Small / economy car deathwatch: we've passed "peak econobox" again

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

It is weird, the owner says it has a CEL for a bad gas cap, but they do not have emissions in his small town in the middle of nowhere, so he does not care, but he also shows that he paid over $700 for recent work, so why not pay $8 for a gas cap, and make it easier to sell?

It's never the gas cap; especially when the guy could fix it for a few bucks like you say.

Evap leaks can be tricky to pinpoint, but I doubt it would be expensive to fix.

EDIT: If the owner doesn't want to fix the underlying CEL, I'd reduce the price by at least the amount to replace the Evap canister, or whatever normal shop prices would be to diagnose the leak. Certainly use it as leverage to drive the price down. Typical consumers will already avoid the car due to the CEL.

[teoman]

I suppose they want to be eye level when driving.

[MetroMPG]

Confirmed dead, VW Beetle after the 2019 model year:

https://jalopnik.com/dead-volkswagen-beetle-1829035495

Also, Ford had initially said they were planning to keep the Focus alive for a bit longer by selling a butched-up version with body cladding called the "Focus Active". (Oh and probably an extra inch of ground clearance.)

But it's dead too (casualty of the tariff wars):
https://carbuzz.com/news/2019-ford-f...val-in-america

[aerostealth]

There are several economic boxes out there that get over 100 mpg, they are called electric cars. Try the Green Eyed Motors website for a list of quality used electric vehicles which can be a real bargain. Many of the cars are low miles and reasonably priced. If you wanted to buy one rent a car hauler and drive there with a vehicle rated to tow it and bring your bargain EV (or PHEV) home.

[MetroMPG]

Toyota has let it be known that it's planning to trim unpopular vehicles from its North American line-up.

That means, as discussed earlier in this thread, the Yaris deathwatch is now on:

The Corolla, Camry and Avalon are all safe, as they’ve seen steady increases in sales year after year.

The Yaris Hatch, however, will probably be dropped, as sales of the subcompact have dropped almost 80 percent since the start of 2018.

Source: https://driving.ca/toyota/auto-news/...anadian-lineup

[airbiteses]

I guess, logically, the price of yaris costs almost to corolla? In Canada, the price of Yaris and corolla is the cheapest:
The Yaris hatchback from $ 15,490, the sedan from $ 16,590
Corolla sedan from $ 16,790. hatchback from $ 20,980.
And in the USA:
Yaris hatchback from: $ 15,635, sedan from $ 15,450
Corolla sedan from $ 18,700, hatchback from $ 19,990.
In Canada, you can see that Yaris is unprofitable slowly. like it would cost $ 10,000 in Canada it's ok
I'm wrong?

[MetroMPG]

Pricing the different models relatively close together is how they get you to move up! More profit in the bigger cars, for sure.


Canada does have a bunch of much less expensive cars: base Chevy Spark, Nissan Micra and Mitsubishi Mirage all start at $10000-$11,000. (Manual transmission, no air conditioning.)


Toyota & Honda apparently decided not to participate in the entry level price war.

[airbiteses]

hmm ... the most economical power to fuel ratio is nissan micra. and the biggest trunk probably has a chevrolet spark? because in the Chevrolet and reserve pages in the US are not given the capacity of the trunk unless I'm looking wrong?

[niky]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Pricing the different models relatively close together is how they get you to move up! More profit in the bigger cars, for sure.


Canada does have a bunch of much less expensive cars: base Chevy Spark, Nissan Micra and Mitsubishi Mirage all start at $10000-$11,000. (Manual transmission, no air conditioning.)


Toyota & Honda apparently decided not to participate in the entry level price war.

They CAN make super cheap cars. They sell them here in Asia. But to do so, they had to cut costs by building them cheap. So cheap that they make cars like the Spark look like luxury-mobiles.

Selling that kind of product pigeonholes you as a budget brand. Buy, Break, Replace. Toyota and Honda have built themselves a reputation for quality that wouldn't survive tens of thousands of customers associating them with garbage.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by niky

They CAN make super cheap cars. They sell them here in Asia. But to do so, they had to cut costs by building them cheap.

Not only in Asia, since countries in other regions might eventually have a tax structure that benefits those bare-bones econoboxes.

Buy, Break, Replace.

I'd rather say buy, break, do some cheap makeshift fix. Just look at Argentina, where it's still kinda usual to adapt carburettors to cars originally fitted with EFI...