this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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The problem is buying a thing whose primary purpose is utility, then paying more for esthetics, while desperately trying to forget that 99% of them will not last 20 years. If I buy a high quality dining room set, it will also have a lot of artistic consideration and could reasonably last hundreds of years.
I'd 100% disagree. Aesthetics are hugely important, especially in things you use every day. It's dumb to go into debt for it or otherwise ruin your life over it but if you have to use it every day you might as well enjoy it.
Also 99% of cars not making it to 20 years old is an absurd thing to say. The average age of a car in the USA is 12 years. Vehicle sales per year haven't changed that much. That means about half the cars on the road are over 20 years old.
And a dining room set lasting centuries? Technically possible but like not if you actually use it every day.
I have never once thought to myself, "This driving experience is so much better because this car is so pretty!" Better handling, more power, smoother ride, more comfortable interior, sure, all those things improve the experience. I'm also aware this is an opinion, where people will have different experiences, but unless you live in your car I can't imagine paying extra solely because you enjoy what that extra brings. The reasoning that causes this simply doesn't make sense to me, although I acknowledge that it happens (a lot).
And while the 99% number is incorrect, it is about as absurd as the 50% claim. Upon actual research rather than my gut instinct, this site puts the number of cars on the road after 20 years at 24%. Note that the weather where I live is harsher and the average age of cars is about a year less than in America, and that the distribution doesn't follow a normal curve so that percentage could be a few points lower where I live.
That site is geo-blocked in my region so I have no idea what it says but I'd just like to point out that
A: the USA actually exports a huge number of used cars so the average life of a car sold in the US will actually be longer than the average age of a car in the US.
And B: without a significant number of cars way older than 20 years old, there's no way for the average age to be 12 years old and only 24% be over 20 years old. So a bunch of that 24% have got to be 50-60 years old. Either one of the stats are wrong or a significant portion of cars are lasting way longer than either of us were guessing.
Also you can appreciate the experience more just because of the aesthetics of a product. This is a well documented phenomenon. If it's not your thing fine, not everyone has to like the same things. I find for example fancy dinner sets to be ridiculous. Doesn't mean that I think people who own them are dumb for liking them. I have friends who break out their grandmother's china for Thanksgiving. I'd never do that but it makes them happy so good on them.
Edit: whoever wrote that blog post really doesn't want any darned foreigners reading it. They not only block non American IP addresses, but also Archive.org, VPN addresses, and Google cache.
Here's the link on archive.org.
A: That may be but I doubt that huge number is significant relative to the approx. 280 million vehicles currently registered in the US or even the approx. 12 million new cars sold each year, so it is basically a rounding error. I looked here and it mentions America exporting about 2.5 million cars between 2015 and 2018, so between 600k and 800k per year, so that's about 6% as many as the new cars sold each year. So yes, that might change things by a percent or two either way.
B: Sorry, but that isn't how statistics (or averages) work. If you work out the numbers in that link, and weight the numbers for the bracket that includes 12 years, you get either 37% or 56% are under 12 years. So it's definitely possible for it to be 12 years. If you draw a curve based on these numbers you will notice a fairly sharp rise, then a long tail, with 12.3 being just past the peak. That gives a lot of cars between 12 and 20 years, leading to the averages we're seeing.
I would argue that ultimately, the only reason we use money is to enjoy our lives more than we would otherwise.
Personal enjoyment over time is then probably the most important reason you could spend extra on a pretty or fast car. I threw in the “over time” because obviously plenty of people spend way too much on cars that they think make them happy in the short term, but make their life worse in the long term.
Cars as entertainment devices are super expensive, no doubt. Consider a $20K price bump for the performance vehicle versus a few grand for a gaming setup that will also last several years. But, for some people it’s still worth it. Like right now I drive a cheap sensible car (11 year old Mazda 3), but in a few years when I upgrade, in think I want to get a performance model. I prefer working in the office, and I work close to home with a fun windy hilly country road between here and there. I’m thinking electric dual motor sedan would be real nice.