I was a car junkie a few years ago. By that I mean I can call out the brand and models of most cars on the road; and I visited the dealership and test drive from time to time. Not to mention I spent tons of time on the car web sites, such as edmunds, autotrader, cars. com, etc.
This is all past for me. I am no longer that enthusiatic on cars any more. I felt while luxury cars and SUVs are great, I can live with my current 5 years old middle size sedan. Basically car is a tool to get me from point A to point B: with good fuel efficiency, reliability, and safety. On the other hand, I can fully understand and respect my friends who fall in love with their cars: the style, the color, the feel of “driving machine”. It’s just that I am cheap on my car these days. I will ignore the “Service Engine Soon” light because I think it’s a nusance. I also ignored the windshield wiper noise for half year before fixing them.
I read an interesting article from Yahoo Finance the other day. And I agree what the author said. In the article the author strongly suggest buying used cars to save some money. I still remember my American mom once said “when you drive a new car off the lot, you lose several thousand dollars”.
I am not suggesting we all hold on buying new cars. It’s just from personal finance point of view, used car makes sense for people like me. But if we all don’t buy new cars, how can the car companies and dealships survive (not to mention make money)? This will also have effect on its suppliers and the economy as a whole. I just heard from CBS “60 minutes” that if GM go bankrupcy, it will affect one million American jobs. Now I believe the GM Ad campaign “Keep America Rolling” after Sept. 11 is true.