I guess I can drive the Cobalt for about 5 years.

 

Raw numbers can be misleading though ... IIRC, the 'affordability' of a new car (as measured by number of weeks of household income it takes to purchase a new car) has been the lowest it's been in many years. Actual retail prices (which can be quite far off the MSRP quoted in the article) have been flat and even sometimes declining over the past few years. (I also thought the average retail price was somewhere in the mid-20s.)

I don't doubt that those trends have reached their bottoms, but maybe it's just a matter of prices getting back to 'normal' in relation to inflation, incomes, etc.

 

Sorry we suck so bad. I love living where I do though.
All the coast states skew the statistics, but in the midwest 100-125K gets you a nice place to live.

While there is a major price adjustment between a house in cali and a house in missouri, cars cost the same everywhere so to us midwesterners that 40K car is a joke, where in cali you guys pay 40K for a tree so the car is a steal.

 

I can definitely see that. A recession and higher costs for almost everything (not just energy and food) are going to make people shy about big purchases. Longer car loans means people are staying upside down longer and thus likely to keep their vehicles longer (this has been a huge, shortsighted mistake by the automakers in recent years IMO). Poor residual values due to forcing too many vehicles into the market will do the same.

I always thought that 17m unit years were an exception and not sustainable. In a mature market like NA, with vehicles lasting longer all the time, something in the 15-16m range is probably better to bank on.

 

Amen! Actually there is some good news out there, and things are not always as bleak as they seem, particularly in an election year.

On a strict personal basis, I'm more concerned about the upcomming elections rather than a good deal of this gloom and doom stuff.

I could get on to a far too honest tirade regarding the problems I foresee, but this is not the venue to do so.

 

So could I, LOL. Everything just feels backwards these days, from the 3 dopes that don't belong in the White House that are running, to gas messing up musclecars once again about 40 years later just as all the really high HP cas were coming out, unbelieveable.

 

That's a good point, and I'm sure it drives the car marketers crazy. And explains some of the problems Detroit is having in California.

The other thing is that with the huge run up of home prices, people have been "taking money out" and buying excessive vehicles. Now that prices are crashing, that's certainly over and I'd bet the premium/luxury market takes a hit.

(also just for the record, I got the avg home price here: http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/cenc25/c25q07)

 

If the average price raises that much, the Detroit 3 will be devastated and the CAFE regs will be worthless since virtually NO ONE will be able to afford a new car.