FIVE OF THE BEST CAR DEALS OF 2010
1. Toyotathon Shareathon

If you’re buying a new Toyota, tweet it! Tweeting about a new Toyota during their Toyota Shareathon can score you a $500 debit card. You gotta tweet by December 15th, and you have to pick up your new ride by January sixth, but it’s the easiest $500 you’ll ever make.

2. Enterprise Weekend Rental

Okay, you probably won’t get to warp speed, but Enterprise Rent-A-Car has weekend rental deals for just $9.99 a day. Go to that garlic festival the next county over, and get your hummus on. Go see a Danish art house film. Go camping and sing kumbaya. Just get off your ass and GO somewhere! With prices this low, you can’t afford to miss another opportunity for travel.

3. YourFreeOilChange.com

YourFreeOilChange.com will take your info and match you to a local dealership service department that wants fresh business. They’ll service the hell out of you for free the first time you visit, in hopes of making you a regular. Savvy shoppers know that this one-time wonder is worth the short registration.

4. Whistler XTR-265 Laser Radar Detector

A radar detector will likely pay for itself in a few years, that is, if you are still pre-Social Security. The Whistler XTR-265 regularly goes for $89.99, but Amazon is letting them ship out at $39.99. It comes with VG-2 cloaking technology so the detectors that detect detectors don’t detect you.

5. Firestone Tires

Firestone is promoting Affinity Touring Tires now by giving the fourth tire free when you buy the first three. If you’re looking to replace only two tires, you can get your second one at half price when you pay full price for the first. If you need new winter tires, you might as well get the equivalent of 25% off.

FIVE OF THE WORST CAR DEALS, EVER

Every so often companies jump off the deep end looking for the ever-elusive dollar. While the workplace philosophy that “No idea is a bad idea” promotes creativity in brainstorming sessions, one has to wonder, who approves these ideas and lets them go public?

1. Assault Rifles

Max Motors in Missouri thought more people needed handguns to deal with road rage, so they included a free one with purchase. They wanted to think bigger, for 2010, so now they offer a voucher for a free AK-47. Nation’s Trucks in Central Florida thought it was such a good idea, they quickly followed suit. Luckily for the ladies of Florida and Missouri, they pimped an AK-47 with Hello Kitty and a tea cozy.

2. Spam

The people of Guam love them some SPAM. Only Hawaiians eats more per capita than the Chamorro (which is a $5 proletariat scholar word for “Guamanian”). Spam is even available on McDonald’s breakfast menus in Guam and Hawaii, but would you buy a car to get a free year’s supply of SPAM? Car dealers in Guam seem to think so, even though the AK-47 owners seem to disagree.

3. Ford F-250 Lariat (Diesel)

It doesn’t matter what you paid to own a Ford F-250 Lariat, it’s gonna cost you big time to keep it. It is among the very worst cars to own when it comes to mileage, getting a mere ten miles per gallon. If you want to spend your time getting to and from your destination, instead of looking for yet another gas station, walk on by when the dealer tries to sell you this incognito lemon.

4. Kia Spectra

If you intend to drive the same car forever, then the residual value of your car may not matter. But if you want to upgrade, need to trade in your car at some point, or realize no one is immune to a recession, you want to maintain as much of your car’s value as possible. The Kia Spectra is one of the worst options when it comes to holding value. After five years, assuming you drive 15,000 miles per year and keep it in perfect condition, your Spectra will only be worth 25.89% of what you paid for it.

5. Cash for Clunkers

An Edmunds study reports that Cash for Clunkers ended up costing the program $24,000 per car—more than many of the new cars were worth. The scrap yards got cheated, and weren’t able to recycle parts from the clunkers because the program rules stipulated that the engines needed to be destroyed, leaving a surplus of cars to rot in junk yards. Bad for the planet, bad for the budget, and when it costs the program $24K per car, consumers should see more than a $4K rebate.

CONCLUSION

While the Christmas season is an excellent time to do a little research and end up saving big bucks on car deals, it’s also a time to be wary of scams, and those who know you need to buy gifts. Think of all the awesome gifts you can buy when you save money on your car. With a little research and due diligence, you can ensure that Christmas day will be special, and that the New Year’s Eve bill from your creditor will be as small as possible.

There is something to be said about owning a beater. They’re not pretty, generally don’t run well and are most likely the farthest thing from a performance vehicle that one can imagine. The general public views them with looks of disgust and considers them road hazards. What they don’t realize however is that to those of us in the automotive know, our beaters are our full-on prize possessions.

The beater is a ride that laughs in the face of all that is beautiful in the automotive spectrum. They love parking on city streets and live for door dings and crappy weather. The beater is a beast that does what all high-end garage queens strive to be, that being… useful. Go to any Home Depot or the local train station and see for yourselves how many Mercedes and BMW’s you see in the lot – the simple fact is, not to many. They don’t live here… this is the beaters playground.

God knows over the years I’ve had my share of beaters. Everything ranging from a 1981 Mercury Capri (remember those), to a clapped out rusted Dodge Dakota pick-up truck, to my all time favorite… a 1997 Mercury Villager mini-van… man do I miss that thing. They were all great vehicles that did exactly what they were supposed to do. They gave me the freedom to park, go and do anything I wanted without the worry of something happening to them. So, with that being said, let’s here about the POS you’ve got in the driveway… I flippin’ love these things so post them up and be proud of your pile.

Related: RideLust’s 15 Beaters That Won’t Disappoint

As a bittersweet farewell to one of the most tumultuous years in automotive history, RideLust presents to you a re-cap of all the biggest industry events in 2009…and a few that slipped in under editorial bias.

Rick Wagoner, Bob Nardelli, and Alan Mulally spent weeks feigning humility and destitution in three piece Brooks Brothers suits in an attempt to wrangle a billion-dollar loan from an apparently benevolent Uncle Sam. Eventually, the government acquiesced and agreed to bail out both General Motors and Chrysler so as not to interrupt their steady production of poorly built, aesthetically unappealing vehicles.

Stunt double Ben Collins outed himself as Top Gear’s infamous masked driver, The Stig, potentially blowing the sweetest gig on planet Earth. Rather than kill him off, Top Gear attempted to counter the rumors by fingering (::snicker::) legendary racer Michael Schumacher as The Stig. Gearheads in America with an Internet connection that’s too slow to cope with downloading the weekly BBC broadcast still don’t give a rat’s ass.

There was some sort of F1 scandal involving Renault intentionally throwing the Singapore Gran Prix, but we were too immersed in our rally obsession to care. Just Google it or something.

As per their plan to cut costs and pretend to pay back taxpayers, GM made the logical decision to axe one of the only remaining brands that consumers still cared about, Pontiac. Shortly after the announcement, rumors began to circulate that the late John DeLorean’s company was interested in purchasing the rights to produce the Pontiac Solstice. The idea, much like the DMC-12, was short lived.

Drawing heavily from the blatantly phallic styling of the Ambiguously Gay Duo’s car, Porsche released it’s first 4-door sedan, the Panamera.

For what feels like the 10th year in a row, GM failed to launch the all-electric Chevy Volt. Reports indicate all 3 enthusiastic fans are coping well.

In an attempt to steal the allegedly sizable fan base the ever-elusive Volt has garnered, Nissan unveiled their equally unready-for-production EV, the Nissan LEAF. As quickly became the case with the Volt, no one really cares.

After muscling a disgraced Rick Wagoner from his position, GM CEO Fritz Henderson found himself on the receiving end of a nasty blow from karma when he was unexpectedly forced to resign after less than a year of service. Immediately following the announcement, his 20-something daughter Sarah Henderson took to Facebook, providing days of gossip fodder with her caps-locked, obscenity-filled defense of her father’s unremarkable stint with The General.

Although arguably destined to be a success in the long run, Cash For Clunkers proved treacherous to September car sales and dealer temperaments everywhere. In truly bureaucratic fashion, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of dealer rebates were caught up in red tape for much longer than expected and, thanks to a gross ignorance of performance and quality, at least one 300ZX was clunked in favor of a 2010 Chrysler Sebring. It was a very dark time for the automotive community.

Citing the worsening global economy and the need for budget cutbacks, Toyota withdrew participation from F1, cruelly crushing the vain hope of fanboys everywhere that Toyota’s race-bred technology would eventually find its way into their excruciatingly boring production vehicles.

In a stark break with the Detroit Three’s storied business philosophy, Ford began producing cars that people actually enjoy driving. In one of the biggest upsets of the year, the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid all but completely usurped the Prius as the public’s favorite hybrid.

After failing to resolve some sort of vague disagreement with Penske, GM opted to wind down the Saturn brand, finally putting an end to what was basically a 19-year identity crisis.

Unseating Ford as the reigning king of the recall, Toyota found itself in hot water in the latter half of the year when a grisly accident exposed serious engineering flaws. After feebly attempting to pin the problem of sudden, accidental acceleration on loose floor mats and receiving a class action lawsuit by way of response, Toyota demonstrated a rare act of responsibility for their subpar product by recalling 3.8 million vehicles for faulty accelerators. Of course, although this was certainly a serious problem in urgent need of an immediate resolution, some might reasonably argue that anyone who purchased a Toyota sort of deserved it anyway.

Ford went to great lengths to keep its month-long negotiations with Geely a secret, ultimately culminating in the quiet sale of Volvo in mid-December. Fortunately, traditional Volvo enthusiasts renounced their brand loyalty when the company was purchased by Ford in 1999, so few tears were shed.

Finally, just a few days before Christmas GM delivered a heartfelt gift to Sweden, announcing that purchase negotiations with Koenigsegg had fallen through and Saab would be killed off. The failure trifecta is now complete.

In conclusion, on behalf of the staff that I no longer employ, I’d like to wish the RideLust readership a very Happy New Year. Thank you sincerely for reading and please keep up the snarling hate mail, my therapist loves the business.

More grist for the mill in the ongoing debate about the aftereffects of Cash for Clunkers and the current recession: Kelley Blue Book reports that small car sales unexpectedly rose in September, after tumbling precipitously when gas prices stabilized. This is despite the fact that the Cash for Clunkers program ended on August 24th, and that overall sales of new cars have been down after the program. This also contradicts a recent survey among new car buyers that suggested that large numbers of the C4C buyers who purchased small cars were unsatisfied with their purchase and would buy a larger car next time.

Nevertheless, as the graph shows, subcompact car sales are up 3.5% over last month, which isn’t easily explained. KBB data shows that all inventories of new and used cars are significantly down after the buying frenzy of the Clunkers program, and it may just be that as manufacturers ramped up production of their smallest cars, these subcompacts are simply the least affected of all the car segments and are able to sell more. That’s just a theory, it’s all a little unclear from this data. But it does show that there are no easy answers as to whether the Clunkers program was effective, and what the lasting impact will be on car sales in the US.

Press Release

Kelley Blue Book Monthly Market Report: Compact-Car Values on the Rise; Market Stabilization Years Away

For additional information, please visit www.kbb.com/media for the latest Blue Book Market Report. To subscribe to the monthly Blue Book Market Report, please email pr@kbb.com.

[Source: KBB]

In Wilmington, North Carolina, Alliance Credit Union will be rewarding the egregious aesthetic taste of Mr. Saintard at the awards ceremony for the first Ugly Car Contest. Aimed at helping one lucky driver ditch his jalopy in the charitable spirit inspired by the Cash for Clunkers program, Alliance opted to bestow one lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) winner to receive a $5,000 cash prize to be put towards the purchase of a new car or a gallon of Bondo and a few cans of spray paint.

While it doesn’t seem to be in miserable enough shape to warrant a five grand prize – especially not when compared to the other truly hideous contestants – Mr. Saintard’s scratched up Saturn apparently offended the senses of enough voters to earn him the crowd favorite and Alliance’s Grand Prize. Hit the jump to check out photos of few of the more, ah, deserving vehicles.

Source: PRNewsire

The Cash for Clunkers news coming out over the last few days has felt like a bit of a rollercoaster. Yesterday reports hailed the program for raising new car average gas mileage significantly. Today, the news is that overall new car sales have declined to pre-Clunkers levels, but that’s not the whole story. The real story is that among the individual manufacturers, there are some significant winners and losers. GM and Chrysler were hit the hardest, suffering a 45% and 42% decline from the same time last year, which is significantly off their sales numbers during the Clunkers program.

But on the other hand, Hyundai came out strong, still pulling in increased new car sales despite the program being over – 27% more than this same time in 2007. Honda, Toyota, and Nissan were all down too, but much less than their domestic competition. So was Clunkers a flop? It’s debatable, but my opinion is that the program wasn’t really intended to keep new car sales increasing throughout the year … it seemed more like the point was to move a segment of the total US fleet into more efficient, new cars, to give the economy a temporary boost. Small, efficient cars benefited the most and maybe that’ll change long-term buying patterns. I’m not going to go out on a limb and say that C4C was a success, but I don’t think this news necessarily proves the program was a failure. (But that’s my opinion!)

[Source]

The continuing saga of the Cash for Clunkers plan has gotten more interesting as new reports emerge that suggest that the program has actually increased the average gas mileage of all new cars sold during that period to a record 23 MPG. That’s an 8% increase from 21.2 MPG in August 2008 and the best numbers recorded since gas hit $4/gallon back in the dark days of 2007. So should we celebrate or sagely shake our heads? More after the jump.

Interpreting the data runs into that old causative/correlative situation, meaning that at it’s difficult to attribute the increased new car mileage directly to Clunkers. Still, it would be tough to argue that the program didn’t have at least some impact on those numbers. Lots of commentators are suggesting that news like this, coupled with news that truck sales are off so significantly they may not recover, points to the American consumer finally and permanently altering their car buying habits and gravitating towards more fuel-efficient options. But who knows? Maybe gas will sink back down to 99 cents a gallon and GMC will crank out 46-passenger wheeled aircraft carriers as fast as they can. But I digress … whatever the actual reason, whenever average vehicle mileage goes up it’s a good thing in my book.

[Source]

Now that Department of Transportation appears to have made good on their promise that all dealers would receive their Cash for Clunkers rebate by the end of September, it seems as though a new problem has arisen. According to sources, thanks to the massive buying spree spurred by Cash for Clunkers, and its abrupt end 4 weeks ago, September promises to yield the worst sales numbers in nearly 30 years. By the end of the month, the Seasonally Adjusted Annualized Rate (SAAR) of sales is expected to be at 8.4 million which, despite the crisis that mired the industry for 2008 and most of 2009, is the lowest the SAAR has fallen since December 1981. The reason, analysts say, is simple.

By the end of Cash for Clunkers’ run in late August, an estimated 400,000 sales had occurred earlier than they would have without the hefty government incentive, and about 60,000 of them were borrowed from September’s projected totals. In addition to the lost 60,000, analysts also expect to lose another 40,000 potential buyers who will be disappointed with post-Clunker prices. Total, sales will take a 100,000 unit hit.

Source: PlanetGore, AutoObserver

There’s been a lot of speculation about the effectiveness Cash for Clunkers (C4C) in light of the massively dysfunctional dealer reimbursement scheme, and it seems like that batch of screw-ups threw the entire program into question. Up until this point, the major unanswered question was, did Cash for Clunkers draw “new” buyers, or did it simply help folks who already were going to buy a car? A new survey suggests that the so-called “incremental buyers” who were not thinking about buying a new car before C4C was introduced went out and bought new cars through the program. And not just a couple of them – as many as 30%. Click through for more on what this means.

So here’s how it breaks down exactly. 30% of C4C buyers were not going to buy a new car at all, and only bought one because of the incentives of the program. Also, 37% of all C4C buyers (and that number probably overlaps with the first one, FYI) were planning on only buying a used car, and used C4C as an excuse to buy a new car. In either case, you had buyers purchasing new vehicles who wouldn’t have otherwise, proving that in at least one measure that C4C was a success. And despite all of the negativity on the dealer end of things, 80% of C4C buyers were happy with how the purchasing process through C4C went. The survey was commissioned by Cars.com and was a random sample of more than 1,000 people who bought a car in the last 3 months or were planning on buying a car in the next 6 months (of the latter group, 55% wished C4C would continue so they could use it). What does it all mean? Well we don’t think it means that Cash for Clunkers was an equivocal success, we do think it shows that it worked for at least one narrow measure. Was that enough success to justify the program? We’ll let the pundits argue about that as we go back to drooling over the ICON CJ3B … mmmmm …

Press Release:

Cars.com Survey Shows Cash for Clunkers Drove Incremental Buyers Into Market

Launched in June 1998, Cars.com is a division of Classified Ventures, LLC, which is owned by leading media companies, including Belo (NYSE:BLC) , Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI) , The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) , Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) .

[Source: Cars.com]

Gorged on tasty government cheddar and encouraged by the sudden surge of consumer activity facilitated by the Cash for Clunkers program, GM has announced it may be revving up the production of four key models. According to GM, sales of the Chevy Camaro, Chevy Equinox, Cadillac SRX, and, defying any rhyme or reason, the Buick LaCrosse, have greatly surpassed expectations and may force GM to blow the dust off a few of their shuttered factories.

It’s too soon to confirm any concrete details but if GM does indeed make good on their intentions, the Ontario plant responsible for assembling the Equinox (and the GMC Terrain) would see a third shift added to the production schedule, possibly calling back a few of the laid off workers.

Source: AutoNews