Wholesale prices jumped across the board but spiked the most for EVs.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Prices of used cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, and vans that were sold at auctions across the US jumped by 1.2% in August from July, seasonally adjusted, the second jump in a row after a long series of declines, according to today’s Used Vehicle Value Index by Manheim, which runs about 8 million vehicles a year through its auction lanes. The index is adjusted for changes in mix and mileage (red in the chart).
Not seasonally adjusted, wholesale prices jumped by 2.2% in August from July, to $18,719, the second jump in a row after a long series of declines, which whittled down the year-over-year decline to 4.6%, the smallest year-over-year decline since May 2023 (the drops maxed out in the double digits earlier this year).
This second month in a row of substantial price increases points at a potential end of the historic plunge of used-vehicle prices that unwound about half of the crazy 60% price spike during the pandemic. It indicates that used-vehicle prices may have hit bottom, that they may no longer push down CPI inflation as they’d done over the past two years, and that they may turn into an inflation headwind going forward.
Dealers buy at these auctions to replenish their used-vehicle inventories. Supply comes from rental fleets that sell some of the vehicles they pull out of service, from finance companies that sell their off-lease vehicles and repos, from corporate and government fleets, other dealers, etc.
The report by Manheim, a unit of Cox Automotive added:
“The trend of higher wholesale values at Manheim continued into August from July, as we saw prices appreciate every week except the last.”
“Sales conversion continued to rise and held at much higher levels than prior years for the month as more buyers came to markets to replenish supply for used retail inventory. We know lease maturities are on the decline, and used retail days’ supply has tightened over the last month. That will likely keep pressure on buyers at Manheim in the next several weeks.”
Used vehicle retail sales, in terms of the number of units sold, have grown by the double digits year-over-year this year, and inventories have dwindled (more in a moment), so dealers are bidding up auction prices to restock their retail inventory, and as they sell those units at higher prices, those prices will eventually be reflected in the used-vehicle CPI.
The importance for CPI inflation going forward.
The 55% explosion of the used-vehicle CPI from mid-2020 through early 2022 was a strong contributor to the surge in core CPI inflation over that period. Since mid-2022, used vehicle prices have plunged – both wholesale prices depicted above and retail prices – and the used-vehicle CPI has given up over half of the price spike and has been a substantial force in pushing down core CPI inflation.
Changes in wholesale prices – the prices dealers pay to restock their retail inventories – precede changes in retail prices as measured by the used-vehicle CPI by a couple of months as dealers try to pass on the higher costs to their customers.
The used-vehicle CPI, seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted, dropped in July (we’ll get August CPI on Wednesday). So, through July, the price increases at the auction have not yet translated into increases of the CPI as CPI lags wholesale prices by a couple of months, and wholesale prices first rose in July, and now in August. So far, the used-vehicle CPI has helped pushing down core CPI. But this will likely flip going forward – that’s what wholesale prices are telling us.
Used-vehicle retail inventories dropped and are very tight.
Retail inventory at the end of July dropped to 2.17 million used vehicles, according to separate reporting by Cox Automotive, down from the prepandemic range of over 2.8 million vehicles, constrained by the reduced influx from off-lease vehicles – vehicles that were leased new two to three years ago with two- and three-year leases, whose leases are now maturing.
A month ago, Manheim put it this way:
“We are just beginning to see lower lease maturities for the key 3-year-old segment, and that impact will be felt over the rest of this year and into 2025 and 2026. As supply tightens for this key segment for the used vehicle market, we expect to see variances from historical average depreciation rates.”
August inventory data will be released in about a week, but from the Manheim report today, we can see that inventories tightened further by the end of August.
These are very tight inventory levels, amid strong sales growth, and this supply-and-demand situation on dealer lots, along with rising wholesale prices, suggest that the retail price declines may have bottomed out.
During the entire episode of the vehicle shortages, there were only five months when inventories were even lower.
Prices of EVs and ICE vehicles.
EV wholesale prices spiked by 5.1% in August from July (red in the chart below), while ICE-vehicle prices jumped “only” 2.0% (blue).
Used EVs had experienced a crazy 145% price spike from January 2020 through July 2022. At the time, Tesla-flipping was a phenomenon where people bought new Teslas and resold them at much higher prices as used vehicles. Tesla, by ramping up production and cutting prices in 2022, then largely killed Tesla-flipping.
This 145% spike of EV wholesale prices was well over double the price spike of ICE vehicles (+64%). About half of those price spikes have gotten unwound.
Auction prices of EVs were at or below ICE vehicles before the pandemic. But that changed in mid-2021 when EV prices out-spiked the spiking ICE-vehicle prices. Even after the big price drops back to earth, EV prices remain substantially higher than ICE-vehicle prices (not seasonally adjusted):
Since January 2020, EV wholesale prices are still up 70%, while ICE-vehicle prices are up only 35%. EVs make up only a small portion of total auction sales, so their impact on the overall price index is small: The index for all auction prices is up 35.5% since 2020, with EV prices up 70.2% and ICE-vehicle prices up 34.6%:
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– The Big Three carmakers still haven’t learned their lessons. They are stil “pumping out” cars with (very) heavy price tags. That’s why the price index is still trying go higher.
Perhaps we are moving to a world where the rich buy new cars and everyone else buys used…
The rich keep their 20 years old Mercedes running like new. The poor buy new cars with 7 year loan.
Many of the ‘rich’ have completely rejected Mercedes-Benz as unreliable junk and have been buying BMWs instead for many decades as they are vastly better cars.
Then trade the car in after 5 years and roll the “negative equity” into the new loan…
One of my very rich morning coffee group friends has a 20 year old Lexus (top of the line model). He said he will keep it until he can’t get it fixed anymore. Beautiful car with 120,000 miles on it. His wife drives a 7 year old Audi and they are keeping that too.
He can afford to buy an entire dealership if he wanted to.
The youngsters are the ones buying the $100+K pickups with 7 year notes on them.
SoCalBeachDude — have you ever worked on a BMW?? I’m not talking about a Nixon-era E9. They are vexatious little glass slippers with gaffe-tasticak engineering wankery at every turn. It’s fine as a rental but nothing to own.
bulfinch, I have 4 BMWs including an E38, E39, and E63 and they are excellent to work on when necessary and anything having an error can be easily diagnosed with INPA and/or ISTA software which is very sophisticated and accurate. The cars are very reliable and continue to perform well and are not fussy or finicky but pleasures to own and operate. I also have a 1987 E30 which is more analog.
bulfinch,
I own a 2001 740iL (e38 chassis, last production year, shadow line trim- all black, no chrome), 99k miles. Here’s what I’ve replaced thus far:
Radiator (just this past weekend)
Water-cooled alternator
Cooling system overhaul (hoses, water pump, thermostat)
Crank case ventilation valve (back of engine near the firewall)
Valve cover gaskets
Vanos solenoid gaskets
Passenger side rear window actuator
Front windshield weather stripping
Lubrication of interior door locks
Replace headlight washer located on the front bumper
But the hardest job was….
Replacing the interior ventilation filters. What a freak’n bitch! One has to be contortionist just to reach them!
Worth the effort. Such a joy to take it for drive out on the back roads and enjoy the rolling hills and wineries of Yamhill county, Oregon. Garaged 6 months out of the year and is now a classic car according to realOEM.
The interesting thing about the e38 is that I never see any on the road anymore. My theory is that they’ve all been shipped to Russia.
And the back seat has been properly broken in.
@Propheticus,
Here’s what I have replaced on my 07 4 Runner with 153K miles.
Oil. Air filters. And one wheel that Discount Tire overly tightened the lug nuts on
That’s it. I will keep it until the bottom rusts out or I die, the latter seems likely to happen first.
True that! I calculate that if my wife and I had both bought $50k cars in cash 20 years ago, we’d be $400k, minimum, less wealthy now.
Since we probably could not have bought in cash back then and would have financed new cars like a lot of young people, now we’re scraping an additional hundred thousand or three from our now-net worth.
Neither of us has ever regretted not having fancier cars. It’s hard to not eye-roll when you see what people are driving and then hear them complaining about money.
My e36 is a beautiful drive and looks about mint.
Here is what I have replaced on my 2007 Ford Focus that I bought with 23,000 and now has 199,600. Oil, oil filter, tires, windshield wiper fluid, one thermostat, charged the ac once, windshield wipers, floor mats.
Andy, you are right. I have five vehicles. The newest one is a 2002 BMW 525i Touring Wagon,(E39) and the most difficult to maintain. I am in the middle of replacing the head gasket right now, but am getting used to wrenching on the thing. Because I am rich, I do all the work on all my vehicles. The best car that I have is my 1937 Cord 810. I think I have enough parts to keep it running for a few decades. I bought it in Auburn, Indiana, for about $5,000, in 1978, I think. That is more than i paid for the other four vehicles, combined.
I do so enjoy watching the poor people driving their $60,000+ pickups though.
Yep and they usually swap them out before they ever pay the car off. I’m still driving my 10 yr old Toyota Highlander that runs just like new. Purchased new with cash and I’ll hang on to it as long as I can. Cars are 100% utility for me, I don’t care what people think, especially when I’ve got cash in my pocket from not continually eating depreciation on a vehicle. Cars are a terrible investment that eventually goes to zero guaranteed!!
“everyone else buys used”
And now they can only afford used cars like the one I just bought, which are “Tin Cans” . Mitsibushi Mirage.
Used car prices started coming down nov 2021. The reason was new car production restarted after covid. It will be exactly 3 yeats from 11/21 on 11/24. This is when the market will get a flood of 3 year lease returns. I estimate prices to crash 11/24.
LOL. You don’t understand how far new vehicle sales plunged, and how long they stayed down, that 2022 was when they hit bottom, and that even 2023, when they started to recover, they were still a lot lower than before the pandemic, and even in 2024, which better than 2023, they’re still a lot below pre-pandemic pace.
About 8 million fewer new vehicles were sold in the four years 2020 through 2023 than the pre-pandemic pace. Those 8 million vehicles are now translating into a supply squeeze for the used vehicle market, and that’s not going to go away anytime soon:
It’s in the auto industries best interest to keep the cost of the vehicles high so there’s not such a vast difference between new and used. I just saw an advertisement by Jeep with zero percent interest. I also recently saw a new Jeep with a price that of $108k. I almost spit out my drink. I’m still driving my 2001 Jeep Wrangler Sahara I bought for $18,000. Vehicle prices are so inflated and it’s only a matter of time to where both used and new will come down in price. As WS has written about new home builders buying down interest rates on cheaper new builds, the same is coming with cars.
“It’s in the auto industries best interest to keep the cost of the vehicles high…”
Absolutely, as long as the auto cartel can keep out the real competition that’s willing to compete on price. But now Tesla is here, and is competing on price, and it’s eating everyone’s lunch. And the Koreans have done that before Tesla.
Look, here are new vehicle sales in units by each major automaker in the US. This is what they got for raising their prices to ridiculous levels — they’re getting killed in sales volume – click on the link and look at the ugly charts:
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/01/04/ugly-charts-of-auto-sales-by-gm-toyota-ford-stellantis-oh-my-got-crushed-by-hyundai-kias-record-sales-tesla-has-arrived/
For example:
Wasn’t 2016-17 the time frame for when Ford and GM announced that they were dropping almost all of their traditional car models in favor of more profitable SUVs, crossovers, etc?
I seem to recall that their line at the time was that on a per car basis, they made little to no money on passenger cars. Amazing how much higher quality Toyota, *can*.
It would be *very* interesting to see just exactly where US automakers’ production dollars go.
For decades now, US makers have really lost the plot on mass production.
Perhaps it boils down to labor costs (partially driven by soaring housing costs – post 2020 at least) – but Ford/GM have plenty of factories in lower cost states (ditto…Toyota, Hyundai, etc).
As with housing, allegedly soaring production costs bear a *lot* of investigation – since foreign competitors seem amazingly unaffected (at least relatively) and the soaring home/auto costs seem to correspond to the final triumph of financing (vs. cash pricing, with its focus on actual final total price versus easily jiggered monthly payment).
The big automakers don’t care about volume anymore. They care about making up volume with high profit margins. The high margins is also why their EV strategies are failing.
And that’s why the car market is moving towards used cars for now. New cars & EVs are way too expensive, especially in trucks. The final 3.5 months of 2024 are going to be extremely challenging for Ford, GM & Stellinis. If we find ourselves in a real recession next year, these companies will be screaming for bailouts.
Also why Chinese EV’s will continue to be banned. Cheap EVs would destroy Detroit.
Chinese EVs are cheap because the Chinese government subsidizes the heck out of them. It’s part of the CCPs plan to take over the world. They are getting banned because of unfair competitive practices, not because they can actually make them so much cheaper.
Someone should tell this Cole fellow about Tesla and other domestic auto company subsidies. At the multinational scale, subsidies are part of the game. If your company isn’t as good at playing that game, that’s on you, not the ebil gommunists.
Perfect timing, Wolf. I just had this discussion with a car dealer friend of mine, confirming what I’ve assumed would happen: when ~15 million units of production are removed (globally) between 2020 – 2023 and the number of 3-year leases drops to nearly zero in 2020-2021, that’s going to show up in supply numbers right about…..now.
Yes, I have also been anticipating this.
There are 260+ million vehicles in the US, from 20-25 different vintage years. It *is* possible for inventory to come from all those years other than 2021+.
Not saying there isn’t a supply effect…just saying it has to be weighed against a 260 million base.
This is a nonsense comment. And it’s the second time you posted it.
Influx into the used vehicle market comes from vehicles that were bought new and are now sold as used. In a normal year, rental units add about 2.5-3.5 million used vehicles to the market. Off-lease vehicles add a few million to the used market in a normal year. People who bought new and later trade in the vehicle to buy something else add millions of vehicles per year to the used vehicle market. Etc. That’s how the used vehicle market is supplied.
Shuffling 15-year-old used vehicles around amongst people adds ZERO used vehicles to the market, it just shuffles owners around.
At the same time, many millions of used vehicles are removed from service and sent to salvage yards or are exported overseas (often as wrecks to be fixed in cheap-labor countries and sold in other markets). So the US fleet of vehicles shrinks if no new vehicles are added to it. At the same time, the population grows. So you run into shortages of vehicles – and prices spike. We saw a version of that in 2021-2022.
I recently traveled to Nashville recently and it was common for the Uber drivers to have leases rather than their own personal cars. I suppose that may be common with many of them and perhaps just never thought about it. Getting a solid deal on a lease has a lot of benefits if you are driving a lot for many and it is business related.
One of my last drivers told me you can only drive Uber if your car is under a certain age, I just can’t remember what number he said.. So if that’sthe case leasing to me makes the most sense, I don’t really like going through the whole resale process and if I was a busy Uber driver needing a new ride to keep my license I’d like it even less I imagine
Uber and Lyft both have their own facilitation programs for drivers wanting to use leased vehicles.
Their vehicles have to be under 10 years old.
Poor guy here. Bought a used car at peak. Interesting to see the weight it brings to CPI. Asside from supply chain induced by the pandemic how are the consumers behaving and who is the prime demographic for new car sales. Because we different tiers of consumers are the car companies pandering to one or the other. I’m a poor guy so I guys I’m a used car candidate. I wish we had better mass transit. Soon you’ll take an air taxi if you of that class type.
Leases are dumb for an Uber driver.
That’s just having a car company and an employer take advantage of you all at once.
Prob add a bank screwing them over for the trifecta.
The flip side is whatever tax advantages the driver gets. If a lot of the cost is written off (not a CPA/ I know ours changed strategy based on depreciation, miles driven etc.) then it makes sense.
I imagine the cost of doing business would be deductible, as that’s the main reason for many deductions: keep the money flowing!
I have an 11 and an 18 year old vehicle, and we opted not to buy a 3rd this year.
Hooray, I am sure with the for sure 25 basis points rate cut in 2 weeks and maybe even 50 basis points (if WS gets its way), this won’t look even worse afterward.
Stonks way up today on nothing (as usual). WS is definitely expecting its way, and since the Fed is in bed with WS, they probably will. Hope I’m wrong but doutful.
I wouldn’t say nothing, for one BTFD crowds came out in full force as expected, you can see this miles away with how often this has happened in the last couple of years, sadly this is the new normal now
Secondly, I think market is feeling even more confident .25 cut is going to be not acceptable and not looking at .50 or .75 as the next bet, they are putting their money down now. This tick up in auto will likely not sour their forever is up mood. I did see Cathie Woodshed went buying again after the dip, so there’s that…
I should have clarified when i said nothing. I meant nothing resembling fundamentals the way I knew them in the old, less corrupt America.
Hopefully you snagged the bait during today’s anemic rally. Asset holders looking to sell to the Johnny cum lately.
Who will hate themselves for the rest of their lives for not being bold enough.
Manheim is a cool name for the car industry, the housing industry needs a cool name as well, then their pricer can rise higher..”houserheim” should do. I was also noticing the frying pan effect on some charts, but it is so pronounced its more of a “big dipper” effect….go and see his last chart…big dipper.
And lastly, the second biggest expense for an individual is his used car, and the prices are rising, so my thinking is the used house will also follow suit. So if you have a used house and used car you are making some money.
Thanks Wolf
3year, 10, and 30 year auctions coming up next three days too. CPI,PCE, too. I’m going to wait for it all, even the feds decision, the 18th. One day it’s going to be surfs up.
Buy your Chevrolets from Persia
Ford is losing $50,000 per EV, so I’d suggest that they increase their unit prices to consumers by at least $50,000 per vehicle just to stem their massive losses.
Ford needs to increase their production to reach the volume levels where they’re making money on each unit. Tesla went through that too, and it took years. They’re all going through it. But it’s afraid to do that because ramping up production is VERY expensive (building and equipping factories, etc.). And when designing the vehicles, it should have focused more on lowering costs. Instead, it assumed EVs would be a premium product that it could sell for $80k-plus. And that backfired. New EVs are now lower priced than equivalent ICE vehicles, and Ford totally miscalculated. They also idiotically killed their Fusion, including the Hybrid, and other sedan models because they were all lower priced and lower-profit margin vehicles than their trucks and SUVs, and they just handed that business to the foreign brands and to Tesla. All Ford executives should be fired. They’re too beholden to Wall Street, they focus on share buybacks instead of long-term sound strategic decision making. They cannot manage themselves out of a paper bag.
Well, if things don’t work out for them with those strategies the government can probably spot them a few billion dollars so they can try again
At least Ford skipped the 2008/2009 bailouts? I respect them some for that.
“I respect them some for that.”
Yes me too. I do wonder if the “too big to fail” approach was a precedent or if there will be some resistance next go around, I guess we will find out eventually.
“Instead, it assumed EVs would be a premium product that it could sell for $80k-plus. And that backfired. New EVs are now lower priced than equivalent ICE vehicles…. :”.
What else is there too say, question mark.
Big agree on the Fusion. I was planning to buy one for my next car until they went and discontinued it. I am still in shock that they made such a bad move.
Our family is growing and we are planning to buy a three row SUV in the next year or two. Wolf (and fellow commenters) do you feel the same about the Ford Explorer? What would be your recommended three row SUV?
Love our Toyota Highlander
Start with Bring A Trailer and take a look at some of the Used Large SUVS. That is a good way to beat the whole system.
Lexus, GM, GMC, Ford, Toyota
A Ford Exploder?
Pathfinder?
Detroit’s repeat of the 70s when they paid little attention to small cars and begrudgingly made miserable penalty boxes like the Pinto and Vega, because they “weren’t as profitable as big cars”, and handed a big chunk of the market to the Japanese. Forever chasing short-term profits at long-term expense.
Yes, I never understood the idiotic management of US automakers. Whatever hits them, they deserve it.
Polaris is a company based in Minnesota. I own a few shares of stock in the company. Polaris owns Indian Motorcycle and makes bikes in Iowa.
Their top “naked” performance bike, the FTR Carbon retails at $19K. It has a 1.2 liter V-twin with only 120 hp and 87 ft-lb of torque. But despite it being “Carbon,” it has a wet-weight of 513 lbs.
Put this bike up against the Japanese, German and Italian competition, and it’s really no contest. Sure, it is a well made machine, and Made in the USA, but the benchmark is now 200 hp and 200 kg.
Why can’t Polaris make a V4 hyper-naked like Ducati and Aprilia? Or why not make an inline-4 performance bike? BMW, Yamaha, Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki sure as hell make a wide variety great bikes with one liter straight-fours.
For comparison to the Indian, a Ducati StreetFighter V4 is just over $22k. It’s got 208 hp, 90 ft-lb torque and a wet-weight (minus fuel) of 430 lbs.
Just asking. And no, I don’t understand either.
The US car companies can’t profitably make a small car because of high labor costs. As a percent of total cost, labor is a larger component of costs for a smaller vehicle compared with a larger vehicle. The entire organizational infrastructure required to deal with the UAW is massive.
They respond too quickly to fad, fashion, and temporary ‘crises’ that temporarily affect (fickle) consumer demand.
They need a better way to put out EV fires.
One would think if the scientists can can win a Nobel for the battery chemistry then they could figure out how to stop the cascading thermal breakdown.
I mean while you are at it. :) ha
Good. Inflation will reignite and for once, everyone will realize that Powell doesn’t know what he’s doing.
So you know, inflation up and labor weakness both suggest both bond prices and stocks will follow a price appreciation down. It will get all investors unprepared for the next move.
It will trigger a recession, which will cause housing inventory to skyrocket and house prices to come down. This “everything bubble” has to end some time, don’t you think?
Nah, this time is different as many have said before….even inverted and uninverted yield curves don’t predict what they used to anymore. I think we have to embrace insanity as the new normal as dystopian as it might be..
Except as interest rates fall the market value of bonds increase.
Stocks are under a different dynamic. The likely market decline should not be a surprise to anyone paying attention.
There will be a massive crash in car prices next year, similar to the housing crash.
I so so so wish you’ll be right but I give it about as much as a probability of me winning the next powerball and for someone who doesn’t buy lottery ticket
I remember last time the asset bubble collapsed, where I could have bought classic cars at a discount. Why didn’t I take advantage of someone else’s misfortune is that I couldn’t afford it.
“Nothing goes to heck in a straight line”
Wolf Richter
The used car market, for me, is a romantic memory when the American dream was different than now, by 50 years.
Although, I think like then, that love is the mysterious fluid that keeps us from killing each other.
That and a homicide charge.
It the ICE vehicle available available for sedans only, broken out from everything else? I’m trying to figure out if sedan *demand* is really going away or not. If used vehicle sedan prices are rising at the same pace (or faster!) than other categories, it would show that there is plenty of demand for sedans out there, it’s just that car manufacturers aren’t producing them anymore.
I still update my Carmageddon charts that I started in 2015 or so to show the structural decline of sales of new “cars” (sedans) and the rise of “trucks” (pickups, SUVs, vans). I just don’t post them anymore.
Sedan sales have now stabilized at low levels, even risen a little bit, after the legacy US automakers essentially got out of it, and Tesla got into it with its Model 3, which is a big seller among sedans, which is what kept the figures from declining further. Several other EV models are also sedans.
The chart shows the 12-month moving total — so each data point is the sum of the last 12 months. I do this because monthly auto sales are super volatile, driven by big promos that automakers roll out, or lack thereof, and by seasonal factors. But this shows the long-term trends. So over the 12 months through August, 12.7 million new “trucks” were sold and 3.0 million new sedans:
I mean, who doesn’t love a sedan?
Am I right?
If you still do, they can be good value on the used car market, because they’re “out of style” and everyone is chasing crossovers/SUVs/etc. at double the price per equivalent size.
Is a similar breakout available for used? We know the manufacturers are shunning sedans, but are consumers? The used data breakout would help clarify that. Thanks for the very interesting chart and comment above.
The problem with the US car industry is that you can’t buy an economy, no-frills car anymore. All the cars are too big, and loaded up with features you don’t want, and are bundled with every car, and you will have to repair if they break. So, you have to buy a foreign made car to get something economical and provides basic transportation to get from point A to point B. I don’t hear many people talking about this.
This all is about the bottom line of the automakers and the unions.
You are spot on Swamp Creature. I will not buy a new car the rest of my life. I don’t wish to pay for the things I do not desire, and in some cases won’t even accept.
Yup. No more DX civic or LE camry for those that want new but basic.
Keep in mind that the yen-dollar exchange rate and yuan-dollar exchange rates vastly undervalue Asian labor. Asian manufacturers can pay their workers wages that allow a decent living in their home markets, but if converted to dollars are low. So there’s no way American manufacturers can compete unless they can automate their processes to run at lower cost, but even there the Asians have an advantage, because they can employ the engineers who create the automation cheaper, too.
I read and speak Japanese fluently, and enjoy about a month each spring in Nagoya, the headquarters area of Toyota and its suppliers (Denso, et a l). A month’s rent on a very comfortable furnished 1br apartment with maid service just half a mile from the central station with its scores of excellent restaurants, department stores, beer gardens, etc. runs me less than $2000. An upscale shopping mall is 500 meters away. Superb subway service.
An eminently livable city. Cheap for me thanks to the exchange rate. Not so cheap for the Japanese themselves; average total compensation for an engineer in the Tokyo area is about $70k/yr, and significantly lower elsewhere. All wages, especially manufacturing, much lower than the U.S. in dollar terms, but still decent in local terms.
The strong dollar is great for Americans as consumers, but not as workers in global competition. And for American manufacturers to try to compete in many areas at current exchange rates would be pissing into the wind, nay, pissing into a hurricane. Alas, because this results in a hollowing out of manufacturing infrastructure, even a return to reasonable purchasing power parity in exchange rates would not soon rectify the situation, because the infrastructure is no longer there.
I love this 2020 Mitsibuhi Mirage I bought after my Toyota Corolla was totaled last November. Gets me around here to do everything I need to do locally for minimal cost of ownership. I only paid $11,500 for it from a reputable dealer, and it feels like a brand new car. The US auto industry is going to go under because they have failed to listen to the customer segment who wants such a car. They have priced themselves out of the market for an affordable car. When they DO go under, I hope the government doesn’t bail them out like they did in 2008/2009. Let them learn the lesson, the hard way. BY the way, I have not owned an American car since 1978 when I bought a used Ford Mustang. That car was a piece of crap the likes of which I have never seen. That soured me on American cars forever.
You know the UAW-made vehicles are crap when the people who assemble them buy Hyundais, Hondas, Toyotas, Suburus, etc.
Inflation whack-a-mole in 3…2…1…
2005 Matrix here (purchased in 2004), all the electric windows still work, AC runs cold. Just brakes once in awhile, couple of starter motors, surpendine belt. Original radiator hoses and spark plugs, rarely have to look at the gas gauge, but the two wheel drive sucks in the snow. NY rust will take it out soon but it is the only new car i have ever bought and what a pleasure this stick shift has been.
How many miles?
200k
Rust will never take out a vehicle, unless an owner wants it to.be destroyed. Learn how to weld, replace damaged parts, etcetera. If one doesn’t want a vehicle to be destroyed, it won’t be.
My favorite car is my 1937 Cord. It is too good to be true.
Easy to work on and my grandchildren love it.