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Or more X comes at the cost of A and B. Car companies have a terrible habit of making options packs where you have to choose between stupid arbitrary things suc

Or more X comes at the cost of A and B. Car companies have a terrible habit of making options packs where you have to choose between stupid arbitrary things such as: - Auto-dimming rear view mirror - Compass - Blind Spot Information System OR - Heated seats - Heated Wing Mirrors - Decent sound system There is no reason you shouldn't be able to have all of these things together on your vehicle, but they say "Hey, you can have one option pack or the other, no compromises!" Would I want a vehicle with more X? Absolutely I would. I would have one in a heartbeat if it also came with A and B but it does not. And given the asinine requirement I must choose, I will take A and B over X... even though I really want X. If a vehicle came with A, B and X, I will take it over any vehicle that is missing one of those features.

rootusrootus 9y ago
Something like 99% of all the cars purchased new are spec'd by dealers, not by customers. So the problem really wouldn't be solved by allowing you to select some combination of features for a totally unique vehicle. You're just going to walk onto the lot anyway and pick from what's there.
- balabaster 9y ago
  Or order it from the factory with exactly the spec I want... but 99% of people are too impatient to wait for a vehicle to be delivered from the factory and most dealerships don't give them that option because they want what's on the lot gone. I get it. It's easier to shift vehicles if they all conform to some common spec because then there's nothing that makes worlds different. You pick this spec or that spec, end of story. But I've played this game too many times with dealers and I just can't be bothered any more, which is why I drive an 8 year old Volvo that is good enough. Would I like a new car? Of course, I'd love a spanking new truck, but the glory of driving off the lot with a brand new vehicle that's not quite exactly what I wanted just isn't worth the loss of the 30% of value as I leave the lot and certainly not the tediousness of talking to car sales people for a day while they fuck around upstairs trying to stress me out. I'll bring my laptop and use your WiFi to work. I'm quite comfortable helping myself to your endless tea or water from your service department waiting room while I'm in your showroom. No, I'm not giving you the keys to my vehicle which is parked outside your lot on the street so you can't box me in, and here's a photocopy of my driver's license which is plenty adequate for your needs, the original stays in my wallet. Now fuck off and do your job and if you're not back here with the keys, ownership papers and plates to a new car matching the spec I specified by the time I'm finished this user story, you won't find me still sitting here. You wanna play games, play them with someone else.
  - pc86 9y ago
    I've never had a dealer decline to let me order a car. What they won't do is discount it as heavily as something they already have. A lot of folks don't see the cognitive dissonance in wanting to order exactly what they want (that the dealer knows is their perfect car or close to it) but expecting to get those huge discounts they could get on the oddly optioned puke green car that's been on the lot for 75 days.
    - balabaster 9y ago
      LOL how else do you think you'd see these puke green shitboxes kicking around our streets? Nobody actually likes those colours do they? There's a reason it's been sitting on the lot 75 days :P
    - nradov 9y ago
      It depends where you go. Many dealers now do flatly decline custom orders due to the way it impacts their allocation.
  - rconti 9y ago
    You don't have that option, not in the US. German cars in the US have option packages, you can only choose from what they offer. Sure, if it's not on the lot you can order it or request an allocation or something, but you cannot specify the precise options you want if they're package-only. Many Subaru options are dealer-installed so the only option you'll have beyond what comes bundled with your trim package is things like roof racks and fog lights that can be installed by a dealership employee.
    - mrighele 9y ago
      Are they imported from Europe ? If so I would understand why you can choose only what they offer. In Europe (for European brands I mean) you don't have such an issue, as long as you are willing to wait a long time to have it delivered, ( I know people that have waited 9-10 months for their VW only because they wanted a specific color) ).
otempomores 9y ago
Lets heat the seat over the Can shall we.. Whats the worst that can happen if we hang a heating diod to the arbitration bits
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
As much as I hate it, with manufacturing you can kinda understand it, because economies come from scale, and it's probably not feasible (or too time consuming) for car manufacturers to serve you every single out of the 2^N combinations of N features that you might want. That's why you get trims, and then packages within those trims.
- Retric 9y ago
  It works fine if you manufacture after a sale. Just look at millions of computer options. But, the current car model is to make a car then find a buyer which means you really want a small number of popular models. Tesla is the largest exception, but even they limit options.
  - balabaster 9y ago
    But they rarely ever offer a vehicle with all the options. It's either base model, option pack A, option pack B. Rarely do you get the chance to say you know what, just slam all of those in there. Give me top of the line everything... except auto-dimming rear-view mirror, compass and and blind spot information system. The things that they make you choose between are ridiculous. It's like they put all the features on lottery balls, spin the bucket and pick 6 at random for each package and that's what you get. At least make the feature packages make sense
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
      Usually they do, it's just that that option is quite expensive and you might not care about some (or most) of the features you get in that option. It's particularly bad if you anti-care about some of the options. For instance, if you are opposed to having leather seats, you can't get the highest trim, coz leather seats are a feature there. For eg. Honda Accord 2018 with all bells and whistles starts at $33.8K while the lowest one starts at $23.5K. There's a good chance that a 40% increase over the base price will put that car out of the budget of a lot of people.
    - Retric 9y ago
Stratoscope 9y ago
The worst one for me is leather seats. "Oh, you want safety and comfort features X, Y, and Z? We've got them, exclusively available in our EX model. And you even get leather seats!" But I don't want leather seats, and I will never buy a car with them. I wear shorts in the summer and I hate it when my legs stick to the seat. If I can get a car with X, Y, Z and cloth seats, I'm in. But that can be hard to find.
- Unkechaug 9y ago
  Thought I'm the only one with this problem. Leather and leatherette are disadvantages to me - wish I could go with a premium cloth option and not have to sacrifice a more powerful engine, CarPlay, etc.
  - kpil 9y ago
    I once had a Peugeot with "sport leather seats", or something - it was a rather nice coarse woven cloth in some synthetic material in the centre, and nice leather everywhere else. Awesome. In my current car, I really wanted the adaptive cruise control, but opted out because of the mandatory leather seats in that trim.
    - hoorayimhelping 9y ago
      likely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcantara_(material) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcantara_(material)
      - vetinari 9y ago
        It's not Alcantara, it is combination of cloth and leather, with leather on the sides and cloth in the center. My current car has it, it is great. It was also option named sport seats.
  - alistairSH 9y ago
    FWIW, look at VW and Subaru. Both often offer their mid-tier packages with cloth, but most amenities. My Golf Sportwagen 4Motion S is cloth, no sunroof, but with heated seats and basic driver assistance/collision avoidance.
nradov 9y ago
Porsche allows you to order a vehicle with any collection of options you like. But you'll pay for it and have to wait while they build it. Most consumers don't have strong preferences in vehicles and will sacrifice a lot in order to get a good deal on something they can drive off the lot today.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  I thought all cars were like this? When I bought my car (a Mercedes) I told them the options I wanted, paid for it, waited two months while they built it, and they gave it to me. I could have bought showroom cars (or pre-built cars) at a discount, but none had the options I wanted.
  - greggman 9y ago
    I did this. Paid $1000 at order time. waited 3 months (taking bus while waiting). car came in on a Sunday. went to get it on Monday. the dealer had sold it to someone else. no recourse. that was bwm of hawthorne
    - StavrosK 9y ago
      Wow, that's scummy. Over here you have bought the car and it's yours, they can't just sell it to someone else.
      - brokenmachine 9y ago
        Good deal for $1k. :-)
        StavrosK 9y ago
        I think I had prepaid around $1.5k or so actually.
    - jandrese 9y ago
      At least you know you chose a good set of options. It just flew right off the lot. Did they at least have the decency to refund your $1000?
slantyyz 9y ago
How about something as simple as a spare tire? Having been unlucky enough (twice) to have experienced sidewall tire damage, the one deal breaker for me on a new car is the absence of a spare tire and/or a well in the trunk and the option to buy one. Every year, the number of automobiles that have a spare tire or the option to even have one in the car shrinks. I'm assuming this de-contenting has to do with making the car lighter to improve fuel economy? In my mind, a "tire inflation kit" (aka an aerosol can) or expensive-to-replace run-flats have limited benefits in general and absolutely zero benefits when it comes to sidewall damage. I would not want to be in the middle of nowhere with the wrong kind of flat in a car without a spare.
- AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
  > I'm assuming this de-contenting has to do with making the car lighter to improve fuel economy? Correct.
  - Declanomous 9y ago
    Additionally, the spare tire well can make a noticeable difference in the undercarriage drag. I know a number of people have removed the spare tire well on their Imprezas and improved their mileage by more than the amount they got when they had just taken out the spare itself. Of course the spare tire well has some weight to it, but pictures I've seen of the delete do make the car appear more aerodynamic from beneath.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    And also - in my car(Merc) if you order the Premium HK speaker system the spare tyre is replaced with a subwoofer + tyre repair kit.
- rjsw 9y ago
  The full size spare in my current car has been transferred from my two previous cars, I swapped it for space saver spares that came with the newer cars.
  - 9y ago
MisterTea 9y ago
Because they have to keep the assembly line moving they make these dumb packages. If they had to hand build each option they couldn't make cars as fast and cheap as they do now. IF they made them modular to accommodate for this on the assembly line, the price would go up. This is why I don't care for or put much effort into specking cars. I get the minimum and work around the lack of features by adding them myself.
IgorPartola 9y ago
Scion did this. They allowed you to choose any option you wanted and add it individually. They didn't really do packages, at least not when I bought one. They also did the pure price thing where you didn't need to shop around at all. And of course the brand died because consumers don't actually seem to want this.
- mikestew 9y ago
  And of course the brand died because consumers don't actually seem to want this. Eh, the brand probably died for a lot of reasons. I think primarily because Toyota missed the demographic mark. Initially the brand was the less expensive, "hip" brand for the younger crowd (because a Toyota owner's club meeting would look about as gray as a Grateful Dead concert). We saw one before they were available to purchase in the U. S., and placed an order with the local dealer while the Scion-specific showroom was still being built. A few months go by and ours comes in. We, of course, look for other drivers who bought the quirky little box. Ya know what? The other drivers looked a lot like us, with a little gray in their muzzle. Didn't pay much attention to the xAs and xDs (conventional compact cars), but it looked like all Toyota did with the xBs was shift the market from Camrys to xBs.
  - IgorPartola 9y ago
    Cheap car is cheap. Young people and older people can both appreciate that. I still miss the cheap utility of my second gen xB. It wasn’t the best car but it worked well as a little hauler. I still see it around town sometimes, now that I sold it.
bovermyer 9y ago
Rolls Royce lets you pick and choose options and fully customize your vehicle. But then, you pay for that freedom...
hooph00p 9y ago
Can you say X comes at the cost of Y and Z? A and B in the previous example were products. Y and Z in your example are attributes of the products A, B and C. Pedantic, but less confusing.
otakucode 9y ago
I just bought a new car. And these lines of reasoning I am reading seem tremendously alien to me. My previous car was 12 years old. I didn't switch from it to something else because my car was fine. I never even looked at what was available during the intervening decade+. Since the day I drove my new car home, I've not looked at a single car (at least not one which I'd ever be able/willing to buy). People don't sit around just waiting to switch to the model that has more of what they want. They only change their situation every few years or in response to things like collisions or whatnot. And purchasing a car is quite a maniacal process in 2017. Car manufacturers seem to have hired web designers that have profound mental problems and who never attempt to use their own sites. They fight you at every step of the way, making even something simple like finding out what cars the automaker sells a tremendous challenge. And once you do know exactly what you want, it still takes hours and hours of experimentation with the site before you can accurately navigate to find it. I was often reduced to screaming laughter at how stupendously bad the sites were. And that doesn't even begin to tackle the antiquated dealership system which is just ludicrous at this point. Luckily I didn't need to nickle and dime the dealership and was willing to just walk in and ask them if they were willing to do a grand or so over the TrueCar average price for the car for the region and so I didn't have to fight them. I can't even imagine what the experience is like overall for someone who is looking to save money. I'm single and have no kids. My prior car worked well for over a decade. I was able to approach car buying as 'I want to find something that I like the looks of and is dripping with gadgets and whose payment won't be more than my mortgate'. Even being that open to various possibilities, they still managed to make it an exercise of pain. I'm certainly not going to considering undergoing that pain again any time soon, even if they do come out with a model that gets 5% better gas mileage or whatever.
- nucleardog 9y ago
  > People don't sit around just waiting to switch to the model that has more of what they want. Sure they do. Tons of people do. There are tons of people that upgrade their iPhone the day the new one comes out not because their old one suddenly broke that day, but because they want new things. There's an entire side of the industry - leasing - that specifically caters to people that just want to get a new car every few years. Lots of people will be looking at the new cars with CarPlay and Android Auto and be seriously considering an upgrade.
mikestew 9y ago
There is no reason you shouldn't be able to have all of these things together on your vehicle Really? Because I thought of three just while reading your comment, and I don't even work in manufacturing. Reduced SKUs, ease of manufacturing scheduling, and some package options might exclude the options of other packages (you can't get heated seats and cloth seat coverings as one example). I'd even argue that they could be good reasons, as creating the packages you'd like add expense and it has been (hypothetically) found that customers won't pay the extra. OTOH, though I don't spend a lot of time perusing automotive options packages, of the ones I've looked it appears that the packages are additive. You can have package A, with X, Y and Z. You can have package B, which has X, Y, Z, and the addition of W and X for an additional $900.
- gregmac 9y ago
  This is its own problem. I want one feature of package B but package B costs +$$$. I don't care about the other features package B also comes with (in other words, provide $0 of value to me), and the feature I want isn't worth $$$. As a result, I don't buy package B, or even don't buy the car at all and go to another comparable model. I had no opportunity to explain why I didn't buy package B to the manufacturer, so do they even realize they're missing out because of that? I'm sure I'm not the only one.
  - mikestew 9y ago
    I want one feature of package B but package B costs +$$$. I don't care about the other features package B also comes with (in other words, provide $0 of value to me), and the feature I want isn't worth $$$. It's been ages since we've purchased a new car, but can't you just check the box for "$FOOBAR" after checking the box for Package A? Our Leaf was pretty much pre-built with few choices outside of packages, but we did that with our Scion. Additionally, though my BMW motorcycle came with a "package", I could still get stuff a la carte. I'd just have to wait for BMW to build it and ship it, instead of riding it home that day. (Or in my case, the dealer has the a la carte items on the shelf. They sent me home with the taller windshield in a box, for example, and I bolted it on myself.) OTOH, I'm using a motorcycle, an early-adopter electric car, and a quirky little off-brand Toyota as examples. Probably not the best examples for sussing the average car buying experience.
mark-r 9y ago
Many many years ago, I was shopping for a new car. I found one model where I could get a manual transmission, but it didn't include a tachometer. To get a tachometer you needed to upgrade to a package with the automatic transmission. The stupidity of that choice turned me off on that brand for about 2 decades.

rootusrootus 9y ago

Something like 99% of all the cars purchased new are spec'd by dealers, not by customers. So the problem really wouldn't be solved by allowing you to select some combination of features for a totally unique vehicle. You're just going to walk onto the lot anyway and pick from what's there.

balabaster 9y ago
Or order it from the factory with exactly the spec I want... but 99% of people are too impatient to wait for a vehicle to be delivered from the factory and most dealerships don't give them that option because they want what's on the lot gone. I get it. It's easier to shift vehicles if they all conform to some common spec because then there's nothing that makes worlds different. You pick this spec or that spec, end of story. But I've played this game too many times with dealers and I just can't be bothered any more, which is why I drive an 8 year old Volvo that is good enough. Would I like a new car? Of course, I'd love a spanking new truck, but the glory of driving off the lot with a brand new vehicle that's not quite exactly what I wanted just isn't worth the loss of the 30% of value as I leave the lot and certainly not the tediousness of talking to car sales people for a day while they fuck around upstairs trying to stress me out. I'll bring my laptop and use your WiFi to work. I'm quite comfortable helping myself to your endless tea or water from your service department waiting room while I'm in your showroom. No, I'm not giving you the keys to my vehicle which is parked outside your lot on the street so you can't box me in, and here's a photocopy of my driver's license which is plenty adequate for your needs, the original stays in my wallet. Now fuck off and do your job and if you're not back here with the keys, ownership papers and plates to a new car matching the spec I specified by the time I'm finished this user story, you won't find me still sitting here. You wanna play games, play them with someone else.
- pc86 9y ago
  I've never had a dealer decline to let me order a car. What they won't do is discount it as heavily as something they already have. A lot of folks don't see the cognitive dissonance in wanting to order exactly what they want (that the dealer knows is their perfect car or close to it) but expecting to get those huge discounts they could get on the oddly optioned puke green car that's been on the lot for 75 days.
  - balabaster 9y ago
    LOL how else do you think you'd see these puke green shitboxes kicking around our streets? Nobody actually likes those colours do they? There's a reason it's been sitting on the lot 75 days :P
  - nradov 9y ago
    It depends where you go. Many dealers now do flatly decline custom orders due to the way it impacts their allocation.
- rconti 9y ago
  You don't have that option, not in the US. German cars in the US have option packages, you can only choose from what they offer. Sure, if it's not on the lot you can order it or request an allocation or something, but you cannot specify the precise options you want if they're package-only. Many Subaru options are dealer-installed so the only option you'll have beyond what comes bundled with your trim package is things like roof racks and fog lights that can be installed by a dealership employee.
  - mrighele 9y ago
    Are they imported from Europe ? If so I would understand why you can choose only what they offer. In Europe (for European brands I mean) you don't have such an issue, as long as you are willing to wait a long time to have it delivered, ( I know people that have waited 9-10 months for their VW only because they wanted a specific color) ).

otempomores 9y ago

Lets heat the seat over the Can shall we.. Whats the worst that can happen if we hang a heating diod to the arbitration bits

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago

As much as I hate it, with manufacturing you can kinda understand it, because economies come from scale, and it's probably not feasible (or too time consuming) for car manufacturers to serve you every single out of the 2^N combinations of N features that you might want. That's why you get trims, and then packages within those trims.

Retric 9y ago
It works fine if you manufacture after a sale. Just look at millions of computer options. But, the current car model is to make a car then find a buyer which means you really want a small number of popular models. Tesla is the largest exception, but even they limit options.
- balabaster 9y ago
  But they rarely ever offer a vehicle with all the options. It's either base model, option pack A, option pack B. Rarely do you get the chance to say you know what, just slam all of those in there. Give me top of the line everything... except auto-dimming rear-view mirror, compass and and blind spot information system. The things that they make you choose between are ridiculous. It's like they put all the features on lottery balls, spin the bucket and pick 6 at random for each package and that's what you get. At least make the feature packages make sense
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
    Usually they do, it's just that that option is quite expensive and you might not care about some (or most) of the features you get in that option. It's particularly bad if you anti-care about some of the options. For instance, if you are opposed to having leather seats, you can't get the highest trim, coz leather seats are a feature there. For eg. Honda Accord 2018 with all bells and whistles starts at $33.8K while the lowest one starts at $23.5K. There's a good chance that a 40% increase over the base price will put that car out of the budget of a lot of people.
  - Retric 9y ago

Stratoscope 9y ago

The worst one for me is leather seats. "Oh, you want safety and comfort features X, Y, and Z? We've got them, exclusively available in our EX model. And you even get leather seats!" But I don't want leather seats, and I will never buy a car with them. I wear shorts in the summer and I hate it when my legs stick to the seat. If I can get a car with X, Y, Z and cloth seats, I'm in. But that can be hard to find.

Unkechaug 9y ago
Thought I'm the only one with this problem. Leather and leatherette are disadvantages to me - wish I could go with a premium cloth option and not have to sacrifice a more powerful engine, CarPlay, etc.
- kpil 9y ago
  I once had a Peugeot with "sport leather seats", or something - it was a rather nice coarse woven cloth in some synthetic material in the centre, and nice leather everywhere else. Awesome. In my current car, I really wanted the adaptive cruise control, but opted out because of the mandatory leather seats in that trim.
  - hoorayimhelping 9y ago
    likely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcantara_(material) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcantara_(material)
    - vetinari 9y ago
      It's not Alcantara, it is combination of cloth and leather, with leather on the sides and cloth in the center. My current car has it, it is great. It was also option named sport seats.
- alistairSH 9y ago
  FWIW, look at VW and Subaru. Both often offer their mid-tier packages with cloth, but most amenities. My Golf Sportwagen 4Motion S is cloth, no sunroof, but with heated seats and basic driver assistance/collision avoidance.

nradov 9y ago

Porsche allows you to order a vehicle with any collection of options you like. But you'll pay for it and have to wait while they build it. Most consumers don't have strong preferences in vehicles and will sacrifice a lot in order to get a good deal on something they can drive off the lot today.

StavrosK 9y ago
I thought all cars were like this? When I bought my car (a Mercedes) I told them the options I wanted, paid for it, waited two months while they built it, and they gave it to me. I could have bought showroom cars (or pre-built cars) at a discount, but none had the options I wanted.
- greggman 9y ago
  I did this. Paid $1000 at order time. waited 3 months (taking bus while waiting). car came in on a Sunday. went to get it on Monday. the dealer had sold it to someone else. no recourse. that was bwm of hawthorne
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Wow, that's scummy. Over here you have bought the car and it's yours, they can't just sell it to someone else.
    - brokenmachine 9y ago
      Good deal for $1k. :-)
      - StavrosK 9y ago
        I think I had prepaid around $1.5k or so actually.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    At least you know you chose a good set of options. It just flew right off the lot. Did they at least have the decency to refund your $1000?

slantyyz 9y ago

How about something as simple as a spare tire? Having been unlucky enough (twice) to have experienced sidewall tire damage, the one deal breaker for me on a new car is the absence of a spare tire and/or a well in the trunk and the option to buy one. Every year, the number of automobiles that have a spare tire or the option to even have one in the car shrinks. I'm assuming this de-contenting has to do with making the car lighter to improve fuel economy? In my mind, a "tire inflation kit" (aka an aerosol can) or expensive-to-replace run-flats have limited benefits in general and absolutely zero benefits when it comes to sidewall damage. I would not want to be in the middle of nowhere with the wrong kind of flat in a car without a spare.

AdamJacobMuller 9y ago
> I'm assuming this de-contenting has to do with making the car lighter to improve fuel economy? Correct.
- Declanomous 9y ago
  Additionally, the spare tire well can make a noticeable difference in the undercarriage drag. I know a number of people have removed the spare tire well on their Imprezas and improved their mileage by more than the amount they got when they had just taken out the spare itself. Of course the spare tire well has some weight to it, but pictures I've seen of the delete do make the car appear more aerodynamic from beneath.
- gambiting 9y ago
  And also - in my car(Merc) if you order the Premium HK speaker system the spare tyre is replaced with a subwoofer + tyre repair kit.
rjsw 9y ago
The full size spare in my current car has been transferred from my two previous cars, I swapped it for space saver spares that came with the newer cars.
- 9y ago

MisterTea 9y ago

Because they have to keep the assembly line moving they make these dumb packages. If they had to hand build each option they couldn't make cars as fast and cheap as they do now. IF they made them modular to accommodate for this on the assembly line, the price would go up. This is why I don't care for or put much effort into specking cars. I get the minimum and work around the lack of features by adding them myself.

IgorPartola 9y ago

Scion did this. They allowed you to choose any option you wanted and add it individually. They didn't really do packages, at least not when I bought one. They also did the pure price thing where you didn't need to shop around at all. And of course the brand died because consumers don't actually seem to want this.

mikestew 9y ago
And of course the brand died because consumers don't actually seem to want this. Eh, the brand probably died for a lot of reasons. I think primarily because Toyota missed the demographic mark. Initially the brand was the less expensive, "hip" brand for the younger crowd (because a Toyota owner's club meeting would look about as gray as a Grateful Dead concert). We saw one before they were available to purchase in the U. S., and placed an order with the local dealer while the Scion-specific showroom was still being built. A few months go by and ours comes in. We, of course, look for other drivers who bought the quirky little box. Ya know what? The other drivers looked a lot like us, with a little gray in their muzzle. Didn't pay much attention to the xAs and xDs (conventional compact cars), but it looked like all Toyota did with the xBs was shift the market from Camrys to xBs.
- IgorPartola 9y ago
  Cheap car is cheap. Young people and older people can both appreciate that. I still miss the cheap utility of my second gen xB. It wasn’t the best car but it worked well as a little hauler. I still see it around town sometimes, now that I sold it.

bovermyer 9y ago

Rolls Royce lets you pick and choose options and fully customize your vehicle. But then, you pay for that freedom...

hooph00p 9y ago

Can you say X comes at the cost of Y and Z? A and B in the previous example were products. Y and Z in your example are attributes of the products A, B and C. Pedantic, but less confusing.

otakucode 9y ago

I just bought a new car. And these lines of reasoning I am reading seem tremendously alien to me. My previous car was 12 years old. I didn't switch from it to something else because my car was fine. I never even looked at what was available during the intervening decade+. Since the day I drove my new car home, I've not looked at a single car (at least not one which I'd ever be able/willing to buy). People don't sit around just waiting to switch to the model that has more of what they want. They only change their situation every few years or in response to things like collisions or whatnot. And purchasing a car is quite a maniacal process in 2017. Car manufacturers seem to have hired web designers that have profound mental problems and who never attempt to use their own sites. They fight you at every step of the way, making even something simple like finding out what cars the automaker sells a tremendous challenge. And once you do know exactly what you want, it still takes hours and hours of experimentation with the site before you can accurately navigate to find it. I was often reduced to screaming laughter at how stupendously bad the sites were. And that doesn't even begin to tackle the antiquated dealership system which is just ludicrous at this point. Luckily I didn't need to nickle and dime the dealership and was willing to just walk in and ask them if they were willing to do a grand or so over the TrueCar average price for the car for the region and so I didn't have to fight them. I can't even imagine what the experience is like overall for someone who is looking to save money. I'm single and have no kids. My prior car worked well for over a decade. I was able to approach car buying as 'I want to find something that I like the looks of and is dripping with gadgets and whose payment won't be more than my mortgate'. Even being that open to various possibilities, they still managed to make it an exercise of pain. I'm certainly not going to considering undergoing that pain again any time soon, even if they do come out with a model that gets 5% better gas mileage or whatever.

nucleardog 9y ago
> People don't sit around just waiting to switch to the model that has more of what they want. Sure they do. Tons of people do. There are tons of people that upgrade their iPhone the day the new one comes out not because their old one suddenly broke that day, but because they want new things. There's an entire side of the industry - leasing - that specifically caters to people that just want to get a new car every few years. Lots of people will be looking at the new cars with CarPlay and Android Auto and be seriously considering an upgrade.

mikestew 9y ago

There is no reason you shouldn't be able to have all of these things together on your vehicle Really? Because I thought of three just while reading your comment, and I don't even work in manufacturing. Reduced SKUs, ease of manufacturing scheduling, and some package options might exclude the options of other packages (you can't get heated seats and cloth seat coverings as one example). I'd even argue that they could be good reasons, as creating the packages you'd like add expense and it has been (hypothetically) found that customers won't pay the extra. OTOH, though I don't spend a lot of time perusing automotive options packages, of the ones I've looked it appears that the packages are additive. You can have package A, with X, Y and Z. You can have package B, which has X, Y, Z, and the addition of W and X for an additional $900.

gregmac 9y ago
This is its own problem. I want one feature of package B but package B costs +$$$. I don't care about the other features package B also comes with (in other words, provide $0 of value to me), and the feature I want isn't worth $$$. As a result, I don't buy package B, or even don't buy the car at all and go to another comparable model. I had no opportunity to explain why I didn't buy package B to the manufacturer, so do they even realize they're missing out because of that? I'm sure I'm not the only one.
- mikestew 9y ago
  I want one feature of package B but package B costs +$$$. I don't care about the other features package B also comes with (in other words, provide $0 of value to me), and the feature I want isn't worth $$$. It's been ages since we've purchased a new car, but can't you just check the box for "$FOOBAR" after checking the box for Package A? Our Leaf was pretty much pre-built with few choices outside of packages, but we did that with our Scion. Additionally, though my BMW motorcycle came with a "package", I could still get stuff a la carte. I'd just have to wait for BMW to build it and ship it, instead of riding it home that day. (Or in my case, the dealer has the a la carte items on the shelf. They sent me home with the taller windshield in a box, for example, and I bolted it on myself.) OTOH, I'm using a motorcycle, an early-adopter electric car, and a quirky little off-brand Toyota as examples. Probably not the best examples for sussing the average car buying experience.

mark-r 9y ago

Many many years ago, I was shopping for a new car. I found one model where I could get a manual transmission, but it didn't include a tachometer. To get a tachometer you needed to upgrade to a package with the automatic transmission. The stupidity of that choice turned me off on that brand for about 2 decades.