As a non-expert in automobiles, I don’t feel a great need to expound. However, as someone who spent way more time than he should have digging through the Internet trying to understand what features actually had benefit, I feel it would be a waste not to document the level of understanding that I think I reached.
The starting point should be no car at all – you use transit, taxis, walking, biking, home delivery, towing/moving services, one-off rentals, etc. Sitting on your butt is not healthy and cars cost money even when you’re not driving them. But when you say you need a car for more than occasional use, the objective will be one or more of the following:
- Transport for mild disability that makes walking more difficult
- Travel longer distances that walking or biking can’t cover in the same amount of time
- Transport in rainy weather that makes biking infeasible
- Transporting significant amounts of cargo and/or passengers
- Towing
- Use on non-paved roads, in deep snow, or traversing a large amount of other adverse terrain with large loads or for significant distances (i.e. that you couldn’t do in ATV, skis, etc.)
- Specialized applications like snowplowing, food trucks, farm usages, etc. – generally speaking, any clearly identified occupational application where you know the optimization parameters, and any other purposes are within that envelope (e.g. picking your kids up after work)
The first three are most appropriately covered by an economy-ish hatchback, which will be front-wheel drive. Right now, the 11th-generation Honda Civic Hatchback EX-L (1.5 turbo) appears to be the best do-it-all, with appropriately sized wheels and tires for 4 seasons, ~40 MPG fuel economy on the highway, ~45 cubic feet of cargo space/viable passenger/child seat room in back, and a highly advanced adaptive cruise control and lane-centering function. Crossovers, etc. cost more money for a worse driving experience and function. You could go with a fuel efficient sedan if you got a good deal, or you had a specialized use case (like transporting guns, heavy objects that you wouldn’t want jump over the seat, or something photosensitive) where the trunk as a separate compartment specifically is used.
Transporting significant amounts of cargo/passengers requires a vehicle of the requisite size. (and some people are huge and need cars that fit them) In this case, you get a minivan. The current minivans all have pros and cons; for example, a current-generation Toyota Sienna has good gas mileage due to its hybrid system, but removing its rear seats is an adventure, so it’s not a good choice for flex use cases where you need the entire van part of the vehicle e.g. for wood from the hardware store. If you really need more cargo space and have fewer passengers, cargo vans should be considered, or even Sprinter-type vans.
You gain towing capacity by getting larger and larger trucks, with increasing cost/loss of fuel economy. A long bed, in a single-row “work truck”, with 4WD option, is the most versatile and therefore sensible starting point, and you add cost/optimize (e.g. going back down to 2WD) as you add requirements for more passengers and towing capacity.
Offroading capacity is increased with AWD or 4WD, raising the car, ruggedizing the suspension, skid plates and armor, locking differentials, and larger wheels and terrain-specific tires – but all of these increase cost and decrease on-road performance, which has safety implications. There are essentially three road-going (not side-by-sides, ATVs, or dirt bikes, which you also should consider for your usage) types of offroad capability:
- “Soft-roaders” of which the most generally capable and useful is the Subaru Outback. These choices are suitable if you are going down gravel or dirt roads such as fire roads, in good weather, and use the car on-road for other purposes (light towing, family transport, on-road, city) most of the time.
- Dedicated off-roaders like the Jeep Wrangler (higher trims like the Rubicon), and the Ford Bronco (not the Bronco Sport except for one very high trim). These off-roaders’ typical distinction is that you can lock the rear differential, which allows them to crawl over very uneven terrain, and hence to go truly off-road. These can go to the most off-road places for a road-going vehicle, but lack cargo and towing capacity.
- Off-road trucks and certain well-equipped SUVs. These vehicles are not as good in terrain mobility, but gain towing and cargo capacity. Any 4WD truck with appropriate underbody armor, tires, etc. is in this class, as well as certain trims of SUVs like the Toyota Land Cruiser and 4Runner. The key caution is that due to manufacturer product strategies and inherent tradeoffs, many SUVs in this class (like the Toyotas) are expensive to operate and not very safe on the road.
The specialized applications will not be discussed – as you already have a good idea of what you need.
Before a discussion of what options/configurations for these vehicles are best suited to the usage, some one-off relevant considerations:
- Most places in the 48 states are 20 miles or less from a nearby road. Therefore, you don’t need an offroad capable vehicle unless you regularly go down gravel drives, are planning to run down wet or snowy forest roads, or haul a large amount of cargo to those destinations. This is especially true in the East, where there are very few vehicle-navigable offroad locations of note (i.e. not on your farm with your farm truck) that would pose any challenge to any halfway capable vehicle like a softroader.
- The related point, that in places like national and state parks, your ability to take your vehicle off the road is very limited. If you are going for Garden of the Gods and similar experiences, then you could be assured of usage, but if you are on the East Coast and going to well-known parks, you may not get the usage that you were hoping for.
- In cars 2016 or later, adaptive cruise control, lanekeeping, etc. mostly are relevant for life and death safety in highway situations; they aren’t going to do a great job of spotting pedestrians, animals, disabled cars, construction zones, etc. so you still have to be attentive. if you’re driving around in the city or on lower speed backroads, property damage is the primary thing they save, and in many cases, that is not efficient to the cost of the sensors and servicing. Indeed, if you primarily drive in the city, you should drive the smallest beater you can get away with and still have people not laugh at you.
- Use the IIHS website (but note some sports cars are not on there) to see what is safest for humans: https://iihs.org
With these things in mind, we can be more specific about various options on cars. First, with regards to electrification:
- Hybrid technology is moving away from e.g. nickel-metal hydride (classic Toyota Prius stuff), to lithium-ion batteries. The technology may change in 5-10 years, but as of right now, lithium-ion batteries are not well suited to automotive applications. They degrade significantly over 10 years, but more critically, the cells also fail/become dangerous, and at unpredictable intervals. Moreover, the cost to replace these batteries has not fallen, and if a car has a significant amount of these batteries in a pack, the cost of the pack economically totals the car.
- An electric vehicle only makes sense if you are going to drive it a lot (100+ miles) every day, and then you can recharge it cheaply, e.g. in your garage or a dedicated work parking space. For perspective: a city/suburb real estate agent is the classically suited user of an EV.
- A PHEV only makes sense if you didn’t pay that much for it, and you come close to exhausting the battery 5 days a week, and you also go on long road trips or routine long journeys where you will put significant (5K+) miles on the gasoline engine per year. It also can make sense in situations where you do a ton of start and stop city driving, short trips, and/or do a lot of idle.
- A hybrid vehicle (pre-lithium ion) is worth buying if you log 20K+ miles per year, enough that the fuel costs clearly are paying for the additional expense of the powertrain. A lot of it comes down to how much you paid for your car. It also is another option if you need a mobile office/long idle times.
- A hybrid vehicle (post-lithium ion) is only worth buying if you need e.g. the advanced ADAS on a new vehicle, and you will put in the big mileage to justify the cost. You also have to bear in mind that you will not be able to predict when the battery pack will fail, and hence will leave you stranded out in the sticks in the freezing cold.
Second, with regards to off-roading and ruggedization:
- If your purpose is for adventures, camping, etc. you should take a hard look at the trails and other activities you will be doing off-road. Buying a soft-roader (or a minivan, etc.) and loading bikes likely will give you similar or better access, with less cost and hassle than trying to move a 4000+ lb. vehicle through mud. Similarly, buying an on-road truck (e.g. a 2WD work truck from 10 years ago) and loading ATVs or dirt bikes into the bed, also should be considered.
- You also should consider the weather conditions you are entering: the disadvantage of a truck is that the bed is open and it’s a bigger vehicle, but if you are going into the desert, or are going into the mountains in relatively good weather (e.g. you can tarp the bed), you can get a much better truck transport for the road, as well as more space, than what you could get in one of the offroad SUVs, or a dedicated off-roader.
- You should remember that people don’t buy Toyota Tacomas just for the reputation, but also for the fact that they are smaller and can fit down more trails, more easily.
- The rally type trucks (e.g. Ford Raptor, RAM TRX) make a lot of sense if you frequently travel significant distances on relatively well kept dirt roads or other lighter offroad situations. In other situations, you are limited by the terrain e.g. rocks, trail width, and you wouldn’t want to go faster, because your issue is not the capability of the platform, it’s the amount of tires you will destroy on rocks and debris.
Third, with regards to ADAS and assisted driving:
- The most you can get out of the current market is lane-centering and adaptive cruise control; while notionally the radar + camera units available could provide better all-weather performance, the latest camera-only units (2023) can do better than the radar + cameras from earlier (e.g. 2020). You should test drive them (e.g. car rental services like Turo) on your own roads and determine how well they work for your situations.
- It is unlikely that they can get much better at a consumer-affordable price in the short run. If you look at the attempts at autonomous taxis (e.g. Cruise Automation, Waymo) you can see the massive number of sensors they use, for fair weather city driving scenarios.
- Accordingly, once you find a good lane-centering/adaptive cruise control setup for the highway (something from 2021-onwards), it probably isn’t going to make sense to buy a new car to get improvements, given the low cost of alternatives like staying in a motel or sleeping in your car at a rest stop.
Third, with regards to performance:
- Any discussion about performance almost completely concerns the dry; wet and snowy streets reduce the grip enough (or reduce the advisable driving speeds under conditions e.g. puddles and hydroplaning) to nullify or reverse the effect of most performance enhancements. Moreover, the tires that you select for colder or snow performance, also put you into that lower grip level, especially when the temperatures get higher and you are on non-snow/non-ice pavement.
- You have to decide whether you are going to keep it legal on the streets, or whether you are going to go to the track/street racing/canyon carving/cutting up. Even in a normal-person Honda sedan/hatchback on fresh-ish stock tires, you cannot approach the grip limits of the car in 99% of driving situations (at near legal speeds) where it would be prudent to do so (e.g. some on-ramps you can’t accelerate on because you don’t have enough visibility, areas where pedestrians or bikers can be in the way, tree obstructions on the left side). If you are keeping it legal, you have to plan out where you are going to drive the car, so you have the right conditions to use that performance. There’s nothing that’s going to make you feel worse in driving, than crashing into something that was completely avoidable with a different approach – it’s the reverse of skill. You have to be even more prepared to do anything more aggressive.
- You have to understand that track driving, with the intent of lap times/optimal lines, is not the same as what you do on the street, but faster. On the street, you are staying in the lane, but on the track, you are moving all over trying to optimize your turn. On the street, your alignment is optimizing tire wear, and on the track, you are in negative camber and optimizing grip in the turn. You can use the track to get better on the street and know your car’s limit behaviors, but understand that is a cornering test that involves a very different protocol and caution to let others pass.
- Adding power, racing suspension, etc. even has the reverse of intended effects on the street, because now you can break the tires free, the stiffer suspension upsets the car more on rough roads, etc. The types of (non tire and wheel, different topic) upgrades that do help are brakes (although of very limited benefit on the road, you don’t typically heat them up enough that it matters), weight reduction, limited slip differentials, etc. Wings and aero don’t necessarily kick in until you get to highway speeds, but on the highway, you typically also are in a straight-ish line except for emergency maneuvers. So unless you are out in rural Montana, West Texas, etc. and can actually push it to 100+ MPH like you could on a few sections of the Autobahn (even it is tough to go fast on now), you’re just losing gas mileage for theoretical benefit.
- If you are going from 0-60 all the time, you probably want one of the high-end EVs that can do it over and over and over again at stoplights, instead of one of the ICE vehicles that has to dump a clutch to do launches. But if you buy an EV, people will laugh at you when they start pulling on you past 100 MPH. There’s no one answer, even in a straight line.
- The abstract “performance car” is likely safer than the abstract economy car, but you should remember that it’s about light weight and wheels/tires when it comes to braking performance.
Fourth, with regards to the driver experience, e.g. manual transmissions:
- When people say “the racing experience” we have to understand that the racing experience (there is not one single racing experience) is not even something that is street legal, let alone advisable. No NVH, loud exhaust, etc. is harmful to your hearing, therefore pointless. Stiff suspensions and track optimized tire/wheel setups kill wheels and tires on rough roads/potholes. Over time, the vibration is harmful to your body, this is why long-haul truckers have nice seats. At least if you go the rally route, your car’s high-travel suspension could be helpful on the road.
- To give an example of what that could mean, one “race” experience is suiting up in a flame suit, driving gloves, helmet, then hoisting yourself into a car through the window because you don’t have doors. The seat you’re in is probably a hard bucket, and the entire back seat is taken up with a roll cage, no trunk because you saved weight, etc. Then you don’t have air conditioning, and you have to do whatever errand it is you were really after in your civilian life.
- Another racing experience is the old-skool high speed street racing – cars with far more power than grip that could be provided by their lack of downforce and 1980s tire technology. Watch the RUF CTR Yellowbird video if you want to see a man cheating death, and if you still doubt, turn on a simulator and watch how the car can’t even move in a straight line without you twitching the wheel.
- There is, as noted, not one single racing experience. Amongst them there were the Can-Am (featuring 1000+ HP, active aero, the works), modern F1 (varying rules for engines and transmissions, but typically involving aero setups that have no street application), NASCAR (where half of even then-modern technology has been banned), various Cup or vendor series for a specific marque, Autocross classes, legit high-speed street racing with no rules, even the drag strip. Most of these experiences are limited by either cost (Top Fuel etc. drag racing), by the mutual agreement of race teams to develop certain technologies/avoid ones they could not sell on street cars, or to make the human more central (e.g. banning of CVTs/more computer-driven transmissions). Indeed, one of the reasons people do street racing and builds is because they are not artificially limited by race regulations. None of this is to say one is “right”, only to point out that there is not one “authentic” race experience, and there is no point in saying one thing is racing vs. another. One example – even the manual transmissions used in races, often are sequential manuals and not H-patterns that you drive on the street (because the H-patterns don’t wear out after 10,000 miles).
- If you are after the maximum performance, you will always look at your car and think, how can I gut this thing so it runs faster? Can I get rid of my back seats? The entire dash? Understand that if you start going down that road, your end point is the austere environment that you see in race cars, and you may as well just buy an old race car instead of stripping a perfectly good street car.
- It is right to talk about it being a good thing to have roll cages, safe fuel systems, fire extinguishers, etc.
- You should consider street-legal open wheel cars like the Ariel Atom, that offer manual transmissions, high grip and speed, etc. and not just high end ones, if you are looking for these types of experiences.
- You should understand that in any high-horsepower car (basically anything above 250HP at this point), on the street, shifting the manual transmission only gives you fuel economy or the experience of pointlessly rowing gears; you won’t go faster.
- In any event, nothing you do on a racetrack in a street-legal car is going to come close to the G-forces that you experience on a rollercoaster. Nor will the speeds be anything close to what you get in an airplane. It’s not about numbers, and really never was – by the time cars got good enough to talk about these considerations, we already had theme parks and jet engines.
- Knowing all this, if you are looking for the driving experience you most enjoy, you should seek it out and then enjoy it, without making excuses about speed, performance, or street cred. For example, even if you truly sought out ultimate speed and handling for your road course, rapidly you would work yourself into a DCT or drag strip automatic and everyone will mock you as not being a true driver. You can’t satisfy all your critics, so don’t try.
We should talk a bit about selecting cars with regards to value:
- When you talk about any investment, you have to look at opportunity cost and cost of maintenance of that investment. To buy a truly collectible car and make real profit, you have to buy it at a good price and hold it for a while (10 years at least). You can resell and not lose much money if you are trading more frequently, but you can’t make big gains in that timeframe.
- Cars that people think are truly collectible, to buy new, would start around $80K+ (what the last edition of a top end muscle car like a GT350, ZL1 1LE, Challenger, etc. would cost) and go up from there (higher end Porsches being well beyond $200K). Just like buying a house, you pay a huge amount in taxes at that level just to get the car, and your buyer would have to pay whatever the taxes are on that, plus your profit.
- You then have to pay to store it somewhere, maintain it in operating condition, paint and interior maintenance, etc.
- So you have an extremely illiquid investment (cannot cash out before 10+ years and have hope of reasonable return) that you have to pay sizable money to invest in. How does that compare to putting that money in the S&P 500, where you pay basically nothing in fees? The S&P, over very long periods, returns about 5% per year – so your car has to appreciate by that much in the 10 years, or however long you have to hold it. Even on simple interest, you have to make 50% + your tax back + your upkeep expenses back, just to break even. On net present value etc. now you are talking about making 100% of what you paid – that is, in 10 years, you will sell the car for twice as much as you paid. Who is going to buy that car and why are they going to pay that much?
- A modern car is much higher quality than the cars from 40-50 years ago, but it still loses use value and ability to be pushed when it isn’t used for that long, and it has new vulnerabilities. Plastics break, parts seize up and lose lubrication, sensors become less sensitive and fail, even high quality capacitors reach the end of their lifespan, ECUs die, etc. Would you want to track that car after 15+ years and push it to its limits? Would you trust your life to that suspension and whatever adhesives were on the frame? Who’s going to know how to maintain all the electronics, and how much is that going to cost? Where are your replacement parts coming from? The point you have to remember is the value of a high-end 911 with a PDK or other performance car is on the track; if you drive it like a grandma, there’s no point in buying it over any other luxury car you could get 15 years from now, and even if you drove it modestly sportily, you still could get more enjoyment out of a Club-spec Miata that you could push hard and throw it away if it ever throws a rod or breaks an axle. The reality is, unless rebuilt and restored (and therefore not having the value of the original), all cars become show cars, if they live that long.
- To the related point about buying cars that are becoming collectible now: those cars aren’t nearly as good as the ones you can buy new today. On track, a 6th gen Camaro ZL1 1LE at $80K (~1 1/2 times the annual salary in America) runs with anything that isn’t a supercar (and some that are), from any generation of cars. A C8 Z06 with Z07, in 2025, will be able to be had at ~$150K (3x today’s American annual salary) brand new, and the performance is even higher. And of course, you have the Plaid Teslas that smoke both of those in a single 0-60. It’s collectors selling to collectors at that point – maybe profitable or fun, but it’s not about how good the car is or what you can do with it, it’s a hobby business and a lifestyle. We only talk about buying collectors’ cars now because we think the ICE is going away. If that doesn’t happen to the degree people fear, all these older cars’ value plummets.
- Look at all the exotic cars and how many of them have plummeted in value.
- Long story short, buy the car that makes you happy, not the one you think people will like or that you think can make money, because they probably won’t like it, and it probably can’t.
The most important car accessories are wheels and tires.
Some things to understand generally about wheels:
- You do better in snow and MPG with narrower/smaller wheel/tires, and better in braking and grip with wider/larger wheel/tires (although you reach a point where the tires just get too big for the road). Handling is dependent on the application as to which is more suitable: often track cars go down in size to reduce unsprung weight. (But if you are sizing for off-road applications, it’s more governed by the terrain you are in and how high you have to be off the ground). On a road car, you probably want smaller wheels and bigger sidewalls, to handle potholes. The “Sport” trims on some cars, may be worse for you than the normal ones.
- If you need new wheels for rough conditions such as equipping a winter car, steelies are best, you can beat them back into shape. Otherwise you get your choice of how much you want to spend – at least buy something quality.
- Recognize that the G-forces you can pull in a corner/grip is heavily dependent on you giving up all-conditions street performance. R compound tires/cheaters/semi-slicks are needed to get the max performance out of sports cars on track. The best all-seasons you can buy may get you around 1.00G on a skidpad on a sports car that has other ways to hold the tires down, but more likely .90 for an average car. Add real winter performance in and that sports performance capability is nerfed. (though it can be fun to drift in winter)
- If you do a large amount of not-challenging driving in usually dry conditions, you buy eco/low rolling resistance tires.
- If you don’t have to deal with snow, but stay on the roads, you get summer tires. (Not the R compound/slicks that can’t handle rain, but the ultra high performance summers, or whatever treadwear you can afford)
- If you do have to deal with a few days of snow/ice, and a lot of cold-temperature days, you buy the all-season tires that get by in the snow, but are optimized more for better weather.
- If you have to deal with a moderate (10-20 days/year) of snow on plowed-enough roads, or have to transit mountains where winter tires can be requirements, you buy the new “all-weather” tires with the three peaks symbol.
- If you have to deal with real amounts of snow or very cold temperatures, especially when large patches of ice are mixed in, you buy winter tires (and maybe even studded ones if you have a lot of ice or inclines), and swap them for summers when the weather clears up.
- If you are offroad, you’ll have a set of terrain tires according to the terrain: dry-ish roads, sand, mud, rocks, etc.
- Don’t forget to change them when they get old or worn!
In regards to buying American:
- Basically, there are Teslas, some Lincolns, Corvettes, a handful of other models, that even get up to 80% American content and R&D. Other than that, you have to look at stickers, or a website like https://kogod.american.edu/auto-index or https://www.cars.com/american-made-index/, which rely on the NHTSA compiled/reported data, to understand what is coming from where. Foreign brands (like Honda) can have very similar percentages of domestic content than cars from domestic brands (like Ford). It is not at all surprising to see a foreign car has more domestic content and manufactured in America, than the American brand competition. Sometimes the same cars/trim levels even can come from American and foreign factories.
- There are notable exceptions: for example, hybrid versions of Japanese makes often will come heavily or completely from Japan, whereas the ICE versions may be some of the most American cars you can buy. Likewise, sports variants, because of the large amount of differing parts, often are built foreign (or domestic) from the main line.
- These numbers greatly fluctuate from year to year, check your specific model for that model year, especially if there has been a design refresh.
In regards to rust and major cleaning:
- Krown, Fluid Film, and lanolin/similar oil coating are recognized as the best way to deal with the nasty Rust Belt stuff, especially on trucks and other vehicles with exposed frames that rot and die in a decade. Krown will drill holes to penetrate body panels, Fluid Film applicators typically won’t. In either case, your car will smell and drip for a few days after application, and you’ll want to have it redone every year.
- The typical body panels, outside of the Rust Belt, do way better than they used to with rust. Outside of that zone, an annual undercarriage cleaning/spray off (probably after the salt/snow is gone), to clear gunk, along with washing the car generally, is the best tradeoff of time/cost vs. benefit for the vast majority of vehicles.
- Ceramic coatings and PPF are really for expensive cars. It’s not that they don’t work on cheaper ones, but the cost of application and maintenance (e.g. including paint correction) and the requirements to keep the cars generally clean (not a good idea to have them outside all the time), means a much higher level of upkeep that is not justified for a normal car.
- Make sure to wipe the insides of your windows to get rid of the fog, vacuum out the floor to get dirt and rocks/debris out, and if you have leather especially, wipe that down every now and then with car-suitable leather conditioner to help with the UV damage.
For more information, here are some useful links about cars:
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a23319884/lightning-lap-times-historical-data/
https://www.theartofcleanliness.com/
https://www.youtube.com/@savagegeese
https://www.youtube.com/@SarahnTuned