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A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

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1321 points kwindla | 4 comments | 25 Apr 25 15:01 UTC | HN request time: 0.741s | source
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PaulHoule ◴[25 Apr 25 15:15 UTC] No.43794437[source]▶
I like it. My wife runs a riding academy and we use a Honda Fit the way some people would use a pickup truck: we can fit 10 bales of wood shavings in the back. [1] We’re dreading when it fails because they don’t make the fit anymore and compact hatchbacks seem to be on the way out. Recent experiences have made me a bit of a Buick enthusiast and I can see driving a 2005-ish sedan except that I won’t get those sawdust bales into the trunk. We are also thinking of fitting in EV into the fleet, so far the used Nissan Leaf has been the main contender but this is a pickup truck I could get into.

[1] We were profitable from day one because we didn’t buy a $80,000 pickup on day one the way everybody else does.

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hansvm ◴[25 Apr 25 15:37 UTC] No.43794725[source]▶
The Honda Fit is great. You can probably squeeze an extra decade out if you're willing to swap out the motor or transmission (used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable), and if you're using it heavily then you have the advantage that most cara on the market take less abuse, so you can maybe grab a decade beyond that by picking up somebody else's used Fit when you're done repairing yours.
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rockostrich ◴[25 Apr 25 16:49 UTC] No.43795847[source]▶
> used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable

Where are you finding a 100k mile Honda Fit for $3k? Before I bought my current daily driver, Honda Fits were on my list to look out for and in the central NJ area I never saw one in decent condition around that mileage for less than $5k. Even looking now I see people trying to part out theirs for $2k or looking for $4k for a 200k mile one. I messaged someone on FB Marketplace that had a 2013 with 65k miles on it to try and bring down their $11k asking to $8k and just got ignored.

NJ is probably on the higher end of the market but the deviation can't be that big.

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1. PaulHoule ◴[25 Apr 25 17:00 UTC] No.43796008[source]▶
Japanese cars, particularly cars that have been orphaned, keep their value at high mileage.

If I had to get a high mileage car in a hurry in upstate NY with some expectation that my acquisition + repair costs would be reason I'd go looking for a 2005 Buick. Maybe half of that is getting older, the other half is that my son drives a '96 Buick which has needed some creative maintenance but has been rock solid reliable after a flurry of work where we replaced aging parts.

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2. stasomatic ◴[25 Apr 25 17:43 UTC] No.43796502[source]▶
Why a Buick? Which 2005 Buick? You can probably, find a simpler or less expensive doppelgänger if you look at the same car but with a Chevy or an Olds badge. I don’t mean this as a dig, simply curios.
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3. potato3732842 ◴[25 Apr 25 17:55 UTC] No.43796646[source]▶
Buick is gonna be less ragged out than an Impala or Olds of same age (you see the same with the Grand Marquis vs the Crown Vic). An 05ish one will come with a 3400 or 3800v6 which was pretty solid and cheap to own by then. The rest of the car is nothing special, just keep oil and coolant in it and drive it.

Basically he's picking a very well sorted platform of a vehicle and then choosing the brand that most correlates with buyers who'll keep it in good order.

4. PaulHoule ◴[25 Apr 25 18:23 UTC] No.43796969[source]▶
When my son got his first job and needed a car in a hurry to commute I helped him get his first car and in the search we wound up looking at a lot of Buicks that we liked and were at a good price and in good condition, particularly circa 2005 though we wound up with a '96 Park Avenue. It was my first experience owning an American car (title in my name for the cheaper insurance) and my own experience plus what I read indicates I probably would have done well with one of the 2005s.

My take is that at that age you don't pay that much more for the upbadged car but you're likely to find it in good condition but you get to enjoy the bling (the '96 is ahead of its time with traction control) and Buicks of that vintage have one of the best engines GM ever made.