There’s no other way to say this other than to say it: I think we’re in the automotive bizarro world. I could probably construct a detailed analysis of how we got here, involving the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, NAFTA, the lack of executive-level prosecutions after the Global Financial Crisis, and the value of the Korean won relative to the Japanese yen. Or, and hear me out here, what if the cancellation of the G8 ST truck created a schism in the multiverse?
If The Morning Dump is to be published in the actual morning, I think I’m going to go with how the axing of Pontiac (and therefore of the Pontiac G8 ST sport truck–what would have been a modern El Camino) is what split us off into the bizarro world we now inhabit. Is it a bad bizarro world? That’s going to depend on your view of things, but the opposite of good isn’t always bad.
Let’s start right up top with the reality that the world we live in is one in which Michael Jordan could bring NASCAR to its knees. Then there’s the White House, which clearly loves two kinds of cars: Big trucks and… tiny EVs and hybrids. Huh.
Carvana. Remember when we were all convinced Carvana was going to die? Now it’s up 10,000% and joining the S&P 500. That’s quite the turnaround. Volkswagen has gone the opposite direction, stumbling at seemingly every turn. One of the few VW bright spots has been SEAT/Cupra, so it makes sense that the executive behind the brands has… left the company to make Gin.
Sure. Fine. Makes perfect sense.
Michael Jordan Thinks NASCAR Is An Illegal Monopoly, And He Takes That Personally
I’m surprised that the lawsuit against NASCAR by two of its teams has gone forward. The sport proudly reached back to its heritage as the progeny of moonshiners who, with no revenuers to outrun, turned to racing.
Two of the sport’s teams are alleging that the illegality has continued, this time in the form of an illegal monopoly. The two teams are Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing, formed by Denny Hamlin and longtime NASCAR fan Michael Jordan.
My shock comes not from NASCAR’s intrasegence, as the sport has long been run by one family that has accrued huge power over the years. Nor is the unwillingness of Michael Jordan to bend that surprising to me, given that I think Jordan might be the most competitive person who has ever lived.
I just assumed that, at some point, various lawyers would remind both sides that discovery exists, which means that a lot of information that was formerly private is going to become public. Having imbibed moonshine out of jars with NASCAR management, I cannot imagine this would go well for them.
There’s a long piece in The Athletic about the early part of the trial, and the other person who appears confused about why this trial is happening is the judge:
Kenneth D. Bell, the federal judge presiding over the legal showdown between NASCAR and the two race teams suing it, alleging illegal monopolistic practices over a dispute about the sport’s charter system, issued that warning this summer. Many times, in public hearings and behind closed doors, Bell cautioned there would be no winners in the case. His message throughout has been that the only way this case could end on somewhat good terms is for 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports to find common ground with the league and settle.
Bell was clearly correct, and you should just refer to this section:
They are playing with fire.” NASCAR commissioner Steve Phelps said in an email to Prime about the teams’ hesitancy over the charter agreement. “Lots of options, but all have the same theme: Pick a date and they can sign or lose their charters. It is that simple.”
Almost assuredly, it will only get messier. How could it not? There will be more animosity, more evidence that paints one party or the other in an unflattering light, and a list of potential witnesses that just happens to include team owner Richard Childress. In an exchange of text messages recently unearthed during the discovery process, Childress was disparaged by Phelps, who said Childress should be “taken out back and flogged” and called him a “stupid redneck who owes his entire fortune to NASCAR.”
I’m not sure where this ends, but if NASCAR loses, The Athletic says that it’ll potentially have to divest from the tracks it owns and give back hundreds of millions of dollars to teams. If NASCAR wins, the teams that sued are in trouble, and the sport will have gained immense power.
The President Wants Tiny Cars
President Donald J. Trump has approved TINY CARS to be built IN AMERICA! ???????? pic.twitter.com/bE4ropoDLu
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 7, 2025
I still don’t know what to do with this information. The White House has sent out a tweet stating that the President has “approved TINY CARS to be built IN AMERICA.” The accompanying video shows a tiny Toyota truck of some sort on a Hot Wheels track.
Just to be safe, I checked the Federal Register this morning to see if there was any new action from the federal government that could make this a possibility. There is not. There is, however, an application for a habitat conservation plan for the Sand Skink and Blue-Tailed Moke Skink in Polk County, Florida, if you are interested.
Obviously, you all care about this because we got more than 300 comments on the original article last week, but the how remains uncertain. This is very obviously a result of the administration realizing that cars are not getting any cheaper, which is going to be difficult given everything that this administration is also doing. So the answer to “what does winning look like” is, I guess, getting people to buy tiny cars.
I’m a new urbanist, and I like tiny cars, which means I’m all for this. No matter how we got here, I am exactly the kind of sicko who is tentatively on board with the idea. As everyone is pointing out, however, this seems unworkable on the surface. I think Axios summed it up nicely:
Even if the U.S. finds a way to legalize them, as Trump has instructed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to do, the laws of economics and physics will almost certainly ensure it never happens.
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They don’t meet U.S. safety regulations.
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Automakers can’t build them profitably in the U.S.
Yes, but I want small cars, so perhaps this isn’t the worst thing to ever happen if it happens. It’s still bizarre, though.
Carvana Is Joining The S&P 500
When Carvana got hit with a bunch of investigations back in 2023, there was an assumption that the company might go under. In fact, we went so far as to speculate about how we could take Carvana’s car vending machines and turn them into Autopian clubhouses.
That didn’t happen, and the lack of affordability in new cars has meant that Carvana’s relatively easy online car-buying process has translated into it now joining the elite companies in the S&P 500.
It’s a milestone for Tempe, Arizona-based Carvana, which has jumped to around $400 per share currently from a 2022 low of less than $4 — a 10,000% gain — as its efforts to cut costs and restructure debt have helped boost earnings. The company said it sold a record of about 156,000 vehicles in the most recent quarter.
What a ride.
Wayne Griffiths Has A Gin
I didn’t expect this one. SEAT/Cupra is VW’s Spanish offshoot. They’re also a pair of brands that represent a mix of fun, affordable cars and a mix of hybrids and electric cars. It’s sort of everything that the actual Volkswagen brand hasn’t been in a while.
At the center of that, as Automotive News reports, was Wayne Griffiths:
Griffiths, who became CEO of Seat and Cupra in 2020, was a well-regarded automotive executive within VW Group. He was selected as an Automotive News Europe Eurostar in 2023.
The British executive had large ambitions for Cupra. The Spanish brand last year revealed intentions to sell vehicles in the U.S.
By November 2024, Cupra said it had begun preliminary talks with auto retail giant Penske Automotive Group for an exclusive partnership to retail sporty crossovers to younger U.S. consumers by 2030.
Griffiths left, and thanks to his LinkedIn page, we now know why:
I’ve wanted to do something like this for years, but the timing was never right. Now, I finally had the space to follow an idea that had been quietly growing for a long time. Because sometimes in life you have to follow your passions, wherever they take you.
This really is something truly unique: a gin that dispenses with anything that isn’t 100% natural, to create a precious distillate using only the quintessence of natural alcohol and botanicals.
No shortcuts, no artificial flavourings, nothing added. Only real ingredients, carefully selected and treated with the patience they deserve.
I love a good botanical gin. Wayne, if you’re reading this, please send me some. Also, respect. I respect it. You only have so much time on this planet, don’t waste it.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
There’s a new documentary on the singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, and it’s got me revisiting his catalog. Here’s “Lover, You Should Have Come Over.”
The Big Statement/The Big Question
I want to thank all of you for supporting this place by reading, sharing, commenting, and becoming a member. Today is the anniversary of the launch of our membership program, which means a lot of you are renewing this week. Thank you! It’s an incredible dream to keep doing this, and it’s impossible without all of you.
Ok, question time. It’s bizarro-world, but it’s not all bad bizarro. What’s the best piece of unexpected good news that’s come out of the post-G8 cancellation world?
Top photo: Carvana
One of the most fun cars you can buy is a Corolla.
The GM division which makes no sports cars is going into F1.
Whatever it is that Jaguar did.
A car company made a new model which was smaller and lighter than its predecessor (ND vs. NC).
Some of the best styled cars available are Hyundai/Kias.
Speaking of Hyundai, it was the first company to make a fun EV.
I could go on. Or just quote the Hitchhiker’s Guide:
“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
The best Uber/Bolt/Taxi/rental I’ve had the pleasure of riding in are Toyota Corolla Wagons. With the hHybrid gave them the snap off the line in heavy traffic, reasonably small size to make it in urban environments, reasonably good fuel economy that I don’t need to keep an eye on the gauge, and large enough to fit a family of four plus luggage (or 5 with the Uber/Bolt driver)
Personally, I blame the Large Hadron Collider.
I think when they first turned it on, it generated a warp bubble that we’ve been stuck in with an alternate reality. The real reality is continuing and when the bubble pops, everyone in this timeline disappears and the real-time line continues.
Oh no, it’s the “Remember Me” episode of TNG. The warp bubble is continually shrinking and I don’t think the Traveler will save us.
I can’t read Hadron without switching the D and the R. My sense of humor is still that of a 12-year old.
Admittedly, drinking makes the world make more sense at this juncture in time, so I’d likely pivot to a distillery if I had CEO level money.
Because I’m sober (and don’t like gin), I find the incessant babbling of the Bizarro World of ‘social media/the internet and whatever the next tech scheme is/Wall Street/most high-level politics’ mostly exhausting and a waste of otherwise useful resources. If you can’t sound smart, at least baffle them with BS, I suppose.
The ginding reality of ‘I’m trying to survive/chip away at my colossal debt pile/make sure my loved ones are cared for’ is acutal reality. Less exciting, but more rewarding.
Best news in recent times? David’s going to be building a Jeep and I’m excited to see the articles about it. Especially since this project won’t make me wonder if he’s got his tetanus shot up-to-date.
Don’t be ridiculous. David will find a way to cut himself on some bit of NOS Jeep with 80yo virus on it. He’d best make sure that shot is up to date. But I am looking forward to these articles too.
I DEFINITELY agree with the rest of your take, and at this point Wall Street is very obviously even more detached from reality than Donald J. Trump. I’m just thankful that I don’t have any debt. Nor anyone to be responsible for other than a small but demanding cat. I managed to go about five years sans furry mistress before the parasites in my brain demanded I get another one.
I always kinda figured that if they got the paperwork shit in order, Carvana would do well. It’s the only negative thing I’d heard about them, in general. (I bought my last car through Carvana in pre-COVID 2020, and didn’t finance through them, so I had to do some hoop-jumping to get things in order, but it wasn’t _too_ onerous.)
I also feel like the time has never been quite right for me to pursue my dream of selling gin.
Actual good news it hard to come by, it’s usually bloviated statements on ideas.
For me I guess it was all those political Twitter accounts passing themselves off as US Citizens being exposed for being anywhere but the US.
DOWN WITH THE BOTS! DOWN WITH THE AI! DOWN WITH THE SCAMMERS!
X pel them fake news fake accounts.
Did I miss the explanation of why this is bizarro world or what the G8 has to do with it?
I think it’s because Carvana is going public, while the ship is basically sunk.
Could be wrong though.
Yeah, it’s up top in the intro. A lot of the headlines in this dump wouldn’t have made sense a couple years ago.
Personally, I blame the existence of civilian-only Hummers as the harbinger of the bad times.
Last time Hummer was spun into a whole brand of platform-sharing plastic, we got the Great Recession. We’ve got the Hummer EV now, and would you look at that: it sucks out there.
GM, stop doing this to us.
I wish I could go into hibernation for the next 1138 days
We need a hibernation membership tier. “Battery Tender” or something. If you really want to keep with the textile theme, call it a “Nap.”
Thx for that.
What, nobody catching the George Lucas reference?
Are you sure you’re going to want to wake up when we get there?
As Moira Rose exclaimed in Schitt’s Creek: “I’d kill for a good coma right now.”
I have been seeing some news cycle rumblings about sub 20K Tesla 2’s and the whole Slate thing has not fully gone away. Seem possible these two things might have some sway on Kei sized car sales. But I figure it mostly was just an old dude on his latest trip to the land of the rising sun that saw an Autozam or a Beat on the street and though, that is a cute car, we should build them, American would buy them…yet he has little understanding of the viability of that in the US. Even if they took all emissions and safety stuff off them and could somehow make money on them at a price point under 20k, the number of people buying them would still be limited. (I would definitely buy a new 15K Autozam, if, of course, my 6 foot frame fit in one)
If we’re in the Bizarro world, then where is…the destructo beam?
Right now, Marvin the Martian is saying “Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be a Earth-shattering kaboom.”
Best thing to happen is electric vehicles going mainstream. It’s made all cars step up their game for power, efficiency and features.
This is a good take.
Insane Clown Posse is touring in 26. NASCAR, dunno, stopped following it 50 years ago. Carvana isn’t available in my area, so I don’t care. I’m sure that they will manage to implode again. Not a gin fan. A Seat or Cupra would be nice if they came to Canada, although I am not fond of VW products. The Buckley Biopic is good.
Tiny cars will not happen.
Agreed that American kei cars are a non-starter. The current administration can force legislation to relax safety regs for tiny cars (or do it via executive order) but American manufacturers can’t sustainably build and sell tiny cars if there’s no profit to be had in the process.
I haven’t seen the biopic, but I’m a fan of Jeff Buckley since a GF introduced him to me 20 years ago.
I suspect that there isn’t much of a market for them. I cannot fit in one without subtractive surgery.
Buckley was an amazing talent gone too soon.
I don’t think most here realize just how tiny those things are. I have friends who wouldn’t ride in my ’18 Fiat Spider because it “looked unsafe”.
Automakers can’t sell Mirages and Versas profitably, anything smaller is a nonstarter. Though I am all for allowing people to personally import whatever they please with no restrictions. I won’t amount to enough cars to matter. Put a nice stiff “environmental impact fee” on it if needs be.
Just curious: do you have a link to any data confirming that Nissan and Mitsubishi didn’t make any profit on Versas or Mirages? They both sold a lot of those models, and I can’t imagine they’d sustain that for an ongoing loss. The fact that both models have been retired doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t have some profit in them.
It doesn’t matter whether they made SOME profit – they didn’t make enough to want to continue selling them – even though sales of both had been increasing. That alone is telling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36YBORWk09o
Fantastic!
Trump says all sorts of crap (“they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats!”) because he is a *senile* old man. This is not “the Administration” this is the random rantings of a man who has no business being President.
This is NEVER going to happen, and even if by some miracle it did, the numbers sold would be miniscule in a country where the best selling category of vehicle is Canyonero. And the next actually adult administration will undo it anyway, so any automaker who does ANYTHING based on Trump’s ramblings is run by morons.
Stellantis has entered the chat.
Is there a car company MORE run by morons? Oh, wait, Nissan still exists. How have those two not merged yet?
I’ll throw jaguar and Aston’s hat into the ring.
Jaguar sure seems to be doing fabulously stupid things at the moment (other than firing the designer, that seems like a ray of hope) – but what is Aston Martin doing wrong? I don’t pay any attention to them, so genuinely asking. They just seem like they sell what they always have, pretty, but very expensive gentleman’s carriages, plus a naff crossover thing because we live in the worst timeline (assume it’s their best seller at this point). Not like that company has ever been a money-making proposition.
My problem is they both have relatively good brand equity. It’s astounding that neither company seems to be able to execute a climb into the Ferrari Lamborghini, McLaren money space. I’m sure that there is enough free money sloshing around for them to sop up with product. Both firms appear to be stuck in the middle market and are trying to build down rather than up. Financing ‘should’ be relatively easy to line up with a smart business plan.
I can buy that for Aston Martin, but not Jaguar. Thier market space has always been a British alternative to the mid-tier Germans, with a healthy dose of bargain pricing comparatively. Plus the sundry sports cars. Sadly, I think the jig is up for them – nobody wants sedans anymore, darned few want sports cars that aren’t hypercars or Porsches, and with Tata also owning Land Rover/Range Rover, Jaguar SUVs are completely and utterly pointless. They need to just need to call it a day already.
Aston Martin, yeah, no idea why they can’t seem to ever break BACK into the big leagues. They were absolutely a Ferrari competitor in the 50s and 60s, on the road and on the track, but sort of lost the plot for a long time. But I also feel like there has to be a market between Porsche and Ferrari. I guess the market for traditional grand tourers is pretty dead too. That they looked just like much cheaper Jags under Ford’s tutelage is probably a big part of the problem.
You’re assuming that someone less bad than that current admin will take power.
There is literally nowhere to go but up. Hitler died 80 years ago.
Enough politics for now. Too boring.
Do tiny cars look larger when driven by people with small hands?
Oh dear.
Do they come in gold?
Kids like them. (I went there.)
You should be able to get the entire administration in one easily.
A company with a 10,000% short term gain isn’t a stable company, but I guess even the index funds are into short term gains now instead of long term profitability.
Carvana now has two years (soon to be three) of profitability under its belt. I have not read enough of their materials to see how they have generated gross margins over 20% last year (this is puzzling), but the equity market is predicting ongoing increases in profitability and cash flow – it is trading at a P/E multiple of nearly 100, which implies like 5X profits growth in the next few years… which is unlikely (?). They have figured out how to make money on their current volume, which seems to not be going up like a hockey stick anymore. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Small cars not being physically or economically feasible is a regulations issue, which can in fact be changed. They could make a carve out that allows small cheap cars to skirt many safety or emissions requirements which makes all this possible. What remains to be seen is if they can do that without special interest groups freaking out about the cars being unsafe and killing any proposals in their tracks because “won’t someone think of the kids!?!” when the reality is that due to a lack of affordable new cars you push people to buy or continue driving rusted out shitboxes. I don’t think the proposed small cars will go anywhere but would fully support it if they do actually gain a bit of momentum for the idea.
The Smart Cars were surprisingly safe due to the High strength steel surround structure, yet they sold so poorly, nobody really wanted them in the end. Except Mercedes of course. they had tiny little motors, but fuel economy was just meh and the prices were probably the main issue. But they came off as a Kei Car in all but name to me.
The smart car is a poor example imo. For one it did actually have to meet all the requirements other vehicles had to. There was both cost and packaging compromises that went into it. The result was a car that wasn’t as cheap as it needed to be while making poor use of the space it took up.
They were small for the sake of being small and very expensive. $23,800 – $28,000 in 2017. That same year you could buy a Subaru Crosstrek for $21,600 MSRP (I couldn’t find actual transaction prices). Most of that was safety regs, even though they were still deathtraps if you were hit by someone else (mass always wins). Crash testing only simulates impacts with a vehicle of identical mass, so a hummer EV hitting you head on is much worse than hitting a brick wall.
It is also a market demand issue – there isn’t any demand for them in the US.
Reality is you can’t sell a brand-new KEI car in the US for what a 3yo Corolla costs, even if you waive every standard there is. There is no world in which they would be cheap enough to be competitive with “rusted out shitboxes”. And at that point, good luck when they get hit by Canyoneros and families get wiped out. Even the Japanese mainly bought the things because they were the only way to buy a car without having to prove you had a very expensive place to park it.
Rusted out shitboxes may have been an exaggeration, but material cost and vehicle complexity are the primary drivers of vehicle cost. If you want cheaper cars you have to cut down on those two items and the only way to do that in any meaningful way is allow cars that can skirt some regulations.
There is very little to zero savings to be had in making a vehicle smaller, and the market today demands a certain level of complexity that is not going away. There are not enough basement dwellers wanting brand-new ’76 VW Rabbits with 50hp and manual everything that might as well have a spike in the middle of the steering wheel in terms of crash safety to make a business case for them in the US. Buy a used Corolla if you want a cheap small car.
Size of vehicle is directly tied to the amount of raw materials, the single largest cost driver at 47% of total vehicle cost https://finance.yahoo.com/news/raw-materials-biggest-cost-driver-180628123.html
It’s ridiculous to say making cars smaller won’t result in less cost.
The best selling kei vehicle in Japan today is the Honda N-Box which starts at 1,881,000 yen, this is equivalent to $12,076 usd and that includes a 10% consumption tax. You can’t tell me there wouldn’t be demand for a brand new 4 door Honda which stickers for $11,000 in 2026.
There is very little difference in materials going from size to size in cars. Cars are mostly *air*. And really small cars end up disproportionately expensive as the engineering ends up needing to be more clever and thus more expensive. Why do you think pickup trucks are such utter cash cows? Big, dumb, built on the cheap is the polar opposite of tiny cars.
It would be nowhere near that price in the US, you can never just do a straight currency conversion of the price in another market. It doesn’t work that way, at all. It would be MAYBE $2K less than what a Civic starts at.
“There is very little difference in materials going from size to size in cars.”
Right because we all know a Kei car weighs roughly the same as an F150
Way to miss the point – which is that there is very little difference in cost between the smallest car and the next size up, and that car and the next size up, etc. And the smallest one may actually be MORE expensive than the larger to manufacture, but manufacturing accounting is a funny thing where you actually CAN make it up in volume in various ways.
It is also worth noting that a new Civic in Japan starts at 3,450,000 yen, or a bit less than double the cost of the N-Box. There is zero reason that cost difference couldn’t also be done here. Japan and US labor costs are similar.
But US distribution costs are not.
I’m not making some hypothetical argument here, the Civic and the N-Box are 2 cars made at the same time, by the same company, sold in the same country, under 2 different sets of regulations. The N-Box is an entire 46% cheaper. Even I was shocked the difference is that much. It’s not even the cheapest Kei car out there.
You are absolutely making a hypothetical argument. You cannot compare prices between wildly disparate countries (you can barely compare prices between the US and Canada at this point). Completely different market, completely different competitive environment. Completely different tax and tariff environment (HUGE one – how much of the price of a Civic in Japan is tax vs. a Kei car?). Honda could well be losing their shirt on them too. There is simply no way it would be half the price of a Civic in the US. I would be shocked if it ended up any cheaper than a Fit was. And Honda couldn’t sell enough of those to bother continuing to sell them. Americans do not buy tiny cars.
This will be my last reply here. Claiming smaller cars aren’t substantially cheaper is certainly a take but it’s nearly universally false no matter the country, brand, or if the vehicle is luxury or mainstream. It’s why a Maverick costs less than a F150, it’s why a Trax costs less than a Tahoe. It’s why an A3 costs less than an A8. Producing and selling smaller cars is perhaps the only way to substantially cut costs from a modern vehicle. Whether they would be accepted by the US consumer is another question entirely, but it is possible they could carve out a large enough share. The Maverick is tiny by modern truck standards but large compared to a Kei vehicle. People can’t get enough of them so it shows people don’t outright reject smaller vehicles if they suit their needs. It’s been a fun debate,appreciate that it didn’t devolve to name calling ect… Have a lovely evening.
A Maverick costs less than an F-150 mostly because Ford makes less money on them. A LOT less in many cases. F-150s cost what they do because people are willing to pay that much for them. Do you REALLY think a loaded Platinum Dude Ranch costs Ford 2.5X as much to build as a basic work truck? Or that a truck much SMALLER than a Maverick would cost any meaningful amount less to build? Pricing is nowhere near as tied to material cost as you seem to think it is.
You need to go back to school for a business degree. Or if you have one, you should ask for a refund.
You are correct about material cost. I used to work with someone who’d been an operations manager at Ford. He told me that a mid-1990s Lincoln Town Car had a total sheet metal cost to Ford of $500. Even if you double that now for inflation, making a car 1/3 the size of a Town Car would save what, $600 in sheet metal cost? Obviously there are significant other manufacturing costs, but metal is cheap.
One reason Honda stopped selling the Fit in the US was that the difference between dealer cost and MSRP was only $600 (second generation). Neither dealers nor Honda were making any money compared to, say, a Civic.
Exactly. People are under a wildly misguided impression that smaller cars are much cheaper to build. They are not. And as I keep saying, today, it gets to a point where the more expensive engineering needed to make them safe enough and fit everything into a tiny package makes them cost MORE. Steel, glass, and plastic are dirt cheap, and a smaller car doesn’t use much less of them.
You are correct that size plays an incredibly large factor in total vehicle cost. This is just a fact.
But the idea that people want to buy inexpensive vehicles, even when the cars are good is also false. The sub-$20k compact car market is rapidly shrinking to almost zero. There’s no more Versa, Fit, Rio, Yaris, Fiesta, Sonic, or Accent and the best value of them all, the Mirage is now discontinued.
Cost will not be a factor again as long as 96 month loans remain a thing.
It doesn’t in the way he thinks it does. The materials cost between a Versa and a Sentra probably rounds to “there really isn’t any”. But the Versa has to sell for substantially less money to sell at all. You aren’t going to halve the cost of a car by making it slightly smaller.
The marginal profit as a % on smaller cars is almost certainly smaller on smaller cars but the 400-500 lbs on a Sentra don’t come free even if the delta in steel might only be $50.
It is a largely meaningless amount of cost savings. It is literally mostly just air. Obviously, the cost savings isn’t commensurate with the difference in profit or the automakers would still be building these smaller cars. You save a few hundred in cost, but have to sell the car for thousands less to have them sell at all. See the problem? Making them even smaller does not help, and it starts to hurt more and more – see as examples the Scion iQ or a Smart ForTwo, both of which were MUCH more expensive to build than much larger cars. Crash engineering in particular just gets more and more expensive as the car gets smaller – for less result.
400-500 additional pounds of material in the case of Versa vs Sentra is the antithesis of “literally mostly just air.”
Aside from being motor vehicles, you’re comparing a lot of very differentiated products. A Smart and an IQ are similar size but otherwise very different products – The IQ was very inexpensive (and built in Japan) and the Smart was fairly pricey (and built in France). But most importantly you’re straying from the original argument in which you suggest that a a compact car and a full-sized truck cost essentially the same to build and use essentially the same amount of materials.
I never once implied that small cars and pickup trucks cost the same to build. Re-read what I wrote. Pickups are cash cows because they are big and dumb and cheap to build in a way that small cars simply are not.
This is a subject you obviously know nothing about, so this conversation is over. Go read some books on auto manufacturing and learn something.
Years back a friend ran a pizza store chain. He said that an xl pie cost only slightly more to make than a small. He made at least double and on some pies triple the profit.
I’d assert that the NA car manufacturers have found the same thing. People assume that bigger is always better, (manufacturers are unlikely to disabuse the marks of the assumption) safer, higher status so small cars will not sell here.
That is *exactly* the way it works, pretty much across the board in most industries. Incremental cost is miniscule once you are setup to make them to start with. Labor and design/engineering are far more expensive than incremental materiel cost the vast majority of the time. If you can, you price the cheapest to cover your basic costs, then the add-ons are nearly pure profit. Pickup trucks are truly the greatest expression of this in the automotive world. There is about a 3X span between the cheapest and most expensive possible version of a an F-OneFiddy, but I doubt there is even $20-30K difference in manufacturing cost between them. They might even lose a little on the most basic work trucks (though again, manufacturing accounting is a slippery, slippery thing, and volume does matter).
As I have said on here for some time now – people have no concept in the US of how much small cars should cost, because literally for *decades* CAFE meant that they were sold at a BIG loss per unit so that the automakers could sell the far more profitable big vehicles. Once “footprint” CAFE happened that went away, and so have small cars. Because small cars aren’t notably cheaper to make than not-so-small cars that sell for more money. Also why the automakers LOVE CUVs so much – they cost about nothing more to make than whatever sedan/hatch they share a platform with, but sell for thousands more.
That’s pretty much the way I see it.
I’ve never been in the automotive industry except as a consumer, but have done loads of work in telecoms, hw/sw and some light manufacturing as well as a fair bit of consulting to those industries. The same processes costing, margins and the rest are largely analogous IMO.
Same here. Plus lots of reading about the automotive industry – and some inside baseball knowledge from being in a couple of car clubs where I got to know some very high ups in the industry. It’s really not a mystery how it all works or why small cars are poison in the US from both the supply and demand sides.
And mind you – I like small cars (though good small cars, not cheap and uncheerful hairshirts).
Same, I like Hondas, Toyotas, Mazdas, Nissans and I’ve had a few British and German cars as well as well as an early Fiesta and a couple of Merkur. The British once you sort them out are not bad. I’ve had a lot of grief with German cars that I’ve whined about on here. It may have been the era or the car as they were actually less bad than the UK ones. There is a lot of quality problems I encountered for the price I paid.
There’s absolutely A market for Kei type cars, it’s just somewhat small. The pickups would replace Side by Side’s for rural use (have you seen how expensive a new Gator is?), while also being street legal everywhere (some counties have exemptions for off road vehicles like quads/dirtbikes/SxS to drive on the street). They would also be perfectly sufficient commuter cars for heavy urban areas (where parking is already a premium and surface street speeds are generally low). My somewhat educated guess is a maximum market penetration of 5%.
Throw a 55mph governor on them and make them illegal to drive on the interstate, good to go.
I hope Suzuki can come back to the US if regulations allow it, they are the experts on “tiny” cars that are fun and look good. Maybe they can partnership with Mitsubishi and use their footprint.
I do want a Pajero Mini and/or a Suzuki Jimny. Both would probably hurt the side by side sales now that those things are hitting the mid 20K to 35k price ranges regularly. And I would be ok with that.
Hey Matt, I too love a good botanical gin and am always on the lookout for solid recommendations. Any chance you can do that without violating journalistic ethics?
Because he asked to get sent some gin??
No. Only because I want him to recommend some bottles without being seen as in the pocket of some brand. I’m not accusing him of anything, I’m asking him to recommend a product if he can and recognizing he may not be able / willing to.
Highcler Castle and, btw, I would happy to be in the pocket of Big Gin. If a Gin brand would like to be sponsor, assuming it tastes good, I would be fine with that.
If you’re in their distribution area, Cold River (Freeport, ME) makes a fantastic gin, with a heavy emphasis on seven ‘traditional’ botanicals. As a bonus, it’s potato-based, not grain-based.
I’ll stump for my childhood home town here, because there is some good product coming from there. Downside is these may be tricky to find:
Middle West Spirits Vim & Petal and Lux & Umbra.
Less botanical, but a damn fine gin is Watershed’s Four Peel. Bonus in the late Summer/early Fall if you can find Four Peel Strawberry; it’s practically a cocktail in a bottle.
If you want a weird cross of gin and whiskey, check out Echo Spirits Genever.
St. George Spirits in Alameda, CA makes several gins. I even find them interesting, though I’m mainly a single malt whisky aficionado.
I want a Pontiac G8 ST sport truck.
I want Jordan to win but I don’t really know what I want him to win out of this. I think the France family are mainly idiots who have made the sport worse with seemingly every single decision they’ve made going back 25 years so I feel like they need to feel pain of some sort for once. What that amounts to, I have no real idea. The sport just feels like it’s Nascar telling the teams that they are going to be inflicted with pain and they have to take it or leave. They are making a $1billion+ from tv rights alone while doing this stuff so yeah. I guess what I’m saying is that the hammer needs to be dropped.
Is there anybody left in Britain who doesn’t have their own brand of gin at this point?
I was skeptical at first, but Asian Parsnip was a decidedly decent flavour add to a G&T.
Me, but only cos my fiancée won’t let me buy one of those computerised mini-still thingummies. Otherwise, I would be distilling all kinds of crazy shit :/
So, tell me more about these computerized mini-still thingummies? I am intrigued…
These, which somehow cost twice what they did last ime I looked. But then, what fuckin doesn’t?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Still-Spirits-Air-System-Distilling/dp/B015R7EG7I/ref=sxin_24_pa_sp_phone_search_thematic_sspa?content-id=amzn1.sym.6abef4fb-b8b2-49d9-b820-ce18d03905a3%3Aamzn1.sym.6abef4fb-b8b2-49d9-b820-ce18d03905a3&crid=XDTOTI46C187&cv_ct_cx=mini+still&keywords=mini+still&pd_rd_i=B015R7EG7I&pd_rd_r=9af5052e-c9c0-49b4-a7a6-2eeca38e4fc8&pd_rd_w=bjmdL&pd_rd_wg=huirs&pf_rd_p=6abef4fb-b8b2-49d9-b820-ce18d03905a3&pf_rd_r=C9H5JQ8CBJ1C0EEDG1XT&qid=1765326366&sprefix=mini+still%2Caps%2C139&sr=1-1-ad3222ed-9545-4dc8-8dd8-6b2cb5278509-spons&aref=fbXszKfC4V&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfdGhlbWF0aWM&psc=1
I was definitely wrong when I thought that Carvana would fail after they were shut down in multiple states, but I am out of touch with what the market will bear. Starting a (partially) member supported automotive news site was definitely unexpected but that’s turned out pretty well so far. Hyundai/Genesis making a genuine luxury car was also unexpected but those are nice cars. I think next I am ready for BMW to make a car that I would actually want to buy or have on a poster again. Tell me that wouldn’t be CRAZY?
NASCAR (along with F1, TBH) feels a lot like WWE these days. Legally speaking, WWE is not a “sport”, because it is scripted and the outcome is determined in advance. In the eyes of the law, WWE is classified as “entertainment”, and so should NASCAR be classified.
Here’s how the tiny car thing is going to go:
NASCAR is as much a hereditary dictatorship as that silly island in Europe with King Upchuck. I hope Jordan, Hamlin, and Jenkins blow it to smithereens.
Hereditary is, too often, synonymous with Inbred.
I’m not going to try too hard to make sense of this, but Trump usually has an angle, and I’m wondering what his angle is on small cars / kei cars. Is it to further separate the haves from the have-nots in the vehicles they drive? Is it to boost American manufacturing (not sure why the size of car matters for that, but whatever)? Is it to give UTV/ATV manufacturers a pathway to selling their utility vehicles as cars for the road?
I love kei cars, but they are a product of uniquely Japanese rulemaking, tax code, and now, culture. They just don’t translate well outside of Japan as evidenced by the fact I’ve traveled across Europe and Asia and kei cars don’t exist outside of Japan.
Sure, Europe has small cars, but even those are getting larger, and even diminutive Euro city cars still typically have much larger engines than kei vehicles.
You’re overthinking it. He “heard” that some people like these cars, so he pretended he cares about them by blowing sunshine up their asses. Nothing more to it, I’m afraid.
Fair enough.
I made a similar comment when the kei car hullabaloo first started. If you squint a bit it sure seems like a way to further distinguish who the not-rich people are.
Oh yeah, this is just a random shiny object Trump has paid attention to briefly, but I’m all in on a TACO bet for U.S. kei cars.
He saw some Japanese hotties the same age as his granddaughter driving in some cute cars, and decided they had the right stuff to win beauty pageants. Nothing more serious than that.
This seems like a depressingly accurate take.
He misses calling his friend to talk about the barely legal talent
Slow news cycle, I’ll throw this out and see what happens.
Who would have thought, it worked!
Just like everything else this administration does: Unless the policy announcement is somehow cruel or self-satisfying, it is just to get attention for attention’s sake. They will follow through whole-heartedly on the cruel stuff.
Carvana is more or less just a giant grift and we have the most grift friendly administration in US history, so I am unsurprised that they’re suddenly doing well. They’re more or less just a national buy here, pay here lot that happens to be flush with that sweet sweet tech blood money.
Is Carvana any worse than any other used car dealer? Honest question as I’ve never used them.
I have been to CARMAX, both to get a car appraised and potentially to buy. The offer they gave for my car wasn’t amazing, but wasn’t insulting either. I very nearly bought a car from them, and they were great to work with through the whole process. I ended finding what I was looking for a little cheaper somewhere else, but I would have been happy had I bought it from them.
Carvana’s in house financing is highly predatory and they’re notoriously un-thorough in their inspections. Carmax is far from perfect, but due to their structure and practices they’re unlikely to sell you a total piece of shit, and when they do they’re obligated to work with you to make it right if you filled out the paperwork correctly. Carvana sells total pieces of shit every day and they don’t care. There’s an infinite flow of horror stories about buying from them that’s a quick Google away.
And to build off my first point they make it way too easy to make a terrible financial decision because their process is so streamlined. The average consumer who wants or actually needs a car RIGHT NOW isn’t going to be as thorough as they should be. I’ve poked around on their website a few times and entered my info to see what sort of deal could be made and every single one was absolutely horrendous.
I have excellent credit and the interest rates they were quoting me were near or even in double digits. I can’t even begin to fathom what they look like for people that aren’t as fortunate…and it’s just so easy to click a couple times and suddenly be roped into a terrible deal.
All car dealerships are predatory leaches on society, but Carvana stands out as uniquely dystopian, which is a real accomplishment. When your unfriendly neighborhood Toyota dealer that’s going to try to put $3,000 in “dealer added accessories” on your car and raw dog you trade, and offer 5.99% APR financing looks nice by comparison you done fucked up.
Wasn’t a big piece of Carvana’s woes that they were in the habit of selling cars in states that they could not be legally registered in and then not EVER finishing the paperwork that would rectify the situation? I though that was them, but maybe it’s some other “car dealer as a platform” company that lives to starve both the buyer and seller while selling everyone’s personal data to anyone with a penny.
No that was Carvana
Anyone who goes anywhere near ANY car dealership without financing prearranged via their own financial institution needs to have their head examined. Caveat Emptor.
It depends on what the offers are. If you know your bank or credit union isn’t going to match the 0.9% or whatever they have advertised and you have good enough credit to qualify for it I think it’s fine just going that route. I’ve dealer financed both my cars and got 0% interest on one and 2.75% on the other.
Doesn’t matter whether you actually use it or not. If you have financing in-hand the dealership will try to beat it to seal the deal and make their kickback (for Dog’s sake don’t tell them what that rate is other than “commensurate with my perfect credit score”).
You and I may easily qualify for those super low rate offers, and should certainly take advantage of them if possible, but many, many, many people will not, and the dealership will *cheerfully* mark up the rate as much as they think they can get away with – that is just good business. And there is no such thing as 0% on a used car anyway, which is Carmax’ primary business.
Of the myriad cars I have bought, several times the dealer has beaten my bank – and in one case, beat their own advertised “special rate”. But I have no doubt that at best I would have just gotten that rate had I not been pre-approved with my bank.
I will gladly take this advice to the negotiating table next time, gracias
HTH – I learned a good few lessons the hard way buying too damned many cars over the years, might as well share what I can.
My last two cars, I tried doing that. The first one, we were still banking with Wells Fargo. They offered us like 14% interest, despite having really good credit and a long history with WF. Even the loan guy said their auto loans were terrible and suggested going elsewhere. We ended up getting something like 2.9% at the dealership.
The other one, we sat in the lobby at our credit union waiting for a banker. After an hour and a half, we had a credit offer at something like 4% or something like that. Get to the dealer, they run our credit, and their first offer was for the same rate at our credit union. We ended up just financing through the dealer since we were already there.
Wells Fargo are known crooks – why do you bank with them to start with?
YMMV. As I said, I have had dealerships beat my bank on occasion, but my bank has beat them just as often. At the end of the day, it’s *leverage*. They are incentivized to not screw you when they know you are not depending on them for financing.
My wife started with them because that’s who her student loans were serviced through. I started with them because I moved to another state and wanted a bank that had branches in my home state as well as where I was living.
We no longer bank with WF because they are crooks. When they had that scandal with employees opening accounts for customers without telling them, we were probably part of that. We sat down with a banker one time and he looked at our accounts, and saw that there was one that never had any activity and quickly turned the screen away from us and didn’t show it again. Shortly after that, we were done with them.
Smart move. I am amazed they are still in business after all the scandals. Not like there is any shortage of banks out there, and there is nothing more portable than money. Overall, I much prefer dealing with credit unions, but I do have accounts with a large bank as well because they have branches near both of my homes. But they are not competitive with credit unions when it comes to auto loans.
Add: “by a proctologist.”
YES! ROFL!
Carvana bought a truck from us a while back. The back window was busted out of the cap, but there was no way to indicate that kind of damage on their online application. I was bugging customer service about it to avoid an issue when they picked it up, and finally some honest soul was like, “Look, they literally don’t care.” This was confirmed when the actual inspection took like 60 seconds.
At least your comment explains how a company that offered about $9K more than anyone else is in business …
Like any other freakish mutant that comes crawling like a Dybbuk out of the late capitalist hell factory that is Silicone Valley, Carvana is entirely dependent on financially illiterate lower and middle class people over leveraging themselves….
I’ve sold cars to both and been very happy with the results – I literally got what I paid for my GTI new from Carvana when it was four years old. I find both to have absolutely laughable pricing on mostly underwhelming used cars that you can buy anywhere else for less. But the laughable pricing is what allows them to buy cars at pretty top of the market prices.
I rarely find the sales process much of a problem anywhere. If I feel like I am being jerked around, I am out the door. I have never once in my life NEEDED to buy a car, but they need to sell them to eat.
I bought a used car from Carvana during the pandemic when cars were sparse in dealer lots. It was a pleasant process. I think you can find better deals if you spend some time looking around these days, but for people who don’t care that much about cross-shopping Carvana is probably better than many dealer experiences.
Fixed take-it-or-leave it pricing is usually an expensive convenience. Everybody gets screwed equally though.