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Comment by dnissley | Hacker News Reader

The car market right now makes no sense to me. Interest rates are high, prices are high (inflation + tariffs), unemployment is rising, inventory is low, and yet car sales are booming? What gives? People panic buying before tariffs have a bigger impact?

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It's more that in America, cars are for the most part an inelastic commodity. It's very, very hard to hold a job and maintain your life without a car except in the densest of metro areas. Since the population is still growing, sales of cars keep going up and people get trapped in predatory loans or conditions. Used cars are also harder to find and more expensive, which pushes people into these predatory conditions.

I think it's a really poor indicator for the future. America literally cannot function without cars, and if people cannot afford cars they cannot afford to work.

A ten year old Honda Fit is like $12K, pretty fuel efficient, and probably reliable and low-maintenance (I owned one until recently). People aren't buying $50,000 new Ford F-150s because they just need a working car to go to work and the grocery store.

> People aren't buying $50,000 new Ford F-150s because they just need a working car to go to work and the grocery store.

Let me introduce you to half of my block. And I live in a city with fantastic public transit where you don't even need a car. I see those loan notices in mailboxes....

you’re opening your neighbors’ mailboxes and reading their mail?

No, I am not.

It's millennials moving out of cities into the suburbs and deciding they need a car. Guess what the bestselling car in the US? Toyota RAV4.

The Ford F-series and Chevy Silverado both outsold the RAV-4 by significant margins.

Also the RAV-4 isn't a car, it is an SUV.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/best-selling-cars-us-h1-202...

"Car" typically means "passenger vehicle" in common parlance, at least in the US. A lot of truck sales like you point to are fleet sales for work vehicles, so this person is probably pointing more towards non-fleet sales, where the RAV4 is indeed the top seller.

for some reason the one-two punch putdown style of this relatively pedantic reply has me in stitches

> and yet car sales are booming? What gives?

Maybe some people need a car to get to work, plus maybe they also want good optics with it, not wanting to be perceived as "broke" by the rest, so they splurge on a new car without any thoughts on financial responsibility just to keep up appearances.

It’s the optics part that breaks the camel’s back. Any decent car goes from A to B. Only expensive cars have the “optics”. The car is a status symbol that carries you around, and the poorest are the most “vulnerable” to need such a status symbol to compensate.

It mirrors perfectly the luxury fashion industry where more branded merchandise is bought by broke people than by rich ones (unbranded luxury goods are a different beast).

I would disagree for a different definition of optics. As someone else who replied to me mentioned, the top selling vehicle in the US is the Toyota RAV4. Based on the many people I personally know who own them, this is a vehicle that says "I'm doing just fine thanks" even when that is very much not the case.

“Optics” just means you care about how the situation looks like to you or others.

Having a RAV4 when a Yaris would have done the job is optics. Sometimes having any car at all is about optics.

It's not just optics. For consumers who care about safety, newer and more expensive cars generally have significantly higher ratings for both passive crash safety and active collision avoidance. You might not care about such things but there is a real and measurable difference.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings

> plus maybe they also want good optics with it, not wanting to be perceived as "broke" by the rest

I mean, really, who is even looking?

It doesn't even matter if someone is actually looking or not, what matters is that owner has the perception that others are looking, so will act on that.

You don't think many people are judgmental on appearances or at least think they are being judged?

That's the main reason why people get a better paying job, buy a fancier car, fancier clothes, nicer haircut, go to the gym, take Ozempic, etc so they can influence how they are perceived.

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