Comment by bluGill
2 days ago
Cars are not buy it for life items. I generally buy a 3 year old car because it is about half the price of a new one - but I'm limited to what color I can find. If I bought new cars I could get whatever color - except that new car buyers won't be seen in a 4 year old car, and they can only afford to upgrade (to the extent they can) if the car has resale value so they care about what color they (the dealer) thinks will sell.
When we bought our current house it was perfect except the colors were an awful neutral grey - I had a hard time convincing my wife despite the otherwise perfection, and only did because we spent several thousand dollars getting it repainted before we moved in. I'm sure the sellers realtor thought the neutral colors were a great idea, but they almost cost several thousand dollars (there was a bidding war when we bought the house, we almost didn't bid and so the sellers would have lost).
The important point is if you like color make sure you pay for it, and reject things if they don't have the color you want.
> Cars are not buy it for life items.
No, but they certainly can be "buy it for the life of the car". I prefer that myself. New cars are nice, but I'm not going to trade up to a new car every few years. I will buy new (or new-ish), and then drive it until it dies 15 years later. Much more cost effective.
I'm on my 16th year with my Jetta, bought new. For appearances I should probably buy a new car (it's totaled), but I'm pretty sure it will last another 16 years and will only be replaced out of necessity (were I to have a family) or vanity (were I to have a midlife crisis). I've worked from home or commuted by bicycle most of the time I've owned it so I've averaged < 8,000 miles per year.
If you buy new and drive for live you are a minority and so manufacturers (and banks via loans) won't make that type of thing that sell you but don't have perceived resale. If you buy newish used and keep for life you are stuck with what they think you will buy.
>If I bought new cars I could get whatever color
You can get a black one, a white one, a grey one, or then maybe two or three others that are most often in a red/green/blue/green which is really more of a flavored grey or black. Currently the Toyota Camry, really the only paint you can get where I'd (in a perhaps slightly silly restrictive way) would call "a color" is red. The other 11 options are either greyscale or slightly tinted greyscale.