I totally agree with the point about all new cars looking completely ridiculous. I have never understood why there isn't a low cost automaker that has only the bare minimum - the style barely ever changes and looks decent, manual everything, bare minimum heat/ac, minimum radio that can easily be replaced, as cheap as possible - is the only reason this doesn't exist because of ever increasing regulations?
Dacia does this in Europe, their lowest priced car that has exactly zero features comes in at 9999EUR with an optional spare wheel for an additional 150EUR.
If you want AC and a radio you’re looking at about 12k EUR, which definitely isn’t terrible. It’s a Renault subsidiary and you see a fair amount of them driving around.
So yeah, it’s not like offering an affordable bare-bone car isn’t possible in mature markets, it’s more likely that Americans just don’t have an appetite for them.
The affordable car is definitely being tested though. Renault discontinued the Twingo last year, which was their smallest car. Audi discontinued the A1, claiming there’s just no money to be made in their lowest segment.
It’s looking pretty bleak for the utilitarians among us, as electrification happens and safety features such as lane assist and emergency stop systems become mandatory, base prices will consistently be higher. You can only drive down the price of components so much.
The Audi A1 was over $30,000. That's not "testing the affordable car"! Honda HR-V and Honda Civics are selling like crazy (<$25,000). Ford Maverick at $20,000 sold out a YEAR before the vehicles had even been manufactured. America has a completely insatiable demand for <$20,000 vehicles but no one makes them.
The Fit wasn’t discontinued in North America for a lack of buyers. It was built in the same factory in Mexico where Honda builds the HR-V, which is a small crossover that is mechanically similar to the Fit. Honda found that the HR-V was more profitable and sold even better than the Fit, so they just dedicated the whole factory to HR-V production.
Sort of similar to Ford discontinuing the Focus despite it selling fairly well. It was a lot of effort for a narrow profit margin so they shifted into more profitable vehicles. A shame because the Focus and the Fit were both reasonable, affordable choices.
Worst part about discontinuing the Focus is that the Focus Electric went with it. Sure, it was a regulation-requirement car, but it drives well and does what city folks need; 100KM range is enough for most people's day. Works well as a second car.
We desperately need sub-20k electric cars and they just don't exist.
There are some nice functional design elements (for instance, the back seats are truly fold flat which provides a surprising amount of storage). That said, I am honestly tempted by going up market to a GTI for a little more fun in a similar package.
I do recommend a GTI -- any recent generation. Sometimes I use it like a "truck" by folding the rear seats flat. It also serves well on longer distance drives with folks in the backseats.
I will not part with my MK6, manual 6 speed, 2L turbo!
Notes:
There are younger folks now that won't bother with manual.
3G telemetry just expired (yay).
It's fun. And decent MPG.
My MK6 GTI M/T was totaled right after the pandemic started but before the used car market blew up. It took me a year to find a suitable replacement, but I was not budging on my requirement of an MK6 GTI (Oddly enough, my partner and I were borrowing a Saab 9-5 wagon from her dad while car hunting).
I found a 2012 M/T GTI being sold in Southern California and literally hopped on the next flight once I got confirmation that they’d sell it to me. I bought at asking ($6500, a steal just months later) and drove it back to Sacramento.
I never thought I’d be that kind of person to take a one-way flight to buy a car, but that MK6 GTI has changed me. It’s one of the few “modern” vehicles that is easy to do work on yourself. The chassis was designed to hold the larger 2.5L, 5-cylinder engine in the Golf so the smaller 2.0L Turbo left enough room to get in there and perform repairs/service without taking body panels off (cough cough BMW). Armed with a VCDS and a 10mm, I can diagnose and fix most minor things.
Super fun, easy to self service, manual transmission, not letting this go.
What you see on the road, on average, is what was selling well 12 years ago. Small cars tend to be more popular during long periods of bad economic times or high fuel prices. SUVs sell like hot cakes every time the US has a decade of good economic times and cheap gas.
The Fit started selling really well around the time of the 08 crash (and fuel more than doubled in price that decade):
Dacia is so cheap that they even omit features that you might not think of as "features".
The base model Dacia Duster doesn't come with height adjustment on the driver's seat or with a glovebox light, you need to upgrade to the Comfort package for those. It does interestingly come with a radio these days, back in the day that used to require one of the upgrade packages.
I drove an older (2000) Jeep Wrangler for much this reason. It came from the factory with no A/C and a bottom-tier AM/FM radio. The seat slides front to back and reclines - manually - but that’s about it. It has a heater, but didn’t work when I bought it in ~2010 and I’ve never bothered to fix it; I almost never used the rear windows when I had them, and I’ve since replaced the vinyl top with a much simpler one that doesn’t even have provision for them, so why bother?
It’s has a manual transmission and an inline 4-cylinder with very low output compared to most vehicles. Paradoxically, that combination makes it fun to drive.
It also holds its value very well. I’ve owned it for twelve of the 23 years of its life so far, and I could sell it today for more than I paid for it. At the same time, it’s extremely cheap to fix, because the design hasn’t changed often over the years and the powertrain is shared between many popular vehicles of its time.
My wife’s vehicle has far more “creature comforts”. She drives a 2015 Kia Sorento that we bought new. We’re considering upgrading hers to a new Kia Telluride in the near future, especially considering recent trends in used car prices.
There’s definitely still a place out there for mechanically simple vehicles. It’s a shame that the new Jeep Wranglers - say, the JK and newer - have gotten so much larger, more complex, and expensive to maintain.
If I had my druthers, I’d be driving something like a modern Kubelwagen, VW Thing, or perhaps something with a bit more cargo space like a Pinzgauer. It’s a shame no one seems interested in making them.
The problem with Dacia is that it is not just simple but also a cheap car. I would be happy to buy a simple good quality car, but Dacia saves money on plastic quality, noise insulation, engine power and seat comfort too (among others).
On the upside, Dacias are typically larger then other vehicles in the same price range. While you would you be able to buy a small city car from another manufacturer, you could actually buy a Dacia useful for the whole family. Yes, it will be underpowered and noisy, but it will be reliable, cheap to maintain and above all, safe. They get poor safety rating because of the way cars are tested today, but I argue that even a new "less safe" Dacia is safer then a 10 year old "safe" car.
Car companies don't want to sell cheap cars, they want to sell expensive cars. If they made a cheap car that people liked they wouldn't make as much money, so they purposefully make the cheap cars bad in some ways to convince people with extra money to buy more expensive cars while still allowing legitimately poor people to afford a car.
> So yeah, it’s not like offering an affordable bare-bone car isn’t possible in mature markets, it’s more likely that Americans just don’t have an appetite for them.
I do not think it is that simple. I think regulations also restrict how simple a car can be. Top of my head, breaks, lights, light colors, emissions, transmission (go figure), fuel storage, fueling features, and so on. All these add to the cost.
No one wants to drive a car that has no or minimal creature comforts.
> safety features such as lane assist and emergency stop systems become mandatory
I've got a cheap $0 lane assist and emergency stop system called "paying attention and not tailgating" that came stock in my 2003 Ford Ranger. I've been using it consistently for 35 years now on different makes and models of vehicles and it hasn't failed once.
Meanwhile, there are millions of wrecks every year in the US alone. I'm sure a large portion of those drivers said the same until they got hit. You need only browse /r/IdiotsInCars for a few minutes to witness the full range of ways people with the best of intentions can get in wrecks because someone else acted like a fool, and how many could have been prevented with lane keeping and emergency stop features.
The roads are a highly regulated public space where safe, smooth motion depends on everyone working together, and where one little error can throw it into chaos. Everyone will mess up if they live long enough. You can make some philosophical argument against mandatory safety features if you like, but I hate driving as it is and welcome any feature that reduces the odds or severity of the inevitable results of the limits of human perception and reaction time.
In my opinion, the real solution to this isn't to stuff as much driver assistance safety tech into all cars. It's to shift our society to not need cars for basic life necessities.
There are plenty of people who absolutely are not skilled at driving. They never will be. But they have to own a car to live in our society - thus, here we are.
> but I hate driving as it is and welcome any feature that reduces the odds or severity of the inevitable results of the limits of human perception and reaction time.
None of this will change the fact that, you, as the driver bear primary responsibility for your own safety, and that of your passengers, when in control of a vehicle. Driver aids are helpful but are not a substitute for attentive and defensive driving.
Your post reads like you're disagreeing with something I said, but the sentence you quoted isn't in disagreement when considered in context. Maybe you need to re-read the whole thing.
I find the cause for many issues in the US mainly in bad road design. Compare that with France, Germany or The Netherlands. So much better there. lane control hardly needed.
A large part of startup pitches boil down to "what if [thing already done well for decades in Asia and/or Europe], but worse, and expensive?" Ugly patches over the existing horror show might be the only option until there's a major cultural shift.
Our town has been replacing stoplight intersections with roundabouts, and you would think we were trying to castrate all the adult males. How people have any difficulty navigating a roundabout eludes me, but every day I see more drivers just act like they are faced with an alien when they come upon a roundabout.
Are road design in Belgium worse than in the Netherlands? The death rates per mile driven is same as in the US [1].
I don't think "road design" is an issue. People in Europe drive less in general, risk groups (teenagers and elderly) drive significantly less often, there are less people who need a car to get home after a night out, higher BAC levels (0.08% vs 0.05% or less in EU), etc.
So in another conversation we were talking about house and car prices. How there aren't cheap 'starter' options available. Partially due to mandated features and codes.
I feel like in a forum of programmers there would at least be some recognition that "get gud" doesn't scale while lane assist and emergency stop work for everyone all of the time regardless of how tired or distracted the driver is.
You're the next iteration of the person complaining about anti-lock breaks because you can just learn to drive better on ice.
Let's say you make a "bare minimum" car and after all of your design costs, you can get the MSRP down to say $13,000. The problem is that once I'm already paying 13k for a "bare bones" car, I'll probably think, well, why not just pay $15,000 to get a car with sound/speakers, adjustable seats, air conditioning, automatic windows, etc. Behold, that's basically what a Chevy Spark costs (before supply chain crunch). If I'm really trying to save money beyond that, I'll just buy a used car.
What would be nice though is a car that doesn't get redesigned every few years. If I know that redesigns will only happen every 10 years, then that means cheap parts will be abundant and maintaining the car will be much cheaper.
I always drive old cars from 10,15 years old.
For example driving an Infinity FX35 from 2003 for about 7 years now. Never had a single issue. Bought the car for 8k.
$2000 adds about $30-40 a month on a 5 year note. If your budget will be busted by an additional $40/mo, you have no business buying a new car in thee first place.
One reason I don't see mentioned here is the perverse incentives to manufacturers to make larger cars due to CO2 emissions regulations differing depending on the size of the car. So instead of making more efficient engines to hit the targets (no doubt the intent of the regulations), they just stop making small cars.
If they had intended to reduce CO2 emissions consumption, they would have just increased taxes on things that cause CO2 emissions (e.g. a tax based on distance driven in a car that emits CO2). Or even easier, increasing taxes on fossil fuels.
However, the intent was to say they (politicians, society) did something about CO2 emissions without actually giving up anything. Which was accomplished.
A few years ago (2013/2014?) there was a bare bones Toyota Yaris I looked at. Cheapest 'new' car on the lot, decent mpg, etc. But... no power windows or power locks, no automatically adjustable seat. And... it was, IIRC, around $15k. For $15-16k I could get something else used with more amenities, and similar mpg/economy. Or possibly even something else new at that time with better amenities. For something with so few amenities, I would have preferred at least a 20% discount compared to other options.
I purchased a Yaris iA (a Mazda2 in Toyota drag) for $12.5K new in CA in 2016 because it was a white manual transmission. Dealer didn’t even have a salesperson who could drive it.
Deals exist on unwanted vehicles for sure. The iA always sold cheaper than the actual Toyota Yaris in my experience despite being a far superior car.
GoGet.com.au have thousands of cars in their fleet and many of them are the Yaris. For a car share company that does a lot of servicing themselves out of a van it's a simple economical vehicle that is cheap to run and own. It also holds its value reasonably when they part with it after 2-3 years or 50,000km.
I bought a Yaris as my first car to go as cheap as possible. Even electrics were more expensive despite the tax breaks. My Dad felt like a new one would break down less than a used one too which is why we avoided used.
Yaris worked well in general. I'm not surprised it's popular with college kids. It was pretty bothersome, though, how at the lowest trim level they even disabled things like cruise control. I'm three times older than any college kid and it made my ankle ache on long drives.
One of my first cars was a geo metro hatchback - probably an equivalent. It was $6500 - a fortune (for me) at the time. But I did get around 50mpg. I took a long road trip across the country and averaged 64mpg.
At the same time here in New Zealand long journeys are 99% on two lane roads, with lots of corners and hills. Not sure how useful cruise control is for that.
This is how both Hundai and Kia started (in USA) Then both moved up-market. And Ford and GMC can't figure how to step back.
Edit: my first truck (1986 Toyota) was $6k. Manual everything and didn't even come with a radio. Most of the stuff was fixable at home (if you're handy). Didn't even have EFI. I feel like Honda used to have some of these simpler models - not just cause it was the 70/80s but also because that was a longer lasting/simpler product.
We've replaced longevity with bells/whistles as the key-feature.
You used to be able to shop for a "work truck" or van from Ford or GM which would be bare-bones. Manual transmission, manual windows, no AC, no carpet, simple vinyl floor and upholstery.
Similar features may be available in an SUV or sedan but I've never seen one; would probably be a special order or maybe only available to fleet purchasers.
I haven't bought a brand new car in over 20 years so I don't know if you can still get cars like this. Rear cameras are now mandatory, so all new cars will have a screen. And if they have a screen anyway, adding more features to it is likely to happen.
You can still buy a work truck, yes. Heck, even my F250 XLT has a vinyl floor (and I like it!). But even so, they're 30K.
> Rear cameras are now mandatory, so all new cars will have a screen.
Nah, the cheap ones just put a tiny little screen in the rear view camera. Nice because it requires no other changes to the dash, and is universal across models.
Just re-read what I wrote. Had camera on the mind, meant to say 'rear view mirror'. How anyone could upvote my nonsensical comment, I'll never know. ;-)
Probably because, like software, everyone has a different idea of what the "bare minimum" looks like. For instance, I don't think that a radio is necessary in my "bare minimum" car - but I do want a battery charge indicator, which you didn't mention.
So, an automaker can either include neither of those two features (and neither of us will want that car), both of them (which makes it more expensive, and if you adopt the policy of "take the union of all of the bare minimums" then you have a normal car), or just a subset. You lose every way.
Minimalism it tech is pretty pointless. Every simple specialty thing seems to invariably cost way more than a common complicated thing, and usually doesn't have much better reliability.
It's philosophy pretending to be engineering. Real engineer requires deep analysis, not just assuming that simple is more reliable.
Reminds me of a friend who bought his Volvo 240(?) brand new. Manual transmission, but without a tachometer because that was like $200 extra. After buying the car, he headed over to the Parts department and bought a tach for $50 then went home and installed it himself.
Dacia is next on my list (currently have a 17yo ford that's beginning to get too expensive). several of my colleagues have them.
Having just filled a Diesel tank that went from €60 (last fill c600km ago) to €80 (today), 1.4l engine, my bicyle is looking even more low cost.
I drive a Dacia with LPG. The car is ok, but of course don't await it to be comfortable. It vibrates more, is loud especially at high speed. And there are many little "quirks" like: To let down the window at the back seats, the buttons to do so are in the middle console instead at the front door.
For my needs thats enough. The trick is to never buy a better car, so you don't get used to the more comfortable features. :)
Because there isn’t any money in designing a no-frills car. Designing a brand new car and starting a brand new brand is crazy expensive so it makes sense to target the luxury market since sales will be limited.
Not to mention, when most people look at a car with manual everything and realize for $10/month more they can have power everything... they go for the car with power everything. So, dealers order their inventory accordingly.
Ability to resell low trim models is also terrible. Nobody wants to buy a base model car when for a couple hundred bucks or maybe a grand more they can get the nicer stuff.
Most of the cost of producing a car is in the design, sheetmetal tooling, dies, employee training, etc.--i.e. it's not all from just some circuit boards, knobs, and servo motors that drive all the fancy accessories. So a brand new designed and built from scratch hyper minimal car with no accessories would still cost $15k+ and be extremely hard to sell to the public.
In reality someone shopping for a car on a budget is just going to buy a few years used instead of cutting out all the accessories in an attempt to scrimp. So the unfortunate truth is that there is no market and no profitability for a purposefully minimal car.
The closest you will find are rental market and commercial fleet vehicles like basic sedans (Chevy Malibu), pickup trucks, and vans where the automakers know there is such high demand and guaranteed income that they don't need to pad them with extra frills.
> I have never understood why there isn't a low cost automaker that has only the bare minimum - the style barely ever changes and looks decent, manual everything, bare minimum heat/ac, minimum radio that can easily be replaced, as cheap as possible - is the only reason this doesn't exist because of ever increasing regulations?
No, it's because people who buy new cars don't want this.
I don't think people know what they want when they buy a car. Manufacturers sell turd crossovers like the Equinox or Highlander in high numbers. Most of them aren't even AWD, and the ones that are AWD have shit systems in them that are barely capable in light snow and rain. They literally have no redeeming qualities, and somehow they fly off the showroom floors.
I bought a Nissan Kicks, which is in your "turd crossover" category... and I love it because it's exactly what I want.
Its redeeming qualities are light weight and responsive handling, to feel like driving a nimble hatchback rather than a lumbering SUV, while having the raised cockpit, visibility, and most of the cargo space of an SUV. Lack of AWD is a feature; I don't do any towing or driving on snow or dirt to need it; FWD is lighter and cheaper and more efficient.
People have preferences that aren't the same as yours, and insulting them isn't necessary. Crossovers are very practical and people buy them for plenty of good reasons.
Yup. I have a 2002 Chevy Express 3500 cargo van who's only luxury is AC. The radio was an AM/FM I replaced with a mechless unit that died so there is no radio. The windows are hand cranked. I honestly miss nothing from a modern vehicle when I drive it save for less noise.
I also have been shopping for a new car and the selection out there is miserable what with all the stupid option games, horrible butt-ugly design, and everyone insisting that cars need more microchips than CERN for whatever reason. When I find something interesting I always run into some gotcha that turns me off.
My latest disappointment was Ford's bait and switch manual transmission Bronco (I love driving manuals)- it's only available paired with the anemic turbo I4 instead of the more powerful V6. No one is buying a 5000 pound vehicle with an I4 in it. I read an article which stated that a ford rep explained this is because manuals are unpopular so they didn't pair it with the more powerful engine option - the engine option that people like me who spec manuals want to order. Of course the manual wont sell if its paired with garbage you idiots.
I would argue stuff like electric adjustable mirrors, seats, good AC, parking sensors, rear view cameras, even automatic transmissions are essential safety features these days. If you put a modern person in a car lacking modern features they're going to be a hazard on the road.
I do appreciate electric mirrors and air conditioning, but the rest of this list is pretty hard for me to buy. I think I'd be called a 'modern person (and one of my cars even has most of these things!)
Those cars don't have huge profit margins. They require selling in bulk to make a ton of money on them. That's why SUVs and trucks reign supreme here in the US. They're cheap to build, have less safety and emissions requirements, and people pay ridiculous money for them here. There's a reason Tesla started with premium cars, because they make more money. Same reason Ford and GM have stopped selling regular cars here. The day of the cheap car is long gone. $45000 is the average sale price here in the US for a car right now. I dunno how so many people can afford a $700+ car payment... but it's pretty normal.
Outside, I think the teslas are very interesting with respect to minmalism.
Nothing sticks out, they are completely smooth aerodynamically.
(I do think the aero model 3 wheels may be functional but are not attractive)
Inside the car, I think tesla's minimalism has gone too far.
The telsa model 3 without a dashboard in front of the driver is cheap, not minimal. They also reduced the stalks and overloaded the controls.
Then the recent model S/X changes went further to outright dangerous. There are no stalks at all on the steering column, and turn signals, horn and high beams are touch buttons in the middle of steering wheel. When you move, the car guesses which direction you want to go, there is no gearshift stalk. There are gearshift buttons at the bottom of the console, but no dedicated buttons for other critical functions like defrost. sigh.
Teslas are aesthetically minimalist, but they ship with hardware to cover an eventuality that the car might not last long enough to utilize. That's the opposite of minimalist from a product perspective.
I would hardly classify Tesla as “as cheap as possible”, at least not in terms of the sticker price. Certainly not “manual everything” with all the touch interfaces.
Tesla has elevated cost-cutting-as-a-virtue to the highest art form. I'm impressed. But they're also making a run at the "only evolve, never redesign" mantra for their cars. This may change with time as more competition enters the EV market.
It's cool how Tesla and his companies in general seem to really understand the idea that things should be computers first, and not have anything that could have been software.
Have they redesigned the rear end yet? I drove Hondas for over 20 years but went with a VW Golf because no one over 30 should be driving the Civic with how it looks(ed) in 2018.
In general, if you want the most basic, low-opex car you can find, just look at what rental car companies are buying (though rental companies have been desperate for anything, so this currently doesn't apply.)
Regulations and fuel economy standards absolutely influence design. The reason most euro cars/SUVs have a sloping hood (compared to the "RAWR I AM AGGRESSIVE" square front on most American SUVs) is to meet pedestrian Euro-NCAP standards. High door sills are to provide better side impact protection, smaller windows are to lower heat/AC load for fuel economy.
"All cars" are not "looking completely ridiculous." He cites some of the most infamously ugly cars (Toyota Camry and Prius) while ignoring, oh, the entire rest of the market. There are loads of conservatively styled cars out there. Toyota intentionally dramatically changes their styling almost every year because underneath those changing body panels and tail/head lights is the stuff that's actually expensive to change. They're intentionally garish because they want the design to look exciting now, and like aged dogshit in 3 years. They also want to push their more conservative buyers into Lexuses.
Lots of decent looking cars out there.
VW's current "narrow line" design language looks like ass, but go back one or two model years and I think they're pretty fantastically well-styled cars.
I don't get what the author is on about with the current F150. It feels like Ford is really in stride; usually they're a shitshow of fugly, awkward curves and proportions, but they seem to be making designs that not only look good in the present, but are holding up longer.
Yeah, I feel like most of the overdesigned cars in the past decade or so have come from Japan. Notably Toyota, which in my opinion has produced some of the worst car designs of the past twenty years. The pinched grill that started with their Lexus line and is now on Toyotas as well is a matter of taste I guess, but it's always reminded me of the alien's mouth in Predator, which in turn is reminiscent of an anus. I think some of the most recent Lexi pull it off, but throughout most of its history, I think that grill has been pretty awful. Honda lost its design mojo a long time ago, and its most recent Accord is ok only because it resembles a BMW. The past 20 years has been a series of mostly very forgettable Honda designs. Nissan has also produced a lot of atrocities the past couple of decades since the genuinely striking tail treatment on the 2002 Altima. The Maxima has been particularly bad. Then there's Hyundai, which has been hit or miss but who went through a very organic look for awhile that made all their cars look like they were grown in pods. They were beautiful in their own way, but like a lot of their Japanese siblings, just overdone in my opinion.
If you look at cars from their inception until about the 80s, most cars, even lower end models were aesthetically very pleasing. That's not true of most cars today. The ones you've cited are all luxury sedans and are rare to see on the road (at least where I live). Also, the cheapest is $40k. That's not practical for most people, and that's not even including operating expenses.
> If you look at cars from their inception until about the 80s, most cars, even lower end models were aesthetically very pleasing. That's not true of most cars today.
I disagree, and most people living when those cars were new would, I suspect, disagree. I would guess this is either a nostalgia-driven (positive for older designs) or overexposure-driven (negative for newer common designs) aesthetic preference.
Because brands like that suffer from poor reputation ( poor people's car), so people prefer buying second hand - it was the case for Dacia in Europe for years, and is among the reasons the Tata Nano flopped.
I suspect the car market will move to similar form as phones. Fewer models and if you want it cheap you buy the few years older one - either direct from the manufacturer/refurbed/second-hand.
>is the only reason this doesn't exist because of ever increasing regulations?
Pretty much. They preclude that car from actually being cheap enough that people would buy it over a nicer used car and as the new car market skews higher and higher end the used car market skews likewise making the competition stiffer.
>about all new cars looking completely ridiculous.
The front body work is bounded by pedestrian safety requirements in the EU and aerodynamics. The rooflines and beltlines are bounded by US safety requirements. It's no surprise that the designs all converge.
Airbags, active suspension systems, ABS, backup cameras, etc all increase the cost of cars. Though I dont know how much of that is tied to increasing price of used cars - that seems to have more to do with Cash for Clunkers taking a huge amount of used cars out of the used car market, while it put a bunch of people in new cars, it also skewed the pricing for used cars higher - it took an entire generation of used cars out of the market - which continues to effect pricing today.
Electronic stability control is not active suspension, those are very different things. ESC isn't really even part of the suspension setup at all, it modulates the brakes in response to steering angle input & a yaw sensor.
because the servicing costs are determined by workshops/companies who charge ridiculous amounts of money at will and inevitably make older cars not worth repairing. personal example: for the same repair in my home country (EU country) would normally cost 350-450e but i was asked from 1000e to 1500e in the EU country i currently live
Do you earn more money in your current EU country vs the home one? Certainly in the UK a lot of cars get purchased for scrap value taken to a cheaper country for repair (or just used for spares)
I don't think manual everything is really practical these days, automatic gear box and windows is something most people would want even in a basic car. Even in Europe these days people move to automatic gears. But something like mid 2000 corolla or civic would be a good and reliable basic car, the question is how much it will cost to manufacture such car, if it will be around the 10k mark it will be a viable option.
Right! In Europe cars with manual transmission remain very common, it allows vendors to sell the automatic version at a higher price point I imagine. At this point I’m not even sure they’re that much cheaper to make. And it’s become a weird experience—you’ll have all these features that make it feel like you’re driving a computer anyway, lane assist etc. And the car tells you when it thinks you should shift gears! I found myself muttering “if you’re so smart, why don’t you do it yourself”.
Until it gets confused like an DSG with broken mechatronics. That might just break the gearbox itself.
After that happened I drove a Toyota Corolla hybrid with a CVT and it was awesome. High mileage, tranquil, no gaps in acceleration. The only downside was that it is smaller than a Passat (GTE).
