The Automobile Thread

Derkderkall said:
Did you get a cash payout or credit to buy through Carmax ?
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We've sold Carmax 3 vehicles. They give you a check before you walk out the door. On our last sale last August, a 2015 Audi A3, Carmax offered my wife $11K. She ran it thru the KBB.com site and they sent her to a "partner dealer" which happened to be Toyota Carlsbad and they gave her $18,500!! We had to wait about 5 days for a check to be mailed.
 
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Derkderkall said:
Good to know,
I think I'm going to try to unload the Elantra and look at a Hyundai Santa Cruz or Ford Maverick. It's at the point where I'm probably going to have to start dropping more money on repairs and maintenance.. just about to hit 80000 miles.
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80k, that things practically new!
I saw a Santa Cruz in person at magic mountain not long ago-very nice. For some reason I thought they were Subarus.
 
Danimal said:
Hyundai dealers are as Scummy as ford dealers, their rep is very poor at this stage. Prepare for markups galore on any of their EVs and most of their vehicles.

Dealers are hastening their demise with this behavior. You can expect more direct to consumer sales as manufacturers get fed up.
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I watch a lot of mechanics and used car dealers on youtube.....sounds like they are good as new vehicles, but as the mileage gets up there around the 100k warranty expiring, they have a tendancy to start blowing head gaskets.
 
So yeah. I offloaded our lemon Atlas for this...

Q8.jpg

Gave up the 3rd row of seats and about 30 cubic feet of storage (the Atlas has a ridiculous 96 cubic ft with rear and third row stowed).

Q8. It's a bigger, more powerful and more refined Q5 - and that's a good thing. I hope it's as reliable as my Q5.

2021 with quite a few miles, but pristine.

Sorry @buggravy - your dealership didn't have one of these. Thanks for the advice along the way.

I drove it to hockey tonight. Dayummm... this thing is smooth and plenty powerful.

Fingers crossed. :thumbsup:
 
herzalot said:
So yeah. I offloaded our lemon Atlas for this...

View attachment 88014
Gave up the 3rd row of seats and about 30 cubic feet of storage (the Atlas has a ridiculous 96 cubic ft with rear and third row stowed).

Q8. It's a bigger, more powerful and more refined Q5 - and that's a good thing. I hope it's as reliable as my Q5.

2021 with quite a few miles, but pristine.

Sorry @buggravy - your dealership didn't have one of these. Thanks for the advice along the way.

I drove it to hockey tonight. Dayummm... this thing is smooth and plenty powerful.

Fingers crossed. :thumbsup:
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She's a beaut! They're killer cars. Congrats, and enjoy!
 
herzalot said:
So yeah. I offloaded our lemon Atlas for this...

View attachment 88014
Gave up the 3rd row of seats and about 30 cubic feet of storage (the Atlas has a ridiculous 96 cubic ft with rear and third row stowed).

Q8. It's a bigger, more powerful and more refined Q5 - and that's a good thing. I hope it's as reliable as my Q5.

2021 with quite a few miles, but pristine.

Sorry @buggravy - your dealership didn't have one of these. Thanks for the advice along the way.

I drove it to hockey tonight. Dayummm... this thing is smooth and plenty powerful.

Fingers crossed. :thumbsup:
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That's a nice upgrade... :thumbsup:

I must be the only one on the planet who didn't like the Atlas... One spin around the block was enough. It felt mushy and it wasn't a Touareg. :laugh:
 
Faust29 said:
That's a nice upgrade... :thumbsup:

I must be the only one on the planet who didn't like the Atlas... One spin around the block was enough. It felt mushy and it wasn't a Touareg. :laugh:
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The Touareg really was a Cayenne - even sharing the same 6 cyl engine. (The V8s were different). They drove very similarly. I actually thought the Touareg was better looking.

The Atlas was definitely not that. And not an Audi. It was (is) its own thing. I hope @Derkderkall's continues to perform well and serves his and his family's needs. I already miss the interior space. Nowhere to put stuff in the Q8 - not much of a center console, no bin for the phone except on the charging shelf in the center console, under the armrest.
 
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herzalot said:
The Touareg really was a Cayenne - even sharing the same 6 cyl engine. (The V8s were different). They drove very similarly. I actually thought the Touareg was better looking.

The Atlas was definitely not that. And not an Audi. It was (is) its own thing. I hope @Derkderkall's continues to perform well and serves his ad his families needs. I already miss the interior space. Nowhere to put stuff in the Q8 - not much of a center console, no bin for the phone except on the charging shelf in the center console, under the armrest.
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You said the same thing driving through Burbank listening to Bob Seger! :inlove:
 
herzalot said:
Time to unload our 2021 Atlas - purchased in July 2020. We tried. We really tried.

The Atlas has THE BEST interior I've ever had in a car both in terms of functionality and comfort. Throw in looks too - brown and black leather. However, our 2021 has had at least 7 recalls and there is a new warning light or malfunction almost every day. Currently, my air conditioning has failed. It's full on heat on the driver's side, but the passenger side works. At first they said it's a programming problem. Really? How is that possible? Was it programmed to fail after warranty? But sure, OK $250. Yeah - well, no. Not fixed. So we brought it back. Now it's $3000 to replace the whole unit. And now the brakes are shuddering badly at speed. We've had the car in to the (horrible) VW dealer shop about a dozen times.

It has 57,000 miles.

What a pity. I can fit in the third row. It's AWD. It swallows up gear like a U-Haul truck - 96.7 cubic feet with all seats stowed compared to 69' on the comparably-sized Audi Q 7. How is that mathematically possible when the cars are nearly identical in length, width and height? Heated and cooled front seats. Heated rear seats. Heated steering wheel. Captains chairs in second row. Fender sound system. Shiiiiit!

View attachment 87784

To those who I convinced to consider an Atlas - I hope yours is better than our lemon. And no - it doesn't meet lemon law protection.

So what's next? We think we want a 3rd row - but our daughter and her friends are now full-sized humans, so that means a mini van or a huge SUV. Do we really need to be the shuttle vehicle? We rarely take more than one or two of her friends anywhere.

I want a Q8. I am in love with that car. My wife says, "Just give me my Toyota Sienna back. That car did everything and was easier to drive than the Atlas."

Stay tuned.

Anyone want my top of the line Atlas SEL AWD? I'll give you an IMTB special of $25k. You fix problems. I'll throw in the roof rack. It has a 2" receiver hitch.
View attachment 87785
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Wow that stinks!
 
Titus said:
It's actually 17.5k to be exact. They add a bunch of crap I don't want like 20inch wheels, power tailgate, power on board, etc. The standard range on electric vehicles are almost always overstated, so it doesn't make sense for me to get the standard range. They did the same thing with the Broncos. If you want to add something you want--like power seats--it means getting an entire package that costs thousands. Not a Ford fan after all this nonsense.
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So many reasons for packaging, its not just to make consumers pay more. Engineering restrictions, manufacturing restrictions and then good old pareto (80/20). Every manufacturer in the world except for the luxury brands is packaging for those reasons. Some of them are not always obvious to the customer and to be honest until I was on the other side of the fence I would never have considered them either.
One example, I was setting up the configurations for one of our top of the line models and marketing said they wanted the 8 way power seats in the RAP cab. Go to the engineer responsible and get told nope, not doing it. Why not, we have the 8 way seat available, it goes on the same base as whats in the double cab maybe a new wiring harness cos of the shorter wheelbase thats it shirley? 8 way seat has to much adjustment for the RAP cab and will mean 2nd row seating doesn't met regulations for passenger space.
There's another hidden one in there, wiring harnesses. The bane of every vehicle manufacturer. With vehicles getting more and more complex so has the explosion of the number of harnesses needed to support them. Most OEMs are moving to a model where harnesses are made bespoke to a VIN but in the old days it was nuts. A main body wiring harness even after option restrictions would still run into hundreds if not thousands of variants. It was ridiculous to the point that they would give away connectors, so your base model had everything in it to run the flash stuff it was just coded out and wiring connectors taped up. Go to your local parts store buy some sensors, find a friendly shop with access to the BMS config files and voila your base model has most of the stuff the top of the line has :Roflmao. Given I'd be in all day meetings with chief engineers where we were arguing over not painting a body part buried in the body structure because no-one would ever see it to potentially save a few cents per vehicle the idea of giving stuff away just makes a manufacturers teeth itch and sends them to an early grave.
There is also the fact they don't want you buying the base model, very little profit in those things. They'll do everything they can to push you up the model range or spec up the vehicle. Take wheels for example, when I was in the (manufacturing) game you'd be charged thousands to go to a "flasher" alloy in a bigger size. Cost to the manufacturer wasn't even a $100 for the bigger wheels and same again for the tires.

TLDR? Anyone selling a vehicle manufactured outside of the US is packaging, the vast majority that manufacture here are doing it to. Its just some are better at hiding it than others. ;)
 
Lost Kiwi said:
So many reasons for packaging, its not just to make consumers pay more. Engineering restrictions, manufacturing restrictions and then good old pareto (80/20). Every manufacturer in the world except for the luxury brands is packaging for those reasons. Some of them are not always obvious to the customer and to be honest until I was on the other side of the fence I would never have considered them either.
One example, I was setting up the configurations for one of our top of the line models and marketing said they wanted the 8 way power seats in the RAP cab. Go to the engineer responsible and get told nope, not doing it. Why not, we have the 8 way seat available, it goes on the same base as whats in the double cab maybe a new wiring harness cos of the shorter wheelbase thats it shirley? 8 way seat has to much adjustment for the RAP cab and will mean 2nd row seating doesn't met regulations for passenger space.
There's another hidden one in there, wiring harnesses. The bane of every vehicle manufacturer. With vehicles getting more and more complex so has the explosion of the number of harnesses needed to support them. Most OEMs are moving to a model where harnesses are made bespoke to a VIN but in the old days it was nuts. A main body wiring harness even after option restrictions would still run into hundreds if not thousands of variants. It was ridiculous to the point that they would give away connectors, so your base model had everything in it to run the flash stuff it was just coded out and wiring connectors taped up. Go to your local parts store buy some sensors, find a friendly shop with access to the BMS config files and voila your base model has most of the stuff the top of the line has :Roflmao. Given I'd be in all day meetings with chief engineers where we were arguing over not painting a body part buried in the body structure because no-one would ever see it to potentially save a few cents per vehicle the idea of giving stuff away just makes a manufacturers teeth itch and sends them to an early grave.
There is also the fact they don't want you buying the base model, very little profit in those things. They'll do everything they can to push you up the model range or spec up the vehicle. Take wheels for example, when I was in the (manufacturing) game you'd be charged thousands to go to a "flasher" alloy in a bigger size. Cost to the manufacturer wasn't even a $100 for the bigger wheels and same again for the tires.

TLDR? Anyone selling a vehicle manufactured outside of the US is packaging, the vast majority that manufacture here are doing it to. Its just some are better at hiding it than others. ;)
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That is truly fascinating. I know that sounds sarcastic, but I really mean it. Who knew?
 
OTHRider said:
As someone in their 7th decade, and coming from a bench seat F-350, I think power seats (and memory positions) is one of the greatest comforts since A/C. Package away!
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I feel u!

I remember when power mirrors, windows and door locks were non existent, and then an option. Being able to roll down the right side window or to adjust the right hand mirror without getting out of the car is one of the greatest inventions ever on a vehicle!

And AC, that consisted of opening the vent and windows so we had moving air. :thumbsup:

FM radio? That was really getting fancy!
 
Found a Maverick to sit in today. Love the cab. Lots of space for me. Actually better driver room than the ranger. But

my long legs eliminate use of the rear driver side seat.


Had the atlas in for its service at the dealer and drove a Taos. I think my decision is made. Ton of space front and rear and cargo. We’ll probably be a boring 2vw family
 
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