New car - or 'Tell me what cars you have bought lately (that are interesting)'

Heh, that was my exact thought as well. What happens in five years when a bunch of people get out-of-warranty cars breaking down and decide to quit making payments?

Isn’t the whole reason why they never offered these sorts of terms is due to the risk of defaults in general? I have to wonder what’s changed their minds - is it a re-evaluation of the risks or are they packaging up their auto loans and selling them just like mortgage lenders did? Perhaps Nissan believes they are “too big to fail” if they get into trouble with these loans in a couple years.

I’m pretty sure auto manufacturers don’t handle their loans internally. That’s Big Banks/Wall Street’s job. They just pocket the profit for selling the car and I believe the dealer gets a commission of some sort on loans originated.

In other words this is probably the financial sector deciding that they’ve found a clever new “product” and they are going to get hugely rich. And if they don’t, no big, the taxpayers will bail them out.

Cars are pretty expensive now, and when they offered 72… people thought it was nuts too.

Nissan quality has dropped so much in the last 20 years, it’s one of the last brands that I’d risk a long loan. On the other hand, the Renault-Nissan-Misubishi Alliance (owner of other storied quality brands like Lada) might fail before these loans are paid off & you’ll get a reduction from the bankruptcy court!

The bigger manufacturers tend to have in-house or affiliated financial companies, like GMAC for instance. I think there is some technical legerdemain that keeps them separate from the other parts of the company, but in the end it’s all the same profit. In all the years I’ve been buying cars, I think I’ve had a load from a manufacturer’s financial arm maybe twice. Usually, yeah, the dealer has a set of banks they like to go to. But I always have my own financing set up before ever visiting a showroom.

Nine years, though. I think @Nesrie is right about the cost being a driver (hah!). People want the admittedly desirable features of up-scale and higher trim models, and base prices are creeping up as well. I also wonder whether people finally have discovered that leasing isn’t the magic bullet it was touted as a while back. For many people, leasing isn’t cutting the monthly payment enough to get them into the ride they want. As they could not lease a car for long enough to lower the payment, the next step logically is stretching out the purchase price.

A little back of the napkin math (and an online amortization calculator) implies that with no down payment and today’s interest rates, even with such a long loan time you’re going to be upside down for like two to three years on that car. At least.

Yeah I think most of next year is gonna be a mess for the industry also.

At the prices things are now I am for sure not buying. I’m just trying to hold my current car together for a few years to see if things get better.

I replaced mine with a 2017 Tucson around the start of the year, when prices were already ticking up and selection getting thin. That same model & mileage goes for about $5K-8K more now.

Up here, at the ass-end of the supply chain in northern New England, local car lots are looking like the Shenandoah Valley in 1865–picked clean over so bad a crow flying through would have to pack a lunch.

Yeah of all the dealers around me the only one with a lot that doesn’t look post apocalyptic is the Volvo dealer, no one apparently likes or maybe can afford a Volvo?

I’m amazed at my timing earlier this year… Traded my Fiat 124 as used values were rising so ended up only paying $500 to drive it two years, and got my Mazda CX-30 right before supplies started waning, so still got a hefty discount off retail. Sometimes you’re lucky.

I had to take my car in for service a couple of weeks ago (Kia.) I watched 3 very bored salespeople line up different customers back-to-back-to-back doing a test drive in the only high package Kia Sportage (low end SUV) on the lot. Like … tons more Sportages out there, but that was the only one with the higher trim package so, I’m guessing, the only one people wanted to look at.

I’m guessing that the dealers ordered their usual mix of trim levels, but with the craziness lately they sold all the most popular models and were left with the stuff that usually sits for a while before it sells. Only this time, there is no resupply so it sort of spirals down to nothingness. I guess too that dealers often cannot get unlimited numbers of any trim they like, as allotments are spread out over the whole dealer network. They are bound to wind up with a number of less-desirable configurations, or nothing at all.

It could very well have been supply chain issues. Usually by the time you get to test drives, that’s the car/trim you’re looking at. So seeing back-to-back-to-back customers going out in that one car seemed funny.

Our local Chevy dealer is on one of the main drags through town, and it has been interesting to watch their supply dwindle. Their front parking lot has 12 rows of stalls between the sidewalk and the dealership’s front door. Now, the row closest to the sidewalk is full, and the other 11 are completely empty. Among the cars filling those spaces are six used Ford Mustangs, none more than a few years old. $5 gas is probably making people reconsider the fun of having a V8 sports coupe.

If it’s any consolation, nobody was buying sports coupes anyway. In general, sales for sedans and coupes have dropped to near zero in favor of CUVs/SUVs with only a few exceptions.

Five bucks for gas? Must be in the hurricane affected part of the country? Premium is three something here.

Not “nobody,” because clearly there are lots of folks who still want these cars, but yeah, in terms of the volume car companies want and need, it might as well be insignificant. For those of us who loathe the high-riding, bloated, generally ugly and overweight SUVs that have come to dominate the market, it is profoundly depressing to see how the confluence of EVs and market trends is rapidly narrowing the choices we have.

While many companies seem to have interesting looking EVs in the pipeline somewhere–and by interesting I mean cars that look and feel like enthusiast machines, not just cars that by virtue of electrification can accelerate wicked fast–many of them are in six-figure territory. Most at least have a few affordable cars like this somewhere in the design stage, but the economics of them needed to recoup their R&D with mass market sales means we probably won’t get a lot of choice for a while. So every time one of the car mags does an “upcoming EV models” feature, it’s an endless parade of SUVs, trucks, and either boring sedans or hideously expensive sporty things.

I mean, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my current manual transmission Type R is probably going to have to last me as long as possible, as it is unlikely I’d be able to get anything comparable in a few years. But if I have to give up my third pedal, I damn sure don’t want to do it for any of the affordable EVs on the market right now. Every single one of them leaves me pretty much cold for one reason or another. The ones I do think would be interesting all cost as much as a freakin’ house. Well, what a house used to cost at least.

Bay Area California is very close to $5/gallon right now. I think I saw $4.95/gallon a few days ago. It might be over $5 in San Francisco proper.

This is from July:

No wonder you folks want electric cars so badly over on the west coast.