A new headlight (bulb) for my Prius was $250.  $150 for the bulb, $100 to put it in.  Are you kidding me?

This is progress?  I remember when I used to buy a bulb for like $1.50, reach down in the fender and replace it in about 5 minutes.

There should be a design challenge to build a modular easy to customize and repair vehicle platform.  One that encourages aftermarket addons, rather than designs to prevent them.  Sort of a vehicle version of the PC.

Of course, the ubiquitous DIY PC has more or less been replaced by laptops.  But at least laptops are cheap.

Which brings me to my other point -- after much spreadsheet numbers crunching I had to conclude that new cars are cheaper to operate on a per mile basis than used ones.  What sense does that make?  So,  poor people subsidize the vehicles of wealthy people simply because they don't have access to adequate loans to purchase new vehicles  and therefore create a market for used vehicles at an artifically high price.

Point being,  their monthly payments are just as high (or higher) as the payments on a new car.  Which is to say, if a person can afford a used car, he/she can also afford a new car, but is prohibited from obtaining one because of an aribtrary banking practice that says he is not sufficiently creditworthy to make the exact same payment over a longer term.

Isn't finance fun?

...

In case you didn't follow that (but of course you did) --

Driver A with good credit buys a car for $400/mo. on a 60 month loan (because car will be "used up" at about 5 years, so the loan amortization matches the anticipated vehicle life).

Driver A then trades his car at 36 mos.  The car now only has two years of life left on it.

Driver B with bad credit cannot qualify for a 60 month loan.  However, he can qualify for a 24 mo. loan.  So, he buys Driver A's used car for $400/mo. and drives it for the next two years, whereupon it is all used up and he needs to get another three year old car.

The reason it is "all used up" is that repairs are about 4 times more than the cost of the car new.  It is not cost effective to repair a vehicle.  The only exception to this is when a vehicle somehow magically lasts beyond its expected life.

Even worse for Driver B, he makes a higher down-payment (and thereby pays a higher per month fee for his car-usage); and also as the car nears end-of-life, it requires repairs and consumables such as brakes and tires.

This is specifically a subsidy to Driver A created by the credit market, because if Driver B was able to purchase a new car, there would be no market for Driver A's three year old car.  He would have to drive it till he finished paying for it and it died in his driveway.

One might argue that the lender takes a smalle r risk on Driver B, because the total price of the car is smaller.  But, that may not be entirely true since if payments are missed on an older car, it has higher risk of having mechanical problems and therefore being unsaleable.  Whereas, while the lender has more total capital tied up in the newer car, if Driver A misses payments, the vehicle still has significant saleable value.

The real place that "risk" is avoided by the lender is in the size of the downpayment (which determines the amount of equity in the vehicle at the inception of the purchase.

Oh, forgot to mention the other "used car" alternative -- if the price is amortized over a period longer than the remaining life of the car, such as a five year loan on a three year old car, then Buyer B is still making payments when the vehicle has become enormously expensive to maintain; or alternatively, when he requires an a new car altogether (and is still paying on the old one).

Bottom line -- make a big enough monthly payment so that equity exceeds what you owe within at least three years and then trade your car; or alternatively, if you can get a decent lease, lease the car.  Excess mileage charges are often less than the per mile charge you are paying for the initial mileage, so probably a good per-mile deal; just make sure you pay-as-you-go so you don't have excess mileage fees just when you need to also be coming up with a downpayment on your next car.

But, all leases are not equal.  You have to actually compare the dealer's lease proposal and purchase proposal.  Inevitably, one will be better than the other and you need to do the math to figure out which is which.

And if you insisted on flunking math in high school, that may explain why you are helping subsidize someone else's car payment.

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Here's a later-breaking update:  Got a notice from Toyota saying they were refunding some costs relating to headlight replacement.  Except however, the costs I AM COMPLAINING ABOUT are their new LOWER PRICES.  Because, it seems some customers paid considerably more for the lightbulb and also ended up replacing some computer chip to avoid the intermittent failure problem (even after bulb replacement).