When trucks are advertised at $10,000 over MSRP, what does MSRP even mean? Now throwing shade on my fancy-schmancy proprietary index.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Every year around this time, I update the proprietary “WOLF STREET F-150 XLT and Camry LE Price Index” with the new model-year MSRPs, base version no add-ons and without destination and delivery charges, for a view of the actual price increases of the bestselling truck and car in the US going back to 1990, and I compare that to the CPI for new vehicles, which is very amusing.
By October usually, Ford comes out with the final pricing for the F-150 XLT. Toyota normally releases final prices for the Camry LE by early November.
The 2022 Camry LE is now starting to get built with an ETA in November. But Ford’s production, which was massively hit by the semiconductor shortage, is a huge mess.
Ford is still building the 2021 model year F-150 XLT, with a very large number of models still in the order bank, due to the semiconductor shortage that crushed production during the year.
A dealer with Ford and Toyota franchises told me that some 2021 F-150 XLTs that were allocated nearly a year ago are still in his order bank, and show up as likely to be built. But he can now also see window stickers for some more loaded 2022 F-series, but not the F-150 XLT.
Back in June, Ford still said that production of the 2022 F-150 was scheduled to start at the Dearborn Truck Plant on November 15th, and at the Kansas City Assembly Plant on December 6th.
“To be honest, Ford’s vehicle visibility and locator information is junk at this point because of the extended production and logistics issues,” the dealer said.
Ford is still allowing you to spec out a 2021 model-year F-150 XLT on its website. But you cannot spec out a 2022 F-150 XLT yet.
On the other hand, the 2022 Lightening EV truck, the 2022 Super Duty, and the 2022 Maverick are now being built.
Ford still hasn’t released final pricing for the 2022 F-150 XLT, though prices have emerged in form of leaks that have not been confirmed. I will use those leaked MSRPs for the time being. If final prices are different, I will update the index.
On the other hand, Camry LE models are starting to show up in the pipeline. The dealer said his first 2022 Camry LE had an ETAs later in November. He has no new sedans on the lot at all, and he said the Camry will sell before it gets there.
“While Toyota has production and logistics issues, they pale in comparison to Ford’s,” the dealer said.
When I started doing the WOLF STREET F-150 XLT and Camry LE price index, I never thought I would run into this kind of mess.
MSRP is suddenly no longer the top. It’s the bottom.
In terms of pricing, my index relies on the MSRP per model. In the past, there were always manufacturers’ incentives and rebates, and dealer discounts, and practically no one ever paid MSRP for these vehicles. Nearly everyone paid a lot less.
Now the opposite is the case. Automakers have slashed their incentives and rebates. And dealers, instead of giving discounts, are selling at MSRP, or are adding thousands of dollars as “addendum” or whatever, to MSRP.
Instead of advertising discounts, dealers are advertising these addendums. For example, a Bay Area Ford dealer advertises the 2022 Maverick SuperCrew with an MSRP of $23,775 and an addendum of $3,245, for a total advertised price of $27,020. This is 13.6% over MSRP. And it’s on order, not on the lot.
The same dealer has a 2022 Ford F-150 SuperCrew Cab V-6 on order, with an MSRP of $57,500. The dealer slapped an addendum of $10,595 on this truck, bringing the advertised price of $67,995, or 18% over MSRP. It’s not on the lot yet, and there is not even an image of the truck yet on the dealer’s website.
This is the craziest situation I have ever seen.
The MSRP of the 2022 Camry LE, without destination and delivery charges, rose just 1% from the 2021 model, to roughly $25,295, according to the dealer and Toyota data.
The MSRP of the 2022 F-150 XLT without destination and delivery charges, according to preliminary data floating around out there, rose less than 2% to $36,050.
But wait… Most dealers are no longer discounting from the MSRP. They’re selling near MSRP or above MSRP across most of their product. And they can.
That customers are jostling for position to pay those prices is the craziest situation I have ever seen in the car business. Sales volume in units at dealers and automakers has plunged due to the shortages, but they are making huge per-vehicle gross profits of historic proportions.
What’s bizarre is that customers let them, and by letting they, they’re encouraging them. Vehicles are the ultimate discretionary product. Most people can drive what they already have for another year or two. They did this during the Great Recession and caused the industry to collapse. But enough people are eager to pay those prices to keep the this going.
This crazy pricing is now throwing shade on my fancy-schmancy index.
The index is based on the idea that discounts are there every year, and on average, they’re similar in percentage terms, and so they canceled out for year-over-year comparisons. While nearly no one paid MSRP, it was a good indicator of the magnitude of price increases from year to year.
Now we have these crazy addendums. So who knows what customers will finally pay for a 2022 F-150 XLT on average? MSRP +$5,000 instead of MSRP -$3,000 as they might have in the past? This would mark a price increase of $8,000! And it wouldn’t show up in my index!
But the Consumer Price Index started to pick up the addendums.
The CPI for new vehicles, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has started to pick up some of these addendums. For October, the CPI for new vehicles jumped by nearly 10% year-over-year, even as the 2022 MSRPs have barely moved.
The chart below shows the MSRP for each model year of the F-150 XLT (purple, left scale), and the Camry LE (red, left scale), and the Consumer Price Index for New Vehicles (green, right scale).
The CPI for new vehicles is somewhat absurd, thanks to aggressive hedonic quality adjustments by the BLS. As a result of these adjustments, the CPI for new vehicles last year was about flat with 1997, and it’s only the 10% spike this year that moved the CPI for new vehicles out of that range (here’s my discussion about hedonic quality adjustments to new vehicle CPI):
Since 1990, the F-150 XLT price has soared by 178% and the Camry LE price 73%, while the CPI for new vehicles has risen just 33%, thanks to these hedonic quality adjustments.
This relationship over the years between soaring truck prices and slower-rising car prices goes across the industry. Pickups, SUVs, and compact SUVs – included in “trucks” – have been red hot for years, while sedan sales have plunged starting in 2014. GM, Ford, and FCA have now abandoned the sedan market altogether, and Tesla and foreign automakers are fighting over the scraps.
Sales of “trucks” – pickup trucks, SUVs, compact SUVs, and vans – rose to 839,200 units in October. Sales of “cars” (sedans and muscle cars) dropped to 207,100 units, the lowest in many decades except for the lockdown freeze in April 2020. This long-term discrepancy in demand between “trucks” and “cars” explains the difference in price growth over the years, and it explains why automakers love to build “trucks” – because they can charge a lot more for them and make a lot more money on them – and why GM, Ford, and FCA thought, possibly in error, that they would be better off bailing out of the sedan market altogether:
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Buy now because the price will be double next year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is this a financial treasure,
Or just a dealer’s pleasure,
Tonight, we hear, the desperation that drives your lies,
But will you just crash it all, tomorrow….
There’s a Ford in your future bankruptcy???
I still dig Motown and especially like the Shirelles, too. Actually they were from NYC….no biggie.
It’s mostly all Carole King stuff, anyway, plus Phil Spector “wall of sound”
If you just added a bit of zzzzz, the buzz of rushing electrons, it would be perfect. You would sound like the real Jerome if more coherent.
According to Wolf’s chart the time to buy was in 2008 when I did.4WD Chevy 2500 nicely equipped regular cab was 24k. It is a shop truck that regularly carries near capacity, but short distances. I think that it is nearly 30k miles now. At the time I could have had a regular cab 4WD 2500 with diesel and the Allison transmission for 30k.
Try that now. That is why I make a stink about proper maintenance to the employees that drive it.
One time on the previous truck an employee put regular mineral oil in the brake reservoir. Hey it is hydraulic oil and they are hydraulic brakes. Two complete brake jobs not cheap.
Pity the person needing a basic workhorse and stuck with no alternative other than these bling filled suburbanite toilets.
My friend told knows a dealer who had a customer pay $85K over sticker for a new Ford Bronco! People have truly lost their minds!
Assuming you mean 8.5 k …..
Well, if they threw in a truckload of toilet paper …
…or Vaseline.
Au contraire mon ami, this repricing aspect requires “Übersilk ”
(avail from AMZN).
Btw no personal experience with the genre of product. Ymmv.
HA…yet it goes both ways sometimes.
In January I bought a Ford truck for 17.9% below MSRP, and the finance manager was so angry that he would not let me in his office to hand him the cashiers check I had brought to buy the truck at the “online Internet advertised price”. Turns out the online prices are lies (tons of “adds”)…yet at the time they took a $2,900 loss on the truck because they had 37 of the same truck on the lot and they had no room to bring in the 2021 “newer version”…which had no significant changes versus the 2020 model year.
The sales guy told me “Nobody” brings in cashiers checks to buy, they finance…and I said “I’m Nobody”….HA
Wolf is right, if Americans negotiated more there would be less inflation and crazy pricing. I grew up poor, so I love to negotiate as it is normal behavior for rural poor people growing up on farms, etc. When I travel internationally, most see negotiating as very normal…yet in the USA, many seem insulted at even attempting to negotiate prices. The lack of bartering and negotiating prices for items and services seem to be a rich country phenomenon….yet funny enough the international friends who “have less” and work less are actually retiring decades before my USA based friends.
Seems like Americans think they are “winning” by paying any price on discretionary items for a short term dopamine hit, yet they are loosing the most valuable commodity, their own free time, by being debt/wage/healthcare slaves…which often times leads to working from cradle to death…
Corporate States of America have pulled a fast one on citizens for the last 40 years, and at some point a majority of voters are going to wake up angry and on the same page about how they have slowly become enslaved inside a system designed and controlled by the very top 0.1% Elites. And to the fear of the Elites, years of high inflation could be the spark that ignites real change for the better of humanity…TBD…
i hate that aspect of traveling abroad. it’s one thing to negotiate on a business purchase, a house, a car, but i hate having to negotiate on trinkets.
My dumb sister and her equally dull friends refuse to buy at discount stores or be seen there in the north western Montana’s fastest growing city. I’ve told her I save sometimes $5 to $8 PER item bargain shopping and just if I bought 20 items once a week that is at a $2 difference (easily) that is $40 per week times 52 weeks or $2,000 a year that she could have spent on supplies, golf clubs, etc. She is ridiculous and our parents, grandparents are rolling in their graves, we were never raised like that, we were also poor.
Yort,
I keep hearing that ” at some point a majority of voters are going to wake up angry,” but I am afraid if they haven’t woken up by now they never will.
And I think that is what the TPTB are counting on.
Cheers.
Addendum? Any relation to the accounting term “goodwill”?
The new euphemism. I see they’ve moved on from “market adjustment”
…and before that “mark-up”
Simply put, you simply say “I’m buying a truck, not an addendum”. You can just leave that in the “optional equipment” I”m choosing not to add to the vehicle. See how that flies. I loved when a dealership had a line item “ADM”. When I questioned that, saying “ADM to me meant ‘Atomic Demolition Munition'” and Homeland Security might frown on my acquisition of a manpack bridge or cratering charge nestled in the trunk. ADM was “Additional Dealer Markup”. I made reference to a visage of a lollypop hovering over my head and declined to participate. Dealer quietly deleted that $3K charge on my 2003 Honda Odyssey which was the ONLY new car I ever purchased, and got it for $750 under MSRP. My ’94 BMW is running just fine, thank you. Just choosing not to play in this sandbox.
Amazing information. Amazing.
regarding: What’s bizarre is that customers let them, and by letting they, they’re encouraging them.
I’m wondering if these customers were ever really discerning buyers? Most ‘civilians’ know they are getting screwed when they buy off a lot, but just had better cards to play in the past. People in commission sales make a living off their wits, and they are the professionals. Many who buy are definitely not as smart in that area and certainly don’t know the prices and sales techniques unless they have prior experience. I get a good lumber price from the yard I frequent, know and understand it is not as good as what a big contractor receives, but it is well below what someone pays who walks in off the street. When I wander through a Home Depot I see folks just paying the code scan and none the wiser. Just like a car lot.
I do have a question. I just replaced a laptop with a terrific product. It has the i7 processor and I paid 30% of what I paid for my first 486 in 96?, in discounted inflated away dollars. In fact, our dollar was above the US dollar in those days so maybe I paid just 25%. With all the automation and electronics, why are trucks and cars more expensive than ever? I could see them increasing a bit to reflect increased energy costs, etc…but nowadays these rigs are made in low cost regions where workers are paid a fraction of what auto makers used to earn. But the companies always lose money. Something doesn’t smell right.
Laptops are all made in China now.
Trucks have electrolytes. It’s what truck craves.
Love that movie…. “Idiocracy”. I just didn’t realize it was a documentary.
These overpriced gas powered vehicles are the last generation of their kind, at least for awhile. Whether you know that or not, you may still need a new car, or you may be buying your last ICE vehicle on purpose.
The politics of carbon are pushing for electric only cars, and that’s what they will be mandating shortly. It stinks and that is why I am not longer a dim. Can’t wait for, you know who, to run again and put a stop on the lefty chaos.
Just saw that the average peon is going to be helping pay for doctors, lawyers and Ceo’s to virtue signal how green they are with $12500 tax credit.
Good for for $80,000 car and $500,000 in married income. That plus the SALT deduction going away plus the former president’s tax cuts means some people going to be living the good life and look down at you when you are driving that old beater.
We will see if Senate rubber stamps it. I say they tweak it a little and send it back.
Nah, it will be extended to aviation/marine sector.
Petunia,
I’m with you on your hope for the future. However, I am unaware of any time in history when a group took power over a nation and then gave up that power peacefully. I am open to being proved wrong with a historical example.
We tend not to shoot when changing power in the USA, but every other type of nonviolent conflict seems to be within bounds.
It is amazing that we can’t have more construct problem solving in Congress. I think the main problem is Federal government has gotten so big that it causes division as whoever gains power uses it as an opportunity to lute the future for their constuents.
I can swallow I guess that you used to be a dem, but if you mean who I think you mean to run again and save things, think again. Unless the GOP can move on from the oddest duck to come down the pike…you are looking at the possible emergence of a third party on the right which will hand the future to the dems.
I assume you are aware of the Lincoln Project, which is an example of current and former repubs who can’t stomach Trump.
There are also huge fractures in the Christian support, with specific renunciation by Catholic press.
Joke told by Mitch McConnel to senators: ‘You know why Rex Tillerson could truthfully deny calling him an idiot? Because he called him a f777ing idiot.’
Nobody in DC has a clue how to fix the mess they put us in. We need some outsiders with some sense to simply stop the chaos. I don’t even believe it’s fixable at this point. I could already see it coming in 2008. 2022 is already shaping up to give 1932 a run for it’s money.
Mitch owes his seat to you know who’s endorsement. Rex turned out to be a back stabber IMHO. And the more parties the better at this point, because what we have now isn’t working. If you know who doesn’t run, I’m voting third party again anyway.
Well try not to go down the misinformation rabbit hole any further … it’s not “lefty” nonsense, it’s absolutely necessary. Even if it wasn’t necessary it will make us rich and bankrupt our enemies while creating millions of jobs that are actually in the US … probably middle America’s only hope … plus trucks that move like a Porsche Turbo … so really what’s not to like!?
We have to hurry now because of right wing obstruction and propaganda that stifled the creation of electric cars for decades, almost from the beginning in some ways. We should have mandated 100mpg by now … sorry if your Mercedes might not get 600hp to go get the groceries … with electric it will though anyway!
This comes from a guy who probably loves nothing more than the feel and sound of a muscle car … it just has to be done!
as we straddle the change from ice engines to future electric/hydrogen/pixie dust powered conveyances, I get a sense of how people in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s felt as the horse gave way to the automobile.
can’t help but wonder if you are making a wise financial decision, and when to make it, but eventually one just has to go “all-in” as the path becomes clear.
I’m still hanging-on to my music cassettes.
for nostalgia.
Cars really have gotten a lot better year after year, for example a sequoia or 4Runner is expected to last 360k kms+ on average. Plus tons of features etc. My last car i bought was 12 years old (paid 150 Canadian and put 500 in parts into it) and it lasted 3 years and 90k kms that’s insane. New cars are definitely blasting past inflation but if you’re taking into consideration the massive drop in cost of ownership i bet it’s cheaper than ever to own a vehicle.
Thanks tdog,,
please keep on reporting on here, the only place/site telling it as it really is IMHO..
You should get out more off. Repair (check indie shops, all brands..esp 3/4 – 1 ton plus US trucks) bills are going up astronomically. Along with “supply challenges” stretching into months (esp Asian brands).
Clients are having a choice of going without (as very few shops have latitude to carry balances) or borrowing/loading the CC.
Given the price of used vehicles ascending, many clients are priced out of buying a newer (used) vehicle. Stranded in the middle…..
Btw ’01 S-10 2wd w/4.3 engine: just turned 360k miles on original engine. Has consumed four radiators, three water pumps, two starters, one alternator & distributor (no 80k coil packs replacement
like newer platforms protocols), two sets of ball joints, one idler arm assm (amazingly: original tie rods), three (DB) rotors sets/four sets if DB pads. One clutch replacement (hyd slave cyl failure).
Oh, two intake reseals (terrible OE gaskets integrity) too.
Probably $10-12k repair$ over 15 yrs ownership, and still obtains 22 mpg (does not matter city/hiway operations).
Very fortunate ownership (doesn’t hurt that i spent two decades, in a previous life, as auto tech/machinist) as I no longer can do most maintenance work myself (re computer diagnostic requirements). Plus getting “old” (approaching seventh decade) is a drag.
Blessed to know several indie shops that have their AAA game down, comparable to having a great Doc/Dentist/Legal &Tax counsel in the “pocket”.
Happy Holidays…..
It’s a big assumption to say people are “letting” dealers rip them off.
1) a certain amount of cars crash and must be replaced or engines die or people have been driving a truck for 40 years and it’s just time to replace.
2) quantifiably about a ‘zillion’ contractors and workers actually USE their trucks to make money. So buying a truck isn’t a choice.
3) Yes, high visibility of a normal or lifted truck makes driving safer since you can see hazard and traffic conditions so far ahead.
4) Costco is an hour away from me. Packing the entire truck full every two weeks vs ‘stopping by’ a couple places a week is efficient for us.
5) If financed for 6 years, the payments will be paid back with inflated dollars.
Check this out. On Ford’s website:
“Flex Buy is offered with 66- or 75-month terms. Your first 36 months of payments are discounted by 15% or 18%, while higher later payments allow for your full balance to be satisfied.”
Are there time bomb loans? Basically buying for 3 years with low payments and ‘praying’ you will be able to make payments in year 4+. Or Ford will basically make back there production costs in 3 years at low payments and then doesn’t care if they repo to sell again.
2) quantifiably about a ‘zillion’ contractors and workers actually USE their trucks to make money.
If truck sales depended on the above, sales would collapse by at least 50 %. Uses requiring a truck didn’t suddenly take off 15 years ago but truck sales did. In fact, back out trucks and there isn’t a whole lot left of domestic based production. Next time driving around note how many trucks there are and how many have something in the box. Also how new many look and how unscratched they are. An older truck can be fine for the job, but not so much for ‘the look’
Friend just bought new one that may never have anything in it.
Agree, the king-cab has replaced the sedan. It’s nuts where I live. Trucks are about 40% of the vehicles where I live. All for the most part empty. My neighbor drives a F250 and I’ve never seen him carry anything in the back (albeit he does tow an aluminum john-boat on occasion). Heck, folks drive dualies around here as commuter vehicles.
Sales are down now due to limited supply, the few who are buying these vehicles are not price sensitive.
I have noticed that local dearer parking lots are slowing filling back up, RV dealer lots as well, and car advertising as well. So things may be turning a corner.
Unions.
A vast majority of Americans are idiots.
My dad had a few things to tell me when I was a little boy. Here’s a mean statistic he shared with me:
“Remember son, half the people in the world have below-average intelligence.”
Good one Dan, but, all seriousness aside, as a student, quite a lazy one my last year in college, I switched from chemistry/pre-med to psychology major and found no actual science in the latter subject matter.
As far as IQ goes, it was clear then, and even clearer now that Gardner’s concepts/theories, derived in the 1960s were much more realistic than the tests derived by the national socialists/fascists of all geographical areas, e.g. ”Stanford-Binet” in the period before world war two in order to have a suitable theory for their atrocities.
The scientific method is to use the Gaussian (bell) curve of intelligence distribution.
You can just as well apply it to the soft sciences, such as history. Explains historic events/movements quite adequately.
For kia telluride some dealers are asking 30k plus above market.
But these are being sold for 10k over msrp easily
Please read above market as msrp.
68K for a cloth seat F150 XLT? People are nuts.
Some owners actually prefer cloth seats. Now we find the demand for leather car seats is leading to further deforestation of the Amazon (for cattle). Something to consider.
All Tesla’s use synthetic leather (which is actually more durable). There is zero need to contribute to Amazon deforestation.
I prefer air conditioned butt blower perforated and ass aerating climate controlled squat stations in my vehicles but they weren’t available in my model year. I just want a macerating toilet drivers seat on my SUV with bigass cupholders for soup and starbucks. Maybe a mini fridge for traffic.
That’s funny. Synthetic most likely means made using fossil fuel. There is a reason things went from natural to synthetic after WW2.
Leather is made from a waste product of the beef industry. Huge overproduction since the surge of beef consumption in Asia. The cost is transportation around the world, processing, tanning, and all the things that need to happen to turn hides into soft leather seats. But the raw material is a waste product.
I prefer seating made from the skins of the fleet footed Nauga.
CA Bob,
Do they force you to drink the cool aide there, or is it osmosis?
Neither. I’m not an ‘environazi,’ if that’s what you’re insinuating–I’m a farmer–but I do try to limit my consumption (for a number of reasons).
We live in TX. Leather and shorts are a no go with the miserable heat in June-September.
Good Lord, are we really worried about cattle in the Amazon? What’s got into all you people?
Leather seating ‘no-go’ in hot climates (ie SW/SE).
The “why” we have sheepskin seat covers on flight deck seats.
Flt crews perform better when their bodies ‘breathe’.
Leather is a no go anywhere it gets really cold in winter or really hot in summer. I like velour because it’s easy to clean and comfy all the time.
I love the black leather seats in my ’05 Subaru Legacy Ltd. that I bought used with 96K miles and 2 previous owners. It still runs good and the seats still look good after 17 years and it gets cold here in New England.
Plus I haven’t eaten beef for 43 years, but figure why waste perfectly good resources? No new carbon emissions generated nor new cattle slaughtered in that vehicle purchase.
One way or another, there is no escaping voracious consumerism or runaway population explossion. Problems of different worlds, but on the same planet.
You can resist it and *almost* eliminate it in your family life. Search for and learn from
“The Alternate Economy.”
“68K for a cloth seat F150 XLT? People are nuts.’
68K for anything is nuts! No vehicle by any manufacturer is worth that kind of money.
Aston Martins are worth more, based on demand-pull. Proof: a series limited – just as is any 2022 F150 XLT! – to 25 units handmade all pre-purchased of the Bond DB5 Continuation Tribute Edition value validated at beyond $3 million. Each.
Hedonic adjustments are indeed the point, to include:
Loaded H2o ‘activated barrels’ emerging from turn signals,
Rear bullet-proof active shield…yes, it’s bullet-proof [what F250 diesel owners did to keep those powerplants functional]
Activated rear oil-slick, well, I mean H2o pressurized ejection feature,
Removable roof panel above the passenger seat in case of need,
GPS Tracking display just as you recall fitted in film models,
Active rotating license plate to avoid national registration authorities, and dastardly meter maids… [In 2021 is that last, even a thing?]
Parking patrol now snaps a picture of the VIN when citation is issued. Digital technology :(
My daughter sold a 1994 camaro z-28 45k miles to car max 8,000 $ couldn’t be happier after I gave her the car
Can’t fix stupid
1988 Volvo, 460K miles, 27 MPG. No payments.
Don’t need no stinking $67K F-150!
No thanks.
People who drive huge pickup trucks as cars are not logical, and the prices don’t have to be, either.
You think this is crazy? Check out pricing of RAV4 Prime on Autotrader. Average around $80k to $90k with mark up. Just saw this one dealer in Oakland marking it up to almost $100k before tax for a freaking RAV4…
Insane time we live in and most people just seem to shrug and except it as that’s the way things are now…
I own a 2008 RAV4. 120K miles. Bought a couple of years ago for 3K (Pounds) runs like a Swiss watch, no rattles, looks good. I would have to be certifiable to buy new.
I also own an old (“vintage”) vehicle that is incredible: 1991 toyota previa van. 350K
it’s an unusual mid-engine vehicle but lemme tell ya that thing has been THE best all-around conveyance I have ever owned!
told my wife to pack me inside & set adrift on a blazing raft like a viking funeral when I go. haha
I think she missed the “when I go” part as lately she’s asked to cancel the auto insurance . .
So, what happens when the ‘rubber band effect’ pendulum starts swinging in the opposite direction? Bankruptcies all around? Is there a negative equity affect on owning drastically overpriced vehicles?
@DEL
Good question. This is kind of fascinating.
The hammer of huge numbers of big gas-guzzling trucks in the pipeline that people are expected to pay big bucks for, meeting the anvil of exploding gas prices.
If economic terms like pork cycle and cobweb model do hold true, one might expect in a few years to pick up a used F150 for less than an equivalent Camry.
Remember you read it first on WS :-)
DEL:
Negative equity is often rolled into the next contract… in other words, financing your loss. Some finance companies do this. Others don’t. It all depends on the credit quality of the customer.
Those that don’t want to do that, buy a new vehicle first…. finance it – then default on the other vehicle. The ding on their credit usually is reduced by the time they need to buy another vehicle.
All of these overpriced vehicles are being financed, right? Which companies are financing loans over MSRPs and why? Are these loans being packaged and sold differently than before, or are they now being backed or guaranteed by some entity somewhere along the way?
Most, if not all, of these loans will be underwater in the future. Something must have changed on the credit side.
I don’t think this would happen
These loans may be refi to 15 year fixed rate.
Now a days people are buying $100 shoes on installments.
So you reckon most of these autos are purchased using home refi rather than auto loans? You may be correct. That would be a financing change which could be driving this.
Is there is any publically available data out there that gives a breakdown on types of auto financing used?
Finance companies are looking at vehicle values. So they look at values of 1-year-old vehicles. And many of them are selling for more than their new price, and this pushes up the entire valuation metrics.
This is a phenomenon that has been created by the Fed’s easy money policies. No one cares anymore about anything because these loans are packaged into asset backed securities and sold to investors, and investors are engaged in a crazy chase for yield. They’re buying ANYTHING with a yield.
Thanks Wolf. The situation is completely ridiculous, but your reasoning makes sense!
Do you think some of the purchasers of those asset backed securities assume they will be bailed out if things go south? As you have explained, searching for yield is definitely a driver for investors to purchase these loans, but I am wondering if there is a moral hazard component too.
I would like to know the average interest rates on auto loans now. And if ‘addendums’ are allowed on the loan along with sales tax. Heck, some people probably even need insurance included on the loan.
Auto loans at these prices most likely stay underwater forever. I suppose I’ll never have a car salesman call ever again offering 0% plus a discount to move the vehicle off the lot.
HELOCs?
Yep, get a $100 K HELOC at 4%, go buy that $80 K F150 and have enough left over for a $8 K lift Kit, $3 K for Big Tires, and the rest you can piss away on a vacation in Cancun and some coke.
Good life = Fun life
Just for some more fun AA:
My older neighbor in ‘flyover’ used to tell me, ”I got the big insurance pay out,,, and spent most of it on wine women and song,,, the rest of it I wasted.”
Another neighbor told me something similar, ” I stopped smoking, drinking, and doing it with women.” The rest of it I wasted!!!
Fun fun fun for the rest of us, I can suppose???
My home rolled 69 Impala index went WTF vertical. I no longer need to sell my used car. I can reverse mortgage it and snack out for eight years.
O,
You should be a guest columnist for WS!
Funny stuff.
Demographics of new F-150 buyers (2018 article):
— Average age: 55
— Gender: 84% male, 16% female
— 3/4 are white males.
So if you hang a big gun on a gun rack in the rear window of your F-150, you win the symbolic phallic power enhancement Daily Double.
(The F-150 also ranked #2 in the NICB’s annual Most Stolen Vehicles list.)
I have never understood why older men wish to announce that they are ill-hung.
dp,
What you are missing is the size of a lot of these people… smaller vehicles are supremely uncomfortable for a lot of this demographic…
Even ingress and egress become more difficult as you age…
Older folks want large, comfortable, easy to get into vehicles that have a large degree of luxury and give them a feeling of safety on the highway…
Once you’ve been there, you really don’t want less..
You mean all those long pickups parked at the packed resturants? Those big butts shoveling down the food are difficult to fit somewhere at any age. America is back!
Exactly my point!
Gotta have something you will fit into after the all you can eat pig trough…
The p/u bed is needed in case there were more than two of you :)
It’s really never left, just the price of admission is higher!
Good one cowg:
In spite of my desire to drive my ’15 accent hatchback into the ground,,, after a couple cross USA driving trips in it,,, it was very clear that it was not only not able to provide me with space to sleep in spite of the 44+ MPG,,, but was also very clear to be the absolute loser in any collision…
And will only agree again re ”crawling down into, vs stepping up into” the full size regular cab 8′ bed pick up now a comfortable ”camper” with a hatch back ”shell”…
Not to be confused with these ”wussy wagons” parading these days, that have the worst of both worlds, as is amply illustrated.
Poker buddy went to pick up older player in his new pick up. Too high, couldn’t get in.
Exactly.
Those deer-shootin’, venison-eatin’ Texas lard-asses don’t go out to hunt in a Prius.
Hmm. My wife of 35 years is a 5′ tall 110 pd Asian immigrant who loves driving Ford F-150’s. We were general contractors who first bought used, then the last two new. Now that we are retired we keep the last one as a 2nd vehicle for camping and hauling, etc. She loves it, it is “her” car.
white males 55+
I wonder if we’re talking about people retiring moving into trailer homes and need a truck to pull. Anyone cross indexed trucks vs trailer homes?
P.S. Even without the retirement/mobile home connection, +55 probably means their 401ks are doing well and they can afford it.
Obligatory
“Telling it like it is” version:
“12 yards long, 2 lanes wide, 65 tons of American pride! Canyonero! Canyonero! Top of the line in utility sports, Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts! Canyonero! Canyonero! She blinds everybody with her super high beams, She’s a squirrel-squashin’, deer smackin’ drivin’ machine, Canyonero! Canyonero! Canyonero! Whoa, Canyonero! Whoooooaaaa!”
I live in a megacity and use uber/taxis. Thanks to intense competition and nutty stock market valuations, ride-share companies are slashing prices yet again (plus, USD surging, local currencies depreciating), it’s practically free.
You either don’t live in the US or you are shilling.
Prices for ride share are the highest they’ve ever been, and I can confirm this in multiple US cities.
Smith&Wesson is the preferred ride share company in South Florida…
Sig & Sauer.
If I remember correctly, Nicko2 said in one of this prior comments that he lives in Cairo, Egypt, as an expat. Nicko2, if my memory is wrong, please correct it, thanks.
He says ‘local currencies’…so guess he’s not in US.
c1ue +1 – i had company paid for ride share to work during the pandemic. it kept going up and eventually the company cancelled it. $30+ for a 15 min ride at 4am from downtown to uptown manhattan sometimes with surge pricing, it went up to $60. $2.75 and 25 mins by subway but you have to deal with the zombies…
Dodging skels in the subway at 4 AM?
Ah, New York!
“That customers are jostling for position to pay those prices is the craziest situation in the industry that I have ever seen in the car business.”
You know, as well as I, that’s because the majority of these customers really don’t care all that much what the price of the vehicle is. They are buying a payment! Financially savvy they are not. As long as they can afford the monthly nut, what’s the big deal? It’s been ages since I financed a new car. Are the loan terms up to 10 years yet?
Some are lease returns…. the customer has no option (other than to buy their leased vehicle for residual) and has to turn in the vehicle. With these crazy used car values, it might make sense to buy your lease return then trade it against another vehicle. I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of that.
We pushed leasing as part of a strategy to constantly have a flow of customers regardless of the economy…. you at least got a shot at them.
With MSRP pricing as a base and an “addendum” markup, I would bet that auto leases are not very affordable these days.
Insane…
My 2017 Nissan Murano has 176K miles on it, is paid off & it purrs. My wife’s 2018 Pathfinder has 55K miles on it, is also paid off & runs like a dream. Both trucks run like new and are super reliable. At this point, I don’t see buying another car anytime soon…good luck out there.
Crazy question but do men get a nice testosterone high from driving a big pickup that they don’t get from a Camry LE, such that it is worth paying much more now for the truck than back in 1992?
DanR,
Women love trucks too. (Nearly) everyone loves trucks. That’s why they are the bestselling vehicles in the US, all of them, by far, the entire range from Ford, GM, FCA, and Toyota.
I know women love SUVs but do they really love Ford F-150, Toyota Tacoma, etc.? I am not seeing that at least here in suburbs of New York City.
In the abstract I like pickups myself for recreational use and for occasionally looking rugged and masculine. However I can’t see paying the way inflated prices, gasping every two weeks while I fill it up at the gas station wondering why the pump hasn’t stopped yet and the charge is now approaching $100, not having a trunk, feeling like I’m driving an unwieldy beast when I could get a BMW instead, etc.
You need to get away from this idea that a truck is “masculine.” And you need to live a few years in Texas, Oklahoma, inland California, and other places where a truck is just an urban and suburban conveyance for everyone. Many of these truck models have four doors, seat 6 people, and are luxurious and spacious inside, including beautiful leather seats. And they have a small bed in the back. Without the small bed, they’d be an SUV.
Maybe but in my world trucks seem more masculine or at least utilitarian.
I’ve spent time down in the Deep South at a second home, though not a number of years. I did come away with the sense that a good nice pickup was needed by contractors and handymen, and that one displayed one’s rank and skill in the trades a bit by the model driven.
While pickups are not as favored in the northeast US one model I see is the Dodge Ram. They are huge and driven crazy fast. I could see being flattened by one if merging into the NJ Turnpike too slowly.
Can you at least provide the model and trim of what you are describing so that I can look it up? Sounds like a Cadillac Escalade disguised as a pickup truck! I’m curious.
Dan,
I know people in Southern Louisiana. They need a truck with big wheels to get around in the constant flooding. Any rain will cause a flood somewhere. Instead of spending money on flood control, they spend it on bigger trucks.
Then the car cos should tune their ads. I’ve never seen one with a woman driving, in fact I’m not sure I’ve seen one with a woman in the ad. The SUVs like Subaru with family and always a dog do, but the truck ads don’t. They often have rugged types doing rugged stuff, if recreation like fishing then another guy. But maybe Sub figured they were getting too domestic because this months ad has two guys tearing through the mountains at unsafe speed until they nearly drive over a cliff.
The large SUV or van offers all the comfort of a truck but does not offer the image, which is the driver of the non-commercial purchase.
for NK:
Latest truck ads have women driving them, including through the woods out to the very edge of a cliff in one case, then smirking at the camera to show how ”boss” she is..
Perfectly coiffed and made up of course!
I lived in Salem Oregon for 25 years. Surrounding Salem were multiple small agricultural communities with large populations of “Old Believer” Russians, They dress in the style or pre-revolution Russia. But all the girls ( women from 16~30) loved Toyota 4 wheel drive pickups. They would all stream in to Salem on Friday and Saturday to go to the movies in floor length peasant dresses, sashes and headscarves driving the latest Tacoma TRD pickup with big wheels and tires. Sometimes they would bring their boyfriends or husbands with them (also in traditional garb) but the girls always drove cause the truck was theirs.
What is the fascination with trucks? I honestly have never understood that. When I was a kid the only people that drove trucks were farmers and building guys, people that need to haul things. Now trucks are commuter vehicles? Why? No one can commute in the bed of a truck, plus they use a lot of fuel. Makes no sense from an economic standpoint at all. Who sold this need a truck BS to people?
Do you know many people that commute long distances in a truck?
I live in the mountains. I drive a truck. Sometimes you may see me in the city, or driving on a freeway. But I’m not doing 100 miles every day.
Truck people like to get shit done. Who fixes your HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and builds new houses.
Maybe a few rich old people use for daily drivers, but they aren’t commuters.
When I go to can Jose, I don’t see many trucks cruising around the freeways. Can barely navigate a parking lot in a truck up there.
I want to see the faces of these lemmings who bought trucks to show off and now have to pay $150 to fill up their gas tanks. And when gas goes to $6 or $7/gallon they will be paying $200+ per fillup. You won;t see them bragging about their big trucks after that. You’ll hear crickets if that
Parking is a bitch, though. Parking slots/lots are made for small cars and have been for 20 years, anyway.
I had to browbeat my 81 year old tenant to stop sinking money into his F 150. He had 500K Km on it and the dealership would rub their hands together when he drove in for repairs. One day the gas tank fell off and he drove it home leaking and sparking. I took away his keys and made him buy some kind of used Dodge soccer mom station wagon. He loves the new rig, big enough to hold his cane and walker, and all the crap he scrounges out of the recycle metal bins. Life did continue without his truck. The day the tank fell out I rescued him off the ground where he was stuck underneath the frame trying to lift the tank back in place. There was a hole in it the size of a softball. The frame was rotted through. And he still wanted to keep the truck!!! He wanted to park it behind the house. I towed it out of there and he got $100 for parts.
It’s bad enough trying park my Subaru SUV in DC. Why would I want a truck which will not fit in any of the small parking spaces. And the roads are so narrow that you won;t be able to get through to do your work. These Amazon drivers are having a tough time.
‘leaking and sparking’ !!
Jees
In the stable:
Vespa PX 125
Aprilia Tuono V4 1100
BMW M4
Lexus RX450h
Chevy Silverado 1500
But by far, my most prized vehicle is a Bianchi Oltre XR4. I put more miles on it than any of my other sets of wheels, and I take great joy in riding the best bicycle that exists in the world … so far anyway.
I can’t speak for others, but I like to drive vehicles that have high performance and that are well engineered & manufactured. Not a “testosterone high,” but an adrenaline rush is what I get when utilizing the performance that’s available.
Back in March, I commented that it would be a good “investment” to buy a late model Porsche Cayman GT4. They have indeed increased in value quite a bit in six months, and if I had pulled the trigger then, I’d be up a few grand if I sold today.
To that end, on 2 May 2020, I paid $40k plus $3.1K for a mint ’16 M4 with a 3 year & 36k mile warranty and service package added. Seven thousand miles later, my car is now worth $45.5k on a trade-in.
Wolf ain’t alone in this observation: “This is the craziest situation I have ever seen.”
Dan, always good to hear from an enthusiast such as yourself. My carrying capacity needs having changed, I traded off my Z4 yesterday. As is typical lately, I got significantly more for it than I paid new last year. Not so typical lately, I got a nice discount off MSRP on the replacement, which I credit to having established good relations with several people at the BMW dealership. The 2022 X3M is a 473hp AWD wolf in sheep’s clothing. Holy cow!
Too bad the new BMW’s are so goddamn ugly. The Koreans keep poaching the talented German designers and it shows
Cool story bro
Are people pissed yet?
M2 March 2020 15470
M2 Sept 2021 20982
That’s over a 30% increase….
and that may be where the inflation, all added in, is going..
everything up 30%.
Fear not, say those in high positions with INFLATION PROTECTED PENSIONS…..on top of lots of money.
Yellen has at least 3 (U of C, Fed, Treasury)
I have an acquaintance with that sort of pension. Radically brusquely liberal, phony intellectual (retired professor, never worked in a for-profit business. I have worked both types). He is grossly unhealthy, through wretched lifestyle choices, a constant drain on every plan he participates in. (I haven’t seen a doctor in 7 years, the old fashioned way: actively cultivating health.) I told him his California pension system is grasping for yield, investing in aggressive hedge funds fighting for pieces of casinos, etc., and he called me “Ayn Rand.” So I pinked-slipped him as an acquaintance. Seeing these public employees I know personally, retiring younger than me and living off the fat of the land for decades, makes me puke. My public work for decades has been all defined contribution plan. For me it is all skin in the game, exposed to the markets. But I am no longer waiting for that “someday” when that bailout regime ends, when overreaching free-riders get a comeuppance. Tomorrow never comes. To me, virtue is a reward in itself, though. I couldn’t be that person.
I remember when economics were taken seroiusly. Then I learned
I think it was Adam Smith in his ‘Wealth of Nations’ (1776) who wrote that nations that have unusually high profit margins are ones that are “going to ruin.”
Very high profit margins for a long period of time mean business has captured government or regulatory bodies.
Hey Y’all, I’m calling you about yawls car’s expired extended warranty, from India. My name is Mark.
Ohai Mark
Willfully burning up chunks of the planet gratuitously to feel good about themselves and elbow other similarly simian males on the freeway. Wow, so meaningful. These buyers have inflation targets on their backs. They would hate to be referred to as “fashion” fools due to the (they would think) effeminate connotations or “typical mammals but empowered merely to really trash things” but that is what they are. Past a point it is rapidly a negative sum game, like growing huge antlers. On a human it smells to me like nihilism, blowing off aggression in sheer waste. Landfill fodder. So, compassion for these mammals with their noses on a chalk line begging for a fleecing to feel competitively virile? When they ride on the freeway one car length behind mine at 70 mph for no visible reason with that stupid phallic truck facade? Zero. I watched a cohort of these ride right off a cliff with other lemmings in 2008. It triangulated when their credit card fees and mortgage resets and gas price and exurban McMansions and construction jobs and marriages all imploded at once. I’m gleeful to see it again. Popcorn at the ready!
Yes I kind of want to see the end to the craziness, but it might be like my fifth grade teacher, when a few were misbehaving we all got punished.
That’s against the Geneva Convention.
You’re “gleeful about marriages imploding”?
I’m sure he could have said all of that in two or three sentences. And without paragraphs, it’s hard to read this way.
– “Willfully burning up chunks of the planet”
Actually we are burning the (organic) biomass that accumulated millions of years of solar energy.
As the link between trucks and road boorishness – there is a correlation but no causality.
Went to test drive a Subaru Outback XT. The XT gives you a 4 cylinder turbo with nice pep. Sitting with the salesperson post-test drive, the typical I’ve got to see my manager, long delay, comes back with a quote that includes a $2,500 above MSRP charge. But if you trade in your vehicle, $2,000 is knocked off the upcharge, and I expect they don’t give you a competitive price for the trade-in. Result – we found another dealer that doesn’t engage in such shenanigans.
Cars are fun but if you drive that one all your neighbors near your new house with the squishy home office and view of a hill will peg you on the doom encrusted NextDoor neighborhood doorbell camera reporting network as just another Subaru from the left coast and not invite you to any savory BBQ or casserole dinner in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, or Nebraska. .
“another Subaru from the left coast”
Interesting connection of ‘left coast’ with Subaru, as I’ve only ever seen “Free Tibet” bumper stickers on either Subarus or Volvos. Which suggests to me that Volvos are a rich virtue-signaler’s vehicle of choice, rather than the proletarian kind (Subaru).
I drove on I-70 in Kansas frequently. 60-70% of the Subarus I saw had Colorado plates. Most of the rest had dealer stickers from Lawrence, or Johnson County.
Moved to Chicago four years ago. Pickup trucks much less prevalent. The signature vehicle in the North Suburbs is the Lexus/Toyota/BMW/MB CUVs, being driven by Trophy wives/Professional women. All of them texting, or yakking on the I Phone.
If you are from the average Metroplex, trucks dont make much sense. But when you live in BFE, and many of your trips are measured in hours, trucks make more sense.
I also enjoyed the buying experience at Subaru of Uranus.
“We’ll only charge you $500 for your trade-in” – SMH – these distortions will make perfect sense in retrospect. Until then, it’s difficult to comprehend.
How are these premiums affecting lease payments and residual values of leased cars? If the purchase price is jacked up and the buy-in price isn’t, the lease payment would have to include that depreciation. on the other hand, if the dealers raise the buy-in price to keep the lease payment affordable, won’t there be a lot of underwater cars in 3 years that will need to be written off?
Nope. That lease will require a higher “cap cost reduction” or higher monthly payments. Dealers can pack a lease but it’s all up to the credit buyers if it flies and any additional over MSRP (which is what the residual is based upon) has to be dealt with either by payment or cap cost reduction (aka down payment).
It’s just a math problem. The money to make it work can only come from three places: Manufacturer, dealer or customer. Manufacturer cut incentives… dealer packing stickers….. guess who’s left?
Are there not legal ramifications for price gouging?
Adding $10K to the msrp seems to qualify.
Credit cards can charge you 31%, and there are no ramifications either. There used to be, but there are not now.
The only solution is a buyer’s strike. Don’t buy anything above sticker, period.
Wolf…. that’s the approach that needs to be taken with anything and everything. A tremendous amount of the price increases that are being shoved down stream are truly price gouging of the sheeple.
“Just say No”.
People DO NOT know how to negotiate 🤣💸🤣
RAB:
Nope. No legal ramifications. That’s why the Monroney Label (aka “sticker”) shows a Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). It also has in the mouseprint “dealer is free to sell at any price”.
Short sighted dealers excessively gouge. Customers will remember (especially in small towns). Long term players will temper their response to market shortages (look at the entire deal – finance income, used vehicle profit potential and front end gross profit). It also – at times – comes into play if you are a loyal service customer. There’s profit there too.
A lot of states have laws that punish price gouging when there is a emergency and/or disaster declaration in an area, but it seems to be “capitalistically OK” to charge as much as you want as long as there is no emergency declaration enacted…although I would probably lose sleep myself if I screwed other humans in the same way that pure capitalism promotes…
For example, I got billed $12,000 for a 3 hour visit to an ER so a sick family member who needed saline IV due to dehydration. Per liter of “salt water”, they billed us a little over $1,000. I had a family member pull the hospital cost and it was around a single dollar for the hospital to purchase the liter of saline solution. So a 1,000X profit margin…just of the bag of saline, not the labor or tubing, etc. The hospital’s stock has risen over 100% this year alone. At what point is enough, enough???? Greed is a disease, and America is very sick at the moment as there are no broad based laws, at the moment, that “restrict capitalism at all costs”…
Lot of readers don’t seem to understand the triangle of supply, demand and price.
If the price is high that means supply is low or demand is high or both.
“Price gouging” is a political term, not an economics term.
How high will gas prices have to go before people put the brakes on buying gas guzzling big trucks and SUV’s. I remember the 70’s when almost overnight people went from driving muscle cars and land yachts to Fiesta’s , Civics and Vegas. As a high school kid you could get a Delta 88 or a big Buick for next to nothing and you only needed enough fuel to cruise the strip on Saturday night. I knew two guys who had their parents neighbors give them big low mileage sedans for free.
I think it’s starting. Just read there is a run on Woodstock’s and firewood as people start worrying about cost and availability of fuel sources.
It’s typical unintended consequences. Fuel evolution went from wood, to coal, to oil, to natural gas. Leave it to politicians to take us back 300 years in an effort to be be green and clean. Wood is neither.
Wood stove. Can’t see spell check til to late. Just consider it like trying to figure out meaning of a license plate shortened phrase
I heated with wood in my raised ranch in Connecticut from 1975 to 1980 before I sold the house and went to work for Big Oil in California in 1981. I had two wood stoves, one up, one down, venting into a common three flue brick chimney that was in the center of the house. The third flue was for the oil furnace that rarely saw oil.
I used to cut and split 8 full cords of hardwood every summer. My neighbors did the same stuff. This can be done. Now we have pellet stoves back east.
I live in Texas now and heat with natural gas. We had no natural gas availability when I lived in rural CT back then.
I had a truck back then to haul wood.
“Wood is neither.”
Burning wood is considered green because it is carbon neutral. It is renewable.
I burn 4 cord a season and not my propane backup, which is obviously not carbon neutral nor renewable.
I am with you on that.
A wood stove in the house is kind of dirty, but nothing like a real fire behind glass and the new wood stoves are efficient.
I have read arguments for and against wood being green. When it gets really cold, the priority becomes not freezing to death, whatever it takes.
The rural areas typically have worse pollution in the air during the winter due to all of the wood burning. In the city with all of the natural gas used I do not see the smoke. This is just my observation, no proof.
SC:
The one thing you’re forgetting is that some SUV’s (like mine – which is a full size crossover – not frame on) get 27 MPG rambling around the city/burbs. Mine does. Long drop to the 8MPG of a Buick Roadmonster.
Gas mileage is a bit of a crock as well. I get 11mpg in my 1981 carb’d beater. 2k cost paid off. 35/month insurance, 200-250 a month in gas. It’s a 3/4 ton 4×4 long bed pickup.
Any comparable 2021 250/2500 pickup at best will get 15mpg unless it is diesel. And even then, only marginally better mileage.
That’s me getting 75% or so of the mpg. Meanwhile that means mr new truck is saving 50-75 bucks a month on gas. But he is spending 500+ on just the payments which will keep coming for years and years.
No thanks. Nobody wants to drive a 1980s pile of crap because this country is grotesquely materialistic and richer than they could possibly fathom. I’ll keep plugging along until I can find a Prius truck for 4-5k and swap in some new batteries myself in another 10-15 years. Until then I’ll give the nice foreign man at the Sinclair a bit more money and the toothless junk yard guy a couple 20s every few months replacing little knick knacks here and there. And meanwhile not have any debt or 600-1000 dollars a month for transportation.
Best thing about driving a beater is people aren’t thinking you are being showy a status symbol. There is a saying that you drive a car to show who you want to be.
Plant manager of a 1000 employee plant I worked at drove an old beater pick up. He was one of the sharpest guys around and graduated one of the military academies. Had a real easy going attitude for such a stressful job
Ditto. 1999 Lincoln Navigator and a 2001 f150 supercab. Both combined get around 13 mpg. Both are paid off and are old enough that insurance is not a problem. Involved in two bad crashes, both not my fault, people turning left in front of me. Both big and safe. It’s worth the extra in fuel cost to be able to turn the next car that turns in front of me into a Taco Bell drive through.
And cheap to repair. I put 350k on my old 1990 F-250 wood hauler.
Look at the carnage that the exploding deer and feral hog populations in Texas does to night travelers and you will do your best to put you and yours into a big vehicle.
Ordered my Maverick in august and beat the rush. Course I am losing interest on the deposit :)
Do you have an ETA yet?
They moved it to “next” year. I did read that the plant is building these vehicles right now. The dealer made a point of pushing a stripped down model, because of supply chain issues. I ordered only two options, a trailer hitch and a 110v outlet. A couple other things will be added when the car is at the dealership. I am wondering if I could resell the vehicle, and tag my own addendum on top of theirs? Obviously in the truck market you get nothing for 20K right now.
Reselling it for a profit would be interesting. If you try to do that, let us know how it turns out.
I think they prioritized high-end versions. That has been pretty much universal. So if you bought a strippy, you might have to wait a lot longer than the person who bought a fully loaded one.
I want one too! But I’ll have to wait til they’re available used…
Those prices are exaggerated. Wolf’s article has trucks in the $65K range. Still outrageous, but commenters on new vehicle articles have been exaggerating the high end pricing for a couple months now.
Sorry…that comment was a reply to Jake W (below). Don’t know what happened there.
:-(
And with these ridiculous prices with come an upcharge in insurance.
It’s just not the upcharge due to gouging (don’t think that will matter… insurance is based on replacement cost and that would be used for used) but it also is the replacement parts shortage leading to extended repair times. A friend of mine’s daughter got sandwiched in an accident. She’s been waiting 6 weeks for a rear hatch. Insurance company doesn’t want to extend the rental car….. her mom sent the insurance company the number of her lawyer.
Gonna get interesting!
Wolf,
I can factually confirm in San Diego. New and used 2022 Kia Sorento SUVs are beings sold at $4,000 and $5,000 over MSRP.
This is done by installing mandatory BS accessories. The consumer has no choice. Sense illegal to me.
Why can’t we buy manufacturer direct?!?! No wonder Tesla sales have exploded here in SoCal.
Mr Anderson (paid subscriber! :)
Michael,
Yes, but buyers might think that the useless accessories or the $400 fluff-and-buffs add something to the vehicle. That has been done for decades. Here in our case, we’re talking about an additional amount slapped on top of the sticker, with nothing in return, not even any pretense. They should just call them “ADP” – Additional Dealer Profit :-]
You buy a Tesla direct. Tesla was the only automaker that was able to successfully break the stranglehold that state franchise laws have.
I think there’s still 6 states that ban direct from manufacturer sales. Two others are “hybrids” that restrict the number of outlets.
Take a peek at how many auto dealers are in public office (state legislators) to get a gander as to why.
However, direct from manufacturer is not the panacea that most think it is. Tesla is among the worst when it comes to right to repair.
Ditto. 1999 Lincoln Navigator and a 2001 f150 supercab. Both combined get around 13 mpg. Both are paid off and are old enough that insurance is not a problem. Involved in two bad crashes, both not my fault, people turning left in front of me. Both big and safe. It’s worth the extra in fuel cost to be able to turn the next car that turns in front of me into a Taco Bell drive through.
I learned the history (reason) for Franchise Dealerships about five years ago from an educated auto industry exec. The argument in the past does not support todays world and all of this is being supported by the State Legislators. Frankly, it is just a fight to maintain Status Quo and we as citizens are paying for it. Our so call “free market system” is anything but.
Interesting comments posted. So many people seem to be down on trucks. Can’t help but wonder if they’re the same people who are boosters for the EV market. Trucks are not my cup of tea. But I say to each his own.
Umm, is there an EV version of the F150 yet? That’s the ticket!!!
Just googled… there is an EV version of F150 for 2022!
You had to google that??? Ford must have done a lousy job promoting it. It has been all over the news for months. Biden even went to drive one. Big hoopla right there. A 600 hp beast.
Wolf, this site is my only “news” and it’s on a one week lag so I can enjoy all the comments. See, some people have successfully boycotted things!
what I don’t get is: if they can put a mini-SUV body on a car chassis and call it a crossover, why is it so hard to make a “weekend warrior” version?
I just need a 1980s era Japanese truck.
You are describing a Honda Ridgeline, available at your nearest Honda dealer.
US truck mpg boggles the mind for us Europeans.
My Toyota Yaris consumes 6 litres per 100km which is 39 mpg US.
To get 13 mpg I would have to fill up my tank and then pour two extra full tanks of gasoline down the drain.
“US truck mpg boggles the mind for us Europeans.”
it’s simple. in most of the country, we have fewer narrow roads and cheaper gas. people haul a lot of crap: boats, snowmobiles, etc. and they often have to take their own garbage to the dump.
in older urban areas, the yaris and other small cars are popular here, too.
This is so dumb. Everybody’s acting like there will no longer be ample supply of cars and trucks. A massive GLUT is forthcoming. I am going to laugh heartily and deeply at the suckers who fell for this ruse.
I would not bet on the glut comming. The manufacturers may have learnt and cut supply in advance. There will be sypply of cars and trucks, but maybe they switch to the built on order practice in USA like some manufacturers practice in Europa.
That won’t work unless they illegally collude.
How is that illegal?
The car is then sold when the order is confirmed and must be paid at delivery. That may or may not be a big change from todays practice depending on your whereabout.
I am. FULLY. Just watch. Any time prices on anything rapidly accelerate, buyers drop out and inventories build. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
They’re basically pricing over 50% of the population out of new vehicles – a very BAD business move. Meanwhile, there are still dealers who will place a factory order for less than invoice.
How is pricing half of the population out of new vehicles a bad business move?
In the end it is the profit and margin that counts. If there is no big profits and a lot of work with abysmall margins, why bother with the mass market?
Meanwhile, Weimar Boy Powell STILL pumping to the tune of over $100 BILLION per month, with no rate hikes in sight. This guy is a mentally deranged lunatic.
What the past 2 years have shown us is that the eCONomic model in the US is broken – a failed endeavor. So what is Build Back Broke Boy doing? Doubling down on the same failed model.
With the rise in crime, driving a newer vehicle increases your chance of being a crime victim. Don’t do it.
WOLF- As always, nice charts. The wealthy are not buying these vehicles and stimmies are long gone.
Looks like real estate where inventory is just so low that the buyers are are paying the high prices because there is a demand which simply cannot be filled. If your car got totalled or engine blew up or whatever, you gotta buy a vehicle. At least they are (presumably) getting great financing rates.
nobody “has” to buy a $90k truck.
I bought a 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee CRD 3.0 Turbodiesel in March of 2020 for $8k. 112,00 miles. This model has a Mercedes Benz derived engine from the sprinter van in it. I swapped out both axles to lower the rpm on freeway cruise. This “Big American Suv” gets 27-30mpg on the freeway and no less than 20mpg in town. With 440ft-lbs of torque, will pull most any trailer. The wife drives a 2005 Jeep Liberty Diesel(Paid $4500 for in late 2019), also gets great mileage. These models were both only made for 2 years, and then the EPA said no more. They must have been too efficient? We don’t have to deal with Diesel Exhaust Fluid, complex emissions systems or lots of excess electronics. One big problem these days is that cars are waaaaay too complex. This is a federal problem, and it’s mandatory that cars now have backup cameras, gps systems, and a whole host of other nonsense that drives the price up. I’m lucky, being both a mechanic and an engineer, I can fix, repair or fabricate just about anything to keep a car on the road, but most new cars have systems that are far beyond what I am capable of dealing with. This will be a problem as we go further into the future, and the consumer will pay for it.
I’m a diesel guy, but the newer diesels are fraught with extremely costly problems thanks to the outrageous emissions systems. That doesn’t even get into the costs of replacing high pressure fuel pumps, etc. Owning one out of warranty can easily result in a $15,000-$20,000 repair bill. No, I’m not kidding.
I completely agree. That’s why we own two, out of warranty for less than $15k. They aren’t our only cars, and if they blow up, or lose an expensive injection pump etc. . .down the road they go. I try to be pragmatic with my vehicle purchases, and with the exception of my 72′ Dodge Challenger, I’ve never paid more than $10k for a car, and typically less than $5k. Americans just have to have brand new everything, all the time. Drives me nuts what people spend for transportation, and image.
Americans might be approaching peak “buy at all costs”, as looking at the latest ABC poll, consumers are getting really angry about inflation and blaming “Team Blue” as they sleepwalk into mid-term wipeout…all while the Fed hides in plain sight. I’m guessing most people have trouble understanding the effects of inflation, but not so much when they see those gas pump numbers rolling up into C-notes when they fill up their SUV/Trucks. Food and Fuel inflation is instantly obvious and really get the voters stirred up quickly…
At this point, even “IF” inflation heads down sometime next year, the world will have seen “Accumulated Inflation” of at least 20% above normal historical annual rate increases. For some reason, not many articles speak about the “Accumulation Effect” of inflation, as if having 6-10% inflation for a few years and goes back to 3%, all the accumulated inflation magically disappears….HA
Per TheHill:
Seven in 10 voters say the economy is in bad shape, only 39 percent approve of Biden’s handling of the economy and close to one-half blame him for inflation, according to the ABC News-Washington Post poll. Sixty-one percent of voters believe that the rise in gasoline prices is due to the Biden administration’s policies, per a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, which also found that nearly 9 in 10 voters are concerned about inflation.
By the way, I think the Pres will sacrifice J-Pow in four days as he needs someone to blame for high inflation to avoid mid-term wipeouts. Markets will not like this and will react, yet I’m still placing for a market wipeout early next year via options hedging. Still some mom and pop retail money left to suck into the system via constant MSM “There is no Alternative” TINA brainwashing. So once retail taps out their margin accounts via housing loans in a “can’t lose market”, that is when the Smart Money pulls the rug when a “black swan” opportunity presents itself in the next 2-8 months to allow a swift exit for the bottom 90% of bag-holders to wonder what hit them. Then the Smart money publishes articles about how the end of the world is nigh, while buying back their shares at the bottom when the retail crowd hits peak panic. Typical Wall Street cycles…just no idea when or how the next Fed will step in as now the markets and inflation have become transparently political…
It is important to remember that Ford and GM actually cancelled their chip orders during the middle of the pandemic. When they tried to get back in they were at the end of the line. Toyota and Tesla increased theirs. Ford and GM are run by idiots. The automotive industry has a useful discipline structure for working with suppliers (APQP) Advanced Production Quality Planning. This includes an analysis of the suppliers ability to deliver and the suppliers use of capacity to supply your parts. Ford and GM are well known by industry suppliers to ignore this information. Chips are also relatively cheap so they are well down the pareto of important parts by dollar value and do not get the attention they deserved.
Yep I drive a Ford but after witnessing the continued idiocy of GM and Ford over the past few years, next ride will almost certainly be a Toyota.
In 1969 I bought a new base model Chevy Pickup. Paid $1950 out the door, Dexter Chevrolet, Detroit Mi. If you wanted a spare tire and rear bumper you had to pay a little extra. My salary was $550 per month at GM. Do the math.
$1950÷4=roughly $500 So 4 months salary more or less, buys you a new Chevy. So what does the average worker in the US, or average autoworker at GM take home a month? Let’s say they earn $80k/year, so $6600/month before taxes. If we ignore taxes, that makes for a roughly $27,000 pickup truck in today’s terms. I don’t think you can come close to a $27,000 1/2 ton pickup nowaydays. Maybe 15 years ago? We know that with the cost of housing etc…that this is not practical, and I have no idea what a UAW worker earns in Michigan. If someone can work this out better or more realistically, please do.
We live in Montana. All of our vehicles are trucks. With rifles on the racks. My favorite is Old Blue, our 1986 F-250 manual. It’s a beast and purrs and is easy to fix. My wife loves driving it to town. When you’re driving on the road day or night there could easily be a herd of elk or moose just over the hill or around the bend. If you hit one it’s handy to have a rifle to put it out of its misery. And if you’re a skilled hunter you can dress the animal right there and take home the meat. We have wood burning stoves. We chop our own wood. In rural areas of any state a truck isn’t macho; it’s a must. PS. Our other vehicle is a backhoe.
If you hit a moose in a pickup your last concern is going to be shooting it and dressing it on the side of the road.
Very true.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll just clip the animal. But still.
The Camry / F150 chart is one of the best economics charts I’ve seen in 40 years. And not only because i own two Toyota Camrys. This website has the best charts of any finance / economics website I know of.
When I saw the article today, I wondered why finding a few MSRP’s online deserved an entire article. Then I read the article — and now i see why.
It’s bad enough dealing with auto salesmen in a normal year. But paying over MSRP is hard to take. I grew up in New York, where paying the suggested retail price for any large purchase was something no one would admit to. Would ruin your reputation. But 2021 is a crazy year.
On one of my blogs, I write a brief article on my weekly Sunday trip to a huge local supermarket. Used to be of no interest to anyone for the past 40 years. But now i provide a list of items out of stock, or with very few choices left.
Examples:
When I wanted a tub of Philadelphia cream cheese, and got the only one in the store, where there are usually 200, that’s news. When the wife wanted a box of Post Raisin Bran cereal, and there’s not one box in the store, that’s news. A few weeks ago I bought the last tub of Jif smooth peanut butter, where there are usually dozens of five different sizes. Out of stock products are increasing every week, for two months so far. These are strange times.
I thought everybody in NYC got their food delivered by a subscription meal startup.
@Petunia – no that’s for the rubes :) the people who are actually from here know how to cook and where to get good ingredients.
for retired people, it can actually be cheap to live here, if you have a rent stabilized apartment. no car, walking keeps you healthy.
Check Reddit, that a 2021 RAV4 is listed for $100,000. Dealer markup is $40,000.
1) The best selling car, F-150, is hardly selling, because it’s Not available.
2) From the CPI chart : Since 1980 the average CPI was 3%.
Since 1990 : 1.03^32 = 2.57.
3) The 2022 Camry should be : 14.5 x 2.57 = $37,265.
4) F-150 should be : 12.8 x 2.57 = $32,900.
5) The average car : $33K.
6) Next year, after senator Cinema approve Nancy’s tax plans, cars CPI will be minus 20% y/y.
I was on the Cars dot com app yesterday checking out the availability of new 2022 3/4 ton diesel trucks and some dealers in the South are advertising $80K+ F250s for $100-120K! More power to them if they get the money.
I ordered a 2022 Platinum F150 back in September that I am still waiting on.
1) F-150 had a change of character, it’s no longer the best selling car.
2) Fill a tank for $200 bucks.
3) Deposed recently by Ford transit vans, Manheim #1.
4) SPX is 2:0 of the Feb/ Mar 2020 plunge. It’s double the size of the
wave from Feb top to Mar bottom. F-150 prices in bubble territory and bubbles revert to the mean by deflating below them.
My V6 minivan, purchased new for sub-$20k, is looking better and better. I put some SUV tires and rear lifters on it to hold some weight, travel the backroads, and pull small trailers. It gets over 30 mpg highway, plus can fit a stack of 4×8 plywood sheets in the back.
As icing on the cake, I’ve found I can blow away most Teslas drivers at the stop light. I do a little power brake off the line, dart ahead and fade towards their lane just a tiny bit. They tend to panic and lay off the accelerator.
The look of dismay is priceless, as they eat the minivan’s dust.
Eagerly awaiting Wolf’s article and J-POW! Comments regarding this morning’s announcement.
my comment is that i don’t understand why people keep saying that powell demonstrated “courageous leadership.” you might think he did the right thing, which i don’t, but there is nothing courageous about unlimited money printing. everyone can do that. it’s only a testament to our former strength that we don’t have hyperinflation yet.
What most people forget is what applies to, perhaps, 97% of us.
We don’t get to make the rules. We have to figure out what they are and do the best with the hand we’re dealt.
And for some extra ‘fun’ … the rules can change year after year.
“Life’s a (word associated with a female dog) and then you die”.
Nah anon, ya got the quote wrong:
Should be, ”Life’s a BEACH,,, and then ya go to join the Great Spirits.”
But, that may be true only for those of us who have lived with little regard for ”money rich”,,, from ‘day to day’ and ”hand to mouth” and in our vehicles and squatting in the high rent districts waiting for the axe to fall,,, and then on to Red wood and Holy Wood looking for that heart of gold and finding exactly that person,,, just before ”getting old”…
”Praise the Lord” and keep your powder dry boys and girls,,, it’s going to come again and again and again,,, that’s for damn sure,,, and you can either whine and regress, or ”surf that wave” to your utmost,,, really your choice these days, as opposed for the vast majority of WE The PEONS, for the last couple thousand years, on average.
Looks like B is going with Powell again, so better buy your cars and trucks now!!
nah MB,,, as commented on Wolf’s report, Biden just gonna use Repub Powell as the ”fall guy.”
Interesting that Biden also said today he was going to run again in 2024,,, don’t suppose that was intended to ensure the bribery — oh, I mean campaign contributions — continue, eh?
Seriously agree with Pet’s comment that outsiders are needed in FEDGUV, and asap IMO..
Unfortunately the trumpster is clearly NOT the one capable of doing the job; also unfortunately IMHO no sane person would want anything to do with USA politics these days.
I now have a car that was built in this century; I hope that this doesn’t lessen my opinion. The computer garbage that is built into every car saddens me beyond words. I still have a couple of cam/dwell meters and at least 5 timing lights.
My wife’s new 2002 touring wagon is doing well, except for an incipient power steering fluid leak that drives me crazy.
Not being able to easily check the transmission fluid level is crap.
My 1937 cord 810 is still running well, and will go everywhere that your $80,000+ F150 will go. I don’t have a trailer hitch on it, which limits its utility a little, but I like it.
Folks: Interesting the demographics evident here in the “truck” comments per this article. Here in eastern Colo., most own at least one PU truck. (most own all PU trucks except maybe a church/funeral SUV or a Cadillac/Lincoln. Almost half also own a semi tractor also for the real pulls. A sizeable # of trucks are vintage, which aren’t a slave to the computer. Any one who buys new, is doing so for the tax angle. I cannot fathom some of the perspectives shown here in these comments. [BTW, several of my Dodge Cummins, which are stock manual trans. diesels get 23mpg carrying 80 gal aux fuel tanks and 2 tool boxes.]
Carry on, mi amigos….