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You are completely discounting the subjective experience of driving different cars. Some cars are just flat-out much more enjoyable to drive. When people are sp

You are completely discounting the subjective experience of driving different cars. Some cars are just flat-out much more enjoyable to drive. When people are spending significant portions of their lives driving, getting more enjoyment or comfort out of that time matters to people. It's completely rational to want to enjoy your time driving a vehicle if you spend a lot of time in the car. Driving a chevy cobalt is just awful compared to driving a higher quality vehicle. You're also far more likely to be able to avoid an accident when you have better handling and more powerful brakes. Even horsepower/torque can be a safety feature for certain accident avoidance situations.

MoBattah 8y ago
Can easily get more comfort in a budget car by adding packages.
- anyfoo 8y ago
  Comfort, maybe. Driving, hardly. I drive both a Ford Focus and a small sports car. While the Ford Focus, my usual commuter car, is not bad at all, I still take the sports car to work about once a week, and it just doesn't compare. In some ways, the Ford Focus is more "comfortable", but the control and precision that the sports car offers even when just cruising through normal traffic through the city is amazing. The Ford, again not a bad car, feels like "swimming" in comparison. This is, to some extent, similar in the difference between, say, driving a Chevy and driving a BMW. Subjectively, one just drives much better than the other one, and given how much time you are forced to spend in a car in the US, why would I not opt for a car that implements the driving aspect better?
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I think esotericn is classifying that as the "enthusiast market". "More enjoyable to drive" matters, sure. But for most of us, it's not the primary driver of the buying decision - practicality is.
dingaling 8y ago
> Some cars are just flat-out much more enjoyable to drive. The counterpoint to that is Audi ( A4 in particular ); dreadfully unbalanced whale-like FWD with the engine hanging out over the front wheels. Objectively dynamically inferior to the humble Ford Mondeo. But sold in droves in spartan-spec because of badge cachet. They have recently started to tidy up their handling but still lag more humble brands.
- madeuptempacct 8y ago
  Don't forget that these cars are a huge pain to maintain.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    They're German. Germans expect that you will take care of things on a schedule if you are told to do so. That's why German cars have a much more detailed list of required maintenance than American cars do. The Germans don't think it's unusual.
    - biztos 8y ago
      Indeed, I'm planning to buy a (probably German) used car in Germany around April, and pretty much the first thing I've figured out is you never buy anything that doesn't have its full service history meticulously documented, with receipts.
    - jcims 8y ago
      Come on now, there's a hell of a lot more going on with the reliability of vehicles coming out of Germany than slack maintenance cycles.
      - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
        It seems it really depends. My '12 Jetta TDI was super reliable, never had a single problem apart from it destroying the earth and lying about it. But other people with the same year, same car, had all sorts of problems. I feel like there's perhaps quality control issues coming off the line in Mexico. Our new-used '13 Audi Q5 is made in Bavaria. So we shall see how its quality compares. So far no problems.
lotyrin 8y ago
Yeah, but what portion of the market can realistically afford the luxury, and what portion of the market cannot afford it but buy in anyways? How do you explain away the people like an old high school friend of mine that was so brand loyal to the concept of a european luxury car that they got the only such model they could afford (purely in cap-ex terms) which was aging and constantly being maintained (could have easily leased a late model asian economy car instead, with money to spare) and from which all of the subjective experience features were gone (sounded awful, felt awful, smelled awful, and had little remaining intact interior materials)? Also, there are cars that manage to have both terrible TCO and lack any positive subjective experience features but manage to make it onto the roadways regardless. There should be an elastic luxury portion of the market where you have the typical dealership experience -- but it should be a tiny minority. The rest of the market should be very concrete, where you show up and just pay a simple price for a simple commodity vehicle that competes with the others through simple metrics (fuel economy, cargo capacity, crash test performance, power-to-weight ratio, warranty terms, etc.) I get an independent party's TCO estimator where I can fill in my average miles per year, how often and how much I might haul, number of years I plan to own it before selling, etc. and they use past data to project costs of ownership (down to considering things like "this model engine has been in use for many years so we can be very confident about its cost of maintanance) to get a TCO for all the models in this segment to easily consider before ordering, and no grubby salesmen are required -- it's mostly between me and the engineers that conspire to build a reliable machine -- no executives to decide that the model line needs to be segmented in such and such a way to trick me into paying more to get much less with by putting a single economy feature (like durable LED headlamps) in the top of the line model with a bunch of other things I really would rather not have (wood texture details and crap).
- nradov 8y ago
  Edmunds has good data on TCO. https://www.edmunds.com/tco.html https://www.edmunds.com/tco.html

MoBattah 8y ago

Can easily get more comfort in a budget car by adding packages.

anyfoo 8y ago
Comfort, maybe. Driving, hardly. I drive both a Ford Focus and a small sports car. While the Ford Focus, my usual commuter car, is not bad at all, I still take the sports car to work about once a week, and it just doesn't compare. In some ways, the Ford Focus is more "comfortable", but the control and precision that the sports car offers even when just cruising through normal traffic through the city is amazing. The Ford, again not a bad car, feels like "swimming" in comparison. This is, to some extent, similar in the difference between, say, driving a Chevy and driving a BMW. Subjectively, one just drives much better than the other one, and given how much time you are forced to spend in a car in the US, why would I not opt for a car that implements the driving aspect better?

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

I think esotericn is classifying that as the "enthusiast market". "More enjoyable to drive" matters, sure. But for most of us, it's not the primary driver of the buying decision - practicality is.

dingaling 8y ago

> Some cars are just flat-out much more enjoyable to drive. The counterpoint to that is Audi ( A4 in particular ); dreadfully unbalanced whale-like FWD with the engine hanging out over the front wheels. Objectively dynamically inferior to the humble Ford Mondeo. But sold in droves in spartan-spec because of badge cachet. They have recently started to tidy up their handling but still lag more humble brands.

madeuptempacct 8y ago
Don't forget that these cars are a huge pain to maintain.
- ams6110 8y ago
  They're German. Germans expect that you will take care of things on a schedule if you are told to do so. That's why German cars have a much more detailed list of required maintenance than American cars do. The Germans don't think it's unusual.
  - biztos 8y ago
    Indeed, I'm planning to buy a (probably German) used car in Germany around April, and pretty much the first thing I've figured out is you never buy anything that doesn't have its full service history meticulously documented, with receipts.
  - jcims 8y ago
    Come on now, there's a hell of a lot more going on with the reliability of vehicles coming out of Germany than slack maintenance cycles.
    - cmrdporcupine 8y ago
      It seems it really depends. My '12 Jetta TDI was super reliable, never had a single problem apart from it destroying the earth and lying about it. But other people with the same year, same car, had all sorts of problems. I feel like there's perhaps quality control issues coming off the line in Mexico. Our new-used '13 Audi Q5 is made in Bavaria. So we shall see how its quality compares. So far no problems.

lotyrin 8y ago

Yeah, but what portion of the market can realistically afford the luxury, and what portion of the market cannot afford it but buy in anyways? How do you explain away the people like an old high school friend of mine that was so brand loyal to the concept of a european luxury car that they got the only such model they could afford (purely in cap-ex terms) which was aging and constantly being maintained (could have easily leased a late model asian economy car instead, with money to spare) and from which all of the subjective experience features were gone (sounded awful, felt awful, smelled awful, and had little remaining intact interior materials)? Also, there are cars that manage to have both terrible TCO and lack any positive subjective experience features but manage to make it onto the roadways regardless. There should be an elastic luxury portion of the market where you have the typical dealership experience -- but it should be a tiny minority. The rest of the market should be very concrete, where you show up and just pay a simple price for a simple commodity vehicle that competes with the others through simple metrics (fuel economy, cargo capacity, crash test performance, power-to-weight ratio, warranty terms, etc.) I get an independent party's TCO estimator where I can fill in my average miles per year, how often and how much I might haul, number of years I plan to own it before selling, etc. and they use past data to project costs of ownership (down to considering things like "this model engine has been in use for many years so we can be very confident about its cost of maintanance) to get a TCO for all the models in this segment to easily consider before ordering, and no grubby salesmen are required -- it's mostly between me and the engineers that conspire to build a reliable machine -- no executives to decide that the model line needs to be segmented in such and such a way to trick me into paying more to get much less with by putting a single economy feature (like durable LED headlamps) in the top of the line model with a bunch of other things I really would rather not have (wood texture details and crap).

nradov 8y ago
Edmunds has good data on TCO. https://www.edmunds.com/tco.html https://www.edmunds.com/tco.html