| > Second owners are the ones to have to deal with the garbage gadgets stuck | > into the cars. New car manufacturers don't give a damn about second owners | > because they don't buy new cars. Manufacturers only have to appease the | > warranty crowd. | | While certainly the new car buyer is the *primary* concern of the | manufacturer, if the used car buyer quits buying the first owner's cast | offs, the used car value drops, which will have some effect on | purchasing decisions of new car buyers (i.e., anticipated low resale | value can cause them to buy a competitor's product instead). | | > Second owners who get fed up of failing power windows, horribly expensive | > alternator replacements, inaccessable wiper motors etc etc eventually end up | > being new car buyers to get that warranty. However, in the process, second | > owners tend to move to better made foreign cars. | | If that's true, then, again, the used market for the one-owner used | so-called domestic cars dries up, negatively impacting prices/ | saleability of both used and new. This being a Chrysler newsgroup, some | here probably understand the impact on the market of a reputation for | low resale value. 8^) |
Since this thread is cross-posted to Ford and GM Newsgroups, they probably understand low resale value as well. ;-)
I must buck the trend...I keep most vehicles well beyond the warranty...10-15 years and well into 100K miles...yet I always buy brand new when the time comes. One recent exception was a 2003 Chevy Malibu LS I dumped on CarMax about a year ago after putting up with it for 9 months. The car had way...WAY..WWWAAAAYYYY too many "auto" features on it for my taste. Drove me nuts ever time I got in the POS! I buy low end $16K or less models because I'm basically a cheap B**tard ant those models are basic...like I like them (or so I thought). Who would have thought a low-end model like the Malibu would have so many annoying things about it. Thankfully the "auto" speed-sensitive radio volume control could be disabled!! If only all of the other "auto" stuff could have been too. That might have made the car tolerable to own ;-) (although it had several other significant "quality" issues too and spent some time at the dealer for those). Anyway, replaced it with a 2004 Sebring...going on 14 months and not a single quality problem and everything (but the tranny) is manual...I'm in heaven!! :-) Yes I already know that the 2.7 Chrysler engine it has will probably not last 100K+ miles. But the Malibu 3.1 had it's piston slap and intake manifold gasket failure problems too...so...