One of the major narratives around the car market during 2024 was that political uncertainty was keeping buyers on the sidelines. Consumers do not like uncertainty. The resolution of this, in the form of an uncontested election, brought a brief period of market movement at the end of 2024. Now, the uncertainty of the political universe is yet again causing issues.
The vibes are bad for this morning’s installment of The Morning Dump, so I’ll do my best to reverse them at the end, thereby cheering y’all up before you start the day. The confluence of tariffs and political uncertainty is making the fabled lease renewal cliff even dicier, while a risk to tax refunds could bring the whole thing crumbling down.
If you’re CEO of Nissan and reading this piece, the vibes have only gotten worse as it’s becoming clearer that the board of directors is eyeing an exit for you, though when that will be is anyone’s guess. Tesla’s CEO isn’t going anywhere, but feelings about the company continue to worsen by the day.
Oh, right, good vibes. Good vibes. We’ll have two American automakers in F1 in 2026!
This Is Not The Car Market Anyone Wanted
I don’t want anyone to read this and assume the worst is going to happen. I picked the headline carefully because we seem to be headed towards a worst case scenario for buyers. It doesn’t mean that’s what will happen, and a little bit of good news could go a long way towards reversing the trends.
A car is, as people like to point out, the second biggest purchase many will make. Unless you’re super wealthy, it’s a decision not entered into lightly. Roughly 80% of buyers finance new car purchases, meaning that wise buyers have to decide that they’re able to pay a certain amount each month for possibly seven or eight years. If you think you’re going to lose your job or that inflation is going to go up, you might decide you’re not going to buy right now.
January’s new car sales were mixed, and February, which held so much promise, fell below the initial exuberant estimates. What happened? Here’s how Cox Automotive explains it:
Initial projections suggest fleet sales were soft in February while retail sales held up reasonably well, even though consumer confidence fell notably in February as worries about the economy took hold. As Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke noted, “The daily chaos from Washington has been negatively impacting consumer sentiment and likely contributing to lackluster consumer spending in February. The biggest worry I have for the spring continues to be the trend we’ve seen in interest rates, which moved higher in February.”
Consumer confidence is a key measure closely tied to auto sales: Lower consumer confidence readings are often associated with lower sales. With trade and tariffs dominating the media headlines through February, some shoppers likely decided to purchase before higher prices set in – a tailwind for the market – while others may have decided to put any big-ticket purchase on ice, choosing instead a wait-and-see approach, concerned about broader inflationary risks.
Most economists and industry watchers seem to think that the tariffs would have blown up the car market in the United States, so it’s probably good that they didn’t happen. Although maybe they will again? That’s a lot of uncertainty.
New car prices have remained stubbornly high, and interest rates have yet to come down, but there’s a one-two punch coming in the form of lease renewals that could impact both new and used cars in a way that’s bad for the people buying cars and the people selling cars. Let’s call it the Lease Renewal Super Cliff or LRSC.
Last year I mentioned that the car market is going to lose a million lease returns in 2025 as one of those strange, yet predictable outcomes of pandemic-related shortages. Quite simply, there were fewer cars built, which meant that there were fewer cars leased, and as most lease terms are three-year terms, we’re now hitting the point where there are the least of these high quality used cars on the market. This is a big deal, as Ivan Drury at Edmunds points out:
Three-year-old used vehicles are the cornerstone of the used car market: They are typically the most desired, generally still offer some form of factory warranty, and represent a good value for those uninterested in spending new-car money. 2025 will be defined by its dearth of these popular models because 2022 was one of lowest new-car sales volume years in recent memory with only 13.8 million sales (the lowest since 2011’s 12.8 million sales). Because lease deals dry up when demand is strong, those low sales tallies were then coupled with a lease penetration rate of only 18%, leaving just 2 million potential 3-year-old lease returns in 2025. That’s a far cry from the norm of 4 million returned leases from the late 2010s, when new-car sales volumes were closer to the 17 million mark with a 30% lease penetration rate.
So that’s bad. The market needs those cars. It might get worse, however, and this is the LRSC scenario.
Not only are off-lease cars a big source of inventory for car dealers, those buyers are expected to then lease or buy another vehicle to replace it. This means that automakers get more sales, dealers get more sales, and the whole car economy keeps moving. The hope was that we’d have a strong economy with lower uncertainty and that would speed the people trading in the leases towards leasing new cars.
Because of high interest rates, still-high transaction prices, and all this uncertainty… that might not be happening as Automotive News points out:
A consumer who leased a new vehicle from a dealership three years ago might feel “sticker shock” if they made that same visit today unless the store offers incentives, Drury said. Pricing shock could make vehicle lessees choose — as was the case in 2021 and 2022 — to extend or buy out their lease to avoid the market.
If enough consumers do that, it would further reduce the amount of inventory available for off-lease purchasing, Drury told Automotive News.
Can it get worse? Yes, it can get worse. Taking more of the already low number of off-lease cars out of the market is bad, and it means we probably need just one more domino to fall in order to make the market that much harder for buyers and sellers. When you look at a chart of car sales, there’s usually a seasonal bump that comes around late February into March. This is because people who file taxes early are usually the ones who expect a refund, which they then spend on things like cars.
What if refunds are delayed this year because the Treasury Department told the IRS to fire a bunch of people or offer them early retirement? Here’s the Associated Press on the potential risk:
The layoffs are part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size of the federal workforce through billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by closing agencies, laying off nearly all probationary employees who have not yet gained civil service protection and offering buyouts to almost all federal employees through a “deferred resignation program” to quickly reduce the government workforce.
A reduction in force of tens of thousands of employees would render the IRS “dysfunctional,” said John Koskinen, a former IRS commissioner.
That would be not-great timing. I have no idea if refunds will be delayed or not, though former IRS administrators think that’s a real risk. The main issue is that the car market probably cannot afford much more of this and we’ve gone from a potential big year of car sales to one that’s maybe going to sting.
It’s bad for new car buyers, who now face high lease costs at a time when job growth is slowing and inflation is not yet ebbing. It’s bad for used car buyers, who might end up with little in the way of inventory. It’s bad for dealers and carmakers, who need consumer confidence going in the positive direction. It’s just bad.
Again, it’s unclear how this will all play out, but anything close to a recession and it’s going to get real uncomfortable real fast.
Is Nissan CEO Uchida In Or Out?
While we’re talking about unpredictable things, is Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida in or out after the disaster that was the potential Honda merger? The smart money is on someone like Jeremie Papin or Guillaume Cartier stepping up, but is that something that happens now or later?
Among directors, one opinion holds that if the company announces new, more aggressive turnaround measures, they should be unveiled by a new chief executive charged with executing them, one person said. That could trigger a change at the top this week for quicker change.
Another line of thought holds that Uchida should stay on until Nissan has had time to carefully craft deeper restructuring and find the right replacement for long-term leadership.
Directors with that opinion say the current executive team, not Uchida alone, bear responsibility for Nissan’s woes and that a more radical overhaul is necessary. This could keep Uchida in place longer as a wider restructuring unfolds, Japanese national broadcaster NHK reported.
That’s not helpful at all.
Tesla Continues To Lose Ground As Musk’s Role In Government Reportedly ‘Narrowed’
Tesla is an interesting company. As we talked about last week, the company is held up by a lot of hype and expectation (to be sure, it makes good cars). If you want to put it in hard numbers, Tesla enjoys a price-earnings ratio that is way higher than most other companies and, certainly, other automakers. As of last week’s close, Tesla had a P/E ratio of 128.87, compared to 7.5 for GM, and 7.38 for Toyota. What this means is that Tesla shareholders are paying a lot more in stock for every dollar that Tesla earns.
The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, has been busy doing a lot of non-Tesla things lately. They could be good for the company long-term, though there are threats everywhere. An obvious and apolitical risk is that by focusing on other things, he risks losing ground to companies like BYD in China and Renault in Europe. The politics are definitely at play, with Democratic-aligned groups now running ads featuring Musk and implying he’s stealing money from kids and retirees. As one strategist mentioned to CNN, he’s sort of unavoidable at this point:
“He makes for a very convenient boogeyman,” said Lynda Tran, a Democratic strategist and former Biden administration official. “He’s driving the vast majority of headlines right now. Whether you want to or not, his name is on your lips because he’s taking up so much of the oxygen in the room.”
That seems to be coming with a cost for the company, though as Bloomberg reports, there are other reasons why Tesla might be falling behind:
Then there’s BYD Co. The company, which stopped making cars powered entirely by internal combustion engines in March 2022, has a market share heading toward 15%. It sold more than 318,000 fully electric and hybrid passenger vehicles last month, up 161% year-on-year. The Shenzhen-based carmaker also notched another record month for overseas sales, which hit 67,025 units.
Its success is a major reason why Tesla is losing.
While Tesla sales in other parts of the world are cratering as Musk wades deeper into politics many find unsavory — sales in Germany plunged 76% to only 1,429 cars last month, even as overall EV registrations jumped — in China, disappointing shipments have more to do with a narrow and dated lineup, particularly in the face of up-to-date and more exciting offerings from BYD and others.
Is Elon Musk going to get out of all this what he wants? Republican Senators and Cabinet members seem to be a little less enthused if this Politico report is to be believed:
Two senior Republicans are reiterating President Donald Trump’s recent messaging about Elon Musk’s realm of control, insisting that the Department of Government Efficiency initiative cannot overstep Cabinet officials’ authority and fire federal employees.
“Elon Musk does not have the power to fire people,” Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott said on CNN’s “State of the Union” to anchor Jake Tapper on Sunday. “The president of the United States is Donald Trump, and the agency heads are the ones who manage each of their departments.”
Scott’s comments follow a contentious Cabinet meeting where administration officials expressed frustration with Musk’s attempts to override staffing and policy decisions within their agencies.
No one knows how this is going to end, though the question will have to be asked, is: Was this all worth it for Musk? As of this writing Tesla’s stock has dropped to below $250 a share.
Cadillac Is Going To F1 In 2026
Both Ford and Cadillac will be a part of the F1 season next year, which is awesome news if you love racing and/or America. This was something that felt like it wasn’t going to happen after Cadillac and Andretti Racing announced a bid to join Formula One, only to be told that Andretti wasn’t good enough.
People freaked out and Andretti was quietly replaced with TWG Motorsports, which owns Andretti Racing (as well as Wayne Taylor Enterprises for sports cars and SPIRE for NASCAR). From Cadillac’s announcement:
“For the past year, we have worked hand in hand with GM to lay a robust foundation for an extraordinary Formula 1 entry,” said Dan Towriss, CEO of TWG Motorsports. “Now, with 2026 in our sights after today’s final approval from the FIA and Formula One Management, we’re accelerating our efforts — expanding our facilities, refining cutting-edge technologies, and continuing to assemble top-tier talent.”
“We’re thrilled the Cadillac Formula 1 Team is official, as the team has been accelerating its work,” said GM President Mark Reuss. “We’re incredibly grateful for the support from the FIA and Formula One Management leadership for us and for our collaboration with TWG. The excitement only grows as we get closer to showcasing GM’s engineering expertise on the prestigious global stage of F1.”
This announcement follows confirmation that long-time motorsports and Formula 1 team executive Graeme Lowdon will serve as Team Principal of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team. Industry veteran Russ O’Blenes has been named CEO of TWG GM Performance Power Units LLC, a new company that will put Cadillac on the future path to being a “full works” team — building Formula 1 chassis and power units.
Cool stuff.
What I’m Listening To While Writing The Morning Dump
Will all the songs this week be a response to Friday’s Slack Tales? Probably. I won’t hit you with the full Jepsen yet, as I want to make peace first. Whatever you feel about Coldplay, I think it would be hard to argue that the best pop-alternative album to come out of Britain around the end of the 20th Century isn’t David Gray’s amazing “White Ladder.” I had trouble this morning picking a best song from that album, but let’s go with “Please Forgive Me.”
The Big Question
How do you see the car market going this year? Are we going to land this plane or what? What’s your personal level of consumer confidence?
Top Photo
We inadvertently fixed our car problem last year, we ran into a good deal on a late model car and traded our high mile, potentially problematic car for one that’s 6 years old with an actual 15K miles on it – it was a second (or 3rd or 4th) car that lived in the garage at the vacation home sort of car. In perfect condition with all the services done and documented at the dealership. A perfect score for the bride.
A few months later we found a 2017 version of the same car with 25K on it, similar verifiable conditions – vacation home car for a local couple who’s other house is in Palm Springs – traded the other high mile potentially expensive problem car.
So, we’re done for buying cars probably for the rest of our lives as we’re older adults, as long as there’s gasoline……
I’m not concerned with a tax refund, I have our finances set up to be net zero come tax day, no refund, no check or at least a very very small one owed…….
Oh, and just to be Autopian appropriate, both cars are wagons, tho not brown… 🙂
Tax refunds are a mostly automated process. Those checks aren’t handwritten and nobody licks the stamps. Former IRS administrators might suggest otherwise, but they were part of the swamp. If you’re reading this and have a normal tax situation and file online every year, don’t worry about your refund.
Elon Musk gutted Twitter and it managed to stay online. There’s a whole empty floor of my office building dedicated to some obscure office of The Federal Department of Government where everyone has been working from home since 2020, and I doubt they’re doing anything very important. But you and I are still paying them.
Suggesting that the vile creatures that gained power based on nothing other than their swampy and overtly dishonest behavior have any desire to drain anything would be funny if it weren’t both so common and sad.
All government workers are just freeloaders?
MySpace is still online. AOL is still online. What’s your point?
Actually, this is hilarious. I just typed twitter.com into my browser and it does not load. I tried another computer. It does not redirect, it just hangs. Hahahahahaha LMFAO!
Ironically, Twitter is currently being hacked and is not online.
The problem is that they’re not firing people based on merit, or lack thereof. They’re just firing people. It’s likely that some of them could be fired and we’d never know it. But it’s also very likely that some of them perform jobs that are important and can’t just be turned over to someone else. As to the IRS, sure – if you file the simplest possible income tax form, you’ll be fine. But if you go beyond that and you have a question you need them to answer? Well, expect a long wait on the line.
“Move fast and break things” seems to be the idea behind what Musk is doing. Gotta remember, though, that “Fail fast and fail often” is another Silicon Valley motto.
Maga right wingers are so laughably dumb that they assume anyone they can’t physically see working must not be doing something of value. Do you think numbers stop at ten when you run out of fingers?
Twitter went from being one of the most important sites on the web to a toilet filled with AI bots, Nazis, and conspiracy loons. Perhaps you should try for a better example.
“Managed to stay online” is such a low bar. While it stayed online (and it didn’t always do this and has been having problems even today!), the user experience degraded, advertisers left en masse, users have stopped coming, and engagement is down. But sure, it “stayed online.”
Would you like a smaller deficit or reduced debt? Among those laid off at IRS are those involved with enforcement. That’s a big problem if you want all the taxes owed to actually be collected.
Yes great discussion about new car sales and 3 year old off lease vehicles, but how will this effect me, the discerning Autopian car shopper searching for my next 20+ year old shitbox?
Asking the real questions right here!
well, I thought those vehicle prices were on the way back down, but these days, I am not so sure.
With the track record of planned obsolescence, even just off lease 3 year old cars are scary propositions, but 10 or 20 year old units that might still run past 150K miles is getting tricky to identify.
I want to remind everyone here that 100% of the reason why we are in this position globally is because of Fentanyl deaths in the US. This has been the only reason offered to support all of these Tariff changes.
ALL OF THIS over 107,000 deaths in 2023. Meanwhile, according to the CDC in 2022:
I don’t see us ruining the world economy to reduce heart disease. I thought automobiles would have contributed more to the death rate.
I don’t see the car market doing well this year. Even if we lower the price of a gallon of gas to $2 will it make a difference. Arguable, and historically, lower gas prices leads to the shuttering of the US oil industry cause it can’t make it that cheap.
I am hoping with this new “lower energy” cost initiative that the price of electricity follows suit too. If you lower gas prices, one would assume electricity should also follow. I’m at $0.30/kWh in Connecticut. If gas goes to $2/gallon, it’s cheaper to burn gas on a smaller, less efficient scale than it is on the larger, more efficient scale.
Also…
When SpaceX rockets explode during launch, it’s SCIENCE.
When a NASA rocket explodes during launch, FRAUD and WASTE.
It’s not an explosion, it’s “rapid unscheduled disassembly”. Sort of how Musk isn’t a Nazi, he suffers from spontaneous arm-raising syndrome.
How to identify the engineer without risking the arm raising.
Any excuse will do. Welcome to the New Gilded Age.
I know I’m repeating myself, but it’s not about fentanyl. Or immigrants. It’s about having a bogeyman to blame for all of the shitty things they want to do to enrich themselves and their friends.
I would be shocked if Trump and his cronies didn’t have a huge cash position prior to the tariffs being enacted so they could buy up shares at a discount when he crashed the market.
At the very least, they’re trying to wreck the government so badly that we have no choice but to privatize a bunch of its functions, thus turning power over from elected officials to filthy rich (emphasis on the “filthy”) corporations.
It’s always about the money.
Of course it’s not about fentanyl or immigrants. We all know that and you know that. I just wish the other 50% of the country wasn’t so gullible.
I realized after I wrote the comment that what I was replying to was probably satirical, but these days it’s so *bleep*ing hard to tell. >:-(
Most of what I write is satirical. I’m trying to be a bit funny, while pointing out the atrocities of the world. I also trying a bit of shock-jock as well.
EVERY SINGLE DECISION made by this administration is made to make the rich more rich, and the rest of us less rich and more subservient to the rich.
Your right. They even voted against free health insurance!
It’s not really about fentanyl. It’s about using “emergency powers” under false pretenses. Is the goal to drive “made-in-America?” Is it to put the economy in a ditch so that the billionaire class can scoop up assets at a steep discount? Now THAT’S the question.
Don’t forget, we’ll all be a lot cheaper to hire by the mega-corps after they’ve bought out all of our businesses and we’ve been laid off for months/years.
Trump’s 2020 Oil deal with Opec gutted the US Oil Industry and was a huge factor in the sky rocketing inflation. You’ll notice inflation only started coming down in a meaningful way until the deal expired in 2022.
Besides fentanyl, the other reason given was that we’re being “ripped off” by all our trade partners because of some truly horrible trade deal that some former president made back in 2020. Wish I could remember who that president was…
Natural Gas is a byproduct of regular gas production. if the lower price shutters more production locally, it will not reduce production costs for electric. and of course the Electric companies don’t like to go the other way, they just use the surplus to pay for more renewable subsidies.
I’ve spent years working in mental health/substance abuse field. It is well known by literally anyone tangible related to the field (social work/law enforcement/courts), that most fentanyl comes in though ports and the mail. Tariffs have no meaningful effect on addressing the import and use of Fentanyl. Literally, could ask anyone who’s actually talked to persons involved in the trade. In fact, they’re massively cutting diversion programs. Which if you actually wanted to do something about Fentanyl, reducing demand is where you would actually start. This was never about Fentanyl.
I like David Gray. I like Colplay. I like Travis. I like Radiohead. Occasionally the Venn Diagram of their styles overlaps a bit, but they’re all distinct enough. Edit: Before you ask, no — Oasis can f*ck right off, across the board, full stop.
My tax refund was delayed from what I’m used to. It was always a few days, this time it was a sleepless few weeks. I considered buying a new car, but there is way too much uncertainty out there. I’m sticking with my old rigs that split daily duty for me, a 19 year old GMC Sierra and a 26 year old Toyota Corolla.
I just adjusted my withholdings, so I do not expect to get a refund ever again. Certainly not much of one. I’m done giving the government a big interest free loan every year.
I got my Fed return in a few weeks, longer than usual, but I got it. I’m still waiting on my state return though.
With them firing all the IRS agents, and reading reports of some of those same agents discussing cases they were investigating where they would lead to huge payouts to the IRS. This was just one company that had never been audited before.
That said, I’m now contemplating how I can cheat on my taxes next year.
#Am I doing this right???
It isn’t cheating if there aren’t any rules. At this point, the only crimes that exist are political.
Anecdotally, I’m seeing used prices rising. In August of 2024, I got it into my head that I might want to replace my 4Runner with a late model (21+) F150.
At that time there were quite a few 2021’s on the market with 30K or so miles for under 35K.
I look now, and the 2021’s are closer to 40K with closer to 50K miles.
I have 190K on my 13 4Runner and put 20K a year on it. Holding out another 4years puts me at 270K. Not that unheard of for a 4R, but still more than I want to have on my DD.
As far as confidence, it’s extremely low. I have no debt and have been socking away cash at a decent rate the last few years, but I’m really hesitant to part with any of it. I *think* my job is fairly secure, the company still has good projections, but who really knows.
thing is. the interest on that socked away money is usually less than even basic inflation, let alone Bidenomics percentages. Certainly going to be less than this administrations numbers will likely be. You might be dollars ahead to keep a sharp eye on end of year deals and maybe pick up a second car to daily and save the 4Runner for fun stuff. But also probably buy up the best parts on Rock Auto now, before they are no longer available.
People put their phone numbers on paper under my wiper or even come right up to the door asking to buy my car. I’m tempted to tell them “$5000” (23 years old, 240K miles, manual, no heat inside, lately the battery is losing charge when not running, etc.), but I’m afraid they’d accept, and I’d have to buy some boring car with a giant monitor in it that will cause a my-fault accident, oh and no fun included.
My personal level of consumer confidence?
I’m confident the US will be in a recession by the end of the year, on its way to becoming irrelevant.
I’m also confident that with the rise of software defined vehicles, there will not be any new cars I’m interested in.
Trump’s economic policy appears to be “Some of you will die, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
That was a number of red state governors’ responses to COVID (in the state I lived in at the time, 1 in 300 people died – and no that’s not an exaggeration, that’s literally what the numbers penciled out to), so yeah, that approach checks out.
Over a million people died in a country of 300-some million, so honestly 1 out of 300 is probably about average.
Fair point. I was working with excess deaths, not just total, so I think SD’s numbers were above average, but yeah either way arguably not by a whole lot.
I know we exported a lot due to Sturgis, which may have help elevate everybody else’s numbers.
It’s also pretty damning if your sparsely populated, spread out state where social distancing is effectively guaranteed could only manage “average” COVID numbers.
“wise buyers have to decide that they’re able to pay a certain amount each month for possibly seven or eight years”
I doubt there are a lot of wise buyers that are considering a 7 or 8 year car loan. A very long-term loan will come with a higher interest rate. It isn’t worth paying thousands more in interest to lower your payment by $100 per month. Long terms loans also guarantee you will end up underwater, which is a problem for buyers whose financial situations change.
Unfortunately, I could see a lot of people’s financial situations changing in the coming months. A recession seems inevitable. Trump appears to think a recession is an acceptable tradeoff for whatever nebulous future he envisions. Even if Trump comes to his senses and decides a recession isn’t a good thing, the damage might be done. Other countries should rationally view any US policy change with skepticism and act accordingly. This will obviously not good for the economy, which will be bad for all of us.
If you have a reliable car that is paid off or close to it, now might be a good time to hang on to it.
Yeah that got me too. I immediately flashed back to the dealer trying to get me into a five year loan for a 15k truck, because “the payment would be the same!”
Some times, you do what you have to do. When my kids were smol, I knew I needed a minivan. I got a used one that I could pay off in 3 years and it broke in 2. I got a new van (upsidedown on the first one of course) that I could pay off in 5 years and it spent more time at the dealership than in my driveway.
When the warranty ran out, I went to a Toyota dealership, bit the bullet and got a Sienna. I had to get a 7 year loan to afford it and the upsidedown trade in, but I got it. I paid the van off 10 years ago and still drive it.
In my case, that Sienna was the right call. I’ve needed a minivan for 20 years. Trying to save money by getting non-quality versions was the wrong call.
Not everyone is that stable in life and I won’t be getting a 7 year loan again, since in 7 years I expect that I will be retiring and my vehicle needs might change. But if I was a 30 year old looking at a minivan for a growing family, I would say go get the best one you can get, even if you have to have a long loan.
I’m not a fan of long-term car loans, but I acknowledge there are times when these loans are the best of multiple options that all less than ideal. I’m glad it worked out for you.
I still think these loans are too risky for most buyers, though. I also doubt that most buyers understand these risks, and I don’t like that dealers take advantage of that.
I will say there are worse ideas than taking out a long-term loan to buy a practical vehicle known for its reliability. I prefer used cars when money is tight, but buying a new car and keeping it for years after it is paid off is a reasonable strategy.
These days “potential worst-case scenario” could be applied to any topic and have a better than 50/50 chance of coming true.
Agreed, only with a twist. “Potential worst-case scenario” seems to become the “potential BEST case scenario” 50% of the time as well.
As hopeful as that sounds, the reality is that the other 50% is just various levels of truly terrible. Hope for anything positive went out the window awhile back.
I wish I could word it better. It’s like every week, my idea of “worse case” ends up being proven as hopeless optimism.
Same thing here.
We are screwed bigly.
“Scott’s comments follow a contentious Cabinet meeting where administration officials expressed frustration with Musk’s attempts to override staffing and policy decisions within THEIR agencies.”
Classic. Not an issue until all of the sudden it affects them personally.
How do you see the car market going this year?
Eeehrrrr! Skreeeee! Ka-BOOM! tinkle-tinkle-tinkle.
Phaaah
I’m fortunate enough to be happy with the vehicles the wife and I have and have no plans of buying anything for a while. I feel so bad for anyone that needs to buy a car (or a home) anytime soon. At what point do middle class Trump supporters realize they made a bigly mistake?
I would suspect “never”. It will, in their minds, someone else’s’ fault. The programming is in too deep now after 45 years. There will always be liberals, people of color, educated elites, past presidents, “them” to blame. The realization will never come, just more radicalism.
This is accurate
Watch the words being used. The enemy used to be the “Deep State”. Now that the Deep State has been put fully in charge, start counting how many times the word “Globalist” shows up in speeches about why your economic situation is worse now.
I will be shocked if I do not see Musk and Trump swap out “Globalist” for Jüdin any day now.
Trump already brought out globalist for the economy beginning to tank.
That realization would require a functional brain.
Not gonna happen. Good luck though.
We need an airship economy, one that doesn’t have to land.
I imagine such an economy would be at the mercy of the winds though.
Is this airship filled with hydrogen? Does it have an ignition source?
Oh, we have ignition sources all right. One might even say they’ve been perfecting not-flamethrower technology for years.
The Turd obviously is playing with a lighter as the economy tanks.
I saw this coming a few years ago and made moves early. I bought a non-Tesla EV in 2022 when I could easily get the full $7500 tax credit and take advantage of my state’s EV incentives (funding for which has since dried up) and also leverage the extremely low interest rates. I also put a large amount down, so I have a very low monthly payment that I’ve just about paid off now.
Our other cars are reliable and fully paid off. We could stand to replace my wife’s car, but again, that’s a minor want, not a need.
This probably means no new cars for us in this current administration, but again, we’d prepared for that, so it’s not a surprise or a hardship.
Seen on a Chalk board outside a pub in Killarney “all Americans must be accompanied by an adult”
That’s hilarious but I would also like to remind the rest of the world that a whole lot of see Trump and Musk as complete idiots ruining America for their own personal gain. Not all of us unfortunately, but a large percentage which i hope is growing.
“What if tax refunds are delayed this year….”
I asked my tax preparer when should I expect my refund and he confidently said “10 days”. That was over a month ago and still no refund!
So Matt, there is no WHAT IF!
So glad we got our taxes done and refund back before the Bond villain messed stuff up.
I highly recommend minimizing your withholdings and starting a business. Without a functioning IRS, there is no reason to worry about an audit. At least one is not based on political persecution. Plus, anything that gets paid in will go right into the pockets of the oligarchs.
Agreed, see my comment above. Time to starting cheating on your taxes!!!!!
I don’t know about that word “cheating” — that will always make me uncomfortable. But I’m definitely done with things like collecting receipts and documentation to support my deductions.
I think we can all assume that the idea behind reducing tax enforcement is to lower individual tax burdens, so we should all be taking the biggest available deductions and worrying a lot less about the fine print of what technically qualifies. If I don’t, doesn’t that make me the sucker? Which is basically what rich people have always said about using their armies of tax lawyers and legal loopholes to stonewall the IRS. Those tax avoidance benefits are just trickling down to the rest of us now in a different form.
no no, it’s not cheating.
it’s merely an innovative interpretation of IRS ‘guidance’
“Alternative facts.” Remember that bullshit? LOL.
Did my taxes early Feb and got both fed and state refunds within 10 days.
The lease on my Bolt EV is up at the end of May. The residual is too high for there to be any question of buying it out. One thing that I did find interesting is that according to Chevy’s lease estimator for Equinox EVs, the monthly cost is actually cheapest at 24mo, then 39/36/27/48. I’m wondering if they’re putting some extra cash on shorter leases to try to recover from the leasing cliff.
Interesting! What’s the offer? I have a review of the cheapest Equinox coming.
I’m looking at a 2LT, FWD at $400/mo with $2500 down. I want the sunroof, though, which appears to be a rare option on actual dealer stock. (This is all through the chevrolet.com “Build and Price” tool, so may not bear any resemblance to what I could get on paper)
I’ll be interested to read that when it comes out! We will be in the market for an electric runabout in the next couple of years. My wife is set against anything GM after her old Chevy that kept breaking, but I’ve been curious how good the Equinox EV is.
An old Bolt is the perfect runabout car, and they are ~$15k before rebates.
Which is why I’m so sad about my $22k residual…we really love the car, but the numbers just don’t work.
I find that a bit insane, honestly. I am actively looking at them, and the 2021’s are easily less than $20k regularly. It has me wondering how they can charge you so much, but I guess they have to, right?
Just say no, wait a week, then go back and buy the same exact car for what the market is offering (less, hopefully).
Did you get the rebate? I wonder if there is come dumbfuckery you can do to maybe sell it to your kid or wife (or anyone who is not on the OG lease) where you can get the rebate?
I just leased a 25 Equinox LT FWD with cloth and heated seats, no extra options. $1k down, $260 a month, 24 months.
Shop around and keep a close eye on all the offers. I suspect the best deals have passed, but there might still be some out there. We went with 24 months on an Equinox EV back at the end of October, and extending it longer didn’t reduce the rate at all. They (GM) seems to be trying to get as many new EVs off the lot as possible, and then back to sell used as quickly as possible. The residual on the Equinox lease is also insane, so we will not be keeping it.
I still see a lot of adds for used Bolts around, but they are $3-4k higher than they were a year ago and we wouldn’t qualify for the used EV tax credit so the full $20-21k on a used Bolt EUV is really hard to justify when they would have been that price new with the fed and state tax credits.
I think the whole market is going haywire. New cars are already too expensive thanks to equipment that many people don’t want. That dipshit’s tarriff BS will only make new cars more expensive.
So, many car buyers will have to step down to that 3 year-old range. Oh, but because of the shortage of cars coming off lease thanks to lower production in 2021 and 2022, those cars will be harder to find and much more expensive.
This will put pressure on the mid-market, those 4-10 year-old cars that usually hang around the $10,000 mark. Since many buyers will not be able to secure a decent loan on one of those, as banks don’t like loaning money for old cars, they may be pushed down into the $5,000 bracket, where they can pay cash.
Which is why, as someone who needs a car and prefers that $5,000 range, I’ll be most likely buying my buddy’s late father’s car. It might not be exactly what I want, but at least I know the car and can trust what the seller tells me. And it keeps me out of the market, where I would have to settle for a whole lot less knowledge about how the car was owned, driven, and maintained. In fact, I’d give my buddy a little more money than I think the car is worth just to avoid the uncertainty of the market.
The poor people I know do not have $5K in cash for a car.
I make 6 figures and I don’t even have 5K cash to throw at a car.
Agreed!
As I posted below. “Let them pay cash” is the new “let them eat cake”
Same…
3rded
I’m out of the market until at least 28. I might consider a Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia or even a Chinese EV at that time. Which I choose depends on where it’s manufactured.
The plane always lands. HOW it lands is a different matter entirely.
Aviation has a perfect flight record, we’ve never left one of them up there.
We need more optimism like this these days.
“Any landing you can walk away from is a good one” – Chuck Yeager
I think you’ll need less Yeager and more Jägermeister for this landing.
Ol’ Chuck didn’t have to pay for the planes he wrecked.
I think Amelia Earhart’s still up there somewhere.
The coconut crabs got her.
Amelia’s Lockheed Electra 10E and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 might still be in holding patterns.
With the state of Air Traffic Controllers these days, they probably collided with each other, but no one in the ATC has realized it yet.
Ideally we’ll get the “walk away from it” variety of landing. But honestly, I’d settle for anything short of the “Clean them up with a Shop-Vac” type of landing at this point.
Probably “rapid, unscheduled dissassembly”
The pilots I know have a saying: “Takeoffs are optional. Landing is mandatory.”
Another one a pilot friend told me was “If you’re crashing landing at night, make sure to turn on your landing lights. If you don’t like what you see, turn them back off.”
Nice.
Another good one: “There are three things of no use to a pilot: altitude above you, runway behind you, and fuel you’ve already burned.”
Or “fuel on the ground”…
How do you see the car market going this year? Are we going to land this plane or what? What’s your personal level of consumer confidence?
The plane will land, but more in the style of Delta Airlines flight 4819
With everyone alive, but the Right Wing destroyed?
I think this one is going to be more like that Malaysia Airlines flight that was shot down over Ukraine.
Well said there.
Also manufacturers, suppliers, business people, banks, investors, cats, dogs… pretty much everyone but supervillains and/or anyone who might live in a lair inside a volcano
What do you have against SWG? 🙂
Lair jealousy is real.
How do you see the car market going this year? We are speed up the long slide into cars are for the haves and walking or busses are for the have nots
Are we going to land this plane or what? The spacex ran FAA will probably crash the plane
What’s your personal level of consumer confidence? I am not even confident we will have anything short of an Orwellian dictatorship in a year. I could not replace the cars I have that I bought new even if my income has risen a lot since I bought them.
Busses? No way. Public transit is communism and ripe with corruption and must be defunded.
Pupmeow is Elon’s shadow account at Autopian.
/s
I wanted to keep this joke alive by saying a bunch of horrible Elony things, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. 🙂
Buses is preferred.
“Let them pay cash” is the new “let them eat cake”
Or dogs and cats.
DOGEs and CATalytics.
Careful with the dogs. That could become a Homeland Security issue to be dealt with most severely, if as they say that dog won’t hunt.
The joke used to be ATF will shoot your dog, now we wish we had that problem with DOGEs.
“Kristi Noem wants to know your location”