“No one cares about what car you drive” has such Boomer energy to it, and it’s completely false.
Our 2nd car (ie. the one we use if my wife or I need to commute individually - suburban sprawl means we live in a public transportation desert), is a beat-up 15yo Hyundai hatchback.
We both love it because it’s economical, surprisingly reliable, cheap as anything to maintain, and we don’t particularly care if it gets dinged at a parking lot.
But the looks we get from our peers when we drive to our respective offices (we usually WFH), holy crap! Constantly having to explain ourselves is tiresome, and our line managers have both made off-handed comments sarcastically asking if we’re not being paid enough. 🤦🏻♂️
You have a point, but you need to not care about some else’s bullshit opinion. You don’t need to explain yourself.
Save your dough and you’ll have money for whatever suits you down the road.
Paying cash for big items like cars isn’t always the best idea, but less debt never hurts.
Yeah, instead of “no one cares about what car you drive” it should be “you shouldn’t concern yourself with the opinion of anyone who cares about what car you drive”.
15yo Hyundai hatchback
surprisingly reliable
You’ve been lucky then. That I believe is in the era of Hyundai/Kia where they’d chew up replacement engines like crazy. But I guess it didn’t affect all engines.
The car was a hand-me-down from one of our grandparents, with ~100K miles on the odometer.
They owned it since new, and like most old people’s cars - it was religiously serviced. Keeping up with maintenance goes a long way towards keeping most cars on the road (unless they’re BMWs, but that’s a whole other story).
Keeping up with maintenance goes a long way towards keeping most cars on the road (unless they’re BMWs, but that’s a whole other story).
Ironically, well maintained BMWs have significantly better durability than Hyundais of that era, just not reliability.
I see M57 engined BMWs doing 500k+ km all the time. ZF 6HP transmissions are pretty good too. Yet the BMW E60/E61 and similar era 3 and 7 series that had these engines and transmissions are considered very unreliable, because everything else around that super solid core breaks down every now and then. They last forever, they’ll just leave you stranded crying when some plastic pipe in the god damn cooling system breaks again.
German cars of the past are the epitome of “durability, not reliability”. Now they no longer have that durability, but have increased reliability in the first part of ownership I think.
My old E-class must’ve had like 700k km or more in reality (it’d been nicely adjusted to <400k km, but some modules showed higher mileage… hmmmmmm) and the engine still ran just fine, transmission shifted just fine… But the power steering failed, sunroof leaked and ruined the sunroof control module, and the parking sensors didn’t really work either… Oh and I had the dreaded injector seal issue multiple times.
I can milk it for more going “I’m saving for a Hummer, I’m not settling for anything less of course. If I only had a couple hundred bucks more each month…”.
It’s not so much our social circles; rather our respective companies’ Department Heads and C-Suites. Appearances and office politics play a hand in perception, unfortunately.
While I can somewhat understand their viewpoints, as both my wife and I are paid well - neither of us have client-facing roles, and we have a nice enough family car for carting around the bub and in-laws.
There is honestly something liberating about not worrying about dings, scratches, or expensive replacement parts.
“No one cares about what car you drive” has such Boomer energy to it, and it’s completely false.
Our 2nd car (ie. the one we use if my wife or I need to commute individually - suburban sprawl means we live in a public transportation desert), is a beat-up 15yo Hyundai hatchback.
We both love it because it’s economical, surprisingly reliable, cheap as anything to maintain, and we don’t particularly care if it gets dinged at a parking lot.
But the looks we get from our peers when we drive to our respective offices (we usually WFH), holy crap! Constantly having to explain ourselves is tiresome, and our line managers have both made off-handed comments sarcastically asking if we’re not being paid enough. 🤦🏻♂️
You have a point, but you need to not care about some else’s bullshit opinion. You don’t need to explain yourself. Save your dough and you’ll have money for whatever suits you down the road.
Paying cash for big items like cars isn’t always the best idea, but less debt never hurts.
Yeah, instead of “no one cares about what car you drive” it should be “you shouldn’t concern yourself with the opinion of anyone who cares about what car you drive”.
You’ve been lucky then. That I believe is in the era of Hyundai/Kia where they’d chew up replacement engines like crazy. But I guess it didn’t affect all engines.
The car was a hand-me-down from one of our grandparents, with ~100K miles on the odometer.
They owned it since new, and like most old people’s cars - it was religiously serviced. Keeping up with maintenance goes a long way towards keeping most cars on the road (unless they’re BMWs, but that’s a whole other story).
Ironically, well maintained BMWs have significantly better durability than Hyundais of that era, just not reliability.
I see M57 engined BMWs doing 500k+ km all the time. ZF 6HP transmissions are pretty good too. Yet the BMW E60/E61 and similar era 3 and 7 series that had these engines and transmissions are considered very unreliable, because everything else around that super solid core breaks down every now and then. They last forever, they’ll just leave you stranded crying when some plastic pipe in the god damn cooling system breaks again.
2 words that any BMW owner from that era fears: VANOS pump.
Oh yeah, definitely.
German cars of the past are the epitome of “durability, not reliability”. Now they no longer have that durability, but have increased reliability in the first part of ownership I think.
My old E-class must’ve had like 700k km or more in reality (it’d been nicely adjusted to <400k km, but some modules showed higher mileage… hmmmmmm) and the engine still ran just fine, transmission shifted just fine… But the power steering failed, sunroof leaked and ruined the sunroof control module, and the parking sensors didn’t really work either… Oh and I had the dreaded injector seal issue multiple times.
My boss did joke about giving me a raise to get me a car and I’m all for it.
Given the community, you should probably finagle that raise and just put it towards friendlier commute alternatives if possible!
Boss: “Hey, I have you that raise - where’s the car?” You: “Oh, I put that towards an e-bike instead!”
I can milk it for more going “I’m saving for a Hummer, I’m not settling for anything less of course. If I only had a couple hundred bucks more each month…”.
Maybe it’s different in your social circle. I work with engineers and technicians and keeping an old car going is respected not derided.
I wouldn’t want to hang around with people that look down their noses at me because I drive a car with 100,000 miles on the clock.
It’s not so much our social circles; rather our respective companies’ Department Heads and C-Suites. Appearances and office politics play a hand in perception, unfortunately.
While I can somewhat understand their viewpoints, as both my wife and I are paid well - neither of us have client-facing roles, and we have a nice enough family car for carting around the bub and in-laws.
There is honestly something liberating about not worrying about dings, scratches, or expensive replacement parts.