← Continued from Page 1 of "Automotive Industry Gotchas. Buying a Good New Car Without Getting Screwed"How recent is the model?
While getting an old model is generally a bad idea, getting a brand new one isn’t the best move either. New models suffer from “childhood issues” way too often, ranging from erroneous settings or bad tuning, bad choice of materials, software errors (increasingly present) and, most unfortunately, “bugs” in the safety systems.
An analogy that works quite well is to look at video games and the countless patches often required to make them work properly and remove annoying bugs. Although at a different scale, the same applies to cars.
Still, the automotive industry does have its performers in terms of respect for the client. These companies push out more polished cars, with a lot less issues on launch day. This, however, leads to much, much greater costs and has started to become an exception, unfortunately.
Never forget that automobile manufacturers will always take advantage of people’s desire to have “the newest car” and boast the coolest, yet unreleased if possible, model, so prices will certainly match. Moreover, further capitalizing on this weakness on the clients’ part, auto makers knowingly amputate models on initial launch, keeping certain features for subsequent release over the years in “new versions” of the car, even though they were ready and available for a long time, waiting to be greenlighted by the diabolical marketing team.
There are plenty of notable examples, but BMW certainly takes the cake on this one. All-wheel drive on the 7 Series was announced at least four years before a model that had it actually became available for purchase. Moreover, diesel fans were given the cold shoulder, as all-wheel drive was only available for the most expensive model, the petrol-based V8. To this day, there’s still no all-wheel drive diesel model, even many years have passed since the 7 Series was launched.
Therefore, it’s better to avoid jumping the gun and get a new model on launch day. With a bit of patience, you’ll be able to get a superior car in just 1-2 years and for the same price as the first model...
Make no mistake; manufacturers do know some of us are onto them and their practices. They simply prefer to rely on the continuously evolving market, take advantage of people’s lack of knowledge, and continue to use these dubious and downright unfair marketing methods of offering new features little by little, thinking and hoping to sell more units.
An analogy that works quite well is to look at video games and the countless patches often required to make them work properly and remove annoying bugs. Although at a different scale, the same applies to cars.
Still, the automotive industry does have its performers in terms of respect for the client. These companies push out more polished cars, with a lot less issues on launch day. This, however, leads to much, much greater costs and has started to become an exception, unfortunately.
Never forget that automobile manufacturers will always take advantage of people’s desire to have “the newest car” and boast the coolest, yet unreleased if possible, model, so prices will certainly match. Moreover, further capitalizing on this weakness on the clients’ part, auto makers knowingly amputate models on initial launch, keeping certain features for subsequent release over the years in “new versions” of the car, even though they were ready and available for a long time, waiting to be greenlighted by the diabolical marketing team.
There are plenty of notable examples, but BMW certainly takes the cake on this one. All-wheel drive on the 7 Series was announced at least four years before a model that had it actually became available for purchase. Moreover, diesel fans were given the cold shoulder, as all-wheel drive was only available for the most expensive model, the petrol-based V8. To this day, there’s still no all-wheel drive diesel model, even many years have passed since the 7 Series was launched.
Therefore, it’s better to avoid jumping the gun and get a new model on launch day. With a bit of patience, you’ll be able to get a superior car in just 1-2 years and for the same price as the first model...
Make no mistake; manufacturers do know some of us are onto them and their practices. They simply prefer to rely on the continuously evolving market, take advantage of people’s lack of knowledge, and continue to use these dubious and downright unfair marketing methods of offering new features little by little, thinking and hoping to sell more units.
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