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Word. And your penciling of the situation makes sense. People have become increasingly more disconnected from each other, music has gotten crappier, etc. etc. Is it any wonder that the choice of vehicles has become more disappointing as well?

The new car market looks bleak to me...EVs don't appeal to me, I don't want a CUV, maybe another SUV eventually (another Grand Cherokee), I have no interest in trucks. I still have my vintage Mustangs, getting restored now, but they are weekend toys I won't drive very much. I'm thinking a CPO Cadillac sedan or Chrysler 300 might be my next primary vehicle (save the Jeep for winter). More interested in spending on real estate..upgrades to my new house, maybe eventually a lake house somewhere in NE Ohio or a winter getaway home in SC..

I love watching 2nd and 3rd gen Camaros do the quarter mile thing... Lastly...

This car is about perfect however...

Malibu is in it's last year, Fusion is gone...it's crazy, but Ford only has one car left--the Mustang. I guess being in tech I have a warped (jaded?) view of things..my total compensation has almost doubled in the last 3 years and my old house almost doubled in value over 6 years.. inflation partially I'm sure. I can afford a new $60-75k car, but it's hard to justify considering I work out of my house and have no commute.

Quoted for truth. Apparently Canadians get something right once in awhile. Does not mean that I hate the Any less. Good riddance to all 3 of these $h! boxes, and good Monday morning to you all!

Canadians...ALL Canadians dont like the Maple Leafs either. Only Canadians from the GTA area tolerate the Leafs. Speaking of GTA. Not exactly a Camaro IROC. Diffrent but same; a picture of...until you find and buy your IROC-Z.

I have largely given up on cars altogether. I have owned vintage cars and love them, but now a woodworking shop fills my garage. Enjoying using my Ranger to get to places to hike/explore. If something happens to Ranger, want to get something similar to replace it. But the inexpensive midsize truck is going the way of the Dodo bird and the sedan. Ford is now building only crew cab models and 99 percent of them are loaded if you are not a fleet buyer. Paid 27K for my Ranger, a new Ranger on a lot is usually about 47K. Not sure it is worth the extra 20K to me. After all this negativity, something positive. Young woman playing piano...

One reason I am seldom here and no longer care about new cars frankly. Of the interesting passenger cars....Mustang,,,,Copy of a 1964 idea....Camaro...copy of a 1966 idea and cancelled.....Challenger, copy of a 1970 idea...Miata....update of a car introduced in 1989....GTI....update of a car introduced in 1975....Cadillac and Audi...sleek sedans but ultimately not that interesting....um....seems we ran out of ideas 45 or 50 years ago. Not that creative ideas didn't happen with 70's 80's, 90's other cars. But the automakers have jack $h! for creative ideas. Exotics largely look like cartoons drawn with a dull crayon by a drug induced stripper in a jail cell after a bad human trafficking session. BMW products largely look like the cheap pizza that stripper flushed down the toilet in her jail cell after her arrest for OMVI. Large SUV's are cool, but again, need new ideas. As the book of Proverbs says.... "and the day of death than the day of one's birth." Malibu and Fusion...are they even sold much/at all any more? Her bare ass resembles a lot of Nissan products. This is something to consider, most folks are in a worse financial situation than they were 4, n6, 8 years ago. We need to move away from cars as a primary form of transportation. Long term we don't have the petroleum reserves, the space, or the ability to deal with the environmental harm of the car as a daily driver for most folks.

Good morning

Couldn't take a photo. It was ugly, anyway. It was the "entry level" Tesla with a license plate saying: OUTA GAS He or she could also be: OUTA AMP

I understand all that. But...if we want to save money, compromises need to be made, in order to achieve a car market that is well...affordable. Yes, crank windows need to come back. What you just explained right there are just minor nuissances. Unless of course you personally has the money to spend on luxuries like that. Im discussing this as if we are still talking about having $25 000 midsized vehicles again. Plenty of Americans and Canadians are in a pretty bad financial situation. Inflation is just awefull and prices of goods and services that are of the necessary kind and not of the luxury kind are not going to go back down. And our salaries are not going to go up matching inflation. We are in a huge pickle. I understand the pleas for cheaper cars. Im a huge advocate for them. I know you do. And I fully comprehend where you are coming from. Please dont take our banter that Im schooling you and tsk tsk tsking you. Its just that. Banter. And rightfully so. You want what you want and worked hard in your life that you do NOT need to compromise. ? That is how one should do it. I always buy new. But more folk like you and less folk like me could also bring car prices down.

I can’t imagine going back to manual windows after decades with power windows. And with any vehicle of sufficient size, can’t reach the passenger side and can’t reach the back windows. Crank windows are best left to the past. I get the appeal of a $25k car, I’d pay cash and not finance something that cheap. But I don’t like decontented or stripper models, I’m old enough I want all the goodies in something of decent size and not a subcompact 4cyl despair-mobile. (I drove an ‘84 Ford Escort diesel with manual windows and AM radio part of the time in college 30+ years ago, not going back to that level of minimalism). I like CPOs, get something 3 years old w/ low mikes at a reduced price. A $60k car for $40k or a $50k suv for $30k. I plan to do that again on my next vehicle.

This is one of many reasons as to why new 25 000 dollar cars dont exist. Especially if said 25 000 dollar vehicle has no frills. A used car of a couple of years with extras might be more enticing. not might be more enticing, for many people it IS more enticing... And I get that 100%. Nothing wrong with that. There shoudnt be any judgement by ANYBODY! Nothing wrong with that either. While a cheapskate could be judged for being a cheapskate, ultimately its the cheapskate that is the smartest one of all. A penny saved is a penny earned and no reason to just part with your hard earned money on nonsense. But lets be honest, NOBODY needs power windows. Its nice to have them, but in icy cold Montreal and plenty of times the power windows dont power window in the winter, I sometimes bitch and wish for crank windows... So there is that considering the cheapskated-ness of stripper cars. I dont aspire to be cheap. But I certainly wished I was more of a miser than the make it rain type of guy i kinda was back in the day.

Nowhere..other than Mustang, those are dead...afraid the 'EV Generation' is just going to be more soulless CUV appliances...generic vehicles for generic consumers.

With a new front end this could be a good range topper for Lexus above the LX..

Yeah, I can't imagine there are many consumers today in the US or CA that would actually WANT a car without all the mod cons. A stripped down basic vehicle w/ a despair gray interior says one of two things about it's owner--that's it's all they can afford, or they are a cheapskate. Not a good image and not what people aspire to. In today's market, $25k is a decent used car, not much of anything decent under $30k for new and your average midsize CUV is $40k and up...

Are we spoiled in the USA and Canada? yes. When will I see a midsize car at about $25K, anytime soon? never, apparently. Will we ever dump the two-box SUV/crossover for sedans again? hard to tell. right now, I doubt it. ?

There was dialogue about the Malibu rental and then some dialogue about a Malibu in general and then some whining about car prices. The same type of whining that I responded to in this thread. So I had to react to both... In this thread @trinacriabob has blessed us with yet story with another car rental from his famous trips. This is what he said. In bold. I laughed at that. Why? Because it reminded of Greece. His story resides in Portugal but he has ALSO seen this in Italy. Because in these places, especially in little villages or towns, they buy a car, a cheap car, well, cars are hella expensive to begin with, but they usually buy a no frills model and drive the hell out of it. These cars have all kinds of dents on them. Dusty... parked on the side of mountainous cliff sides carrying all knds of stuff in them. The windows are ALWAYS dusty. The tires. the interiors. Its a thing you have to experience. BTW...in the bigger cities, you will continue to see that as well.. Way different than what our North American rednecks do. Almost the same. But different. Point being: We Canadians and Americans have become spoiled brats. We whine and whine and cry and stomp our feet especially when we cant have nice things anymore without making ANY compromises. Its like we are OWED something... Yet...as we know...NOBODY owes us NOTHIN'!!! But we do NOTHIN' to change our ways. We CONTINUE to buy on credit...yada yada yada... Like I said...in other parts of the world...THEY MAKE DO with what they got.

The LX has traditionally been in the 4-5k units per year in the USA, where as the GLS and Escalade are usually more like 20-30,000 and 40,000 recently for Escalade. And the GLS has 11,204 first half of of this year, but they also have 5,500 EQS SUV, so if you put them together they are at 16,700 first half of this year compared to 4500 over at Lexus. And the Century isn't a Tundra platform and engine, it is a Grand Highlander chassis and engine for $179,000. It would be like Chevrolet selling a $179,000 Traverse turbo 4-cylinder hybrid.