>One goes up in value, often greatly, the other is nearly worthless. The Toyota fanboys would take issue with that statement ;) Personally owning and maintain

>One goes up in value, often greatly, the other is nearly worthless. The Toyota fanboys would take issue with that statement ;) Personally owning and maintaining my own metal box on wheels saves me ~2hr per day over the publicly owned metal box on wheels. Even in Europe that would be worth it for just about any white collar professional. Not everything has to be a good investment. I drive junk but I understand why some people would rather sit in a really, really nice car for their commute. The way I see it transportation is just the cost of having a job. "Base" transportation has zero residual value. You can't sell a worn out shitbox for anything. You also can't sell a city bus or rail car at all. If you throw more money on top of the "base" A to B car in order to have something nice then you might get some value back but it's fundamentally a luxury expense. For my use case and for many people, the "base" car offers so much utility improvement over anything else that it's a) a no brainier b) basically pays for itself vs attaining equivalent standard of living without it.