I think part of the problem is that safety and fuel economy regulations have made it unprofitable to manufacture basic cars.
But my slightly-conspiratorial view is also that companies want to engage in a kind of "customer indoctrination", where they want to train customers to expect and demand high-margin low-value features, so they can freely cut lower-margin sections of their product line. Sort of like the "starve the beast" approach, but for consumer preferences.
The problem is entirely that the vast majority of new car buyers don't want "basic cars."
Even car enthusiasts, who talk endlessly about how simple cars are better, will point out how poor of a deal a new "basic" car is compared to a used luxury car. Jalopnik and the like used to constantly run articles like, "Why buy a new Honda Civic when you can get this 2012 Infiniti G35 for the same price?!!?" Sometimes they were tongue-in-cheek, featuring something like an Maserati, but most of the time, it was genuine advice.
It's totally possible to sell cheap, basic cars in the USA and make a profit, but the key is that those cars need to sell. Companies have tried for years to make the formula work. The Versa, Mirage, Fiesta, and Fit were all basic, no frills transportation, but the only one left is the Versa.
I think it's hypocritical of people who don't own one of those (preferably that they bought new) to complain about lack of basic cars in the USA. If you weren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to drive a basic car, why should you complain about other people not making the same sacrifice?
> But my slightly-conspiratorial view is also that companies want to engage in a kind of "customer indoctrination",
Or...Vehicles exist at a high enough price point that price/performance is a key driver of value. Spending more on a larger, more capable vehicle makes sense if you plan to use it for the next 15 years. Transaction costs on cars are insane. So if one buy small, then trade up as one needs, then it's going to be much more expensive in the long run than just going big the first time.
Barring pickup trucks, the best selling vehicles in the USA are all pretty much mid-level, family-focused transportation: Rav4, CRV, Rogue, Camry. These are big enough to haul a family, but not loaded to the gills with luxury appointments.
> The problem is entirely that the vast majority of new car buyers don't want "basic cars."
Mostly, I'd like to buy a basic car, but in the US, you've mostly got to buy off the lot, and basic cars aren't well stocked; maybe they don't sell as fast so dealers don't stock them, maybe they don't make as much margin so dealers don't stock them, either way, they're not there so you can't buy them. You might be able to convince a dealer to order it, but then you're usually not going to get any of the promotions, and it's not worth waiting 2-3 months and paying more so you don't have to get the features you don't want.
It's probably both - there isn't a lot of margin in something like a base model vehicle compared to its upmarket family and not a lot of people come in looking for a vehicle with manual crank windows and a stick shift (I WOULD) so they aren't flying off the lot.
I wonder if there is a feedback loop between this phenomenon and income inequality. People in the "lower middle" income tier can't afford anything but the cheapest basics (or are forced to switch to used cars), so demand becomes skewed towards higher quality stuff, so the product mix gets adjusted towards higher quality stuff, further increasing prices, etc.
I don't own any of the cars you mention and don't care to. I also, however, don't care to own a luxury brand, or even some mid-level with fully loaded options, or even what you would probably consider to be a reasonably priced modest choice, e.g. Toyota Corolla, for that matter. Why? Because when I think of "great, small, cheap cars", I don't think any of those fit the bill. All the aforementioned cars (including your recommendations) all share one or more qualities with luxury buys that disqualify them from being considered by my rubric as "basic cars". Bezos famously drove a beater. At some point he upgraded to a newer (but still old) Honda Accord that I would probably classify similarly—not basic enough.
I own (and for years drove) a mid-90s Mustang. (Still owned, but no longer driven.) It is/was a great economy car, which crucially by my rubric includes low-cost maintenance, given that it lends itself to easy repair. Still it came with some things outside the bare essentials, including AC, power locks, power windows, a nice stereo, and zero smart features (another pro in my book, not a con). Having never bought and owned one of the cars you recommend, where do I stand, in your book, on being able to complain about the state of access to basic and affordable cars in the US car market?
> Or...Vehicles exist at a high enough price point that price/performance is a key driver of value. Spending more on a larger, more capable vehicle makes sense if you plan to use it for the next 15 years.
Alternatively: we know that people are not rational actors, and car ownership is just one of the many things that people can be observed to be incredibly irrational about (to the point of acting counter to their best interests and/or their own stated interests).
>All the aforementioned cars (including your recommendations) all share one or more qualities with luxury buys that disqualify them from being considered by my rubric as "basic cars". Bezos famously drove a beater.
Ah, I'm curious what new car you consider to be "basic". I'm guessing none of them are. Whatever "beater" Bezos drove, probably has a modern analog, and that modern analog is probably the same price or cheaper, adjusted for inflation; safer; and more reliable.
Simple does not mean reliable, and reliability does not require simplicity. First-gen Lexus LS400s are still rolling around after 30 years, despite being a flagship vehicle that was loaded with enough technology to compete with top end Mercedes. Meanwhile, a Trabant is as simple as cars get, but keeping one going is quite the challenge, even though pretty much every part on one can be built by a local specialist, or adapted from another vehicle.
You'll get 250k miles and 20 years out of a new Corolla. And if the car has a fundamental defect that prevents that from happening, they'll make it right with an out of warranty repair. See: Taco drivers who received new chassis or cars with the 2AZ-FE who received complete engine rebuilds under warranty, even on vehicles with well over 100k miles. After that, because Toyota sold millions of them each generation (and shared parts with millions of other cars), you can easily find a lifetime supply of replacement parts. And that's what you like about your Mustang, right?
> Alternatively: we know that people are not rational actors, and car ownership is just one of the many things that people can be observed to be incredibly irrational about (to the point of acting counter to their best interests and/or their own stated interests).
Two of my siblings bought the basic transportation people are espousing here: one an older Civic, the other a Mazda2. Neither owned those cars for more than 18 months because, like many 20-somethings, "oopsies" happened and they find out things like, car seats don't fit if the person in the front seat is over 5'6, or strollers are gigantic. Both ended up trading their cars in for a minivan and a crossover. Both took a bath on the trades too.
This was irrational behavior. They were buying the car they could live with now with the expectation of keeping it for 15 years. A rational person would consider what life looks like in 15 years if they were planning on keeping a car that long.
The aforementioned used Mustang is/was good for 250k more miles after purchase and 20 more years, too, but it didn't cost as much as a new Corolla does, even adjusted for inflation.
I've driven both. I'll take the Mustang on that alone, even though gas mileage is better in the Corolla.
Naturally, I've done maintenance and repairs on a Mustang from the mid-90s. I'm guessing you haven't. I've only done minimal repairs on a new Corolla. The Corolla loses there, too.
Strike 3 really is the price. Given all this, you'd think the one with these downsides would be cheaper or something. Otherwise, you're putting one car up against a less desirable one, except it also costs more money? Would you pay extra for the privilege of having a bird shit on you while you walk down the street—where not paying means trudging through your day shitless? The choice is simple.
With lots of things in life, you expect there to be some sort of tradeoff involved. With food, for example, maybe something tastes great but it's bad for you, or vice versa. It doesn't always work like that, though.
New cars are like chicken-fried steak in a competition with salad: no pros, all cons. I hate chicken fried steak, and if you hate chicken-fried steak, too, but your view of the world is one where tradeoffs are axiomatic and inescapable, then the natural outcome is to find yourself probably on the cusp of thinking that you should, like, eat more chicken-fried steak, even though you don't like it—or more precisely: because you don't like it. But that's crazy, and you shouldn't! Something can both taste bad and be bad for you while other things (like a salad) can be better for you and be delicious. It turns out there's actually lots of stuff like this, and the car market in 2022 is one of them.
Barring any changes (like Bezos taking a personal interest in fixing this problem and making the hypothetical Costco car a real thing), fuck the whole industry.
> I'm curious what new car you consider to be "basic". I'm guessing none
That doesn't sound conspiratorial at all. All sorts of features drift from being 'luxury items' to 'no one will buy a car without it.' In my life time time this has happened with air conditioning, power windows, heated seats. To say nothing of mandated safety features.
I think the way auto makers have 'trained' their customers is by removing the granularity of customization. Back in the day, every possible option could be tweaked when you ordered a new car. I knew a family that ordered their van with (standard) upholstery seats in the front, but cheaper vinyl seats in the back (because small kids with drinks).
You can't cherry pick features now, you just get 3 or 4 trim packages: base / standard / luxury / luxury + sport. And base is so punishingly sparse it only exists to lower the 'starting at' price in ads.
And that level of indoctrination is nothing compared to the 60 years long campaign to keep most urban development zoned as car-centric sprawl.
It’s kind of crazy how many things are mandated now that weren’t 20 years ago. Abs, traction control, airbags for both driver and passenger, rear camera (which means a screen to view it is also mandated), more and more emissions controls, etc. Not saying all or most of these are bad things but the number of expensive electronic and mechanical add-ons legislated into every vehicle makes it basically impossible to make a “basic” car.
There is a definite bump in the last couple years (likely covid-related) but we are still at about 1/2 the rate of the 60s/70s/80s, and roughly 1/3 the rate per-mile driven. Even by total deaths, fewer people died last year than in most every year of the 1960s. The increasing safety standards of the modern road system (cars and infrastructure) should be applauded as an engineered success story.
Roughly two or times as many people die each year of alcohol abuse. If we are going after dangerous evils there are better areas to attack.
the argument in the NYT piece[0] is that the US is not doing enough to protect pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists[1] compared to other rich nations. (obviously because they have less cars than the US, so the article just points out that "cars first" costs a lot of lives)
> If we are going after dangerous evils there are better areas to attack.
Absolutely, but ... I'm not saying "it's all connected" and all of it is due to suburban sprawl, but ... it's a common factor.
If people were not driving, drinking, vaping, fentanyling in their little isolation cubes (ah, I mean cars, or houses with perfectly useless backyards, or tents), they might die less. Low population density does nasty things to communities. NIMBYs keep density low, commute times high, etc.
Meh. US culture was always a bit too simplistic, from homesteading the manifest destiny to "USSR has fallen, democracy won" and finally with "first black president elected, racism officially over guys", and now it seems society entered a post-modernist phase.
I mean the obvious fallacies[0] of these oversimplifications are getting the spotlight culturally. And it's mighty polarizing. One one hand it's too much for some people and on the other hand it's still nothing substantial for others.
[0] Yes, the USSR has fallen, but Putin built a cleptocracy, also here comes China. Oh, yes Obama got elected and the ACA is nice, but it hardly moved the needle for millions of people. The benefits of half a century of global and domestic changes concentrated in the top ~30%, and the drawbacks hit the bottom ~30%, and weaponized selfishness, shortsightedness, and radical demagoguery (ie. ingroup vs outgroup populism, both the eat-the-rich and the republiklan variety) are on the rise again, because social media maximizes engagement.
I am going to be very sad when I find I can no longer buy a car without bullshit like parking sensors, auto braking, digital screens, tracking/logging and so on.
It's not really a conspiracy. Even setting aside all the ads/product placement for SUVs and trucks, you can't really go to a dealership and expect them to have any make/model, like types of jeans at a levi's store. You can only buy what they have for sale, which is big autos with high profit margins. The big 3 automakers in the US simply aren't making smaller cars like they used to.
"“You know, carmakers always say they build what people want. But they never mention the fact that they spend billions to tell them what they want. It wasn’t just that consumers spontaneously desired a truck that was as big as a house. No, that was a gradual process. And it has been pushed by the automakers primarily because bigger equals more profit.”"
I think case in point with this is the engine bay cover that a lot of cars have these days. To me these sorts of design elements are useless costs unless they exist for these two reasons: either to scare off the curious from ever seeing the full beast, or to make it annoying enough to repair for the handy person who after seeing the amount of labor required for what used to be a trivial repair in older cars, simply opts for taking it to the service center because they lack time or an engine lift or any proprietary tooling.
I can't imagine they reduce a significant amount. I've driven some more recent cars that did not have these covers and they weren't any louder or anything. Most noise comes from your exhaust, if you don't believe it just take off your muffler and see what happens.
It doesn’t require any conspiratorial thinking. If the math says that the company will lose sales to higher-margin products by offering low-margin ones, it’s a simple calculation to make the most profitable choice.
Of course, potential consumers could switch to a cheaper product from another manufacturer — in a sufficiently free market the unfulfilled demand for the low-margin option should be enough warrant a new entrant if the market is big enough.
TLDR if enough people wanted a simple car, someone would make it even if the existing companies don’t want to.
I'm not sure where I read it, but Toyota apparently saves money in the USA by making optional features included in the base model. In the 90's and early 00's, US companies would churn out base models with crank windows, manual transmissions, etc. Toyota found it was cheaper to engineer/build cars with fewer options, especially one's that everyone chose anyway. And customers didn't feel nickle and dimed.
That makes sense to me. That's part of why the Model T was so cheap.
>Toyota found it was cheaper to engineer/build cars with fewer options, especially one's that everyone chose anyway
It's easy when you're Toyota and the overwhelming majority of your customers are middle class on up consumers.
When you're Nissan or Chrysler and you NEED to offer low MSRP stuff so your customers can just barely qualify for the loan or you're Ford and you NEED to offer base spec stuff for the fleet customers it's not so easy.
Sounds like that underlines the OP's point. Toyota makes more profit in the US on a Tacoma designed for US tastes and price points. The US demand for Hiluxes isn't enough to either persuade Toyota to add it to their US line or importers to pay the import tariff.
But my slightly-conspiratorial view is also that companies want to engage in a kind of "customer indoctrination", where they want to train customers to expect and demand high-margin low-value features, so they can freely cut lower-margin sections of their product line. Sort of like the "starve the beast" approach, but for consumer preferences.