G98, Prophet for Our Times: Small-Car Buyers' Big Regrets

[roo_ster]

G98:

This makes me recall that one comic strip you have posted in the past, especially the part I put in bold-face below.

I like that the article also points out the high cost of trading vehicles for the sake of fuel economy. 

Last, I do enjoy the reinforcement this sort of low-high-low price swing has on consumer behavior.  We don;t need gooberment to run people's lives & purchases, price signals will do nicely.

    * NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Small-Car Buyers' Big Regrets
By JONATHAN WELSH

Fran MacDonald got better fuel economy and maneuverability in traffic when she downsized from her Buick sedan to a tiny Chevrolet Aveo. But the small car was noisier and didn't ride as smoothly. And then there were the hand-crank windows.

"I was driving with my mother, and she asked me to put the window down," Ms. McDonald says. "When I told her she'd have to do it herself, she said, 'Well, I don't see a button.' "

While large vehicles often come with a lot of creature comforts built in, compacts tend to be basic, even stripped-down. Ms. MacDonald's Aveo has manual locks. While getting back to automotive basics was part of her plan, she says she misses the Buick's "power everything."

"I really miss my CD player," she adds.

This year's record-high fuel prices drove some consumers to switch to smaller vehicles. Now, as fuel prices have pulled back, many are rediscovering some of the reasons they bought big cars and sport-utility vehicles in the first place.

Perhaps the biggest draw for large vehicles: comfort. Having wide, soft seats to accommodate the ever-growing American physique and space to stash briefcases, totes and handbags has changed from a luxury feature to one drivers take for granted. And as people spend more time in their vehicles, they have come to crave the sense of safety, privacy and insulation that come with larger vehicles.

Sometimes what seems like a small downgrade can lead to big regrets. Blake Schomas traded his 2002 Chevrolet Suburban, an SUV with room for eight, for a relatively fuel-efficient Chrysler Pacifica. The Pacifica is big, but it carries two fewer passengers than the Suburban and cannot tow as much.

"I kind of regret the decision to get rid of the Suburban, which had a lot to do with the price of fuel," says Mr. Schomas, a marketing manager in Hudson, Wis. While his Pacifica's fuel economy beats the old truck's by as much as 40%, the new vehicle seems downright small compared with the Suburban. The big problem is that its third-row seat takes up what would otherwise be room for cargo.

"We have two kids, and if one of them wants to bring a friend, our storage space is reduced to nothing," says Mr. Schomas. It also lacks the bigger truck's "family room" comfort, he says.

Even though average gasoline prices have fallen from a peak of $4.05 a gallon in July to about $2.40 -- dropping about 26 cents in the past week alone -- the broad move to smaller cars is still going strong. Sales of compact cars like the Honda Fit, Nissan Versa and Toyota Yaris have risen 28% through the end of September compared with the same period last year. Midsize cars like the top-selling Toyota Camry, Honda Accord and Chevrolet Malibu are flat. Nearly every other segment of the auto market is declining, with large SUVs down 36%.

Still, some industry experts point out that relatively few motorists are making extreme changes, such as trading in their Chevrolet Suburban for a Smart car. After all, switching vehicles is costly, especially for people trying to unload an undesirable gas guzzler with depressed trade-in value. And with real-estate, credit and other financial markets faltering, high gasoline prices aren't necessarily the biggest problem on consumers' minds.

Some families with two SUVs are replacing one with a smaller car while keeping the other for trips that require a lot of space, says Rebecca Lindland, an analyst with IHS Global Insight, a research company in Lexington, Mass. In many cases, she says, it takes a while for drivers to discover the downside of ditching the four-wheel-drive truck for a frugal compact.

"A lot of people who like their small cars haven't gone through a winter with them yet," Ms. Lindland says.

Driving in harsh winter weather can be more harrowing in small cars because they can feel less stable and secure on snow-covered roads. Less ground clearance means their undersides scrape in a few inches of snow. This also compromises traction, making them harder to control and more likely to get stuck.

Ms. Lindland says she experienced these problems herself a few years ago after trading in her Chevrolet Trailblazer for a BMW Mini. She now drives a BMW X3 SUV.

Phil Gott, one of her colleagues, got rid of a fuel-hungry Dodge Durango and bought a compact Mazda 3 two years ago when gasoline reached $3 a gallon. Recently his wife wanted to take a trip with their daughter and four of her friends, but neither the Mazda nor their other car, a Dodge Neon, had enough room.

"They wound up taking my collector car -- a 1974 Chrysler Imperial," he says. The enormous sedan, with bench seats in front and back, easily accommodates six passengers. "It probably wasn't legal, though," Mr. Gott quips.

A 500-mile-a-week commute convinced Jolie Morris of Wasilla, Alaska, and her husband to trade their 2006 Dodge Ram 3500 pickup for a Honda Civic. The switch cut their fuel bill by more than half. Still, Ms. Morris misses the truck.

"I miss the bigness of it, which makes you feel safer. Plus, it was fun to drive and it sounded great," she says of the rig, which guzzled $600 of diesel fuel each month. The small, fuel-efficient Honda simply makes more sense.

"It was a case of need versus want," she says.

[AZRedhawk44]

Looooooooosers!

[cuddles with V8 Dodge Ram]

I'm going camping and fishing this weekend.  I'm taking all my gear with me.  All of it.  In my ginormous truck bed.  I may rev my engine for fun while I'm at it, just to irk the Piouses that I pass on the highway on the way up.

[/cuddle]

In all seriousness, I considered parting ways with my truck... but I did the math first.

It didn't make any financial sense at all unless gas got near $6 a gallon.  At which point, my truck would have almost no resale value, making it still senseless.

So, I re-iterate:  LOOOOOOSERS!!!11!

They're probably twice as upside down on their car loans in their desperation to "save money," too.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

People like big, useful, safe, fast vehicles.  It's no surprise that people who bought clown cars because of high gas prices now regret it.

[Manedwolf]

I don't understand why people think that "fuel efficient" has to mean "manual-windows POS bubble that would be totaled if hit by a moped".

My full-sized Accord gets 30mpg stock, about 32mpg with stuff I've done to it. It's got plenty of power on the highway and off the line as well, torque to get out of snow, and it's power everything with eight-speaker stereo and silent inside at highway speeds.

The Aveo gets...34mpg only with the jerky cheap stickshift.

2mpg more.

That's IT. Is that worth it to suffer in a car that's far less safe in a crash, and has far less amenities to make the drive comfortable, so you feel relaxed when you get there instead of that you've been fighting a wobbly, noisy econobubble down the road for miles? I've had little rental cars like that, they're exhausting to drive!

[seeker_two]

Maned is right.....fuel efficiency doesn't mean lack of performance....and consistent maintenances and an occasional tune-up will do wonders for both....

I bought my Frontier in '02 with a balance of efficiency and performance in mind...and it's done well even through $4/gal gas.....

[mtnbkr]

The Aveo gets...34mpg only with the jerky cheap stickshift.

You sure about that?  My '93 Toyota Paseo got 30town and 40hwy right up to 200k miles when I sold it (hit a high of 45mph highway on one long flat trip in NC).  It only had a 1.5L engine, but was pretty peppy with its 5spd and had pretty tight handling.  Apparently they made good autocross cars as well.  Anyway, that was a car that would be 15 years old and lacks many of the modern engine management "features", but still got pretty good mileage.  It was the "sporty" version of the Tercel and shared the same mechanical systems.

Chris

[mtnbkr]

FWIW, my 03 Camry gets low-mid 20s and about 30 on the highway with a 4cyl and 5spd.  It did much better before all the gas around here become E10.  It's not a speed demon, but has plenty of pep with the 5spd.

Chris

[Manedwolf]

You sure about that?  My '93 Toyota Paseo got 30town and 40hwy right up to 200k miles when I sold it (hit a high of 45mph highway on one long flat trip in NC).  It only had a 1.5L engine, but was pretty peppy with its 5spd and had pretty tight handling.  Apparently they made good autocross cars as well.  Anyway, that was a car that would be 15 years old and lacks many of the modern engine management "features", but still got pretty good mileage.  It was the "sporty" version of the Tercel and shared the same mechanical systems.

Chris

When I just looked up the Aveo, which is a Daewoo rebadged for Chevy, it showed it as being 34mpg for the manual.

[K Frame]

When it appeared that gas was going to keep going up well past $4, I considered getting a smaller used car that got better gas mileage. But, I would have had to have kept the Subaru, because of Mason.

Out on the highway the Suby gets 25 to 27 miles per gallon. Around town around 18 to 20.

The real sweet part of the deal is that, now days, if I don't do a lot of extra running around, a tank of gas can last me close to a month because I live so close to the office. I think the most I got out of a tank of gas in the past year was a little over 6 weeks last winter.

So, all in all, it just didn't make any sense to get an additional car.

[ronnyreagan]

People like big, useful, safe, fast vehicles. 

I think useful is the key there, at least for me. I liked driving a larger SUV, but never needed all that space so I switched to driving a little Saturn about 5 years ago. While I occasionally miss 4WD, not having it has never stopped me from getting somewhere I want to in the winter and I've had plenty of long drives on snowy roads. It's got almost 250k on it now, probably time to start looking for a newer one.

[mtnbkr]

What keeps us in the larger vehicles now is the family.  With two adults and two children (and frequently a dog), we just can't do it on anything much smaller than our Camry.  A Corolla might work for short roadtrips, but then we would be driving the SUV more often in general, which would result in more fuel usage. 

The little Paseo was plenty big when it was just me and adequate when I got married, but would never work with even one kid, let alone two.  At some point you just have to eat the fuel costs for practicality's sake.

Chris

[zahc]

I've been thinking about new cars recently; it's only a matter of time before one of my cars dies to an extent that it makes more economic sense to replace it than fix it.

I actually have no problem with cranked windows, I don't care about sound systems whatsoever anymore either. I positively hate automatic transmissions. I don't like my car to talk to me, automatically lock my doors, monitor my following distance, warn me about my seatbelt, or anything else.

The result is the typical cheapo care is sometimes more appealing to me than expensive ones. Unfortunately, I don't want a tiny Yaris, though. I would gladly like to buy a larger, better performing car, but they all have gizmo features that I can't stand the thought of having paid for them, almost always with automatic transmissions.

Alternatively I could buy an old 80s is car, but they need maintenance and usually have poor fuel mileage.

[ilbob]

I look at it this way. At 12,000 miles per year, and 16 mpg, I am using 750 gallons of gas per year. If the prcie of gas goes up a buck a gallon it is only $15 a week. not a deal breaker for me.

[Manedwolf]

Buying a car that there are a lot of can be a good choice too, I think. Especially for parts. With over six million 6th generation Accords on the road, finding parts is easy, and if anything went seriously wrong with the engine, simply swapping an entire new low-mileage F23A1 block in would be a lot cheaper than a lot of "repairs" to a damaged one. All of the connections are bolts, locking hoses and snap connectors, nothing is welded. Swaps take a few hours, and that's it, the computer just needs to be put in learning mode and it'll drive a bit rough for a couple hours till it figures out what's what.

Of course, I could also get a swap mounting kit and put in a brand-new K-series engine instead, anything from the Acura line that will physically fit as well, but that costs more. :)

[Desertdog]

I have not yet considered getting a better mileage car, and won't until we run the wheels off the cars we have.  Where we live we do not need a late model car to get around town. 

Mine is a 1990 Dodge grand Caravan with 163,000 miles, and runs good and starts unless the battery is down from being driven, which I have had for 7 years.  Paid in full for 7 tears.

My wifes car is a 1992 Pontiac with 117,000 miles bought and paid for for 3 years ago. A little over $1500 in maintinance, tires and repairs.   Registration on each is $73.  We carry good liability/property damage insurance and no collision insurance, a savings of $200+ when I dropped it.
Our cars for going on long trips are  rental cars.

We get about 13 MPG around town, and put on less than 7500 miles per year. 

I figure buying a $15,000 to $25,000 car to save gas would be one of the stupidest things for me to do.

[Jamisjockey]

Speaking as someone with an Esuvee, truck, and boat.....
Gas prices will come back up with Obama as president.  He has every incentive to penalize big oil to bring prices back so that he can drive forward his liberal energy policies. 

[Pb]

I think new ethanol mandates are coming for the new year.   

I wouldn't expect gas to be "cheap" for too long.

[Gewehr98]

1.  Unless The Chosen One has decreed that gasoline prices will remain as low as they are now for the foreseeable future, I find the comic strip in question still quite relevant. As I mentioned earlier, I predicted that a drop in fuel prices would cause some short-sighted folks to swing back to the FSP mode of transportation, much like a moth to a light bulb, or flies to fecal matter.  How much do you want to bet that crude prices will stay as low as they are, and for how long? Maybe GM should reverse the Suburban/Tahoe facility shutdown in Janesville, based on the last couple of weeks?

2. You can be as in-your-face as you want about my finding irony in a well-known and cyclical historical trend.  It's really no skin off of my nose. Those who buy the big zip-codes-on-wheels are perfectly entitled to buy them, but they had best not be bitching about how much it costs to feed the things after knowing that they weren't particularly fuel-efficient or practical as gas went through the $4.00/gallon mark.  That's my biggest gripe - I can guarantee that nobody held a gun to a soccer mommy's head and told her she absolutely had to buy a 5.7L 4x4 2500-series Suburban to haul her gaggle of crotchfruit to and from Chuck E. Cheese's.  There are indeed folks who need them or have oodles of extra money to burn, and my youngest stepson owns the same exact Suburban I described above.  He used it to haul heavy hot tubs and spas around with a trailer when he did installations and repairs.  Obviously, a 4-banger S-10 wouldn't have worked for his vocation. He cried in his beer when it cost over $170.00 to fill it up a couple months ago, but readily admitted that was the price to pay for such a behemoth. He at least knows the consequence of one's decisions.

3. I bought a new 3.7L Jeep Liberty 4x4 in August.  I'm under no delusions that I was going to save on fuel costs compared to the 2.0L Hyundai Elantra that I traded in for it, but the reality of another nightmare Wisconsin winter like last year, and our two big dogs liking to go for rides made my decision considerably easier.  I've set a budget for fuel based on the $4.00/gallon rate or worse, and now that the stuff is down to $2.23/gallon I feel it's icing on the cake.  If (when) gasoline goes back up anywhere between the current price and what it was a couple months ago, I'm very much ok with paying what it takes to go down the road.  No "woe is me!", no "OMGWTF!", no "I'm doomed!", no "I can't afford to drive!", none of that horse puckey.  24mpg highway is fine for a heavy Jeep that's as aerodynamic as a brick, and if I want better, I can still scoot down the highway in my 2.2L FlexFuel S-10.   

4. Ford is scaling back on their V-8 production, instead focusing on producing V-8 horsepower and torque out of next-generation turbocharged V-6 engines, while maintaining the fuel economy of the latter.  I'd wager GM and Chrysler are probably doing something similar.  This didn't come about based on a whim of fancy from those corporations, it's a survival maneuver. That's assuming, of course, that the highest jobless rate in 14 years (as reported in today's newspapers) doesn't put the kibosh on such projects. 

5.  Go out and buy that big FSP.  If you have a big FSP already and still owe on it or have recently paid it off, don't trade it in on an econobox for the simple gain in fuel mileage - that's just plain foolhardy. But whatever you do, do it now before The Chosen One redistributes your wealth for you.  After all, it's for the children. 

[HankB]

My mother has an '06 Toyota Avalon. 3.5 liter V-6, 268hp. Performance is on a par with what passed for a muscle car in the mid-70s, (caveat: by the mid-70s, engines were choked with smog controls) and it will seat five very comfortably.  Ride is quiet and smooth. In what I'd term "hill country suburban" driving, it's consistently around 24-26 mpg, and tops 30 on the highway.

And it's not a glorified golf cart with a little tinfoil wrapped around it.

I've got an '06 Nissan Pathfinder 4x4 myself, and average a hair under 18 mpg. (2 mpg better than my old '93 Explorer.) But I figure the extra gas is my "insurance premium" . . . the price I pay to drive a vehicle that would be a mite more survivable in a crash than an itty bitty unibody POS.

It's not so bad, since neither of us are folks who put 50,000 miles a year on his vehicle . . . and most importantly, both vehicles are paid for. 

[Tallpine]

I can guarantee that nobody held a gun to a soccer mommy's head and told her she absolutely had to buy a 5.7L 4x4 2500-series Suburban to haul her gaggle of crotchfruit to and from Chuck E. Cheese's.

I fail to see what such derogatory terms add to your argument

 :rolleyes:

[Gewehr98]

It's satire, and unfortunately, true. I could very easily find the local newspaper articles from that particular demographic, bemoaning the cost of feeding their chosen FSPs.  It would be funny if it weren't so sad...

[Zed]

I Drive This.



It has a 7.3L Diesel V8 & gets around 20mpg in town.

Many Econo Boxes get worse mpg.

[Ryan in Maine]

Zed, you get 20mpg in town in that? For serious? 

[Modifiedbrowning]

Speaking as someone with an Esuvee, truck, and boat.....
Gas prices will come back up with Obama as president.  He has every incentive to penalize big oil to bring prices back so that he can drive forward his liberal energy policies. 

Go to www.change.gov , he is already calloing for a windfall profit tax on oil companies.

I guess I am the last guy in the world to actually like a stickshift, manual locks and windows. I would hate having power everything in my car.

[Tallpine]

I guess I am the last guy in the world to actually like a stickshift, manual locks and windows. I would hate having power everything in my car.

My pickup is a 1976 3/4 ton GMC  :)

Granny low four speed and dimmer switch on the floor

I love the old thing.  It only has 90 something thousand original miles.  But it's only a two wheel drive so I can't get it up on some hills to retrieve firewood