SUVs plunge toward 'endangered' list

I can't believe that dealers are still taking guzzlers in on trade! That will end soon I think. I'm going to keep looking for my old van when I drive by the dealer's used lot...always good for a laugh.

Yak

 

Here's a good one from that article. The author said -
"Owners might owe $20,000 or more when the vehicle is now worth $12,000. It's similar to an upside-down mortgage, and it may not make sense to try a trade-in.
"What they might be doing is spending thousands of dollars to save hundreds," says Jack Nerad, the executive director of Kelley Blue Book's kbb.com.
"Because if you make a trade, you're most often going to spend more to make that move than you would just sucking it up and paying the extra gasoline prices."

The author writes as if the purchase of a vehicle is an investment. We all know vehicles are not investments. They are expenses. And as such, they are certainly not analogous to real estate.

So, by the same philosophy... if you're on a sinking ship, grab hold of the anchor, because it could become a life preserver when the density of water increases 100 fold. Or, as the author would say, "just suck it up" and breath water. Let's face it - the price of gas is not coming back down. This should not be a surprise. In June 2004 (THAT'S 2004!) the National Geographic cover story was "The End of Cheap Oil" (End of Cheap Oil @ National Geographic Magazine). - Forget bad investment... the purchase of gas guzzling SUV was a just a plain old bad idea. My advice to anyone who's got one is to cut your losses and get out of it ASAP!

 

I'm aware that light trucks are controlled by CAFE, I guess I should have picked better words. My point remains. When CAFE was implemented, American was dominated by large, body-on-frame, RWD, V8 cars. In 1975 the average fuel economy for cars and trucks in the US was 12.9 mpg. The car truck mix was 88.2/19.8%.

CAFE went into effect in 1978 with the standard for cars 18 mpg. In 1979 the light-truck standard was set at 17.2 That difference isn't too bad but the standard for cars progressively raised to 27.5 by 1985 while trucks stayed the same. In the early 80's, cars changed to FWD, 4 and 6 cylinder, unibody vehicles. All of these changes were new and not generally accepted in the market. By the mid-80's if you wanted a V8 RWD vehicle had to buy a truck or SUV.

 

I predicted some time ago that big cars are going the way of dinosaurs:

( a bit of brainwashing here, isn’t it?)

what he is saying is: “keep bending over for many more years, keep paying thousands of $ more in fuel cost, even tens of thousands because “you do not want to loose the money by selling your gas guzzler now. no, you do not want to cut your loses and sell your gas guzzler for less than what blue book says it is worth… because you will lose the money. you should just wait a few years until you pay it off, all while you are spending thousands of extra $ per year, because “your car is worth moreâ€
and idiots that lots of people are -- quite a few of them will take such “adviceâ€.
poor intellectual weaklings always fail to understand that no matter what a car value per 'blue book' is – the demand will determine the REAL value of a car, hence $19,500 salvaged prius has 26 bids so far with 3 days 8 hours of more bidding to go
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Toyota-Prius-2008-Toyota-Prius-491-Miles-Smart-Key-Backup-Camera_W0QQitemZ250251481459QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item250251481459&
)

he is right


video:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/05/23/dumping.suvs/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

 

Second part first - the Suburban in 1936 (or 1986) looked nothing like today's Suburban. They all tend to get bigger and heavier with time.

Your example of a need for an SUV is pretty rare. Most people don't haul machinery to a farm show, they use their vehicle to get groceries or drop a kid off at soccer practice. If you have that need, that's fine, but how many people need a vehicle to pull a trailer (bigger than a minivan can handle) and fill it up with more than 2 passengers (single cab pickup size) at the same time? Maybe 1 or 2% of current SUV owners. There were probably another percent or two who towed boat trailers or camping trailers on vacation, but due to the price of gas they probably aren't doing that anymore. And those are things that only happen a couple times a year anyway - they could rent a heavy-duty vehicle for those times and drive something sane the other 99% of the time.

I come from farm country, and there people need trucks. They get pickup trucks, often single cab, never bigger than an F250. And they have an old Escort or Metro for all the running to town, groceries, getting tractor parts, etc. The right tool for the right job. The vast majority of SUVs are a suburbanite's vanity vehicle, nothing more, nothing less.

As for large vehicles sitting on used car lots, this is an exact repeat of the 1970's and early 1980's. This doesn't surprise me a bit. Those of us who were teenagers then were often embarrassed to drive our parent's old "boats" as we called them. Of course, we weren't given new cars, even in college.