Originally posted by Beachboy: After ten years or 200,000 miles, which car is going to be running well? Your Chevy or your Toyota? Look at the resale values....that tells you how the public is voting.
I agree. Unfortunately, the general public knows very little about cars, and even less about good ones.
Around here, at least, a 98 Civic will sell for as much as a 98 Contour 2.5L, and Accords go for almost twice as much! There is no question in my mind which is the better car but the general public has a different idea.
At least that means we can buy (although not sell) our cars at very attractive prices and the majority of parts are more reasonably priced to boot.
Something many people may not be aware of is that the Japanese (according to an SAE paper of many years ago) started the disposable car idea when they first designed and made the Honda Civic. According to the article Honda designed the Civic from the very beginning to be cheaper to replace than repair - hence the first disposable car. Unfortunately, this made the cars very inexpensive to produce initially and that forced everyone elses hand into producing less durable cars as well. After Honda built a reputation for providing ok to reasonably good cars at very low prices (very much like McDonalds original marketing) they started to improve quality and increase prices, shifting to an emphasis on value and quality rather than cost and now charge a premium for their cars over the competition based as much on resale value as anything else.
Regards, Alan
03 Volvo S60 2.5T AWD
98 Mystique 2.5 MTX
99 SVT - Inheriting Lil Monster's parts
98 SVT - Lil Monster (RIP) 183.7 whp
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