this good in the future..

I went to every Toyota dealer near me a few months ago. They only had one or two of each model of car in stock. They had random colors and expensive packages (the extra extra ones like random trunk hardware, not just the tech package for sensors) and then after all this up specced with no color choice, they wanted 10-15k USD on top just cause “someone else is ready to buy it if you aren’t”

I'm waiting on a Corolla right now. Found a dealer who will sell for MSRP. But ... there are no cars. Every Corolla that you see on Autotrader as new right now, with few exceptions, was sold months ago and they're using the listing as an ad to attract folks like me to go on a waiting list. Crazy.

Oof. Yea and when i bought mine, the 0% interest indicated that they were trying like mad to get rid of them.

I have a 2012 Prius with high mileage going strong. Bought used in 2013 for $17K when gas prices were over $4/gallon. A year later, gas prices plummeted and hybrids lost their value. Now finally they are in high demand again, along with everything else. It is crazy how I see the same car being advertised at around the same price I paid back in 2013.

I feel strongly that you’re likely to get another 10 years out of it if you keep up with regular maintenance. My non-Prius Toyota is 17 years old. The outside looks like a war zone from being a city car but the interior is in great shape and everything works perfectly. A family member has a Prius approaching 300,000 miles. Good cars.

[edit: Regular maintenance is key! I take mine in to my local mechanic for an oil change and inspection 2-3 times a year. For elderly cars, don’t wait for a noise or a light to go off :) ]

Slight tangent, but I bought a 2012 Civic shortly before switching to working at home. It has about 50k miles now.

I've been surprised by the results of simply leaving it outside that long. Weather stripping around the windows has dried out and cracked. And I have actual lichen growing on the car's exterior.

But other stuff has held up great. The paint (ignoring the lichen colonies), the tires, etc. And thanks to the wacky market these past years, its resale value.

For your door seals, get this, it works wonders. It is Honda OEM lubricant for door seals and it makes them look like new.

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2019/09/26/hondas-secret-we...

I think you’re on to something. A colleague got into a car accident and ended up spending way more than he needed to on a luxury car he didn’t want.

He has 4 kids. Getting a minivan or suv is difficult unless you are patient or can buy the “Elite Super Touring Edition with Gold Sprinkles”. Car companies are adverting incentives for ordering cars, so I think this is the new normal. They’ve learned from Tesla’s shenanigans that you can get away with anything.

Current minivan market is batshit crazy. We've had dealerships call us up offering thousands more than we paid for our (used) minivan three or four years ago, with 1/3 the mileage it has now. It's basically gone up in value by about as much as it should have dropped in value, in a normal market. I assume they expect to make a profit, so must be pretty sure they can sell it for even more than that. WTF.

I was offered $27k in January for a 2016 Odyssey with lowish miles when I got an oil change.

It’s wacky. The guy was legit bummed - he told me they were at the point where legit dealers are buying wrecks and cars that need new engines. At the time, they were ordering new cars with projected delivery dates in August.

We had the opposite- we had to buy a cheaper trim level than we'd wanted, but even after visiting several dealerships, we ended the day at one that had exactly two new cars available on the lot.

There was no point in buying used, because retail prices on used cars was approaching MSRP on a new car.

I think people are getting whatever they can. Specially when they don't have an option.

I'm in Portugal which has a completely different 'personal economic structure' from the US, so this might not apply:

Transaction values and the luxury segment both keep rising here as well. Loking around me it feels like people disregard savings so much AND are take such large loans to buy homes that spending 50k on a new car feels sensible, possible and not a big deal. This in a country where take-home salaries are routinely under 20k/year (net of taxes and health expenses).

Money's been so cheap and credit so easy that we seem desensitized to total amounts. Who cares what anything costs as long as you can pay the balance at the end of the month?

One of my friends had to buy a new (to him) car out of necessity. He decided to buy the only new car on the lot. He was bragging. Great deal.

Here’s the catch.. it requires premium. He didn’t know that. The dealer made sure not to volunteer any extra info. He’s keeping those miles low.

The car requires premium gasoline?

Is that a thing?

edit: Thanks for the info. Did not know that. I've always had piece of shit cars that could probably run on McDonald's french fry oil. :)

Yup, some engine's are designed for it. Usually for performance reasons if the engine is boosted or high compression.

Some engines require higher octane gasoline, yes. You can use lower octane in it, but you're going to hurt the engine.

It’s been a thing. My car is 20 years old and requires it. Engines with higher compression require higher octane fuel to reduce pre-detonation and pinging. Using low-octane fuel in one of them can cause game-ending physical damage to the engine.

Many more modern cars can sense lower-octane fuel and adjust for it, at the cost of power and efficiency (i.e., mileage).

Yes, I have a car which requires premium gasoline. Though I haven't tried putting in regular, my understanding is that doing so would induce knocking.

A car with knock sensor will detect lower-quality fuel and pull back timing. This will usually limit your power, but not damage your car. My car manual even explicitly states that it won't affect engine lifetime.

Full disclosure, I still use premium anyway because I want to keep the car for a long time and I don't fully believe this disclaimer.

Generally you'll get worse fuel economy due to the ECU and knock sensor detecting the lower grade fuel and pulling ignition timing out. It's unlikely you'd even save money at the pump

The octane rating you see on gas indicates the pressure at which gasoline will combust. Engines tuned to a higher compression to ignite require higher octane level gasoline. Using something other than what the engine is tuned to might put a lot of extra wear or degrade performance of the engine.

The gasoline will ignite before it is supposed to, forcing the piston back down before it has travelled all the way to the top of it's stroke. The engine will destroy itself. You can hear "knocking" coming from the engine when this is happening. It's worse than it sounds.

I know this is definitely true of older engines that aren't controlled by fancy software, but I suspect at least many consumer cars are capable of adjusting to the difference. I could be wildly wrong here though, and wouldn't want to test it myself.

Knock sensors are standard on every car made by a global automaker since the early 90s when fuel injection became universal

Some vehicles, especially ones with OEM performance tuning, run high compression ratios or forced induction. Higher octane gas allows for more compression within the piston before ignition. I had a 2003 Toyota Matrix that redlined at 9100 rpm and used their fancy Toyota variant of VTEC that would dynamically swap the camshafts on the engines past a certain RPM. Although the engine was naturally aspirated (no turbo), it had the compression ratio of 11.5:1, which is pretty high for an economy vehicle (1.8L)

All the comments are giving unequivocal yes’s, I’ll note that some cars (my buddy’s Subaru) will say they require premium but work just fine without. Currently going 240k miles still strong.

In case you're being facetious, old Mercedes diesel cars can literally run in old MacDonalds french fry oil with a tiny bit of modification.

I like how you say "the dealer made sure not to volunteer any extra info" as if this was a secret and the dealer somehow scammed your friend into buying a brand new car at the height of a chip shortage and record high car prices.

The lifetime difference of premium gas financially is next to nothing.

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