
The Most Popular Cars in American Cities - Thevet
https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-popular-cars-in-american-cities
======
dsr_
Who wrote this paragraph?

"While some people prefer energy efficient cars, other drivers are more
concerned that their car have a powerful engine. Almost 14% of the cars we
service have an eight-cylinder V engine, more commonly known as a V8. V8
engines are more powerful than the four and six cylinder engines found in more
than two thirds of the cars we service."

This stands out as filler written by someone who doesn't speak English or Car.

~~~
raldi
For those of us who aren't as savvy as you, could you explain what the "Car"
mistakes are?

~~~
dsmithatx
I think he means that anyone who knows even a smidgen about cars would say v8
and not explain it like the audience didn't know what a v8 was.

~~~
raldi
Ah, I see; all _true_ Scotsmen know what a V8 is.

(I, for one, appreciated the extra clarification. If the article had just
said, "14% of cars we service have a V8" it would have been accessible to a
far narrower audience.)

~~~
umanwizard
The no true Scotsman fallacy doesn't mean that words don't have meanings or
that it's impossible to reason about things. "This person writes like a novice
and therefore probably doesn't know much about cars" doesn't invoke the
fallacy at all, regardless of whether it happens to be true.

~~~
raldi
I was referring to the remark that, "anyone who knows even a smidgen about
cars" needs no explanation about V8s.

I know more than a smidgen about cars, but I appreciated the explanation.
Presumably, OP believes that I must not know a _true_ smidgen about cars.

------
nether
Saab 5-Sep is presumably the Saab 9-5.

~~~
tosseraccount
[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=excel+gene+names](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=excel+gene+names)

Mistaken Identifiers: Gene name errors can be introduced inadvertently when
using Excel in bioinformatics.

 _" The date conversions affect at least 30 gene names"_

~~~
mikeash
There was a recent item in comp.risks about an Amber Alert broadcast using
speech synthesis software, which asked listeners with information about the
abduction to "call September 1, 2001."

------
ComputerGuru
What poor writing! I've come to expect way better research and analysis pieces
from startups about their domain (think articles like BackBlaze on drives,
OKCupid on dating and socio-economics, Google on the web, etc)

The'most unusually popular car by city' was rather poorly described and I
think the results reveal that it was not a very proper query, as the 328i is
hardly an 'unusual' car by any means (New York)..

The article mentions the extreme loyalty of the Midwest to buying American but
makes no mention of the fact that the biggest city in the Midwest (Chicago,
obviously) has only 51% American ownership. No mention of age of vehicles,
which is very odd.

------
spo81rty
This American car index is great. Would be nice to see it based on where the
actual cars are made though. Many American brand cars are made in Canada and
Mexico. Just as many Hondas and Toyotas are made in America.

~~~
wil421
Agreed and all BMW SUVs are made in South Carolina. Mercedes makes the larger
SUVs (and some smaller ones too) in Alabama.

~~~
Loughla
I wanted to buy American when I was shopping for a family car recently.

So I bought a Subaru Outback.

------
furyg3
Interesting that nowhere in the article really examines the degree to which
trucks are making the US/foreign difference. Even though the distinction
between US/foreign has been greatly diminished in recent history, the
workhorses of farms and rural areas are american (e.g. F-150).

Cities are by definition not rural, but Oklahoma City is much closer to the
rural lifestyle than, say, SF or NYC.

------
TheBiv
The article should be titled "The Most Popular Cars in American Cities that
YourMechanic services"

~~~
vacri
No, it really shouldn't. This complaining about every title that isn't
caveated to hell and back is getting really tedious. It's the YourMechanic
website. They're up-front about the source of the data, and specify that
source on every table. How much spoon-feeding are people going to demand?

------
Shengbo
Whats the reason for the percentage of American brands being lower in the Bay
Area, NYC, etc.? Do wealthy areas just prefer imports or is there more to it?

~~~
furyg3
My guess would be: compact cars are more desired in very urban areas for many
reasons (size when parking, fuel efficiency in an area where it is more
expensive); less trucks (truck workhorses are overwhelmingly American); and a
higher concentration of rich people so more German imports.

~~~
Shengbo
I totally forgot about gas prices. Looks like some of these trucks can consume
>15l/100km. I guess it only makes sense that we don't have them in Europe.
Especially with recent emission regulations, downsizing, etc.

------
magicbuzz
I had no idea that you could get a Subaru with a V8 engine.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
It was a typo in the article. They didn't change the table title from V8 to
Subaru.

I'm surprised Colorado beat out Seattle, but then the latter doesn't really
have snow unless you go east or skiing.

------
donretag
"American made"

I am assuming the author meant headquartered in the US, because many foreign
vehicles are actually made in US.

------
csours
Well these are kind of silly lists. I would like to see OEM ranks per city (VW
Group, Toyota, GM, Ford, FCA, Nissan, etc), and vehicle classes per city (Half
ton truck, small car, etc)

------
jordache
Subarus with V8 engines? What is yourmechanic.com? Ah yes the prerequisite
tech blog (aka dubious article) in an attempt to sound like a data driven
operation.

What is their sample size?

~~~
cpsempek
The sample size? Probably large enough as it comes from Your Mechanic's "huge
dataset". /s

This is such a poor example of data analysis, even for a non-technical blog
post. No mention of at least normalizing data, no mention of confidence or
measures of uncertainty. Also, as others have mentioned, poorly written.

If this was an attempt, as the comment above implies, to paint themselves at
data driven, they failed. It impressed upon me the opposite, that they have no
grasp of how to analyze and use data effectively.

------
cprayingmantis
While this data has some really neat aspects to it I think they miss some
interesting observations, this is why I wish people would release their data
set more often.

How do they define unusually common? I ask this because there's an interesting
pattern I think you can start to see emerge in the towns with lower
populations. As you go down the list it looks like cheaper foreign cars are
more "unusually popular". I doubt this is a function of where they're located
or culture but I would guess it has more to do with median household income.

It would be even more interesting to map where each car is serviced and see if
you could determine where the most affluent communities are. Or maybe you
could use property values coupled with vehicle values to see if financially
responsible people tend to live in one community or another. You could then
use this data to affect how you advertise in one area or another. Some areas
you may want to market as "A quick affordable, mechanic right at your finger
tips." and in others you may want to market it as "Having your own personal
mechanic that caters to you." Just throwing that out there.

------
dyeje
It would have been nice to do the tables in markup instead of images. I wanted
to Ctrl+F the cities I actually cared about.

------
codezero
Although interesting, this is heavily biased towards cars that need third
party servicing, so probably doesn't include new cars that are within
warranty.

~~~
artag
Yes, you are right. Most of the data on our platform is for out of warranty
cars since that's our target market. Also, 85% of the cars in US are out of
warranty.

~~~
codezero
Wow 85%!

------
baldfat
No state next to the city.

Springfield - Mass?

Bridgeport - CT?

~~~
GabrielF00
I think by Bridgeport they actually mean Fairfield County. The city of
Bridgeport is relatively poor. Fairfield County is one of the wealthiest areas
in America.

~~~
baldfat
I'm from Bethel and it is the sad that only a handful of friends were able to
stay in Fairfield County. Most of us live somewhere else due to cost.

------
drpgq
I would be curious to see the breakdown for Canadian cities. Compared to
America, Canadians really seem to like Chrysler.

~~~
serge2k
Vancouver, Honda Civic

Everywhere else in BC mainland, Pickup (F-150/Ram)

that'd be my guess for BC.

------
itomato
The Prius in San Francisco has more to do with ride sharing than some
stereotypically 'hippy' motivation. That and HOV lane access.

While one can make an argument that ride-sharing can be seen as a 'communal'
effort to 'share wealth', the other is entirely selfish.

In reality, they both are.

------
sakri
The local/import map looks similar to the red/blue state map.

~~~
zeveb
Perhaps oddly, my politics are pretty squarely red-state, but there's no way
I'd buy an American car. I like to imagine that both stem from the same
underlying pattern (I'm a realist/cynic), but perhaps I'm flattering myself
:-)

