The US used vehicle market is a fucked up clown show. In the EU, the prices are more realistic, especially with the smaller motors. The reason, the piss poor US income distribution and astronomical new car prices combined to create this mess.
old man anecdote: my first car was a toyota celica, 10 years old, this was back in 99’. it cost $500, bought in the classified ads, and the deal was sealed with a firm handshake and a passing of legal tender in unwashed hands.
that same car nowadays would run me 8k.
I just Kelly blue booked my 07 jeep compass… it’s worth a whole $600. I spent more then that on the tires
It’s often the upkeep that really determines its value, long-term.
Where is the meme? All that is here is the waking world.
Loosely related: if your relatives ever give you anything to sell on Facebook Marketplace or something, they will insist on some sort of insane price which will not move. You lower the price dramatically and it finally sells after weeks and weeks of just sitting there. Knowing that your boomer relative will be angry that it sold for $25 rather than 40 bajillion dollars, you lie to them and say you sold it for $45. They bitch, shit themselves, scream and cry, give you a hard time all throughout Sunday dinner and then claim they’re going to sell their own stuff from now on. They never sell anything, or even attempt to do so. The end.
Tangentially related: Some times your relatives don’t even have to still be in possession of the item any longer to inflate the price and get offended. My mom goes on and on about how much some LP she had when she was 15 would be worth if grandma hadn’t of let it mold in the garage. I looked the album up and if she had a first pressing in mint condition it would be worth a bajillion dollars, but she most certainly played the shit out of a beat up copy of a 14th pressing that isn’t worth shit. Likewise, eBay fucks with their sense of worth, too. My parents will mention something they have being worth a lot of money and I’ll ask how they know only to be hit with “we saw that someone had one of these that went for several thousand.” And of course, looking deeper into unravels the entire plot of why that very not really rare thing sold for an unusually high price 10 years ago during a minor surge in popularity of that thing due to a new media reboot.
This is so fucking true
It shows me they have no idea how to check the comps. Some eBay sellers will be delusional about their items or will list something for an inflated price just for the outrage views, that doesn’t mean it’s ever sold for that price. You’ve got to check the most recent sold listings and check to see how many sold recently.
I avoid this problem by not using Facebook
Facebook sellers all consult The Art of the Deal.
[insert selling platform here]
Oh no, not the end. At the end, you have a week to dispose of what can be charitably described as a hoard of useless boomer nonsense.
Behold the inevitable future of funko pops.
I’m planning on doing swedish death cleaning if I don’t go suddenly. Only things that will remain are things my kids actually want.
Oh I’m selling mine before my next birthday for sure. This won’t be me when I’m old! I only had 3 of them, but that is too many.
Sure. My point is that every generation that’s existed since mass consumer culture began will have their versions of this. Contrast Precious Moments figurines among Boomers to Funko Pops for Millennials.
Yeah that’s why I’m putting the pressure on now, while they’re all still breathing on their own.
There’s always more they’ve never told you about
Holy shit…
You can always call the second hand store to come and take everything
Reasons:
-
They refuse to write a will, it’s now or never
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They’re tripping over this stuff and getting rescued by the fire department or paramedics on a semiregular basis
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There are some actually valuable objects, which they cannot mentally differentiate from the junk
-
I don’t want to deal with this on top of being sad they’re dead, I’d rather do it while I’m still annoyed with them
-
They die and now all that stuff is your responsibility anyway
I’ll tell them on their death bed that I will totally sell their used figurines for 40 bajillion and that this is a reasonable price.
I already told my mom not to leave me any of her prized 70s era ethan allen furniture because I’m just going to donate it.
Noooooobody wants ugly old baroque heavy fucking king arthurs court style tables and chairs. If they do want it, there are lots of people selling it because people like me have a parent who died and left it to their kids and they’re all trying to sell the ugly shit.
She insists that it’s worth a fortune, but just tell her that it’s worth what someone will pay to buy used furniture and come haul it all off–which isn’t much. Both of my brothers already have a set that she’s dumped on them over the years, I’m the only one who refused it. I have my own taste and it ain’t that shit. Of course when I’m old, I have no expectation that anyone will want my shit. I like it, but by the time I’m ready to drop, MCM will probably be out of style and it can just go to the salvation army with all the rest of my worthless shit.
I’m sorry but sometimes you’ve got to lie to them.
If they have something like gold-plated silverware or jewelry you can be more honest. You’ve still got to lie and tell them it sold for slightly more than it really sold for (they will bitch and moan anyway, wanting a super inflated price, but still), and give them a cut of what you got for it.
But if it’s something stupid like furniture nobody wants, or figurines, for dishware, you’ve got to lie to their faces and tell them you needed the money for credit card debt. That is the only way they’re going to stop tripping over their hoarded stuff and getting rescued by the fire department. “Please grandma give me this massive hoard of plates you have packed in cardboard in boxes all over the floor, I need it to pay off my non existent credit cards” and then throw that shit in the trash.
Or tell them nothing. dont bring it up. especially on their death bed. Just comfort them. no need to stress them or yourself out more.Just say it is all fine. agree to whatever by handshake. After that just do what you intend to do anyways. the only legal binding contract is the will. Even at that; the stuff gets disbursed to the new owners who decide whether or not to keep it. the will is a temporary measure to which these temporary objects simply find their new temporary spot. Then life continues to change among the living who make their own executive decisions with these temporary objects.
Other than that get back to your life asap. This estate stuff will eat you alive as it is while you’re grieving.
I wrote a long reply but at the end of the day it’s better to get it done now, tldr
In like 2018 I bought a 2014 Honda Accord Sport for $6500. 6 speed manual, fun car to drive. It had like 50k miles on it which is essentially nothing for a Honda. Carfax was clean etc. Then I had 2 kids and it was time for the Minivan. I traded in the Accord at the dealership (which I never do, but didn’t have time to do a private sale). They gave me something like $9500 for it. This was in the beginning of 2025. I drove the Accord for 7 years and made $3000 somehow. And I’m sure the dealership sold it for like $12000.
Shits crazy.
Trading in is the biggest theft. Always better off selling on your own, by thousands.
Was it prey-spyware? I’ll pay extra for pre-spyware vehicles. I work in IT, so I value my privacy.
I’m starting to look at those old cars just to not have built-in trackers on my vehicle.
The engine in my 1994 K1500 is fucked but I’ll engine swap before I buy a spyware truck.
I figure the engine swap business has got to be booming right now.
Chevy v8’s can be rebuilt and engine swapped to the end of time… They only built ten million of them a year.
Hell, you could rent a Uhaul and use its engine, then claim in broke down on you.
Doesn’t engines have serial numbers? I have a feeling this is going to backfire
Lol, I like that
I won’t drive anything I can’t fix. That seems to be old vehicles only.
On one hand, I wanna do right by the environment, own an EV, do my part.
On the other hand, corporations are never going to do their part, the Earth is probably doomed and I have to get by to get by.
So… yeah, I’m probably buying another 6-9th gen Civic or Accord and sending it until it dissolves into the pavement.
Own an EV to save money. People buying vehicles seem to assume gas is free.
And fewer moving parts means less expensive maintenance, generally. Granted, replacing a battery can get expensive, but if you’re not going all that far anyway, the battery’s range dropping from 400km to 200km after 12 years or so might not be a big deal. That said, the boots theory of socioeconomic unfairness might mean you’re stuck with ICE vehicles for a while if you can’t get a loan for a comparable amount of time.
Edit: after looking it up, that’s also assuming a worst case loss, average range is now roughly 460km, getting better, and it’s still at ~78% capacity 10 years later.
I’m optimistic about Slate. Perhaps naively so.
Buying old means not purchasing net new products. It’s not fully sustainable, but it maintains the status quo and doesn’t contribute to more waste. Keeping something old alive and in good working condition is a lower carbon footprint than buying a new EV or Hybrid.
Depends on the miles. An EV undertakes a new gas car after 20k miles.
There is a point where a new EV, with mined lithium and all, will be more environmentally friendly than a used car that didn’t need to be built but burns gas for every mile.
If you live in a sunny area (pv) or a dense hydro area, that point is quite quickly reached.
Whether there’s a net lower carbon footprint depends heavily on how much gasoline you burn
However the used EV market is only growing
I’m hoping that someone does some reverse engineering on the engine management computers of EVs. EVs internals are a lot simpler. An open source, drop in brain is definitely not unachievable.
All the advantages of an EV with none of the corporate tracking.
Simple to do badly, but still challenging to do elegantly. Managing power/throttle response in every situation is quite complex if you want it to feel good. Kinda like how everyone makes a trackpad, but only Apple makes Apple trackpads.
And thats before we get into the complications of thermal management with the batteries and heat pumps and stuff.
Do you mean for an ICE to EV conversion? You can already buy such kits.
More a replacement brain for an EV. Compared to an ICE there is far less to manage in a hyper time critical manner. It’s a lot more viable to design a drop in replacement. Particularly if the battery bank already has its own monitoring, that just reports upwards.
You would end up with a modern EV, with many of the desired features. However, the manufacturer would no longer be able to reach in and extract data, either remotely, at a mechanic, or after an accident.
Just unplug the sharkfin, or cover it with foil tape.
You can also have that. The ice replacement kits bring everything, and very often use tesla or leaf batteries. If you already have a Tesla battery in your tesla, that much you can save. You lose all the fancy features, remote app management, sentry, etc, but that might be a pro for you…
same, that’s why I drive a kid tricycle.
Whoop whoop carburetor gang rise UP!
Yes, carbs are great if you love working on cars. A factory fuel injection system these days (anything newer than the old Jetronic pieces of shit) is pretty much set it and forget it, plus if you do have a bad sensor or something, it’ll usually tell you (by live data reading if not DTC). Way easier to maintain than carburetors.
Carburetors waste a lot of fuel.
Ha. Just switch to an electronic ignition, improved coil, and spark and it’s as peppy and efficient as fuel injection.
efficient as fuel injection
That’s quite wrong.
I the sort of person who would go to the dealership and start looking underneath the showroom cars. If I can’t see the oil filter, I don’t want it.
Both of my cars are from the 80’s lol. I will never buy a new vehicle again, made that mistake with a 2019 Tacoma.
I have 1974 car, a 1994 4x4 van for snow, and a 1975 motorcycle for summer. All things I do my own work on.
The 2012 used car market was pretty fucked. Tons of old stock had been taking off the market in 09/10 by Cash for Clunkers.
Let’s not pretend that a lot of good cars met an early end in C4C. People were hauling in their broken garbage to cash in. Nobody was bringing in some pristine example of anything good. A whole lot of raggedy minivans, crappy econoboxes and rusty trucks got sand in their engines. If they were worth anything, the scrapyard could have plopped a new motor in them and resold them.
C4C cleaned out the bottom of the barrel shit. Unless you were dying for some fucked up shitheap of a car, nothing of value was lost. If someone was dumb enough to roll in with something useful, you know damn well that the dealer would have given them the same money for it and just resold it. Yeah, you weren’t supposed to do that, and politicians aren’t supposed to fuck children either.
You’re way off.
There were fuel economy requirements for c4c, your trade in had to be low mpg and your new purchase or lease had to be higher mpg. So it was never econoboxes. In fact they changed the rules in the middle of it and blacklisted a bunch of engine and model combos so you couldn’t get the rebate if your trade in was good enough on gas.
If a person was coming in to get the c4c money then the dealer had to record the vins to prevent fraud. They made a system in some of the vin check websites that made it so you could look up and make sure you weren’t being sold a salvage car like after Katrina. There was still a really small amount of insane bullshit but it was one of the first times back then that you could get a free title check across state lines instantly and online.
When a dealer gave someone the c4c money they had to record what title it was for and destroy the engine and body. So there was only the car salesman who’s employer wouldn’t be footing the bill for the payout standing between some prospective buyer correctly recognizing it was their one chance to get more for their trade in than any dealership would ever give them being way more willing to sign an onerous lease and signing off on putting reliable vehicles like the box Cherokee and blazer (and f150 and 1500 and and and) on the conveyor belt to being destroyed.
And c4c cars never got scrapped. They were destroyed and then junked. After the most expensive part was destroyed as a requirement of the program the yard that did the job had 180 days to destroy the body. American scrapyards aren’t like European or Asian ones where the car is disassembled into its component parts that each get tagged and put on a shelf in a big warehouse, they drag the car out into a field and let it sit there. A car with no usable engine isn’t even worth handling because it’s taking up space that one with an engine could occupy. It’s not even worth putting in a spot because you have half a year to get some value out of the accessories that weren’t damaged in the engine destruction process (no water pump, no manifolds, no radiators or oil coolers, when the engine blows its seals externally it might even take out the alternator!) and the interior before you gotta move it on. Better to never mess with it in the first place.
Even if none of that were true and it wasn’t actively destroying the parts, engine and chassis availability for two decades of vehicles people could have been driving for dubious environmental and economic gain, c4c specifically incentivized the poorest drivers to take on debt in order to juice the economy. It was fucking evil.
That was also when the CAFE standards changed and suddenly small trucks became effectively illegal since fuel economy standards started being based on vehicle footprint.
It’s why trucks started growing in size so much. The manufacturers figured out it was easier to make cars bigger than to make them more effecient.
Just tell your mom what ever is left is getting sold in an estate sale
Not to mention the choice of Toyota here makes this especially silly. The used market for body-on-frame Toyotas has been so far out of whack for so long that back when you could still get 0% dealer financing it was often cheaper to buy new than used after you factored in interest rates.
Yeah, the new car market has made overpriced shitters look good
Just checked out a trade in 2026 model at a dealership. Had 14k miles already in 8 months and had a damaged head unit display (2k for replacement). Told the dealership they were gonna struggle to sell it, especially given that there’s an actual branded dealership selling these all day long a mile away with a quarter of the miles and no damage. It’s been sitting on their lot 2 months already with barely any online hits.
GM had a hissy fit that I suggested 2k less than their price, OTD, for me to drive it off the lot.
I suspect I’ll be getting a call back in a few weeks when their quotas are low and they realize they aren’t selling gold-plated Ferraris.
You should offer them something even lower when they do
“I moved on, but for the favor, I need another 2 grand off.”
Psh, that’s high-balling it. If the dealer gets anything more than breaking even in this situation, the buyer messed up.
The dealer dismissed an offer of 2 grand off the first time. You need to show him that next time you won’t be so generous. Teach those snakes to be open to bargaining again, or they’ll only continue to raise prices year after year.
You are naive if you think a dealer ever loses on a car sale. If you think you got a deal, 100% you got fucked with a bad car.
If you think you got a deal
I never said anything of the sort. I’m not sure where you got that I did. I simply told the other commenter to play hardball.
The value has dropped, it’s now closer to inspection date
And they’re more desperate to sell
Hell, the new cars do that too.
Just buy an electric car. It’s a 40% discount after 2 years. Thanks previous owner.
They devalue even worse off warranty, 60% .
They have never made an electric car I want.
What sort of car are you a fan of? I sort of felt the same way but then Subaru (by way of being owned by Toyota) came out with an electric station wagon that mostly looks like a normal car. It’s great.
The closest anyone has come is the Golf EV. The Subaru you like is still too much like an SUV. And the interior 🤮
Look at a Gen 2 Nissan leaf.
I feel this. “Teslafication” took over the interiors and so, so many are SUVs in the states. Our obsession with them stinks for anyone just wanting a car.
Screen addicts want car screens. Look at Tesla crash rates, higher than any other brand, 3 years in a row.
Not just the interiors, but also on the headlights. They all have a flat front and a long LED light bar across it. And if that light bar breaks it’s a couple grand to fix.
Cause nothing ever hits the front of a car and breaks a headlight, right?
240k miles.
so like brand new if it’s a Toyota
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Fair.
Are you trying to break Europe by using “k” and “miles” together?
240 kilomiles (km)
So many baguettes just hit the ground
Sacre bleu!
It just dawned on me Americans use k as a shorthand for 1000… like the metric system 🤣
And if you’d use yard, then it’s only 9% off. One kiloyard is 0.91 kilometer.
In the US, k could stand for 1042 or something, who can tell?
(it’s the number of thumbs that fit in a half barrel btw)
1153 and 36/127ths. Simple.
Why do you keep being your mother a “half barrel”?
k is just a prefix, it is unit-independent
Ok use kilopounds then. Or milimiles!
kilopounds (Kips) is a real unit that gets used in structural design in the US. It makes no sense lol.
We already have short tons, you don’t lose much precision by halving the number!
Although I do get the argument that using tons is confusing because there are metric tons as well, and with only a 10% difference, it won’t be as obvious as if you confuse pounds and kilos or feet and meters
I had some annoyances with this. My old company had a requirement to do some annoying tasks in intervals that depended on the inverse of the number of tons of fuel used and the document controlling those tasks said just that: ‘tons’. But if you looked in the documentation behind that requirement, it was made back when we’d been involved with a European company for sourcing that fuel so that requirement was actually based on the inverse of specifically the metric tons of fuel used, not short tons. So all the math on determining the interval for doing that task had to involve converting for the metric tons of fuel used in the interval even though the newer fuel supplier we had swapped to and we ourselves were using short tons in essentially every other context. And since the controlling surface level document just said ‘tons’ without specifying which kind I was always having to correct the math of schedulers and new people on my team since they would eternally think we had more time to perform the task than we actually did and respectively plunk it down late or tell someone who was asking that it be moved that it could be pushed later than it should have been.
Anything but metric lol
But milimiles would be redundant, it already gets its name from being roughly equivalent to a thousand of someone, somewhere’s (probably in Europe or the Mediterranean, but beyond that, who knows) paces.
A millimile would be five feet, three and a third inches.
Someone, somewhere’s pace!
K
I saw that 2 kiloinches away.
If it’s a prefix, why do we write it after the number? 🤔
Cos its a prefix regarding the unit
Do you live in the US? I’ve seen you simping for Trump before but you’re not familiar with how we write car mileage?
Sus af
You will break people by using a proper Mm there. The GGP is harmless.
Cool abbreviations bro
K means 1,000 as in kilo because T already means 1,000,000,000,000 (trillion) OR 2000 pounds (Ton)
T is actually short for 1000 KG not 2000 units of British currency.
K is short for 1000.
Merci! It’s actually “short” for “kilo”. But you’re doing great!
Winning hearts and minds being a smug prick.
Great job! You blocked eurotrash shithead!
Is the bottom one made to look better with AI, is that a feature of the used car market these days?
2UZ-FE V8, could probably push it to a million miles.
Except they’ve owned it since new, it’s got 300k and is still running the original timing belt
Timing chain.
Maybe I was thinking of the previous generation that ran the belt, other than the belt that is a bulletproof engine too, I’ve seen one approaching half a million miles with 100k belt changes.
I’m never selling my manual Honda Fit.
Best car Honda ever made.
Same but with my 2005 Corolla XRS. I’d rather pay 10k to replace the engine than buy a new car.
Toyotas are beasts. Definitely hold onto that one.
I feel the same about my '12 Civic LX. The only thing I’d give it up for is the same car with a stick.
I was just reading about somebody who bought a car in 2020 new for like $40k, and then after three years, resold it for $45k.
People are selling their five year old used GPU for a 50% markup on MSRP. It’s crazy out there.
Inflation does crazy stuff like that.
In the 1980s here in Brazil there were people that made a living by buying new cars and reselling them before the store managed to bring the actual car from the factory.
I know several people who did that - trucks, boats, campers were all worth more used during COVID than they were worth new just a year or two before. You may recall there was a massive chip shortage during COVID and new vehicle production was greatly impacted.
I haven’t bought a car in almost 10 years. But, there’s this guy saying he has a lot full of used cars, $2500 to $4000. And, he says people are calling to ask if they can finance that small amount, whereas they used to just pay cash:
“small amount”. Ok Elon
In the context of prices of cars it is indeed a rather small amount.
And yet it’s still 2 months of median income in the US.
Which should be well withing an emergency fund for when, for instance, your car breaks down.
The median income for an individual in the US is
$3761$4280/month.That’s far higher than the $35,500/yr I found in census info, where did you get that number?
https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.pdf
I actually trusted the LLM overview, which was a mistake; the median is $4280.83/month, a bit higher than I originally said.
Most people are digitally paid, so they can’t avoid taxes
