Tough segment. There are examples like https://kilow.com/pages/la-bagnole of a cheap, small car but it’s basic utilitarian. It is NOT a status symbol. It’s equivalent to a cargo bike or long tail bike : it’s not sexy, it’s small range, you can’t bring lots of people or furniture, it’s JUST to go from A to B, mostly in small city or on the country side (if the roads are safe enough).
Meanwhile cars keep on being advertised, and thus mostly perceived, as something to travel with, to show of, to protect oneself and your family against the “others” as dangers on the road. Cars keep on getting bigger, higher and consequently heavier, polluting more (yes, even EVs, at least for pollution come from tires erosion on roads) and the acceptance window keeps on moving up.
Until laws get in place, like in Paris, to make SUVs expensive due to their impact on ourselves and our environment, car companies will keep on pushing for whatever makes the most money.
Cars keep on getting bigger,
(US) I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that “small” trucks are starting to shrink again. Seems they finally hit critical mass.
I remember when the Toyota Tacoma was a truly small truck (up through the late 1990s, maybe early 2000s?). If I’m not mistaken, the 2015-2020ish Tacoma is the size of the 90s Toyota Tundra which was a “big” truck at the time. It’s stupid. I need a truck but I don’t need a $100,000 tank with a quad cab and a useless fucking tiny bed. About 75% of the people I know that buy those huge quad cab trucks actually need a minivan because all they use it for is shuttling their kids around but, of course, minivans aren’t “cool”.
… now I’m getting off topic but minivans are freaking awesome. Assuming the seats are stowable or removable, you get a ton of (enclosed) cargo space (more than those stupid quad cab trucks with tiny beds) and can optionally move a lot of people or a lot of cargo. They are fantastic for road trips if you need more space than a typical sedan.
This is one of the things in life that makes me irrationally angry. Give us small trucks that are actually small.
(US) I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that “small” trucks are starting to shrink again. Seems they finally hit critical mass.
I fucking pray this is true. All I want in a vehicle is a late 90s style pickup with a single cab and a full bed to drive on the highway. I don’t need passenger space, I don’t need ridiculous ground clearance, I don’t need an engine powerful enough for towing. I just need something to haul furniture and lumber around in, maybe some yard waste if I ever manage to afford a house. Bonus points if it’s electric.
If nothing like that comes out I’ll just keep driving my Honda civic until it disintegrates and borrow my dad’s shitty Colorado when necessary.
Hurray! The GDP is saved!
hugs Civic si
you’ll get all the motors and transmissions you need, widdle guy.
My last car was a civic si. It was a great car.
There was a whole line of outstanding Civic models for a while there. I miss the Del Sol.
I just want a small car I can work on myself. 30 years ago, I could maintain my own car, do some shadetree mechanics…
But all cars today are meant to be black boxes. All need proprietary tools and computers to do almost anything.
Dear Santa, could I have a 67 camaro.
I’m still chugging along doing maintenance but yeah it’s getting ridiculous. Just as a metric: service manual length.
My motorcycles: ~800 pages
My 2010: ~1800 pages
My 2016: ~13500 pages
I fear to see a more modern vehicle. I don’t own anything newer.
A lot of the page increase is all the diagnostic code debugging. Modern vehicles have way too many computers.
I have a gearless (fixie) bike since last Summer, I don’t even have a manual for it, not do I really need one.
Before that I had a fancy e-bike which nobody but the manufacturer could fix. Even bike shops would warn “We can fix the mechanical parts but we don’t touch the electronics, if it fails while we fix it, it’s on you.” and basically saying they would prefer not to fix it.
Now my bike is so basic I don’t care and I think it’s even safer from potential robbers.
So… in my own experience, less is more! It’s less maintenance, it’s less money, it’s less temptation for others, and ironically enough in this specific case it’s even healthier. I use it everyday, from Sunny spring to rain and snow, it just works.
Simplifying is empowering.
I’m very pro simplifying, but you’ll take my freewheel from my cold dead legs. The only part of my bike that I struggle to repair is I still can’t true a wheel despite trying many times
I’ll take more complex computers over trying to get KE-Jetronic to run properly any day of the week lol
Honestly, things have gotten easier for me with the extra computers. Usually if something electrical is wrong, there’s a code for it. Can’t blindly trust the code of course, but it’s usually a good place to get started when doing diagnostics.
I’m told that Americans only want big expensive cars but for some reason the government felt the need to slap 100% tariffs on small inexpensive Chinese cars.
Because Chinese cars are priced at a loss to corner the market and put competition out of business.
Meanwhile VW and other manufacturers make smaller more affordable cars, but they don’t sell them here.
That’s because the goal isn’t to sell you a car, it’s to saddle you with a $50K debt obligation they get to sell off.
Exactly. If they were incentivised to encourage the best vehicle for the customer they’d be talking most people into a subcompact or minivan
I have an electric golf cart that I can take on any roads 35 mph or lower, I’m saving for a lithium upgrade so I can go farther than 15 miles round trip. I had my last vehicle stolen when cars were not available at the beginning of COVID. I bought a mini van to replace it, it cost twice what I wanted to pay but I have to have a good vehicle for the family and a sedan just wasn’t realistic. Luckily insurance also paid out over twice what my stolen vehicle originally cost me because of the market at the time. I love my mini van but I usually only drive it once or twice a week, most of my daily trips are in the golf cart.
Cars from the late 80s and early 90s are still fine today if produced; relatively safe, good fuel economy, air-conditioning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_(fourth_generation)
Heck, 4/5 people would be happy with a side by side ATV as a form of transportation in urban/suburban areas. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
A golf cart is suitable for at least 50% of people currently driving in cities, as the majority of small cars are just grocery getters. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
Something is fundamentally wrong with the transportation; size, power, cost of cars.
The Honda fit is the best urban car I’ve ever driven. Street parking? No problem. I can fit a bike in the back or put my rack on for two. It seats 5 just like an suv. Great milage. Sure I wish it was electric and had android auto but otherwise it’s amazing. Hell it handled a drive across the country stuffed completely full with stuff we didn’t want to risk in a shipping box
Cars from the late 80s and early 90s are still fine today if produced;
Unfortunately they can not even be bought used because they’ve all rusted through (Japanese ones anyway, others are hit and miss)
relatively safe
Citation needed, they’re usually missing most of the new safety features, that’s why they can be so small and light
good fuel economy
Maybe if you’re in the US where diesels are the devil and everything has to be a truck. Modern cars have better fuel economy at even twice the weight. You can get similar or better highway fuel economy out of a 2.5 tonne Audi SQ7 tdi compared to a small 1 tonne 90s Honda Civic. Diesel of course helps a lot in that regard. But if a huge ass performance SUV gets similar mileage compared to a 90s ecobox, imagine what a normally sized modern car can do.
air-conditioning
Was by no means standard on those, at least in Europe. Be lucky to have heated seats in a 90s Japanese ecobox, AC was nearly unheard of, and wasn’t standard even in the 00s.
That’s not even getting into emissions, which are the reason you don’t get these cheap and simple 80s and 90s engines anymore. Now you need EGR to manage NOx, catalytic converters to manage CO2 and if it’s a brand new car, even petrol engines need to have particulate filters.
Heck, 4/5 people would be happy with a side by side ATV as a form of transportation in urban/suburban areas. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
A golf cart is suitable for at least 50% of people currently driving in cities, as the majority of small cars are just grocery getters. https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-news/cheapest-utility-side-by-sides/
Do any of these even have proper heating? Or like how do you demist the windshield between September and April when it’s too cold to drive an open vehicle and too humid to not have heating and ideally AC to reduce humidity in the car?
They just look like nice summer toys.
The Honda Civic has had the same fuel economy now since the late 80s https://www.fuelly.com/car/honda/civic at 30mpg The VTEC engine has been computer powered for the same time, and has used a Catalytic converter that whole time. Only now, with an electric motor for first gear, do we see any mpg improvement.
The main safety feature, is that they gotten heavier.
15-minute duration, covering approximately 9.3 miles at an average speed of 18.6 mph" https://en.phongnhaexplorer.com/qna/travel/what-is-the-average-distance-of-a-car-trip.html#gsc.tab=0 Most cars don’t even heat up in that time, an ATV or golf cart would be fine.
The Japanese haven’t actually advanced much in the automotive industry in recent decades, so I’m not surprised there.
And yes, extra airbags, bigger crumple zones and noise insulation add weight and since.
My 2019 C class did about 60 mpg extraurban and it’s significantly bigger. 30 sounds about right for urban. Cars have gotten better. Hondas? Ehh.
Even my diesels have started heating up the windshield in 5 minutes at most. You let it idle for 2 or 3 while removing the snow anyway. Or use webasto. Petrol engines of any real size heat up quicker so they don’t usually need such things.
For some reason most of America decided that they needed a massive truck or SUV that could haul a semi trailer yet their needs 99.9% of the time are short trips and buying groceries.
Americans didn’t decide it. Loophole in fuel efficiency laws ties the fuel economy footprint to carriage size. So to get around this, the manufacturers started making the cars larger, wider, and boxier. It’s why even small sedans are several inches wider than they used to be, when you can find them at all.
Something about companies lobbying for less tax on huge cars.
Well you need to BE SAFE and walking is SCARY.
deleted by creator
You should try not tariffs.
Car prices were on the rise long before the tarrif crap. Yes the tariffs continue to make it worse, but this was a trend already! As long as people are willing to pay 50 grand for a rav4 with leather seats they will continue to pump their numbers up. I know VERY few people that drove a car more than 10 years old, their afraid it will break down on them when the reality is their newest 700$ /mo POS techno trash on wheels will be dead long before my 87 gives up the ghost.
The symbol for this are the run down ranch houses near me that look like dumps but they have a $70K truck in front.
Unsustainable grift is unsustainable? Wow I’m shocked.
Step 1: oligopoly. Step 2: Make less stuff, make it worse, and make it more expensive. Step 3: Use the wealth hoarded that way to make it easier to become a monopoly.
A literal decade late on that headline, good work CNN!
my car is not reliable enough to justify keeping it anymore, and i chose to buy a honda ruckus instead of a new vehicle simply bc we cant afford the payments or potential repairs on 2 cars anymore. it is working because my partner works from home so we can get by with one car, and i do as much commuting on my ruckus as i can.
I wish I lived somewhere I could daily a scooter. I have a small collection of old Honda scooters I managed to snag off of marketplace just before covid/Trump made everything whack expensive. They spend most of the year in the shed because there’s either a foot of snow on the ground or I’m traveling for work.
I recommend getting an upgraded seat for that ruckus because the stock one in my opinion is pretty rough. They also make some neat bags that fit in the under seat area.
thanks for the advice! it has underseat storage all kitted out but i am open to suggestions for saddlebags or similar. also is it worth it to find a windscreen (i ride in iowa in the winter lol)
A windscreen on my old motorcycle made a world of difference comfort wise. I image it will help in the cold too.
- Make car dependant infrastructure for every single city or town
- Refuse to innovate, build only “luxury” models
- ???
- ProfitSimilarly with housing. Why make cheap starter homes when you can make so much more with “Luxury” homes and condos.
It cost nearly the same to make a luxury unit as a stripped down one. Most of the cost is labor. Spend 5 k in fancier materials and get 50k for the unit.
Similar to literally every market that involves ‘things’, as we transition from failing liberal capitalism to horrifying technofascist neofeudalism (aka cyberpunk dystopia).
The next step is… well they won’t lower the luxury prices, everything becomes renting, loaning, etc, even further and harder… untill you end up with bundled subscription plans / leases on a diverse array of physical things, as we currently have with bundles of online services.
We literally going to transition to a subscription based model for just being alive.
… unless enough people actually do something effrctive about it.
Other wise, the K shaped economy becomes a === shaped economy. You’re either on top, or you’re not, and you’re basically treated as a kind of cattle; raised, milked, then expended whenever it is most profitable to do so.
And yet use the same cheap materials in the “luxury” ones that you would have used in the cheap ones anyway!
I follow some home inspectors who post videos from their new home inspections, and holy crap the things they find are ridiculous. Like, construction companies should lose their licenses bad.
I visit some partially built homes from time to time, and recently saw one just after it had been inspected. On one wall, on the insulation, the inspector had scrawled STUD? In red felt.
The stud was completely missing from the wall. It was just an empty frame filled with insulation. You’d think someone would have noticed earlier during construction, but obviously the actual contractor had just let the day labor go to town and never bothered to review their work before inspection.
A lot of times, it’s the contractor cutting corners and hoping no one notices.
lol, that is 100% every australian apartment built in the last 15 years. the window frames are plastic and the cladding is combustible… but it’s got Italian tiles and “European appliances” so it’s an “executive suite”. that will be $1.5million fuck you very much.
There’s a difference between “cheap” and “inexpensive.” Mcmansions are cheap.
People wanted those mcmansions and rebuilds jack up prices. Now those massive suburban mcmansions are getting old in the tooth and no one wants to buy them. They are realizing they need to build smaller homes finally. We’ll probably see more townhomes with shared structures (walls/roofs).
Before they were building mcmansions and charging a fortune for them. Now they’re building sardine cans and charging a fortune for them. Much better.
- Force you to rent an apartment
- Refuse to build anything affordable, only “luxury” models
- ???
- Profit
- Capitalism
- ???
- Planetary Doom
Don’t forget the government cutting funding for affordable housing projects.
Amateur hour, my government funds ‘affordable’ housing projects that cost 300 grand and immediately turn into overpriced rentals.
I recently read an article about “affordable” apartments being constructed an hour or so away. 900 SF, one br and bath, $2200, in a right to work, $7.25/hr minimum wage state.
At least housing is actually being built, but I know what you mean. Theres no real affordable housing near me and the wait list for what little is available has been closed due to budget cuts.
Sorry I didn’t get that, did you say you wanted an even larger pickup truck?
Can you jack up the front so I can’t see and put a bar on it so I can kill anyone I hit? Thanks.
We’re way ahead of you! Our engineers have worked tirelessly to come up with an extra flat front that maximises impact with unsuspecting pedestrians
Can I get it angled to ensure they’re swept under? I don’t want to risk them hitting my 1’ of windshield
Thanks to the invention of debt, we can continue taking from the poor what they don’t even have!
They do have it. It’s the value they generate while working. That’s what we’ve always taken, regardless of the exact financial tool used.
- Cede sedans to Japanese car companies.
Even they aren’t selling them as much in the US any more. You don’t really see many new Accords or Camrys any more, you see CR-Vs and Rav4s.
Trump tariffs combined with the policy to ‘make in America and buy American’ is going as well as predicted then.
Except American cars still source more than half of their parts outside the country. On top of that they are made far worse than foreign cars.
I saw something about being approved for “up to 100k” for a car loan. 100k for a car? Man, this country is fucked.
There are pickups being made that are more than $100k. It’s absolutely absurd.
And their beds are spotless because they are used just for regular driving with 1 or 2 people. You could do that with a compact car.
