re: WSJ: Desperate for sales, Ford courts riskier borrowers to sell F-150 pickups

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just don’t get it. A golden opportunity for any auto maker to make a simple bare bones truck.

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What does this mean?

It has a vinyl seat?

It's also probably gonna have:
Active fuel management/cylinder deactivation
A 10 speed transmission
A turbo charged engine
Sensors in the front and back seats ensuring everyone has their seatbelt on
Mandated reminders to check your backseat for toddlers (even though you ignore it).

All of this adds cost. All of this is mandated by the Federal Government, and to a lesser extent, the State of California.

Government got us here more than shitty car companies.

Toyota and Honda were making damn near perfect and indestructible vehicles in the 1990s. Now they're equipped with CVTs and Turbos and all kinds of other shite that are the enemy of reliability and longevity.

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Repo men salivating right now.

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Last I heard, there is already no shortage of work for them.

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Good deal until you realize that the truck is overpriced

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I can't give anyone $80K for a pickup truck. Especially how unreliable they all seem to be these days. I don't want a digital speedometer or a flat screen thermostat, or a bed door that goes up and down automatically. All that is to me is a thousand dollar fix that is completely unnecessary. Give me a K10, that's easy to work on if I have to and parts that are easily available.

I see a Federal bailout when Ford Motor Credit tanks.

I have a friend with a dealer's license. If I ever need a F-250, I'll just send him to the auction to pick me up one of these repos next year.

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it's a sign that people are finally revolting against the massive price hikes from Detroit.

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hopefully. Truck prices cannot be sustainable. They're ridiculous.

And as someone who has excellent credit, I'd be pretty pissed that people with less financial responsibility and discipline get the same rate.

What do people with excellent credit get since Ford has essentially marginalized one's credit score?

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Repo men salivating right now.

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It doesn’t get mentioned enough but that is a dangerous fricking job. The fiancé did repo as a second job out of HS and the stories he tells are nuts.

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$1300 a month for a fricking pickup truck????

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And many of these are being bought by people just getting started in their career. It's like financially handicapping themselves for life.

They'll see so many missed opportunities to build wealth because they spent too much on an unreliable, overly complex truck they don't need at a young age. Most of them would do fine in a Toyota Camry or Honda Ridgeline - which are not only more fuel efficient, but also more reliable and cheaper to insure.

Going to suggest something to our 20-30 year olds looking for wheels:

Buy a reliable old beater and save your money. It's so liberating to be able to drive something that's already got door dings and scuff marks on it. You can park it anywhere and not really worry about some half wit backing into it. If a hail storm comes by....you don't really care. You don't need to wash it every couple of weeks. And it's not a big deal if you spill something in it. Cheap and reliable is the secret here. You don't need high quality. You don't need high tech. You don't need to prove anything to anyone with the car you drive.

Some examples:

YAWN - check out this 10 year old Rav4 with a far from flawless paint job in the popular boring color.



The seats are pre-stained.
It's got 17" wheels so tires are cheap.
It has a super reliable 2.5L Toyota 4 banger - the kind with timing chains and not timing belts.
It's got 120,000 miles and some dings, but who cares? The most you'll have to do to this thing is to replace the battery and some light bulbs.

Sell it to some 16 year old girl after 5 years - this thing will still be running.




Need to haul shite around? Check out a 7 year old compact pickup truck (from Nissan, Ford or Chevrolet specifically) with 100,000 miles for less than half the price of a stripped down new model



Easy to park? Check.
Can tow a UHAUL? Check.
Too ugly to care about scratching up the bed to move to your new apartment? Check.
Readily available parts for repairs and bodywork? Check.
Scoop this pile up for cheap and drive it for 5 years; put the cash you save into a brokerage account and use it as a down payment on something that actually builds wealth - like real estate or a small business. Later in life you can put mud tires on it and use it as a hunting rig.



Try to stay awake, because we are looking at a 6-8 year old Malibu



These things can be found for under $15K with less than 80K miles.

This thing looks like some government-issued boring-mobile driven by whatever mid level bureaucrat that checked it out of the motor pool that day because that's probably exactly what it was.
It's designed to be cheap to operate as a fleet vehicle - the tires are cheap. The brake pads are cheap. It sips on the cheapest gas available. You could even swap out the engine for cheap if you had to.

Think of this as a modernized 2001 Ford Taurus - Hertz Edition. It's front drive so it can handle the snowy rust belt just fine, and you won't give a shite if the salt spray causes some rust under neath - this thing isn't worth much to begin with, so it can't lose much in value.

The infotainment is one of the easiest to operate in the business and this thing will do 80 and still be whisper quiet. And you won't have to worry about speeding tickets because the cops will never notice you.

This is the perfect car for a 23 year old that just got their first job, drives a lot on the highway, and doesn't want to burn cash on a new vehicle or waste money on gasoline for a big SUV.

Love these threads where a bunch of dudes who drive full size trucks tell everybody they should buy a Corolla. Not taking a moment to think about why they bought the full size truck.