When buying a car, Is buying for resale

I agree this article that way I copied it into my blog

 

Buying for resale

By Eric Chin

October 24, 2012

So my friend Richard really wanted a BMW but he settled for another car because he thought it had better resale value.

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 24 — When I bought my trusty ol’ Proton Gen.2 in an eye-searing shade of turquoise, my friends baulked and remarked that I was a particularly brave soul for buying the car in that colour.

“You’re gonna get hit when you try to sell that on, mate. No one’s gonna buy a turquoise car. Or a Gen.2 for that matter. Not when you can get a Persona for the same price!”

This of course came from friends who oddly enough, drove cars that they didn’t exactly fancy. Which were invariably silver in colour, even though it was nowhere near their colour of choice.

I’ve always found this piece of advice mind-boggling. And to a smaller extent, annoying. I for one am a staunch believer of automotive democracy. You simply buy and drive what you want. But this concept, apparently, rarely ever applies in the world where everyone else seems to live.

Another friend, Janet, still looks longingly at the Kia Optima each time she spots one.

Janet, an ex-colleague. Fancies dark graphite grey on cars. And she actually thinks the Kia Optima K5 looks like a million bucks in that colour. But instead of putting her hard-earned cash on a car she wanted, she ordered a silver Camry instead.

Richard, a friend from high school, drives a gold-hued Mercedes. He fancies green. And turns the same shade when he sees someone zoom by in a BMW.

Ron, my friendly purveyor of fine suits and such, drives a grey Honda CR-V. He actually fancies a searing orange Kia Sportage.

What do all the above have in common, you may well ask. Well, all of these blokes and lasses bought what they thought would fetch a better price at resale. So they ended up with “safe” colours on “safe” cars.

And I have a serious issue with this. How one could agonise for hours deciding the exact shade of mauve that should be on a RM69.90 shirt and yet spend upwards of RM100k on a “default” colour and brand choice based on resale value simply escapes me.

I’ve always believed that one should buy what one fancies. And if that happens to be a turquoise Mercedes, so be it. I reckon far too many purchasing decisions in the automotive world these days are governed by those awful two words called “resale value”.

Sure, a Toyota may command a bit more at trade-in than a Kia. But would you seriously sentence yourself to five to nine years of facing a greige interior with hideous orange-hued wood trim, and driving dynamics only your grandmother would appreciate in the name of resale?

Would you commit yourself to the grey cloth-upholstered monotony of a Honda when for a couple of thousand LESS, you could be in the lush leather clad cabin of a Kia?

Would you commit yourself to the stoic yet starkly middle-age driving environment of a Mercedes E-class when the wild, techno-infested interior of a BMW 5-series could be yours for the same price?

The question that begs to be asked, therefore, is this: Why in the world do we let our car’s NEXT owner decide what kind of car we drive for the immediate five to nine years?

I reckon it’s because of this myopic need to see everything one buys as an “investment” of sorts. That one must maximise the returns on anything one buys in life. Everyone seems to end up treating cars like houses.

This, ladies and gents, is the biggest single killer of motoring joy.

For my friend Janet, she openly acknowledges she’s getting the raw end of the bargain with the Camry. For the RM160k she’s forking out for the car, she’s getting a 2.0 litre engine coupled to an ancient four-speed automatic. She still has to use a key to start her car. She gets just two airbags to protect her in a crash. And the car has the distinction of being one of the rare cars in its class NOT to have stability or traction control.

For no less than twenty thousand ringgit LESS — yes, you read that right — RM20,000 — a Kia Optima would have given her a 2.0 litre engine paired with a modern six-speed auto. She would have gotten keyless entry. She would have had no less than SIX airbags to keep her safe in a crash and more importantly, a full suite of stability and traction assist systems to keep her car pointing straight and true even in the worst conditions. The folks at Kia even saw it fit to throw in a full-length panoramic sunroof for good measure.

And don’t for a second think Korean cars are any less well built than their Japanese counterparts. The Kia Optima (and to a lesser extent, its sister car, the Hyundai Sonata), I reckon, has the best interior amongst its non-European competitors. Where the Japanese would use hard, unyielding plastics, Kia puts padded, plush, squishy plastics that simply reeks of quality, even if it remains short of the quality standards on show in, let’s say, a Peugeot 508.

But still... I think a point that has to be made here is this:

A car is NOT an investment.

A car is NOT an investment.

A car is NOT an investment.

Repeat that and get used to it. And once you do, stop feeling guilty about buying something that will give you just minimum return on your initial payment when it’s time to trade up.

There’s a reason, after all, why car loans are called “hire purchase”. You essentially rent the car, and at the end of the day, make one final payment to own it outright. When you look at a car purchase as a rental arrangement, resale consideration becomes less of an issue, since whatever resale value you get out of it at the end of the day is actually just a bonus.

When was the last time you rented a house for five years and ended up owning it on your last day of your tenancy?

Resale value is massively over-hyped. I say drive what you want. In any colour you want. If no one else appreciates your taste in car and colour, so be it.

So Janet, if you’re reading this. Might I persuade you to still consider the Kia?