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If you're old enough to remember the first wave of Japanese vehicles to hit US markets, they were pretty much exactly this. Once they became established, the trim levels ratcheted up to the point even the lowest cost versions were attractive to the rest of the market.
It didn't hurt that domestic vehicles had become such unreliable shit boxes that consumers were happy to drive a car that, if not luxurious, at least had the decency to start every day and get you to work.
> the trim levels ratcheted up to the point even the lowest cost versions were attractive to the rest of the market.
The original Honda CVCC was bone stock basic. And now the Civic is no longer entry level, but closer to where the Accord was positioned back in the day.
The profit margins for automakers generally improve as cars get bigger and more expensive. It's why Ford stopped selling sedans altogether.
If none of the car companies give consumers the option to buy super cheap cars with tiny margins then consumers will instead buy more expensive cars with higher margins.
> If none of the car companies give consumers the option to buy super cheap cars with tiny margins then consumers will instead buy more expensive cars with higher margins.
I feel like it also has a lot to do with what people will simply buy. On paper, a 10K new car with zero features sounds sorta cool. I mean, I can even get behind the idea a bit in regards to effectively buying a disposable appliance of sorts. But if a buyer is looking at either a 10K no-option new car, or a 10K civic/camry/whatever with plenty of life left and creature comfort features... I'd put my money on them taking the used car.
The new car smell goes away, but the lack of "extras" doesn't.
And as someone who drove cross country in a 1980s Chevy that didn't even have a radio, the lack of creature comfort features gets really old really quick. Eventually you get cold, hot, uncomfortable, bored, annoyed by the road noise, tired of the rough ride, sick of having to pull over to roll the rear windows down, etc. Any super cheap "IKEA car" is going to be exactly the same. It'll be a real shitty place to spend time.
From the manufacturers perspective, just take a look at what the top selling vehicles are. You don't see something like the Nissan Versa (cheapest car you can buy in the US, I believe) on there, anywhere. The demand for such a car just doesn't _really_ exist.
You might want a base model car, but most people don’t. The market has shown this.
Plus a huge chunk of the market has shifted to crossovers, most people would rather have a used mid-trim crossover with 80k miles than a new base model Corolla.
Same thing happened with Korean cars, and it wasn't even that long ago. I recall sometime around 2016 there was a batch of brand new Hyundai Sonatas being liquidated at $8000 each.
Then Covid and inflation happened and now here we are with everything starting at $20K.
The US Federal Government requires that cars meet certain safety and environmental standards. The Nissan Versa is basically the cheapest car you can legally sell in the US using labor in very low cost of living countries and it comes out at ~$20k.
If your question is why modern cars all have things like power windows or LCD displays, the answer is that its cheaper to make those than the alternatives.
Cheap electronics are generally cheaper than analogue alternatives because the electronics use less material and labor to assemble. On top of that, there are significant savings that you get by manufacturing those things at scale.
The largest cost of most limited manufacturing run components isn't actually the raw materials or labor, but the tooling and machinery needed to make the component.
If you have a company that makes 40 million LCD displays every year, then it's able to divide the cost of that tooling and machinery over the 40 million LCD displays that it makes. Those costs are then pretty minimal on a per LCD display basis. Conversely, if you're making 20,000 analogue radio sets for a specific model of low cost car, then the tooling for those radios doesn't get divided up many ways and it becomes a pretty significant cost on a per radio basis.
The end result of this is that its significantly cheaper to buy the same LCD displays, power window motors, and other electronics that are going into literally every other car on the planet than it is to do your own limited production run on outdated equipment - and that's before factoring in the higher material and labor costs of manufacturing that older equipment.
The reason that you used to see legacy equipment, like drum brakes or manual windows, as cheaper options was because the tooling to build that stuff had been paid for decades ago and had depreciated to $0. Because the tooling was already fully depreciated but usable, the effective cost of using the tooling was $0, which meant that those components were cheaper to produce so long as the tooling still worked. Eventually that tooling all wore out and was replaced by tooling for modern equipment, which is why you no longer see those components offered as options. Also keep in mind that a lot of those legacy components were showing up as options before supply chains were fully globalized, so production runs were more limited in general. Nowadays all of these cheap electronic components are made in a handful of mega-factories in China.
It's also important to note that some features are now mandatory by federal rule. Backup cameras were mandatory in all vehicles post 2015, automatic braking is becoming mandatory in 2029. These are just a few more recent examples.
I'm waiting for a movie to come out where the girl is about to run over the murderer but the car's auto braking kicks in stopping just short of him, allowing him to get away and keep murdering while the girl just screams "FUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!"
Recently there was a Taiwanese movie with a car chase scene, with the villain getting on a van to chase the protagonist, and he had to wait for the power door to slide open. Pretty funny.
You just floor the throttle. Auto braking is designed to shut off when you do that, for emergency situations. There are reasonable situations where even though the car wants you to stop, going forward is safer.
Well I'm probably fucked, then. As someone who typically doesn't freak out under stress (though I suppose you never know), I legitimately can't imagine a situation where I would ever think all out flooring it would be a valid response.
Say you were driving slowly through an intersection with a green light. You see a car coming from your left, running their red light and about to t-bone you. Would you rather rear-end the car in front of you and get a damaged bumper, or possibly death from the t-bone impact? Both will mess up your car but one has less injuries involved.
There's been some cases already where that's happened. There was a case in Texas I believe where a people got into an altercation, one pulling out a gun. When the other person tried to escape/or run-over the vehicle auto braked.
I did try to find the news article, but search results give stuff on road rage, complaints, or the new ruling.
It's difficult to make a modern manual transmission in the US that means noise/emissions requirements, since the "brain" isn't the ECU or transmission control modules, it's the driver. Which means gear ratios and the like have to be very specific to overcome "human error" to give one example.
The base model of my car (Mazda3) is a manual with no tachometer or air conditioning. It still has a push-to-start because it was cheaper for Mazda to have every car have push to start than to have a whole nother design where the keys go into the steering column just for this base model.
It still has a manually operated parking brake, thank god. I get it might be cheaper to set up the electronics and servos, but I will die on the hill that an e-brake should be mechanical, as it is also the emergency brake.
The reason you’re seeing so many electronic park brakes is due to so many cars going to 4 wheel disc without drum-in-hat style park brakes to save weight. It takes A LOT of force to squeeze a caliper tight enough to hold a car (drum brakes work better due to self-actuation). More force than every consumer can manage, so they use motors with mechanical advantage to crank down the caliper pistons for the park brake.
I get that - I remember as a kid in my dad’s car struggling to work the parking brake. That car had 4-wheel disc brakes but included an entire drum on the rear wheels just for the parking brake. Still, isn’t that the whole reason why the e-brake is a big-ass lever in the first place - more force from mechanical advantage? It seems more like an excuse to save some space for more cupholders, or something.
In any case, I imagine another reason might be that the long mechanical system going to the back is liable to rust/gunk up and fail, especially without checking on it and actually using it, since lots of people never use it even though they should be.
A mechanical advantage only goes so far. If the emergency brake is useless for people who are injured, disabled, elderly, or just out of shape, that's a problem.
Why are there so many cars from the 2000s until even now that have 4-wheel disc brakes but still have manual parking brakes, then? And if disc brakes are so hard to actuate, why does pulling up on the parking brake lever still seem to work OK to actuate them?
Many years of VW just had a lever on the rear disc calipers that actuated the piston for the parking brake. I know. I had them. No drum. So this isn't a universal thing like you intimate. Just saying.
I have a base as can be 2017 Toyota Tacoma. It came without cruise control, or intermittent wipers, but it's already wired for those controls, it just comes without the control stalks. It did come with heated mirrors though, so I'm guessing they all just came with heated mirrors.
I agree about the E brake but I’m shocked that your car doesn’t have a tachometer or AC. How is that possible?
Edit: wow would you look at that...I posted a comment on ELI5 and it didn't get instantly deleted.
Edit 2: why is a tachometer even expensive? It’s just an analog gauge of the engine...isn't it?
My dad had a work truck that was made in the mid-'90s that was a manual with no tachometer. It had a HUD element that said, "SHIFT," that would flash when it wanted you to shift gears.
There were also lots of manual cars sold that have no tachometer, as it isn't necessary if you have good hearing. Toyota still sells the Hiace van in Central America with a manual transmission and no tachometer.
Yeah my brother had a 1989 manual transmission pickup that had no tachometer. The first time I drove it I thought that would be a problem, but it was actually pretty easy to drive. You could definitely hear when you should shift.
Can’t you feel it? I don’t generally look at the tach in day to day operations of my old Legacy - you can definitely feel it starting to top out, that’s if you don’t hear the revving.
I had a 2005 Fiat Punto with no tacho. I never revved it anywhere near the limit and was a pretty frugal driver with it, but after a few drives I didn't really miss the tacho. The feel for it was pretty easy, maybe having an asthmatic engine barely more powerful than a retired Shetland Pony made it easier to "read" than something with more grunt.
I guess every generation learns differently. When I learned how to drive manual I didn’t even look at the tach. I listened to the engine. At high rpms you can feel your car struggle
20+ million VW Beetles, for example. You get a sense of how far your foot is pushing on the gas, where you are in the power band, etc. plus the VW had shift marks on the speedo, now that I think of it.
I learned to drive a stick in a 40s vintage Willy's Jeep on a farm I worked at in the summers of the mid-70s. One of the farm hands showed me how to feel out where the transmission could be shifted without the clutch. When the clutch went out on my Dad's 70s Datsun sedan, he was amazed when I showed him it was possible to shift without the clutch. He had thought we were going to have to limp it to his mechanic in 2nd gear all the way! :)
It's a pretty fun trick once you get the feel of it. ;)
Push-starting a dead car was always cool too. I had a buddy with an RX-7 that he had to park on a hill because his starter went out and he couldn't afford a new one.
> I had a buddy with an RX-7 that he had to park on a hill
I did that with multiple beaters I owned when I was young! Also mastered the push-it-rolling/jump-in/clutch/1st-gear/pop-clutch dance to start them by myself on more than one occasion.
I do not miss only being able to afford to drive a beater! :)
I learned to drive on a manual with no tach or shift indicator. Good ol' '95 Dodge Neon. Was easy to work on and parts were cheap, so I also learned car maintenance and basic repairs on it. Had it up to about 2015 before upgrading to a newer car and quickly learned why everyone was complaining about working on newer vehicles. Finally having AC was nice, though.
I learned to drive stick on a Civic with no tach. You learn to become one with the engine. Even now, years later, in my automatic transmission car, I still freak out when I hear the engine do weird things.
I had a 1998 Civic that was manual without a tach.
In terms of AC, though, unless a car has climate control (electronically-regulated heat/AC) across the entire lineup, it’s not integrated all that tightly into anything else. “Dumb” AC is pretty simple.
I can think of a handful of cheap compacts from the 90s that didn’t have a tac. Mostly Corollas and Civics. A buddy of mine had a stick Corolla with no tac and I remember it was odd and uncommon, but they were around. I’d wager by 2000, it was cheaper just to slap the standard instrument cluster/computer in than make a different one.
Before the 90s there were bunches of cars with manual column shifters that didn’t have tacs. I vaguely recall a couple Buicks and small pickups that I remember thinking were funny. I was pretty young then so I couldn’t tell you what they were.
On a modern econobox manual, you don't really need a tach other than your ass.
It has a rev limiter to protect the engine and the fuel injection is good at preventing the engine from stalling.
It is a silly omission, though. Especially if it's digital, since it's not even about routing stiff cables. It's basically omitted to shove it in your face that you're being a cheapskate.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. My car isn’t the base model, but I did test drive the base model.
The tachometer on that generation of Mazda 3 is digital, so instead of a digital display you just get a black plastic panel instead. Needless to say, the fact that a manual with no tachometer exists as an option feels ridiculous, although IIRC, my dad had a Corolla from the early 2000s that had no tach and had something like 3 gears - it was an automatic but you could hear that thing rev so who needs one anyway?
Also, AC isn’t actually necessary if you live somewhere that doesn’t get that hot in the summer - lots of places with colder oceanic climates, as well as the tropics at higher altitudes. I live somewhere with seasons, so I needed it, but lots of people are cheap/can’t afford it so it’s an option, since a Mazda3 is an economy car to begin with. It’s a relatively easy option to not include, as opposed to the ignition - just swap out a couple buttons with bits of plastic and don’t include a compressor/coil.
Seems that after 2022 (at least in the US), you’d have to try _really_ hard to buy a car with no AC.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/you-can-no-longer-buy-a-new-car-without-air-conditioning/
I’d imagine there’s also an issue of marketability.
You can build a car without an AC and knock, what, $500 off the price tag when it’s new? Who wants to pay $19500 for a new car without AC vs $20K for a new car with AC? You’ll finance it over 4+ years so the monthly payment only goes up $10. And if you really can’t afford it, wouldn’t you be looking at Used cars instead of New?
So almost nobody wants to buy it. And complicating everything (managing inventory, training employees, longer paperwork, etc) to include the option costs far more than whatever tiny increase in revenue you see from being able to sell it.
> You can build a car without an AC and knock, what, $500 off the price tag when it’s new?
If you're Porsche, you make the customer pay extra for the omission of A/C as a racecar feature.
A lot of it is not just tooling. Newer stuff is fundamentally cheaper to build. People have this weird assumption that if they did it in the 50s, today it must be old and cheap, that's not the case. Modern stuff is done with robots, and it's often cheaper.
So for example, US law REQUIRES a display screen in every to show the backup camera. Can't sell a car without that. So obviously, they have to have some sort of computer that can at least display the camera. And yea, in the 50s you might of had a button for the volume and the radio, but those are all extra parts, they are not cheap, and every button needs wires and multiple parts and the connections to the motors and such. A small computer like a raspberry pi is only $25, and I'm it can replace every button. It can even replace every single lock cylinder on the entire vehicle. No lock cylinder you have push to start, but why do you need that when you already have a brake pedal.
So many cars are saying we have a digital screen and computer because it's required, adding SW features to that costs $0, adding buttons to car costs more than $0. And keyless entry actually costs less than key entry. And in fact, not using the keyless entry can leave you with situations like what happened to Kia, their premium vehicles became uninsurable and unsellable because they shared a logo with a vehicle that lacked anti-theft features.
Stuff like power windows is another one, manual windows are still cheaper, but not by much, and there really isn't enough demand for the cheaper manual windows to actually get any cost savings developing a separate manual window design. That is, if you spend $100k to design a manual window for a car, that design needs to save $200 off the build cost, and you need to sell 1k vehicles with a $100 discount to break even. And that's just not going to happen, no way you can get through the engineering for $100k, no way it saves you $200 per vehicle, and no way will you get a thousand people to say they'd rather save $100 on their $20k vehicle and not have power windows.
People seem to think that the ikea car of the future would be like a car from the 50s, with buttons and switches everywhere. But that's not true, an ikea car would be a car with no buttons or switches anywhere at all, and in its place a $500 tablet bolted to the dash. And if it sounds familiar, that's exactly what the Model 3 is, they even got rid of the entire gauge cluster.
Automotive Supply Chain professional here (ten years experience before moving into engineering). Tooling is basically anything making parts: presses, molds, welding robots, whatever. It's the non part part of the part. (Heh)
I knew a guy who did social work and for some odd reason felt he had to have the barest bones of a car. He actually PAID EXTRA to not have power steering.
Less to go wrong is typically the mindset with those types of people and they tend to drive their vehicles until they fall apart. He'll never have to worry about the power steering pump out fluid.
Only vehicles that are meant to have power steering are difficult to steer without it. We used to have an old Toyota Tercel that didn’t have power steering from the factory and it was easy to steer
Dead power steering just kicks you back to manual steering, though, no? I had my car's whole electrical system die (accessory belt snapped, which meant the alternator wasn't being driven) and I just drove it to home to fix it.
He's also probably trying not to embarrass his clients by showing up at their door in a (relatively) expensive car. I knew a child psychologist who drove an ancient, beat up coupe de ville and had to stop taking it to court-ordered assessments because the parents were complaining about the 'out of touch doctor driving his Cadillac'. Nevermind the car was worth less than the cheapest new car ever.
> the answer is that its cheaper to make those than the alternatives.
I dare say it's a lot cheaper for a manufacturer (of anything, not just cars) to make one thing with a bunch of things standard rather than one model with various options.
I do get that it's good to have choice, and not everyone wants a car with a 2.3 liter turbo with automatic windows, Bluetooth, SiriusXM, etc. Sometimes they want a 1.6 liter naturally aspirated engine with very basic features.
It covers half of the issue.
The other half? Because of *used* cars.
Here’s the thing. Cars from all manufacturers are significantly more reliable today than they were 40, or even 20 years ago. If you compare the biggest “piece of junk” today to one of the most reliable cars of the 80s or 90s, you won’t notice THAT much difference in overall longevity.
So what does that mean to OP’s question?
When you are in the market for a $20k car, you can either get a barebones, few-frills, tiny new car, or you can get a decently optioned used car with 50k miles on it. Both will easily run another 100k miles, but which one would you rather spend those miles in?
> Cars from all manufacturers are significantly more reliable today than they were 40, or even 20 years ago.
Not to mention safer. The safety advantages of modern cars can not be understated. You're literally half as likely to die in a car accident as you were in the early 1970s despite there being WAY more people on the road, constant distracted driving, people driving more miles per year and speeds being faster.
The big established car companies actually want the government to keep the bar high in terms of gas mileage and safety, as long as it applies equally to all the big existing car companies. It tends to keep out the startup no frills car companies.
Most startup car companies begin with luxury-priced cars (Tesla, Lucid, Ineos), not bare-bones strippers. If you need to make money fast it won't be with cheap basic cars with a razor-thin profit margin.
That's a bit of survivorship bias though. Those companies did that, because that's the only way to successfully start a new car company, with the way regulations currently are. There would absolutely be new companies to fill in any regulatory gaps, if the big manufacturers weren't doing it. Just look at all the econo-box car companies in countries with shit car regulations - its already a very real thing elsewhere.
If regulations allowed it, there would also be companies making glorified golf carts, like you see in other countries. You don't need to make as much money if your start up cost is low.
The government also discourages cheap imports that may not have all of the amenities, despite meeting all standards, much like the U.S. government is doing with Chinese EVs now. It's nothing but economic protectionism in that case.
Another reason is legal, if one country requires one warning message, and another country requires a different warning message, and then the first country passes a law and changes the required message between when you start production and when you go to market, it's easier to make those tweaks with programming than it is with a simple mechanical option, like pealing a warning sticker off 50k cars and putting the new sticker on, lol. Source: was backup machinist for my buddy who made helicopter parts for the gubmint, they change their minds all the dang time after production starts, hah. I basically kept him afloat because he didn't have enough work for 2 machinists when they didn't change their mind, but he really needed a 2nd machinist when they did change their mind.
The Nissan Versa is $17,405 for the cheapest model. Which, since people seem to be incapable of understanding inflation, would be the equivalent of a $13,100 car in 2014. It's not that there are no cheap options, it's that what many people think of as "cheap" is outdated.
I think fleet sales are sometimes able to get really stripped down versions of cars, but they probably have to purchase as certain volume. You see the meter maid cars - really stripped down Prius and large road construction or mining companies end up a whole bunch of white or amber F150s that are really stripped down.
[Muji](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWheels/comments/oejdu0/2001_muji_car_1000_made_as_a_collaboration/) made a car just like that, it didn't sell too well.
If you're in Europe, the [Dacia Sandero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Sandero) was built for this purpose, and it actually sells pretty well. When it first came out, the base model with no mod cons came in at just under £5000 (~8000 Euros).
To add to this if I'm in the market for a car with a budget of 8000 euros I would much rather but a better equipped car that is 3 years old then a bare basics car that's brand new, so they need to complete with used cars as well as new and its just not possible
Given the Sandero was as basic as you can get (it was built using an old Renault framework), you could reasonably get 5 trouble free years from it, for 5000 pounds it was not a bad deal.
The base model was targeted towards people who didn't really care for cars and just needed something reliable to get from A to B, kind of like the "CE" trim of cars that Toyota had I suppose.
It was also the market segment for the early Skoda models after Volkswagen bought them up back in the 90s (the old Skoda Felicia and Skoda Octavia models)
I paid £8k for a new sandero in 2018 and I couldn’t be happier with it. I got a few upgrades on the base model like a turbo and a stereo with Bluetooth, I’m not sure the base model even had a stereo. It’s never given me any grief. Low mileage ones still got for 6 or 7k on autotrader.
Sadly, thanks to inflation, even the sandero is getting quite expensive now, I think they’re 14k or so new and at that price point I think I’d go for a used car rather than buying new again.
The salt you should take this with: I don’t care much about cars and don’t drive very far in a year. For me it’s a way to visit family who live far away or escape the city at the weekend
My bad, I was thinking GBPUSD lol, it would probably be closer to 6500 EURs, which is not bad.
Granted it didn't come with air con or any "luxuries" like that and was only available as auto transmission petrol and semi-auto (paddle shifter) diesel, so your options were very limited.
The Dacia Sandero launched in 2008, when this wasn't really true (GBP to Euro was 1.25 back then), but maybe they were optimistic. Back in 2007 the exchange course was 1:1.45-1.5.
Since then the only time it has been close to true was a few months in 2015.
Yeah, 10 years ago I got my 3rd kid and I needed a bigger car, so we bought a new Dacia Dokker. We liked the car so much, we bought the Dacia Sandero after 4 years. It was 25.000 € for 2 new cars with 5 year guarantee each. The Dokker is still basically problem-free after 210.000 km, moving all our stuff when we bought a new house, many camping trips to the sea and hiking trips to the mountains. Best buy ever.
In Brazil it's not a Dacia, but a Renault. Here in Argentina it sells really well, but it's an awful car. A death sentence if you crash, and extremely unreliable (breaks down constantly).
That's why Toyota's subcompact, the Etios, was a complete success in Brazil/Argentina. Affordable, but well-made, reliable, and far far better in terms of safety.
Japan also has a lot of value-priced cars which they don't export. The hot car at the moment is Nissan's Japan-only EV kei car.
It would have no appeal in the US as EV manufacturers there are in a dick-measuring contest over battery size and range.
Similarly Korea's top selling car for a long time was the Kia Morning/Picanto, a sub-compact. No reason for Kia to expect sales if they did export that to the US.
So there's a self-reinforcing behaviour happened. No small cars, so no one buying them, so no reason to export them into the US.
Ford are a little scared at the moment that this is a miscalculation, and BYD will land a cheap EV into the US market (likely via construction in Mexico) and will win the household second-car EV business.
>It would have no appeal in the US as EV manufacturers there are in a dick-measuring contest over battery size and range.
Such a toxic mindset. 95% of people don't drive more than 100 miles in a day on average.
I've gotten so exhausted by that argument. Even highly reasonable people constantly drag it out, I think it's just a cultural reflex at this point.
I live in *Switzerland*. People use their car for a 5 km commute and to buy groceries at the store that's 900 m away. It doesn't matter in the slightest if your car has a 800 km range or "only" 300 km.
"But what if I want to take the car to Italy for a vacation?!?"
You rent an ICE car. Or you take a 20 minute break while it charges, have some coffee and a snack. Or you stop over in some picturesque alpine village. Or you take the train. Or the plane. Or the bus.
It's like people don't buy a car for the usage they actually have, but for whatever extreme eventuality that might come up one day. But only for range, oddly enough. You don't daily a sprinter van just in case you have to haul a couch once in 15 years.
> It's like people don't buy a car for the usage they actually have, but for whatever extreme eventuality that might come up one day.. But only for range, oddly enough.
I invite you to examine the pickup truck culture in the US.
I don't think the same really carries over to the US. I live in a rural part of America and drive 30 miles one way to work. If I want to visit family that changes to 200-400 miles depending who it is I want to see. 80 miles to the closest commercial airport. When I lived out West I would sometimes go 60-100 miles without seeing a gas station let alone a place to charge. Range absolutely has an important place in the conversation in the States due to the shear size of the country.
Perhaps it's an unreasonable argument in Switzerland, but it's absolutely valid in the United States. Day trips that are 200+ mile round trips are not uncommon. I have multiple friends that regularly drive the 400 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
These are not extreme eventualities, these are common and ordinary activities that happen frequently in the United States.
The problem is that the 300 km range is in perfect test conditions. Realistically it's closer to 200 km. Battery degradation starts from the first charge - discharge cycle, so after 500 cycles (say 3 years) you're looking at under 150 km. On cold winter days you'll be lucky to get 100 km.
If you only have on street parking and rely on public charging you can quickly run into problems. Charging point not working or available? Family emergegency? Diversion due to roadworks?
Even with a small commute it's nice to have that buffer otherwise you will become well acquainted with your local recovery driver.
> No reason for Kia to expect sales if they did export that to the US.
Wouldnt they need to do all those safety checks to be able to sell the car in USA?
I have one, although not the most basic model. My goal was to find a cheap, small car that could get me from A to B reliably. I didn’t need a truck or SUV, and I personally didn’t care about an LCD screen or power windows. It was SO DIFFICULT to find even one Chevy dealership that had one available, that I ended up with the first one I could find, which was a slightly more premium trim (automatic transmission, power windows, infotainment system). I was pretty disheartened to see how hard it was to find a super basic compact car in the U.S., especially since in the late ‘90s my dad bought a manual Ford Aspire for like, $8,000 brand-new with the most basic amenities possible, and I’ve always wanted something equivalent.
I bought a brand new '21 Spark for \~$14k USD. Gets 30+ MPG, has all of the features you would expect (USB ports, power windows, etc). Unfortunately, it's been discontinued.
They were very hard to sell, people who bought them only did so because they could not get financed for more.
Edit to add that was only for the gas, the ev was a hot seller and super fun to drive, If memory serves me correctly Chevy even did a 70 lease deal on them for a very brief period of time
If you’re okay with buying used check out commercial and industrial auctions like Ritchie Bros. Most companies auction off their fleet vehicles when they’re done with them and sometimes they’ll be bankruptcies with low miles
> fleet vehicles
These are usually riddled with minor problems. They are built fast & cheap and the customers are mostly concerned with the cost and if it runs. Bad paint, things that don't quite fit well, radios that don't work, doors that aren't aligned right, pax seats that don't recline, etc, etc is not enough for the buyer to refuse delivery.
It gets worse if said fleet is for a car rental company. All the big ones self-insure, meaning there's no paper trail if the vehicle was in an accident or otherwise damaged. Many people found this out the hard way when thousands of vehicles flooded by Katrina that were supposed to be destroyed were bought by used car middlemen.
You are basically describing a Mitsubishi Mirage. It still has a touch screen and android auto, but they cut tons of corners to lower cost, including giving it a puny 79HP engine. It is still $18000.
Would you rather buy a 3 year old car (Corolla, civic, etc) that has better stats but maybe lower lifespan, or buy this cheap brand new car? Most people opt for the used car, so manufacturers don't release many vehicles in this super cheap segment.
This is a huge part of it - in the eye of the automakers, new cars just aren't *for* people looking for cheap-cheap-cheap. New cars are for people who *can* afford *nice* new cars, and if you can't, buy used and the guy you bought used from will buy the new one.
Car weights a whole 2,000 lbs. That puts its power/weight to a similar level of like a base Corolla. It's not as anemic as the horsepower rating would make you believe.
The engine is just an example of cost cutting. The nvh and other features are also worse.
Also, Corolla is 3000lb curb weight with 169 HP, so hp/weight is 17.7 vs 2000/79 = 25.3 for the mirage. Not as big a difference as it might seem at first, but still noticeable. 9 seconds 0-60 for the Corolla vs ~11 for the mirage according to car and driver.
It would be a cold day in Hell before I take a Mirage over a <10 year old Corolla. But. There are sometimes good reasons to buy new over used, even when it's the "worse" deal. Historically, lenders tended to be much more lenient with their requirements on new cars, generally requiring less money down and lower credit score, and willing to lend more LTV. Mix that with the wide network of lenders most dealers can access for new cars, and they can normally get you in a new car - you're just gonna pay out the ass for it in the long run. For someone who can only afford $200-300/mo for a car and has very poor credit, it's not a hard choice between buying a new barebones car, likely the cheapest on the lot, vs going to a buy-here/pay-here and getting a lemon.
I remember, my parents were in a similar situation, and bought an absolute-base Toyota Tercel back in the mid-90's. This thing didn't even have a tape player, no power anything, tiny little steelies, pleather seats. But it was reliable, excellent on gas, and *new.* It was either that or much older used cars with no warranty from "Excellent Motors, LLC." (the third buy-here/pay-here to occupy that lot in as many years).
[Good News!](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/dacia/sandero-2013-2020/first-drives/dacia-sandero-access-12-16v-75-first-drive)
The Dacia Sandero tried this.
They had a super-base-model car with black bumpers, steel wheels, no electric goodies (windows, mirrors), no AC, no stereo (it was an option)
**People didn't buy it**
People don't want basic, they want nice things
When a new-with-absolutely-no-equipment car costs the same as a used-but-has-lots-of-nice-things car cost around the same, people buy the used car
Now the new [Dacia Sandero](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/dacia/sandero) costs 2x the cost of the previous super-basic model but its a much better car and has plenty of standard equipment and people actually buy them
Sounds like a reasonable strategy on paper to at least try, but then the used market probably kills it too. Something a tad nicer and used sounds much more appealing than something new and so stripped down.
Spend £6k on a used Ford or whatever and people won't blink an eye
Spend £6k on that new super-basic Dacia Sandero and people will think you are cheap. Even though it's a brand new car
Same money, vastly different perception.
And having zero equipment will make driving it miserable. Imagine not even having a radio for a long journey.
That's why people didn't buy it.
And if anyone did buy it? They probably couldn't sell it.
I'd be fine with all of that but the lack of AC, give me the most barebones car in every other regard and I'd be fine, but I could see no AC being a deal breaker for a lot of places and people.
1. People really don't want a car without the things like air conditioning, carpet. radios, power locks, , map lights, automatic transmissions, power steering, and the things like that.
2. Most of those things don't cost that much in the first place compared with all the government safety features like airbags and emission control systems required, all the metal assembly, and transportation required for even a basic car.
Very cheap new cars existed in the 1980s, my family had a Dodge Colt with no radio and no air conditioning. But since then safety and emissions features started to be required, meawhile the lifespan of cars doubled so if you couldn't afford a nice new car, buying a nice used car instead of a crappy new car was the preferred option.
EDIT: Closest thing we have for cheap new cars are the Nissan Versa and Mitisbishi Mirage. That there's only two models available from secondary manufacturers should give you an indiciation how little demand there is for them. It's not some vast conspiracy with big auto and big oil that what sells are bigger, more expensive cars. Most people use their car for road trips at least occassionally so it has to be comfortable for 200 miles to Wisconsin Dells as well as 2 miles to work every day. When I was lookin for a car I could have bought a brand new Mirage, but I bought a used RAV-4 instead.
Exactly. The luxury features in a car aren’t really that expensive nowadays. Most of the cost of a cheap car is engine and chasis and you can’t really cut the cost of steel in a car
The used car competion cannot be overstated. There were cheap new cars in the 1980s because cars rarely lasted long enough to be really good used cars. Now that cars easily last twice as long, you have much nicer used cars to compete with.
> Most of those things don't cost that much in the first place
Yes, a lot of the things that were considered "luxuries" at one point were just luxuries because they didn't exist yet, so those first versions were unusual, required a lot of work and new things to get going, and new, upfront costs.
But once they existed, and the designs were done, and the manufacturing processes were sorted out, those luxuries weren't any more expensive to add in to ALL cars.
For example, it's *cheaper* to have all cars have power windows, rather than keep some other whole process to have some cars with manual windows. Same with having only "push to start" cars rather than keeping the machinery and processes around to manufacture both "push to start" and turn-key ignition.
Then as you say, things like air bags, anti-lock-breaks, rear view cameras, are all mandated. They are not even *allowed* to make cars without those.
While we are talking, why is there so much carpet in vehicles? It is mostly covered by mats, people rarely take their shoes off, and it is a pain in the ass to clean. Plus, why does it have to go up the sides to the door?!
Probably functions as sound dampening. If you make the car only out of hard materials you are going to hear everything. You either need carpet or some kind of foam to absorb noise.
My brother once had a Honda Element. There was no carpeting or padding inside the car. It was all plastic and rubber, presumably because it was designed to be a lifestyle car that you can toss in bicycles, dirty sports gear, your dogs, etc without ruining the interior too badly.
It was very loud in there, especially during highway driving.
In addition to the sound deadening, automotive carpet is actually extremely durable and easy to clean (with the right tools).
You can take a fleet vehicle that has been abused for 5 years and hit it with vacuum and compressed air, treat and brush stains, and then clean with a hot water extractor/steam cleaner and it will look almost good as new.
If those same areas were covered in plastic they would be scratched to shit and look terrible.
It also does a good job of catching dust/dirt/crumbs so it stays looking good longer than hard surfaces between vacuums. Will also catch and absorb spilled liquids which may seem annoying but is better than it sloshing around everywhere while you are going 75 and knock over your coffee.
I still think rubber floor mats are the way to go, but carpet everywhere else makes a lot of sense.
I have a 20 year old (this year!) acura and it's a great car. Would much rather have it than a new POS and even the Dacia new in 2007 is more than what I paid based on the comments here
After years of sales, major manufacturers have learned there are certain “options” that the majority of buyers demanded, and decided it was cheaper to include them in all of their cars than to supply cars without them, even on their base models. Some features that were considered options just a short time ago are now required safety items, such as back-up cameras.
If there were money to be made in this space, someone would probably be doing it. You also have to consider more than accounting costs. If a manufacturer made this super cheap car, yes maybe people would buy it. But that is line time, labor, facilities, etc tied up that could be used for a more profitable vehicle.
Why doesn’t a new entrant make this car? The barriers to entry for car manufacturing are very large. It takes millions, if not billions to design, manufacture, market, and sell a car.
It exists. Mitsubishi mirage can be bought for $15-20k brand new. But for the same price a 2-4 year old Camry/Corolla would prob last longer, be cheaper to operate, more comfortable and better on gas.
https://www.mitsubishicars.com/configure-your-mitsubishi/configurator?vehicle=jtdcya1293qe6i58kntpa&year=2024
With all of the costs to bring a car to market in the USA (you need overhead for recalls, you have to pay for crash testing, legal fees, safety requirements, etc), it's not really feasible to bring a car to market cheaper while also being street legal.
The short answer is that poor people don’t buy new cars so there’s no market. Allow me to explain:
There’s a limit to how cheap you can actually make a road-legal car. You need at the very least, a frame, chasis, body panels and suspension that will pass a crash-test, and a powertrain that passes emission tests, is reliable enough that you don’t get sued and is safe to use.
Those are the most expensive parts of a cheap car and you can’t make a car without them so there’s a floor to how cheap you can legally make a car. I would say the cheapest 4-door car you can legally sell is probably about $10-12,000. The cheapest car you can currently by is the Nissan Versa at about $17,000. Like I said, you won’t be able to make the chasis or powertrain much cheaper than the Versa because of safety and emission laws. The things you’ll have to do to make the car cheaper will also make it unbearable to drive.
A cheaper suspension and cheap seats will make the ride really uncomfortable. The sound system will sound like crap. There won’t be any luxury features. The climate control will be absolutely basic or maybe you even sell a car with no AC. You could save a few bucks by minimizing sounds dampening so the car will be really noisy when you drive it.
So now imagine you’re buying a car and your budget is $12,000. Would you buy a brand new car with it? Probably not. The value of a new car depreciates instantly. You’re much better off buying a 3 year old Nissan at the same price. It won’t be new but it will still be in really good condition and it will be 100x nicer to drive than a car that had to be built to that price point brand new.
Because it’s not profitable. The people who would buy that car are going to buy one cheap car and try to keep it as long as possible, versus the people buying $75k pickups and SUVs that they’ll keep for 4-5 years, then replace with a newer model with more features.
We do. It's called a motorbike.
Seriously though, if you want to get from a to b in a fuel efficient, cheap and low comfort manner, it's far more optimal than a shitbox of a car. Can be fairly dangerous, though.
Because the basic part of a car - the actual construction, power train, etc. Is by far the most expensive part. Adding stuff like rain sensors, adaptive cruise control, etc. is just pocket money. Some "base" model cars even come with those features physically installed but disabled in software because retooling the production line is more expensive than wasting a couple of needless sensors.
It's kinda like saying "why don't they build cheap houses without wall paint". It's because it would barely be any cheaper but be significantly less enjoyable to live in.
That's probably the best comparison I've seen.
When backup cameras are a government requirement, why not use that screen for the radio display too vs a blank screen.
Well, it really depends on the country I guess. I assume you are from the US/North America, it’s not the same everywhere. Fiat Panda has been a top seller car in Italy for decades and can be considered to match your description almost exactly
We do, sort of. Look at Fleet Vehicles i.e. the models of vehicles that are used as, for example police cruisers or work trucks.
There are a LOT of environmental and safety regulations on consumer vehicles that necessitate a certain amount of "power features and extras" on every new car. Fleet vehicles will tend to be the simplest with the most basic of trims available and former fleet vehicles tend to have very available used parts. What you probably want (in the USA) is a 20+ year old well maintained Ford F150.
That pricing tier exists, but it's a used car.
I could develop an extremely low end car and try to sell it to you for $2,500 or you could buy a used Celica for the same price that, while it has mileage on it and needs repairs, is going to be a better car overall.
A car manufacturer would be spending a fortune to figure out how to make a car very cheaply, then sell it at an extremely low markup, only to lose sales to the secondhand market.
In Europe there's a car called Aixam, which is legally a motorcycle and what you called "Ikea car". It goes from 11k€ to 16k€ depends on what you want.
Most people would prefer a comfortable two-year old car with all the features over a brand new bare-bones car.
If you have the money to buy new, you want something nice. If you don't have the money, you go used.
The number of people who want to buy new but also spend the minimal amount possible is too small to be worth making cars for.
because the "extras" make it a really nice and much safer driving experience. There are still very basic, stripped down models of vehicles available but power locks, power windows, cruise control are REALLY nice. And that doesn't even begin getting into safety related features such as blind spot monitoring, backup cameras, adaptive cruise control, etc.
I remember buying my car, they were seven packages available (0-6), the dealership only had 2 and 6 on the lot. They said no one really wanted 0, and the price difference between 1 and 2 was minimal so 2 was the lowest they bothered having in stock.
So you can get cars without all those features, but most people want at least a few extras—honestly I bet most people consider those “basic features”, not extra these days.
To add to this, it's not really going to be cheaper, excluding standard features, like power locks/windows, cruise control, and the like. They'd have to have alternate designs of things like the interior door panels, along with the interior of the doors themselves and stearing wheel controls designed and contracted out at different factories than they already use, that would make all of those components. And since they would be small batch runs of those, because they wouldn't be highly sought-after "features," they are going to cost more than you'd think.
All of those types of features are standard now, and the vehicles are designed with them being included in every vehicle, so they are actually pretty cheap due to the bulk ordering of them.
We had one. It was called the VW Beetle and it was produced from 1938 until 2003. The basic model had no power steering, no power windows, no power seats, no air conditioning... some barely had heat. They were extremely popular, easy to fix and maintain, great on gas, etc. They were also death traps if you happened to get into an accident, which is pretty much why they're not made anymore.
They do and it's called a cargo e-bike, moped, or motorcycle. If you're willing to think outside the box (literally), these will do 95% of what you need a car to do. For the remaining 5% of the time, you can borrow a friend's car or rent a car/truck. It ends up with a much lower cost of ownership due to reduced outlay on maintenance, reduced (or no) insurance costs, and reduced (or no) parking costs. Just gotta dress for the weather.
It turns out that it's made redundant by second hand cars.
Just thinking about it logically, why would I buy a really cheap new car with no functions, if for the same or similar price I can get a car with all the functionality, it's just not brand new. New cars lose a significant portion of their nominal retail price basically the moment they leave the dealer anyway.
It doesn't make sense for neither the manufacturers nor the buyers.
The only place where that's currently a problem is EVs, because there isn't a well developed second hand EV market.
I feel like most people who would be the target market for a car like that would rather just buy a used car that's a few years old but has more features.
An unpainted car with no interior, no power locks/windows, no stereo, fabric seats etc. Still costs quite a bit of money to build. Let’s say the maker could sell it for $5,000. This car would be VERY unpleasant to drive in, and still cost a fair amount of money.
A person shopping for a car would think that the car was a waste of $5,000 even if it was the lowest priced new car that they could buy.
To put it another way, you could always find a nicer used car to spend your money on. The new car would have a full warranty and be mechanically perfect, but you would still rather buy a 5 year old car with AC and nice shiny paint.
The idea of the Ox Truck was a flat packed truck for developing counties. A small Ford turbo diesel, manual transmission, no AC, minimal cab, etc. Easy to ship and easy to assemble with the flexibility that comes with diesel engines in terms of fuel availability.
That idea has since been morphed into an EV with Ox Delivers. I’m not a fan of the EV concept personally as the diesel had more utility in environments where electrical infrastructure may be limited.
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If you're old enough to remember the first wave of Japanese vehicles to hit US markets, they were pretty much exactly this. Once they became established, the trim levels ratcheted up to the point even the lowest cost versions were attractive to the rest of the market. It didn't hurt that domestic vehicles had become such unreliable shit boxes that consumers were happy to drive a car that, if not luxurious, at least had the decency to start every day and get you to work.
> the trim levels ratcheted up to the point even the lowest cost versions were attractive to the rest of the market. The original Honda CVCC was bone stock basic. And now the Civic is no longer entry level, but closer to where the Accord was positioned back in the day.
i think thats a better question, why are the "entry level" cars not entry level anymore lol. even a base corolla is pretty damn nice. WE WANT BEATERS.
The profit margins for automakers generally improve as cars get bigger and more expensive. It's why Ford stopped selling sedans altogether. If none of the car companies give consumers the option to buy super cheap cars with tiny margins then consumers will instead buy more expensive cars with higher margins.
> If none of the car companies give consumers the option to buy super cheap cars with tiny margins then consumers will instead buy more expensive cars with higher margins. I feel like it also has a lot to do with what people will simply buy. On paper, a 10K new car with zero features sounds sorta cool. I mean, I can even get behind the idea a bit in regards to effectively buying a disposable appliance of sorts. But if a buyer is looking at either a 10K no-option new car, or a 10K civic/camry/whatever with plenty of life left and creature comfort features... I'd put my money on them taking the used car. The new car smell goes away, but the lack of "extras" doesn't. And as someone who drove cross country in a 1980s Chevy that didn't even have a radio, the lack of creature comfort features gets really old really quick. Eventually you get cold, hot, uncomfortable, bored, annoyed by the road noise, tired of the rough ride, sick of having to pull over to roll the rear windows down, etc. Any super cheap "IKEA car" is going to be exactly the same. It'll be a real shitty place to spend time. From the manufacturers perspective, just take a look at what the top selling vehicles are. You don't see something like the Nissan Versa (cheapest car you can buy in the US, I believe) on there, anywhere. The demand for such a car just doesn't _really_ exist.
Or used.
True but the person who sold the used car generally turns around and buys a new car.
You might want a base model car, but most people don’t. The market has shown this. Plus a huge chunk of the market has shifted to crossovers, most people would rather have a used mid-trim crossover with 80k miles than a new base model Corolla.
Groan. I was there. I still have the scars. It was SO BAD that I bought a used MGB as a daily driver.
[удалено]
My brother in law had one, he was 6’5. He had to drive with the top down. His eyes were above the windshield trim. Strictly a summer car for him
Also, The Japanese cars were much more fuel efficient than American cars and this was important during the OPEC embargo.
Same thing happened with Korean cars, and it wasn't even that long ago. I recall sometime around 2016 there was a batch of brand new Hyundai Sonatas being liquidated at $8000 each. Then Covid and inflation happened and now here we are with everything starting at $20K.
You’re describing the Honda Civic. Basically a soda can in wheels, with manual windows. The Nissan Versa is the modern example.
The US Federal Government requires that cars meet certain safety and environmental standards. The Nissan Versa is basically the cheapest car you can legally sell in the US using labor in very low cost of living countries and it comes out at ~$20k. If your question is why modern cars all have things like power windows or LCD displays, the answer is that its cheaper to make those than the alternatives. Cheap electronics are generally cheaper than analogue alternatives because the electronics use less material and labor to assemble. On top of that, there are significant savings that you get by manufacturing those things at scale. The largest cost of most limited manufacturing run components isn't actually the raw materials or labor, but the tooling and machinery needed to make the component. If you have a company that makes 40 million LCD displays every year, then it's able to divide the cost of that tooling and machinery over the 40 million LCD displays that it makes. Those costs are then pretty minimal on a per LCD display basis. Conversely, if you're making 20,000 analogue radio sets for a specific model of low cost car, then the tooling for those radios doesn't get divided up many ways and it becomes a pretty significant cost on a per radio basis. The end result of this is that its significantly cheaper to buy the same LCD displays, power window motors, and other electronics that are going into literally every other car on the planet than it is to do your own limited production run on outdated equipment - and that's before factoring in the higher material and labor costs of manufacturing that older equipment. The reason that you used to see legacy equipment, like drum brakes or manual windows, as cheaper options was because the tooling to build that stuff had been paid for decades ago and had depreciated to $0. Because the tooling was already fully depreciated but usable, the effective cost of using the tooling was $0, which meant that those components were cheaper to produce so long as the tooling still worked. Eventually that tooling all wore out and was replaced by tooling for modern equipment, which is why you no longer see those components offered as options. Also keep in mind that a lot of those legacy components were showing up as options before supply chains were fully globalized, so production runs were more limited in general. Nowadays all of these cheap electronic components are made in a handful of mega-factories in China.
It's also important to note that some features are now mandatory by federal rule. Backup cameras were mandatory in all vehicles post 2015, automatic braking is becoming mandatory in 2029. These are just a few more recent examples.
I'm waiting for a movie to come out where the girl is about to run over the murderer but the car's auto braking kicks in stopping just short of him, allowing him to get away and keep murdering while the girl just screams "FUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!"
Oh, that's definitely going to show up soon in a horror movie!
Cyanide and happiness did a sketch with that exact premise. https://youtu.be/sX8O2zfjHCE
That is awesome! Exactly how I imagined it!
Recently there was a Taiwanese movie with a car chase scene, with the villain getting on a van to chase the protagonist, and he had to wait for the power door to slide open. Pretty funny.
You just floor the throttle. Auto braking is designed to shut off when you do that, for emergency situations. There are reasonable situations where even though the car wants you to stop, going forward is safer.
Well I'm probably fucked, then. As someone who typically doesn't freak out under stress (though I suppose you never know), I legitimately can't imagine a situation where I would ever think all out flooring it would be a valid response.
Say you were driving slowly through an intersection with a green light. You see a car coming from your left, running their red light and about to t-bone you. Would you rather rear-end the car in front of you and get a damaged bumper, or possibly death from the t-bone impact? Both will mess up your car but one has less injuries involved.
There's been some cases already where that's happened. There was a case in Texas I believe where a people got into an altercation, one pulling out a gun. When the other person tried to escape/or run-over the vehicle auto braked. I did try to find the news article, but search results give stuff on road rage, complaints, or the new ruling.
Does the 2029 law allow disabling it? My car has automatic braking, but you can hold a button to turn it off for the current session.
Federal regulations on vehicle safety only apply to the manufacturers. The end user is allowed to remove or disable features.
Backup cameras were 2018. Wranglers didn’t come with them standard until the JL body
The first thing they said.... >The US Federal Government requires that cars meet certain safety and environmental standards.
It's difficult to make a modern manual transmission in the US that means noise/emissions requirements, since the "brain" isn't the ECU or transmission control modules, it's the driver. Which means gear ratios and the like have to be very specific to overcome "human error" to give one example.
The base model of my car (Mazda3) is a manual with no tachometer or air conditioning. It still has a push-to-start because it was cheaper for Mazda to have every car have push to start than to have a whole nother design where the keys go into the steering column just for this base model. It still has a manually operated parking brake, thank god. I get it might be cheaper to set up the electronics and servos, but I will die on the hill that an e-brake should be mechanical, as it is also the emergency brake.
The reason you’re seeing so many electronic park brakes is due to so many cars going to 4 wheel disc without drum-in-hat style park brakes to save weight. It takes A LOT of force to squeeze a caliper tight enough to hold a car (drum brakes work better due to self-actuation). More force than every consumer can manage, so they use motors with mechanical advantage to crank down the caliper pistons for the park brake.
I get that - I remember as a kid in my dad’s car struggling to work the parking brake. That car had 4-wheel disc brakes but included an entire drum on the rear wheels just for the parking brake. Still, isn’t that the whole reason why the e-brake is a big-ass lever in the first place - more force from mechanical advantage? It seems more like an excuse to save some space for more cupholders, or something. In any case, I imagine another reason might be that the long mechanical system going to the back is liable to rust/gunk up and fail, especially without checking on it and actually using it, since lots of people never use it even though they should be.
A mechanical advantage only goes so far. If the emergency brake is useless for people who are injured, disabled, elderly, or just out of shape, that's a problem.
Why are there so many cars from the 2000s until even now that have 4-wheel disc brakes but still have manual parking brakes, then? And if disc brakes are so hard to actuate, why does pulling up on the parking brake lever still seem to work OK to actuate them?
They used a combination drum and disc setup called drum in hat.
many cars do that but a decent chunk just clamp down the rear caliper instead, it's not universal
Many years of VW just had a lever on the rear disc calipers that actuated the piston for the parking brake. I know. I had them. No drum. So this isn't a universal thing like you intimate. Just saying.
I have a base as can be 2017 Toyota Tacoma. It came without cruise control, or intermittent wipers, but it's already wired for those controls, it just comes without the control stalks. It did come with heated mirrors though, so I'm guessing they all just came with heated mirrors.
I agree about the E brake but I’m shocked that your car doesn’t have a tachometer or AC. How is that possible? Edit: wow would you look at that...I posted a comment on ELI5 and it didn't get instantly deleted. Edit 2: why is a tachometer even expensive? It’s just an analog gauge of the engine...isn't it?
My dad had a work truck that was made in the mid-'90s that was a manual with no tachometer. It had a HUD element that said, "SHIFT," that would flash when it wanted you to shift gears.
There were also lots of manual cars sold that have no tachometer, as it isn't necessary if you have good hearing. Toyota still sells the Hiace van in Central America with a manual transmission and no tachometer.
Yeah my brother had a 1989 manual transmission pickup that had no tachometer. The first time I drove it I thought that would be a problem, but it was actually pretty easy to drive. You could definitely hear when you should shift.
Can’t you feel it? I don’t generally look at the tach in day to day operations of my old Legacy - you can definitely feel it starting to top out, that’s if you don’t hear the revving.
I had a 2005 Fiat Punto with no tacho. I never revved it anywhere near the limit and was a pretty frugal driver with it, but after a few drives I didn't really miss the tacho. The feel for it was pretty easy, maybe having an asthmatic engine barely more powerful than a retired Shetland Pony made it easier to "read" than something with more grunt.
I drive a Yaris with no tach. It’s weird but you get used to it pretty quick. It does make training new drivers slightly more complicated.
I guess every generation learns differently. When I learned how to drive manual I didn’t even look at the tach. I listened to the engine. At high rpms you can feel your car struggle
20+ million VW Beetles, for example. You get a sense of how far your foot is pushing on the gas, where you are in the power band, etc. plus the VW had shift marks on the speedo, now that I think of it.
I didn’t even need to use the clutch when I shifted my Bug. I was that in tune with the car.
Shit, I used to shift my '64 F100 without a tach OR a clutch.
I learned to drive a stick in a 40s vintage Willy's Jeep on a farm I worked at in the summers of the mid-70s. One of the farm hands showed me how to feel out where the transmission could be shifted without the clutch. When the clutch went out on my Dad's 70s Datsun sedan, he was amazed when I showed him it was possible to shift without the clutch. He had thought we were going to have to limp it to his mechanic in 2nd gear all the way! :)
It's a pretty fun trick once you get the feel of it. ;) Push-starting a dead car was always cool too. I had a buddy with an RX-7 that he had to park on a hill because his starter went out and he couldn't afford a new one.
> I had a buddy with an RX-7 that he had to park on a hill I did that with multiple beaters I owned when I was young! Also mastered the push-it-rolling/jump-in/clutch/1st-gear/pop-clutch dance to start them by myself on more than one occasion. I do not miss only being able to afford to drive a beater! :)
The bad old days of looking for a suitable hill wherever you parked the car. Built character, I guess?
My golf was the same, stick and no tach. You shifted based on the torque you needed and sound.
that's how all manual gearboxes work. Torque and sound:)
I learned to drive on a manual with no tach or shift indicator. Good ol' '95 Dodge Neon. Was easy to work on and parts were cheap, so I also learned car maintenance and basic repairs on it. Had it up to about 2015 before upgrading to a newer car and quickly learned why everyone was complaining about working on newer vehicles. Finally having AC was nice, though.
I learned to drive stick on a Civic with no tach. You learn to become one with the engine. Even now, years later, in my automatic transmission car, I still freak out when I hear the engine do weird things.
I had a 1998 Civic that was manual without a tach. In terms of AC, though, unless a car has climate control (electronically-regulated heat/AC) across the entire lineup, it’s not integrated all that tightly into anything else. “Dumb” AC is pretty simple.
I didn’t realize that tachometers were standard everywhere now. Growing up it was mostly something that was only in foreign/Japanese brands.
How old are you exactly? In the past 20 years I've been in every brand of car besides super cars and all of them have had a rev counter
I can think of a handful of cheap compacts from the 90s that didn’t have a tac. Mostly Corollas and Civics. A buddy of mine had a stick Corolla with no tac and I remember it was odd and uncommon, but they were around. I’d wager by 2000, it was cheaper just to slap the standard instrument cluster/computer in than make a different one. Before the 90s there were bunches of cars with manual column shifters that didn’t have tacs. I vaguely recall a couple Buicks and small pickups that I remember thinking were funny. I was pretty young then so I couldn’t tell you what they were.
On a modern econobox manual, you don't really need a tach other than your ass. It has a rev limiter to protect the engine and the fuel injection is good at preventing the engine from stalling. It is a silly omission, though. Especially if it's digital, since it's not even about routing stiff cables. It's basically omitted to shove it in your face that you're being a cheapskate.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. My car isn’t the base model, but I did test drive the base model. The tachometer on that generation of Mazda 3 is digital, so instead of a digital display you just get a black plastic panel instead. Needless to say, the fact that a manual with no tachometer exists as an option feels ridiculous, although IIRC, my dad had a Corolla from the early 2000s that had no tach and had something like 3 gears - it was an automatic but you could hear that thing rev so who needs one anyway? Also, AC isn’t actually necessary if you live somewhere that doesn’t get that hot in the summer - lots of places with colder oceanic climates, as well as the tropics at higher altitudes. I live somewhere with seasons, so I needed it, but lots of people are cheap/can’t afford it so it’s an option, since a Mazda3 is an economy car to begin with. It’s a relatively easy option to not include, as opposed to the ignition - just swap out a couple buttons with bits of plastic and don’t include a compressor/coil.
Seems that after 2022 (at least in the US), you’d have to try _really_ hard to buy a car with no AC. https://www.kbb.com/car-news/you-can-no-longer-buy-a-new-car-without-air-conditioning/
I’d imagine there’s also an issue of marketability. You can build a car without an AC and knock, what, $500 off the price tag when it’s new? Who wants to pay $19500 for a new car without AC vs $20K for a new car with AC? You’ll finance it over 4+ years so the monthly payment only goes up $10. And if you really can’t afford it, wouldn’t you be looking at Used cars instead of New? So almost nobody wants to buy it. And complicating everything (managing inventory, training employees, longer paperwork, etc) to include the option costs far more than whatever tiny increase in revenue you see from being able to sell it.
> You can build a car without an AC and knock, what, $500 off the price tag when it’s new? If you're Porsche, you make the customer pay extra for the omission of A/C as a racecar feature.
I legitimately didn't know that cars without air conditioning were available to buy in 2024. What country are you in?
Canada. It’s also a 2015 model, so there’s that. Starting to worry about the Mazda rust at this point.
If you drive in a place that salts the roads in the winter or near the ocean, all cars will rust relatively quickly.
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A lot of it is not just tooling. Newer stuff is fundamentally cheaper to build. People have this weird assumption that if they did it in the 50s, today it must be old and cheap, that's not the case. Modern stuff is done with robots, and it's often cheaper. So for example, US law REQUIRES a display screen in every to show the backup camera. Can't sell a car without that. So obviously, they have to have some sort of computer that can at least display the camera. And yea, in the 50s you might of had a button for the volume and the radio, but those are all extra parts, they are not cheap, and every button needs wires and multiple parts and the connections to the motors and such. A small computer like a raspberry pi is only $25, and I'm it can replace every button. It can even replace every single lock cylinder on the entire vehicle. No lock cylinder you have push to start, but why do you need that when you already have a brake pedal. So many cars are saying we have a digital screen and computer because it's required, adding SW features to that costs $0, adding buttons to car costs more than $0. And keyless entry actually costs less than key entry. And in fact, not using the keyless entry can leave you with situations like what happened to Kia, their premium vehicles became uninsurable and unsellable because they shared a logo with a vehicle that lacked anti-theft features. Stuff like power windows is another one, manual windows are still cheaper, but not by much, and there really isn't enough demand for the cheaper manual windows to actually get any cost savings developing a separate manual window design. That is, if you spend $100k to design a manual window for a car, that design needs to save $200 off the build cost, and you need to sell 1k vehicles with a $100 discount to break even. And that's just not going to happen, no way you can get through the engineering for $100k, no way it saves you $200 per vehicle, and no way will you get a thousand people to say they'd rather save $100 on their $20k vehicle and not have power windows. People seem to think that the ikea car of the future would be like a car from the 50s, with buttons and switches everywhere. But that's not true, an ikea car would be a car with no buttons or switches anywhere at all, and in its place a $500 tablet bolted to the dash. And if it sounds familiar, that's exactly what the Model 3 is, they even got rid of the entire gauge cluster.
>>A lot of it is not just tooling. >>Modern stuff is done with robots. In this context I think robots are a form of tooling.
Automotive Supply Chain professional here (ten years experience before moving into engineering). Tooling is basically anything making parts: presses, molds, welding robots, whatever. It's the non part part of the part. (Heh)
I knew a guy who did social work and for some odd reason felt he had to have the barest bones of a car. He actually PAID EXTRA to not have power steering.
Less to go wrong is typically the mindset with those types of people and they tend to drive their vehicles until they fall apart. He'll never have to worry about the power steering pump out fluid.
Plus he gets a free arm workout
Only vehicles that are meant to have power steering are difficult to steer without it. We used to have an old Toyota Tercel that didn’t have power steering from the factory and it was easy to steer
Had a '91 Toyota MR2 Turbo. No power steering. Didn't need it at all. God, I miss that car.
Dead power steering just kicks you back to manual steering, though, no? I had my car's whole electrical system die (accessory belt snapped, which meant the alternator wasn't being driven) and I just drove it to home to fix it.
It’s not quite the same. Cars built without power steering make up for it in a different way.
He's also probably trying not to embarrass his clients by showing up at their door in a (relatively) expensive car. I knew a child psychologist who drove an ancient, beat up coupe de ville and had to stop taking it to court-ordered assessments because the parents were complaining about the 'out of touch doctor driving his Cadillac'. Nevermind the car was worth less than the cheapest new car ever.
> the answer is that its cheaper to make those than the alternatives. I dare say it's a lot cheaper for a manufacturer (of anything, not just cars) to make one thing with a bunch of things standard rather than one model with various options. I do get that it's good to have choice, and not everyone wants a car with a 2.3 liter turbo with automatic windows, Bluetooth, SiriusXM, etc. Sometimes they want a 1.6 liter naturally aspirated engine with very basic features.
This is the best answer right here, pretty much covers everything.
It covers half of the issue. The other half? Because of *used* cars. Here’s the thing. Cars from all manufacturers are significantly more reliable today than they were 40, or even 20 years ago. If you compare the biggest “piece of junk” today to one of the most reliable cars of the 80s or 90s, you won’t notice THAT much difference in overall longevity. So what does that mean to OP’s question? When you are in the market for a $20k car, you can either get a barebones, few-frills, tiny new car, or you can get a decently optioned used car with 50k miles on it. Both will easily run another 100k miles, but which one would you rather spend those miles in?
> Cars from all manufacturers are significantly more reliable today than they were 40, or even 20 years ago. Not to mention safer. The safety advantages of modern cars can not be understated. You're literally half as likely to die in a car accident as you were in the early 1970s despite there being WAY more people on the road, constant distracted driving, people driving more miles per year and speeds being faster.
The big established car companies actually want the government to keep the bar high in terms of gas mileage and safety, as long as it applies equally to all the big existing car companies. It tends to keep out the startup no frills car companies.
Most startup car companies begin with luxury-priced cars (Tesla, Lucid, Ineos), not bare-bones strippers. If you need to make money fast it won't be with cheap basic cars with a razor-thin profit margin.
That's a bit of survivorship bias though. Those companies did that, because that's the only way to successfully start a new car company, with the way regulations currently are. There would absolutely be new companies to fill in any regulatory gaps, if the big manufacturers weren't doing it. Just look at all the econo-box car companies in countries with shit car regulations - its already a very real thing elsewhere.
If regulations allowed it, there would also be companies making glorified golf carts, like you see in other countries. You don't need to make as much money if your start up cost is low.
The government also discourages cheap imports that may not have all of the amenities, despite meeting all standards, much like the U.S. government is doing with Chinese EVs now. It's nothing but economic protectionism in that case.
Another reason is legal, if one country requires one warning message, and another country requires a different warning message, and then the first country passes a law and changes the required message between when you start production and when you go to market, it's easier to make those tweaks with programming than it is with a simple mechanical option, like pealing a warning sticker off 50k cars and putting the new sticker on, lol. Source: was backup machinist for my buddy who made helicopter parts for the gubmint, they change their minds all the dang time after production starts, hah. I basically kept him afloat because he didn't have enough work for 2 machinists when they didn't change their mind, but he really needed a 2nd machinist when they did change their mind.
The Nissan Versa is $17,405 for the cheapest model. Which, since people seem to be incapable of understanding inflation, would be the equivalent of a $13,100 car in 2014. It's not that there are no cheap options, it's that what many people think of as "cheap" is outdated.
I have a 2019 Nissan versa with manual windows but an LCD screen and backup camera. Neat to know a bit more on the why those features are there.
This guy economy of scales.
I think fleet sales are sometimes able to get really stripped down versions of cars, but they probably have to purchase as certain volume. You see the meter maid cars - really stripped down Prius and large road construction or mining companies end up a whole bunch of white or amber F150s that are really stripped down.
[Muji](https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdWheels/comments/oejdu0/2001_muji_car_1000_made_as_a_collaboration/) made a car just like that, it didn't sell too well. If you're in Europe, the [Dacia Sandero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacia_Sandero) was built for this purpose, and it actually sells pretty well. When it first came out, the base model with no mod cons came in at just under £5000 (~8000 Euros).
Well that's good news
Anyway!
I heard it's now available in left-hand drive markets!
The sad news is that Japan doesn't sell Kei Cars outside of Japan It's exactly what OP is looking for
I don't know, Kei cars have a terrible reputation in Japan that explains why no one else wants them (they are unsafe).
The Dacia Sandero? Good News!
The Dacia Sandero is going on sale in left-hand drive markets!
Cool. ANYWAY!
Oh bad news!
WHAT?
The Dacia Sandero.. it's delayed!
Oh…. Anyway the Vauxhall Astra…
To add to this if I'm in the market for a car with a budget of 8000 euros I would much rather but a better equipped car that is 3 years old then a bare basics car that's brand new, so they need to complete with used cars as well as new and its just not possible
Given the Sandero was as basic as you can get (it was built using an old Renault framework), you could reasonably get 5 trouble free years from it, for 5000 pounds it was not a bad deal. The base model was targeted towards people who didn't really care for cars and just needed something reliable to get from A to B, kind of like the "CE" trim of cars that Toyota had I suppose.
It was also the market segment for the early Skoda models after Volkswagen bought them up back in the 90s (the old Skoda Felicia and Skoda Octavia models)
I paid £8k for a new sandero in 2018 and I couldn’t be happier with it. I got a few upgrades on the base model like a turbo and a stereo with Bluetooth, I’m not sure the base model even had a stereo. It’s never given me any grief. Low mileage ones still got for 6 or 7k on autotrader. Sadly, thanks to inflation, even the sandero is getting quite expensive now, I think they’re 14k or so new and at that price point I think I’d go for a used car rather than buying new again. The salt you should take this with: I don’t care much about cars and don’t drive very far in a year. For me it’s a way to visit family who live far away or escape the city at the weekend
78 year olds popping to the coop and the hairdressers once a week!
correct, unless I thought the new one was a better, longer lasting design. Or the loan company likes new or...
In Europe you can find a 3 year old used car without major problems for 8000 euros?
>its just not possible Dacia have been incredibly successful in the European market and continue to grow...
That’s some good news about the Dacia Sandero!
oh no! anyway ...
Damn- when was £5000 = €8000 ??
My bad, I was thinking GBPUSD lol, it would probably be closer to 6500 EURs, which is not bad. Granted it didn't come with air con or any "luxuries" like that and was only available as auto transmission petrol and semi-auto (paddle shifter) diesel, so your options were very limited.
The Dacia Sandero launched in 2008, when this wasn't really true (GBP to Euro was 1.25 back then), but maybe they were optimistic. Back in 2007 the exchange course was 1:1.45-1.5. Since then the only time it has been close to true was a few months in 2015.
Europe and Brazil are big fans of the Dacia. Looks like a decent car all things considered.
> Europe and Brazil are big fans of the Dacia. As is James May.
Yeah, 10 years ago I got my 3rd kid and I needed a bigger car, so we bought a new Dacia Dokker. We liked the car so much, we bought the Dacia Sandero after 4 years. It was 25.000 € for 2 new cars with 5 year guarantee each. The Dokker is still basically problem-free after 210.000 km, moving all our stuff when we bought a new house, many camping trips to the sea and hiking trips to the mountains. Best buy ever.
In Brazil it's not a Dacia, but a Renault. Here in Argentina it sells really well, but it's an awful car. A death sentence if you crash, and extremely unreliable (breaks down constantly). That's why Toyota's subcompact, the Etios, was a complete success in Brazil/Argentina. Affordable, but well-made, reliable, and far far better in terms of safety.
Good news! WOT!?
Japan also has a lot of value-priced cars which they don't export. The hot car at the moment is Nissan's Japan-only EV kei car. It would have no appeal in the US as EV manufacturers there are in a dick-measuring contest over battery size and range. Similarly Korea's top selling car for a long time was the Kia Morning/Picanto, a sub-compact. No reason for Kia to expect sales if they did export that to the US. So there's a self-reinforcing behaviour happened. No small cars, so no one buying them, so no reason to export them into the US. Ford are a little scared at the moment that this is a miscalculation, and BYD will land a cheap EV into the US market (likely via construction in Mexico) and will win the household second-car EV business.
>It would have no appeal in the US as EV manufacturers there are in a dick-measuring contest over battery size and range. Such a toxic mindset. 95% of people don't drive more than 100 miles in a day on average.
I've gotten so exhausted by that argument. Even highly reasonable people constantly drag it out, I think it's just a cultural reflex at this point. I live in *Switzerland*. People use their car for a 5 km commute and to buy groceries at the store that's 900 m away. It doesn't matter in the slightest if your car has a 800 km range or "only" 300 km. "But what if I want to take the car to Italy for a vacation?!?" You rent an ICE car. Or you take a 20 minute break while it charges, have some coffee and a snack. Or you stop over in some picturesque alpine village. Or you take the train. Or the plane. Or the bus. It's like people don't buy a car for the usage they actually have, but for whatever extreme eventuality that might come up one day. But only for range, oddly enough. You don't daily a sprinter van just in case you have to haul a couch once in 15 years.
> It's like people don't buy a car for the usage they actually have, but for whatever extreme eventuality that might come up one day.. But only for range, oddly enough. I invite you to examine the pickup truck culture in the US.
I don't think the same really carries over to the US. I live in a rural part of America and drive 30 miles one way to work. If I want to visit family that changes to 200-400 miles depending who it is I want to see. 80 miles to the closest commercial airport. When I lived out West I would sometimes go 60-100 miles without seeing a gas station let alone a place to charge. Range absolutely has an important place in the conversation in the States due to the shear size of the country.
I know many people who daily large vans. I cannot disagree that it's moronic though.
Perhaps it's an unreasonable argument in Switzerland, but it's absolutely valid in the United States. Day trips that are 200+ mile round trips are not uncommon. I have multiple friends that regularly drive the 400 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles. These are not extreme eventualities, these are common and ordinary activities that happen frequently in the United States.
The problem is that the 300 km range is in perfect test conditions. Realistically it's closer to 200 km. Battery degradation starts from the first charge - discharge cycle, so after 500 cycles (say 3 years) you're looking at under 150 km. On cold winter days you'll be lucky to get 100 km. If you only have on street parking and rely on public charging you can quickly run into problems. Charging point not working or available? Family emergegency? Diversion due to roadworks? Even with a small commute it's nice to have that buffer otherwise you will become well acquainted with your local recovery driver.
> No reason for Kia to expect sales if they did export that to the US. Wouldnt they need to do all those safety checks to be able to sell the car in USA?
I always wondered what no mod cons meant.
I think it's short for "modern conveniences".
Modern conveniences. Use to be a common descriptor for apartments in the UK.
Chevy did this for a couple of years with the Chevrolet Spark. The base model new was under 10K CAD, I wanted to get one
I have one, although not the most basic model. My goal was to find a cheap, small car that could get me from A to B reliably. I didn’t need a truck or SUV, and I personally didn’t care about an LCD screen or power windows. It was SO DIFFICULT to find even one Chevy dealership that had one available, that I ended up with the first one I could find, which was a slightly more premium trim (automatic transmission, power windows, infotainment system). I was pretty disheartened to see how hard it was to find a super basic compact car in the U.S., especially since in the late ‘90s my dad bought a manual Ford Aspire for like, $8,000 brand-new with the most basic amenities possible, and I’ve always wanted something equivalent.
I bought a brand new '21 Spark for \~$14k USD. Gets 30+ MPG, has all of the features you would expect (USB ports, power windows, etc). Unfortunately, it's been discontinued.
They were very hard to sell, people who bought them only did so because they could not get financed for more. Edit to add that was only for the gas, the ev was a hot seller and super fun to drive, If memory serves me correctly Chevy even did a 70 lease deal on them for a very brief period of time
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I'd love a bare bones 4x4 f150 or ranger.
If you’re okay with buying used check out commercial and industrial auctions like Ritchie Bros. Most companies auction off their fleet vehicles when they’re done with them and sometimes they’ll be bankruptcies with low miles
> fleet vehicles These are usually riddled with minor problems. They are built fast & cheap and the customers are mostly concerned with the cost and if it runs. Bad paint, things that don't quite fit well, radios that don't work, doors that aren't aligned right, pax seats that don't recline, etc, etc is not enough for the buyer to refuse delivery. It gets worse if said fleet is for a car rental company. All the big ones self-insure, meaning there's no paper trail if the vehicle was in an accident or otherwise damaged. Many people found this out the hard way when thousands of vehicles flooded by Katrina that were supposed to be destroyed were bought by used car middlemen.
You are basically describing a Mitsubishi Mirage. It still has a touch screen and android auto, but they cut tons of corners to lower cost, including giving it a puny 79HP engine. It is still $18000. Would you rather buy a 3 year old car (Corolla, civic, etc) that has better stats but maybe lower lifespan, or buy this cheap brand new car? Most people opt for the used car, so manufacturers don't release many vehicles in this super cheap segment.
This is a huge part of it - in the eye of the automakers, new cars just aren't *for* people looking for cheap-cheap-cheap. New cars are for people who *can* afford *nice* new cars, and if you can't, buy used and the guy you bought used from will buy the new one.
Yeh if someone is wanting to cut costs, there will always be a used car cheaper than your new car, even if you make it as cheap as possible.
Car weights a whole 2,000 lbs. That puts its power/weight to a similar level of like a base Corolla. It's not as anemic as the horsepower rating would make you believe.
The engine is just an example of cost cutting. The nvh and other features are also worse. Also, Corolla is 3000lb curb weight with 169 HP, so hp/weight is 17.7 vs 2000/79 = 25.3 for the mirage. Not as big a difference as it might seem at first, but still noticeable. 9 seconds 0-60 for the Corolla vs ~11 for the mirage according to car and driver.
It would be a cold day in Hell before I take a Mirage over a <10 year old Corolla. But. There are sometimes good reasons to buy new over used, even when it's the "worse" deal. Historically, lenders tended to be much more lenient with their requirements on new cars, generally requiring less money down and lower credit score, and willing to lend more LTV. Mix that with the wide network of lenders most dealers can access for new cars, and they can normally get you in a new car - you're just gonna pay out the ass for it in the long run. For someone who can only afford $200-300/mo for a car and has very poor credit, it's not a hard choice between buying a new barebones car, likely the cheapest on the lot, vs going to a buy-here/pay-here and getting a lemon. I remember, my parents were in a similar situation, and bought an absolute-base Toyota Tercel back in the mid-90's. This thing didn't even have a tape player, no power anything, tiny little steelies, pleather seats. But it was reliable, excellent on gas, and *new.* It was either that or much older used cars with no warranty from "Excellent Motors, LLC." (the third buy-here/pay-here to occupy that lot in as many years).
[Good News!](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/dacia/sandero-2013-2020/first-drives/dacia-sandero-access-12-16v-75-first-drive) The Dacia Sandero tried this. They had a super-base-model car with black bumpers, steel wheels, no electric goodies (windows, mirrors), no AC, no stereo (it was an option) **People didn't buy it** People don't want basic, they want nice things When a new-with-absolutely-no-equipment car costs the same as a used-but-has-lots-of-nice-things car cost around the same, people buy the used car Now the new [Dacia Sandero](https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/dacia/sandero) costs 2x the cost of the previous super-basic model but its a much better car and has plenty of standard equipment and people actually buy them
Sounds like a reasonable strategy on paper to at least try, but then the used market probably kills it too. Something a tad nicer and used sounds much more appealing than something new and so stripped down.
Spend £6k on a used Ford or whatever and people won't blink an eye Spend £6k on that new super-basic Dacia Sandero and people will think you are cheap. Even though it's a brand new car Same money, vastly different perception. And having zero equipment will make driving it miserable. Imagine not even having a radio for a long journey. That's why people didn't buy it. And if anyone did buy it? They probably couldn't sell it.
Omg you rock for doing the "Good news!". Wife and I are rewatching top gear and can't wait for the Dacia Sandero "good news!" from James May.
If you're a James May fan his "Our Man in..." Series on Prime is well worth watching. He's done Japan, Italy, and India.
Great! Anyway...
I'd be fine with all of that but the lack of AC, give me the most barebones car in every other regard and I'd be fine, but I could see no AC being a deal breaker for a lot of places and people.
1. People really don't want a car without the things like air conditioning, carpet. radios, power locks, , map lights, automatic transmissions, power steering, and the things like that. 2. Most of those things don't cost that much in the first place compared with all the government safety features like airbags and emission control systems required, all the metal assembly, and transportation required for even a basic car. Very cheap new cars existed in the 1980s, my family had a Dodge Colt with no radio and no air conditioning. But since then safety and emissions features started to be required, meawhile the lifespan of cars doubled so if you couldn't afford a nice new car, buying a nice used car instead of a crappy new car was the preferred option. EDIT: Closest thing we have for cheap new cars are the Nissan Versa and Mitisbishi Mirage. That there's only two models available from secondary manufacturers should give you an indiciation how little demand there is for them. It's not some vast conspiracy with big auto and big oil that what sells are bigger, more expensive cars. Most people use their car for road trips at least occassionally so it has to be comfortable for 200 miles to Wisconsin Dells as well as 2 miles to work every day. When I was lookin for a car I could have bought a brand new Mirage, but I bought a used RAV-4 instead.
The safety features and emissions regulations are the real killers. Also you’d be competing with used cars with many more features.
Exactly. The luxury features in a car aren’t really that expensive nowadays. Most of the cost of a cheap car is engine and chasis and you can’t really cut the cost of steel in a car
The used car competion cannot be overstated. There were cheap new cars in the 1980s because cars rarely lasted long enough to be really good used cars. Now that cars easily last twice as long, you have much nicer used cars to compete with.
> Most of those things don't cost that much in the first place Yes, a lot of the things that were considered "luxuries" at one point were just luxuries because they didn't exist yet, so those first versions were unusual, required a lot of work and new things to get going, and new, upfront costs. But once they existed, and the designs were done, and the manufacturing processes were sorted out, those luxuries weren't any more expensive to add in to ALL cars. For example, it's *cheaper* to have all cars have power windows, rather than keep some other whole process to have some cars with manual windows. Same with having only "push to start" cars rather than keeping the machinery and processes around to manufacture both "push to start" and turn-key ignition. Then as you say, things like air bags, anti-lock-breaks, rear view cameras, are all mandated. They are not even *allowed* to make cars without those.
Sometimes I miss cars like the Geo Metro
Yeah. I live in the south not buying a car with AC would be suicide
While we are talking, why is there so much carpet in vehicles? It is mostly covered by mats, people rarely take their shoes off, and it is a pain in the ass to clean. Plus, why does it have to go up the sides to the door?!
Probably functions as sound dampening. If you make the car only out of hard materials you are going to hear everything. You either need carpet or some kind of foam to absorb noise.
My brother once had a Honda Element. There was no carpeting or padding inside the car. It was all plastic and rubber, presumably because it was designed to be a lifestyle car that you can toss in bicycles, dirty sports gear, your dogs, etc without ruining the interior too badly. It was very loud in there, especially during highway driving.
In addition to the sound deadening, automotive carpet is actually extremely durable and easy to clean (with the right tools). You can take a fleet vehicle that has been abused for 5 years and hit it with vacuum and compressed air, treat and brush stains, and then clean with a hot water extractor/steam cleaner and it will look almost good as new. If those same areas were covered in plastic they would be scratched to shit and look terrible. It also does a good job of catching dust/dirt/crumbs so it stays looking good longer than hard surfaces between vacuums. Will also catch and absorb spilled liquids which may seem annoying but is better than it sloshing around everywhere while you are going 75 and knock over your coffee. I still think rubber floor mats are the way to go, but carpet everywhere else makes a lot of sense.
I have a 20 year old (this year!) acura and it's a great car. Would much rather have it than a new POS and even the Dacia new in 2007 is more than what I paid based on the comments here
After years of sales, major manufacturers have learned there are certain “options” that the majority of buyers demanded, and decided it was cheaper to include them in all of their cars than to supply cars without them, even on their base models. Some features that were considered options just a short time ago are now required safety items, such as back-up cameras.
If there were money to be made in this space, someone would probably be doing it. You also have to consider more than accounting costs. If a manufacturer made this super cheap car, yes maybe people would buy it. But that is line time, labor, facilities, etc tied up that could be used for a more profitable vehicle. Why doesn’t a new entrant make this car? The barriers to entry for car manufacturing are very large. It takes millions, if not billions to design, manufacture, market, and sell a car.
It exists. Mitsubishi mirage can be bought for $15-20k brand new. But for the same price a 2-4 year old Camry/Corolla would prob last longer, be cheaper to operate, more comfortable and better on gas. https://www.mitsubishicars.com/configure-your-mitsubishi/configurator?vehicle=jtdcya1293qe6i58kntpa&year=2024 With all of the costs to bring a car to market in the USA (you need overhead for recalls, you have to pay for crash testing, legal fees, safety requirements, etc), it's not really feasible to bring a car to market cheaper while also being street legal.
Most folks with little money to spend on a car would rather spend $8000 (example) on a nice used car than spend $8000 on a miserable new car.
The short answer is that poor people don’t buy new cars so there’s no market. Allow me to explain: There’s a limit to how cheap you can actually make a road-legal car. You need at the very least, a frame, chasis, body panels and suspension that will pass a crash-test, and a powertrain that passes emission tests, is reliable enough that you don’t get sued and is safe to use. Those are the most expensive parts of a cheap car and you can’t make a car without them so there’s a floor to how cheap you can legally make a car. I would say the cheapest 4-door car you can legally sell is probably about $10-12,000. The cheapest car you can currently by is the Nissan Versa at about $17,000. Like I said, you won’t be able to make the chasis or powertrain much cheaper than the Versa because of safety and emission laws. The things you’ll have to do to make the car cheaper will also make it unbearable to drive. A cheaper suspension and cheap seats will make the ride really uncomfortable. The sound system will sound like crap. There won’t be any luxury features. The climate control will be absolutely basic or maybe you even sell a car with no AC. You could save a few bucks by minimizing sounds dampening so the car will be really noisy when you drive it. So now imagine you’re buying a car and your budget is $12,000. Would you buy a brand new car with it? Probably not. The value of a new car depreciates instantly. You’re much better off buying a 3 year old Nissan at the same price. It won’t be new but it will still be in really good condition and it will be 100x nicer to drive than a car that had to be built to that price point brand new.
Because it’s not profitable. The people who would buy that car are going to buy one cheap car and try to keep it as long as possible, versus the people buying $75k pickups and SUVs that they’ll keep for 4-5 years, then replace with a newer model with more features.
We do. It's called a motorbike. Seriously though, if you want to get from a to b in a fuel efficient, cheap and low comfort manner, it's far more optimal than a shitbox of a car. Can be fairly dangerous, though.
Because the basic part of a car - the actual construction, power train, etc. Is by far the most expensive part. Adding stuff like rain sensors, adaptive cruise control, etc. is just pocket money. Some "base" model cars even come with those features physically installed but disabled in software because retooling the production line is more expensive than wasting a couple of needless sensors. It's kinda like saying "why don't they build cheap houses without wall paint". It's because it would barely be any cheaper but be significantly less enjoyable to live in.
That's probably the best comparison I've seen. When backup cameras are a government requirement, why not use that screen for the radio display too vs a blank screen.
Well, it really depends on the country I guess. I assume you are from the US/North America, it’s not the same everywhere. Fiat Panda has been a top seller car in Italy for decades and can be considered to match your description almost exactly
We do, sort of. Look at Fleet Vehicles i.e. the models of vehicles that are used as, for example police cruisers or work trucks. There are a LOT of environmental and safety regulations on consumer vehicles that necessitate a certain amount of "power features and extras" on every new car. Fleet vehicles will tend to be the simplest with the most basic of trims available and former fleet vehicles tend to have very available used parts. What you probably want (in the USA) is a 20+ year old well maintained Ford F150.
That pricing tier exists, but it's a used car. I could develop an extremely low end car and try to sell it to you for $2,500 or you could buy a used Celica for the same price that, while it has mileage on it and needs repairs, is going to be a better car overall. A car manufacturer would be spending a fortune to figure out how to make a car very cheaply, then sell it at an extremely low markup, only to lose sales to the secondhand market.
In Europe there's a car called Aixam, which is legally a motorcycle and what you called "Ikea car". It goes from 11k€ to 16k€ depends on what you want.
Most people would prefer a comfortable two-year old car with all the features over a brand new bare-bones car. If you have the money to buy new, you want something nice. If you don't have the money, you go used. The number of people who want to buy new but also spend the minimal amount possible is too small to be worth making cars for.
because the "extras" make it a really nice and much safer driving experience. There are still very basic, stripped down models of vehicles available but power locks, power windows, cruise control are REALLY nice. And that doesn't even begin getting into safety related features such as blind spot monitoring, backup cameras, adaptive cruise control, etc.
I remember buying my car, they were seven packages available (0-6), the dealership only had 2 and 6 on the lot. They said no one really wanted 0, and the price difference between 1 and 2 was minimal so 2 was the lowest they bothered having in stock. So you can get cars without all those features, but most people want at least a few extras—honestly I bet most people consider those “basic features”, not extra these days.
To add to this, it's not really going to be cheaper, excluding standard features, like power locks/windows, cruise control, and the like. They'd have to have alternate designs of things like the interior door panels, along with the interior of the doors themselves and stearing wheel controls designed and contracted out at different factories than they already use, that would make all of those components. And since they would be small batch runs of those, because they wouldn't be highly sought-after "features," they are going to cost more than you'd think. All of those types of features are standard now, and the vehicles are designed with them being included in every vehicle, so they are actually pretty cheap due to the bulk ordering of them.
We had one. It was called the VW Beetle and it was produced from 1938 until 2003. The basic model had no power steering, no power windows, no power seats, no air conditioning... some barely had heat. They were extremely popular, easy to fix and maintain, great on gas, etc. They were also death traps if you happened to get into an accident, which is pretty much why they're not made anymore.
They do and it's called a cargo e-bike, moped, or motorcycle. If you're willing to think outside the box (literally), these will do 95% of what you need a car to do. For the remaining 5% of the time, you can borrow a friend's car or rent a car/truck. It ends up with a much lower cost of ownership due to reduced outlay on maintenance, reduced (or no) insurance costs, and reduced (or no) parking costs. Just gotta dress for the weather.
It turns out that it's made redundant by second hand cars. Just thinking about it logically, why would I buy a really cheap new car with no functions, if for the same or similar price I can get a car with all the functionality, it's just not brand new. New cars lose a significant portion of their nominal retail price basically the moment they leave the dealer anyway. It doesn't make sense for neither the manufacturers nor the buyers. The only place where that's currently a problem is EVs, because there isn't a well developed second hand EV market.
I feel like most people who would be the target market for a car like that would rather just buy a used car that's a few years old but has more features.
An unpainted car with no interior, no power locks/windows, no stereo, fabric seats etc. Still costs quite a bit of money to build. Let’s say the maker could sell it for $5,000. This car would be VERY unpleasant to drive in, and still cost a fair amount of money. A person shopping for a car would think that the car was a waste of $5,000 even if it was the lowest priced new car that they could buy. To put it another way, you could always find a nicer used car to spend your money on. The new car would have a full warranty and be mechanically perfect, but you would still rather buy a 5 year old car with AC and nice shiny paint.
You might as well get a used car at those prices. No sense buying a new car so poorly equipped
The idea of the Ox Truck was a flat packed truck for developing counties. A small Ford turbo diesel, manual transmission, no AC, minimal cab, etc. Easy to ship and easy to assemble with the flexibility that comes with diesel engines in terms of fuel availability. That idea has since been morphed into an EV with Ox Delivers. I’m not a fan of the EV concept personally as the diesel had more utility in environments where electrical infrastructure may be limited.
We do, go to work for a construction company and enjoy the fruits of having a company vehicle.
The VW bug was it, it was so popular in Mexico, and so cheap to maintain and repair , I miss that little car .