I hear you. My wife and I never bought a used car. My dad ONLY bought used cars and some of them were not so hot. Her dad always had new cars and luxury ones at that. We decided as young marrieds that we would buy new when we could. As a result we had plenty of car debt most of our marriage until now. As a retiree with a true fixed income, the adding of car payments has been something we've been avoiding.
I'm not happy. I love cars! And I've had my Acura TL Type S for almost 13 years. It's a perfect car. Runs like a top. Nothing ever goes wrong. It's very fast. Just sprung for the timing belt change so it's good for another 13 years. It's only had one set of brakes and needs them probably in 10,000 miles.
But I'm bored. Cars don't wear out anymore. You just get bored. Folks of my generation (Boomers) grew up in the 50s when car designs changed radically every year and cars lasted 3 years if you were lucky. There was a SERVICE station on every corner because cars needed constant service, just about every 10,000 miles for something. I remember when even front wheel bearings needed repacking every time you had the tires rotated. Tires rotated??? Bias ply tires didn't last long enough to worry about rotating. Every system… name one… was shot by 50,000 miles. Now you don't even need spark plugs in 100,000 and even then they're probably okay. With direct ignition, where every plug has its own coil driven by a computer, nothing wears out. Distributors were mechanical contraptions that had all kinds of parts that wore out. Now… nada!
And with the advent of total electric vehicles even less wears out. Tesla doesn't even have an identifiable service network. Imagine the cost savings for an auto manufacturer when you don't need to support a vast dealer/service network. In the Tesla, nothing wears out. The traction motors are probably good for 1,000,000 miles. All the controls are digital. The batteries are bullet proof and can probably be changed quickly. Brakes don't wear out since the regenerative braking is so effective you don't need to actually apply the brake pedal until you actually stopped and don't want to accidentally roll into an intersection. No fluids, no radiator, no transmission, no belts, nothing. It's so compelling that as soon as the charging network is as comprehensive as Biden says it should be, internal combustion cars will go the way of cars with crank starters.
Forgive me for writing editorials every so often. I find it fun.
