chinny22 wrote on 2024-10-14, 23:56:

My wife is seriously considering leasing her next car.
But then she has more disposable income and doesn't like old things. Financially I don't think it makes much sense but either does spending money on old computers.
Just another "as a service" business, soon some people will own nothing.

"transport as a service" is definitely coming and car ownership by regular people will fall away. Its a combination of increasingly self driving cars, permanently higher costs, complexity of the product, regulations and surveillance. It may be a few decades as yet, for now we enter an interesting in between period.

Its a city thing too, in a densely populated city with transport infrastructure owning a car is something of liability - finding a place to park, driving often short distances in often heavy traffic.

I'm now a fleet owner 😀
If you remember last year, I relocated from the UK back to where I grew up in Australia.
The original plan was to live in the same town as my job, The wife's car would be the primary and I'd just use the '74 beetle as the 2nd car around town.
But things never work out like you expect and I now have about a 160 KM round trip to work each day.
While the VW was doing this just fine for 6 months, did feel a bit hard on the old girl, (she turned 50 this year after all) and my parents needed a 2nd car again to help us with the kids.
so..
I got a 2009 Holden Commadore VE wagon.
With 2 kids under 10 I like wagons, space in the back to chuck bikes or whatever, but still get car handling in the front. (I really don't get the appeal of being up high like everyone seems to go on about IMHO just makes for a boring drive)
It's also old enough to not have infotainment, touch screens, etc. just big knobs and buttons I don't even have to look at to operate. It even has a "proper" handbrake.
Only thing I don't like is its an Auto, but I didn't have the luxury of waiting to find a good quality manual.

One thing I do have to admit after comparing to the similar aged 2008 Volvo V70 I had in the UK, is for a family daily driver the Volvo wins hands down. Even though the Holden has more space the Interior of the Volvo is way better both material and practicality. I also miss diesel engine BUT at least the Holden is RWD just as God intended 😉

Here’s mine, a ‘46 Indian Chief, in the living room for the Winter.

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-02, 00:38:

BUT at least the Holden is RWD just as God intended 😉

oversteer on demand 😀

looks pretty good, i think cars there often have bigger engines that you get in europe, like in the US? certainly will do that round trip nicely enough anyway

Marc Brucker wrote on 2024-12-02, 02:02:

Here’s mine, a ‘46 Indian Chief, in the living room for the Winter.

wow 😀 such a clean machine too

chinny22 wrote on 2024-12-02, 00:38:

I'm now a fleet owner :) If you remember last year, I relocated from the UK back to where I grew up in Australia. The original p […]
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I'm now a fleet owner 😀
If you remember last year, I relocated from the UK back to where I grew up in Australia.
The original plan was to live in the same town as my job, The wife's car would be the primary and I'd just use the '74 beetle as the 2nd car around town.
But things never work out like you expect and I now have about a 160 KM round trip to work each day.
While the VW was doing this just fine for 6 months, did feel a bit hard on the old girl, (she turned 50 this year after all) and my parents needed a 2nd car again to help us with the kids.
so..
I got a 2009 Holden Commadore VE wagon.
With 2 kids under 10 I like wagons, space in the back to chuck bikes or whatever, but still get car handling in the front. (I really don't get the appeal of being up high like everyone seems to go on about IMHO just makes for a boring drive)
It's also old enough to not have infotainment, touch screens, etc. just big knobs and buttons I don't even have to look at to operate. It even has a "proper" handbrake.
Only thing I don't like is its an Auto, but I didn't have the luxury of waiting to find a good quality manual.

One thing I do have to admit after comparing to the similar aged 2008 Volvo V70 I had in the UK, is for a family daily driver the Volvo wins hands down. Even though the Holden has more space the Interior of the Volvo is way better both material and practicality. I also miss diesel engine BUT at least the Holden is RWD just as God intended 😉

It's always a mystery to me why people with long commutes eventually pick the floating down the road on a couch with a low burble vs the being dragged on a tin tray on a lawnchair while the engine screams experience 🤣 🤣 🤣

Did you end up with something similar to murrican LT engines in it? Those don't have too bad of a drinking problem if you can keep them at 1500 rpm or under if the gears are right on the highway... well provided TC lockup is working on the automatic.

Marc Brucker wrote on 2024-12-02, 02:02:

Here’s mine, a ‘46 Indian Chief, in the living room for the Winter.

Thats one spoilt bike! Admit it does look nice, no way would my wife let me do something similar though, She complains enough about all my old PC's in the house!!!

gerry wrote on 2024-12-02, 15:06:

i think cars there often have bigger engines that you get in europe, like in the US?

I think we sit somewhere in the middle.
Our fuel prices discourage really thirsty options that you can still kind of get away with in the USA, but with alot less urban driving then Europe you want something that can do highway speeds comfortably for hours at a time.
Back when we had a local car industry Imports were heavily taxed but now that's extinct and taxes have been reduced European brands such as VW and BMW are a lot more common than before not to mention Japan having always make up a good percentage of car sales, smaller yet just as efficient engines are now becoming more common.

But yes, like the US we would all love driving around in big V8's given 1/2 a chance.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-12-02, 15:51:

Did you end up with something similar to murrican LT engines in it? Those don't have too bad of a drinking problem if you can keep them at 1500 rpm or under if the gears are right on the highway

Yeh has the LT 3.6 engine, onboard computer tells me I'm getting around 9.5L/100 KM of what's mostly highway driving.
Compared with the beetle, I'd call that an economy car!

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-12-02, 15:51:

It's always a mystery to me why people with long commutes eventually pick the floating down the road on a couch with a low burble vs the being dragged on a tin tray on a lawnchair while the engine screams experience 🤣 🤣 🤣

engine noise is fine, lawn chair is fine(ish), its the wind noise from contently having the window down (either acting as my A/C or demister depending on the season) that I'll admit can get tiring, but hey I was never bored! 😉

What does an EVs range drop to when it gets cold?

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-01-10, 07:24:

What does an EVs range drop to when it gets cold?

Depends on the vehicle. Particularly on the battery chemistry used, and the quality of the thermal management implemented by the vehicle manufacturer.

But the range reduction can be pretty hefty. In my experience, it can be as much as 30%, but this was with an earlier EV model that I drove a decade ago.

In many newer EVs, there is a feature called "battery preconditioning", which automatically starts warming up the battery once you've selected a DC fast-charging station as the destination in the on-board navigation system.

That way, once you arrive at the charging station and plug in to charge, the charging speed will be considerably higher. This doesn't solve the range reduction, but it does solve the issue of slower charging, which is also caused by cold weather.

Charging speed can also be slower at very high temperatures, but that's usually because the charger starts "derating" to prevent overheating. But this usually tends to happen only in hot climates or on unusually hot days.

But in general, thermal management of batteries in EVs has developed and improved a lot over the years.

damnbuggerdamnbuggerdamnbuggerdamn

The Kia is pooched... despite trying to pick one with a motor between the earlier problematic 1.6 and the 2.0 and avoiding the later problematic 2.0, mine got a problem which seems fairly unusual for that year and motor. 2017 GDI. Piston ring has cracked/broke and scratched up a cylinder. Confirmed by borescope at dealer. No recalls or class actions on this one, and it's outside factory warranty periods 🙁 ... still running and not down in compression that much on that one but starting to consume oil, and who knows how long it will go.

... and it's not like the car markets, new or used have improved any since I last had to shop, looks like the opposite. Wife is beater averse, though I can point out we're not having better luck with "decent" cars.

at least a beater doesn't really suffer from depreciation (Its already lost most of its value) and if truly a beater probably had the really big service items already done.
Its those mid life cars that are still worth a bit but are going to need some major components changed in the near future that are potential money pits

chinny22 wrote on 2025-01-15, 04:44:

Its those mid life cars that are still worth a bit but are going to need some major components changed in the near future that are potential money pits

Yeah this one is not that far away from it's midlife crisis, and with $10k to put it right "properly" now and $5k worth of all that alternator, starter, pumps, radiator etc looming in a couple of years, the math isn't looking good to me. Been looking at used engine availability and it's new enough to be priced fairly high still, and any shop I'd trust to do it, the labor is still 80% of dealership. So still working the problem, but seems I can't knock the number down that much.

Still 3 months of potential snow and subzero away from swapping the motor out in the driveway weather in the North here. Plus there's a lack of able bodied and/or mechanically minded family or friends I can volunteer to pitch in for pulling it, fetching it, or assisting. Plus I have pollen seasons and the ebb and flow of other health issues making timing a pain in the ass. But if it's still running by that time, it's probably been demoted to 2nd fiddle beater status and might get the, head off, hone the bejasus out of afflicted cylinder on the car, re-ring and cross fingers treatment. (Could get away with it if scoring isn't too bad or can be peened in)

Hum what info sources to trust? Fairly sure it was JD Power that told me the Versa was gonna be super low TCO, wasn't. And Consumer Reports told me it was alright. Then I look at Car and Driver and Repair Pal and they don't have too much bad to say about the Rio or Versa, noting the CVT though but saying overall above average reliability, ho hum. C&D has a Hyundai with a recalled engine on it's best used car buys list, so yeahhhh...

Anyway, that's like two theoretical "safe bets" just burned me real bad. I can't believe I'm that hard on cars, given that I've gotten hundreds of thousands of clicks on beaters doing my own "as required" maintenance, vs having these dealer serviced on a schedule. Also I feel like I saw higher reliability out of cars I was driving as a youngun in the UK and rallying on weekends.

Selection here is bloody awful, in that half the cars that are around further South have been eaten by the rust and salt up here, then the Euro nameplates and Asians only bring half their models over, Ford and Dodge have pretty much given up on cars apart from performance models, so any car you like as long as it's a truck. On top of that the Canadian Dollar slid so while prices went up 30% in US they doubled here over the last 3 or 4 years. Yeah, so after losing two "safe bets" now I gotta "double down". Oh yeah and in response to reduced government tax incentives on plugin and electrics, the prices on those have increased the gap over IC cars also.
So where I could have got 7,500 back on a 35,000 PHEV a year or two ago, now I can't and the PHEV model is $50,000. Plus full electrics were hanging close to PHEV then, and the saying was that the combination of IC and electric was making the PHEV extra spendy, and full electric was only around there because of low production and new tech, and would drop, because in the end, no IC was simpler... so they've come below PHEV now right? Not really, same models in electric are $75,000 Canadian now... crazy.

Though I am thinking of giving up on smaller cars for now, due to how bad roads are these days, both in maintenance and being loomed over by the wankpanzers. Thinking I might gain some reliability in a larger less stressed size class. The Japanese and Koreans have boned me, so maybe try a Chevrolet, the Malibu has been a relatively lucky model for reliability as far as Chevys go, and seems on the more reasonable side of extortionate at the moment. In theory the Maverick hybrid from Ford might be attainable, but all the dealers seem to be sitting on overly "loaded up" models. Or if I really go out on a financial limb a CR-V or Rav4 hybrid look nice.

Car market is a mess at the moment.

I'm also getting used to reduced options in the small Australian market after living in the UK for so long.
If you want something car sized rather than SUV sized you can cross of entire brands like Mitsubishi or Ford.
and good luck finding a manual no matter what your looking for.

Sure that's the new car market but it's what's going to be the choices for the used car market.

It's not like it's much better in larger markets though.
You have videos like this confirming used car market is strong in the UK as new cars are just too expensive (I think Geoff goes a bit over the top sometimes but does make good points as well)
https://youtu.be/pwBaQGWpyb8?si=25TRF8Ku6s1ZIbpD

Then you have parts availability (or lack of) and he lists some fairly common cars as well!
https://youtu.be/SsZLCEg7UOU?si=qtcuSlE4mV8B0fuH

So much like the Kia even if the parts exist they are worth so much more then the car itself even after 2 years according to Car Wizards video.

Yeah a lot of stuff that makes you bang your head against the wall, like if we're supposed to be getting accelerated toward EV, why EV aren't getting any cheaper? I do revisit the practicality for us of EV, but it's still as bad as trying to take a train anywhere, chargers are far enough away that it's like need a car to get to your car, or waste hours a week just sitting in it. Level 1 charging seems like it will only put about 50km worth of range back a night, whereas 100km is gonna get used daily, so older EV with 200km ranges when they were new, and probably 150km now, and maybe don't have the capability to use modern charger networks, are gonna be a problem. Particularly if like that 500e in vid, essential repair parts are unobtainable.

For repair and part costs and price of new cars, I keep hearing the "complexity of modern cars" thing... but how come then I am having problems with the systems that were reaching a state of near perfection by the noughts, the engine and transmissions. "Oh they made them lighter and cheaper with less material" so they're cheaper to replace than the $1500 unit from the early noughts? No, three times that. Aaargh. Even crap like alternators, it looks almost the same as the $150 one for my old escort/minivan, but for a tens up car it's $500.... and I'm not sure they last as long either. Just standard alternators, not stop start BAS stuff. Yah so no doubt there are complex systems that cause trouble, but it's the "basics" failing and costing so much to repair that are biting me in the ass in the last decade. Unless in the end it's failure mitigation sensors and ECU software that's completely failing to mitigate failures, not reacting fast enough to limit combustion chamber pressure by changing fueling or valve timing, or allowing too much torque for the transmission or something. Yet when such things were introduced in the more expensive models in the noughts.... they worked.

But wizard dude didn't need to tell me about 80s french cars being hard to find parts for now, the dealers were out of them in the late 90s. But yeah Stellantis parts availability is a good warning. I was wondering how come some dodge parts were turning up in random surplus outlets a while back, guess they must have dumped a load of stuff at a penny on the dollar for inventory liquidation to bump up one quarters numbers. The plastics heavy stuff I was seeing resold, the metals heavy stuff maybe got recycled straight off. I will need to keep myself from the temptation of cheap ecodiesels and what if I just get this $2000 Compass and drive it, etc. And there's a Dart or two around cheap, but if they are "being like that" with parts on the more prestige stuff, I ain't risking it.

I wish I was "in" some old reliable I could keep fixing, rust is a bit merciless for finding a good one to adopt.

edit: actually that was why I went into newer cars from beaters in 2015, because of parts drying up at 10 year mark across a bunch of stuff. So that's been going on a while, and 10 years is now looking optimistic.

editII: Ah, trade war already started in EV and electrical components. US 100% tariff, Canadian 25% component tariff... and since most part networks route thru US first, we're probably getting 125% effective on some stuff... IDK. Anyway, that gave EV makers carte blanche to charge out the arse while they've got the protected US monopoly, instead of low margins to stay in biz. While "domestics" that were relying on cheaper parts have cut the small models.

why Kei Cars are not a thing outside of Japan? i would love to have a Nissan Sakura or something similar

i whould be happy with this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DGRMr9zttnE?feature=share

Living wrote on 2025-01-30, 15:01:

why Kei Cars are not a thing outside of Japan? i would love to have a Nissan Sakura or something similar

i whould be happy with this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DGRMr9zttnE?feature=share

Mostly because other countries didn't offer any extra benefits for owing such a car, like Japan did. And to be honest having so low limits on both the size and the engine doesn't make them very desirable if you don't gain anything else.

Some of them did get exported (for example the Daihatsu Cuore and the Suzuki Alto), but I don't think this category had any reason to grow larger outside of Japan.

But hey, (at least in Europe) we got the Smarts eventually!

Well, the last time I posted on VOGONS I didn't even have my learners permit (lol)
I collect 4th gen Honda Civics. I've had like 7 at this point. Actually, I've been through more than a dozen cars.. (never crashed one... yet...)
I drive a '90 civic hatchback. And my Toyota T100 which I actually drive more than my Honda at this point..

konc wrote on 2025-01-30, 15:27:

Living wrote on 2025-01-30, 15:01:

why Kei Cars are not a thing outside of Japan? i would love to have a Nissan Sakura or something similar

Mostly because other countries didn't offer any extra benefits for owing such a car, like Japan did. And to be honest having so low limits on both the size and the engine doesn't make them very desirable if you don't gain anything else.

Plus the fact Japan is right hand drive.
Just as plenty of US/European car's are never offered in right hand drive if companies think the sales numbers won't justify the added expense of the conversion. Not to mention the cost of all the tests you have to do to sell a car in any country.

Few more models get exported to the Oceania region been mostly RHD and located closer to Japan keeping shipping costs down, but plenty don't, Its a car primarily focused on the domestic market

The Suzuki Carry got around quite a bit, but it was the Bedford Rascal in the UK and a Holden in Aus, so you might not mentally peg it as Japanese behind local branding.

Other Suzuki got around a bit too, with GM's help. There was the WagonR in UK too.

I think Toyota had one or two things available elsewhere for short periods, like a kei open top 2 seater sports in the UK for a couple of years but forgot what it was called.

Some countries got the Daihatsu Mira under different branding and between more substantial bumpers for local regs.

Living wrote on 2025-01-30, 15:01:

why Kei Cars are not a thing outside of Japan? i would love to have a Nissan Sakura or something similar

i whould be happy with this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DGRMr9zttnE?feature=share

Well I can tell you that in the US, the state I live in has BANNED the registration of Kei cars.
Kinda stupid.