People don't like to be embarrassed about their choice of vehicle purchase. We all like to think we're smart consumers -- but not all of us are. Things have changed bigtime, and if there were ever any good reasons to buy a truck for the home (much less for a solo commute), they're quickly evaporating.
Sure, Detroit doesn't offer great replacements yet, but there's no good replacement for gas at all, and it now costs almost as much per gallon as silver costs per half ounce. Let's see, a gallon of gas, a half ounce of pure silver. Hmm. "Fill 'er up, honey! Right after you sell your necklace on eBay! Oh, you sold that last week? ...Uh-oh."
I have no doubt that if you look at sticker prices on used car lots, there are a lot of nervous numbers already. If the bottom hasn't dropped out yet, I think there's no doubt, it will. More and more folks are going to quietly switch to Saturns and Civics, or if they can get one, a hybrid, and suddenly claim to have gone from smart to smarter (rather than from "low performance left-lane-hogging, view-obliterating, rollover-prone gas guzzler" to responsible, if I may say so).
Once the self-esteem adjustment is made, people who thought their truck was a smart buy are going to quietly decide something else is a lot smarter. And they would be right, I think. Hauling all that extra steel around just to get a bigger trunk, when a good sedan holds 5 people and gear for a camping trip for a half-ton less?
Biggest losses on trade-ins will go to the hindmost in this deal. Gas isn't going back down to sane any time soon, unless some bigwig politicians and CEOs have some kind of a road to Damascus experience, and believe it or not, things aren't nearly bad enough for that to happen, yet. .
I'm already starting to miss those little Dodge Colt hatchbacks from Japan in 1971 that got 45 miles to the gallon and yet performed like little muscle cars -- and they didn't cost much either, if you factor out dealer gouging.
It's not about the SUV or pick-up, ladies and gentlemen -- it's about the gas.
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