2,964 Complaints Come From Leased Cars. They Are Filed Earlier Than Anyone Else's.
Ownership changes what people report. Somebody who will hand the car back in two years has no resale value to protect and no repair bill to face, and it shows in the record.
62,142 Complaints State the Exact Mileage. 19,999 Mention the Warranty in the Same Breath.
Nobody asks for the mileage. A sixth of complaints supply it anyway, usually to the exact thousand, because the number is doing a job in the argument the owner is making.
1,372 Owners Filed a Complaint and Traded the Car In. 1,027 Said They Would Never Buy the Brand Again.
There is a moment when a fault stops being a repair problem and becomes a resale problem. A few thousand complaints record exactly that moment, and what it cost the person who reached it.
Flex-Fuel Peaked at 689 Models. Now It Is Gone.
A technology fitted to hundreds of models disappeared inside a decade, and almost nobody noticed because most of the cars that had it never used it. The reason it existed explains why it stopped.
Pontiac Died in 2010. It Still Sells 42% Below a Chevrolet.
A dead badge on a car that shares its engine, gearbox and platform with a living one is the cleanest natural experiment the used market offers. The market charges a lot less for it, and the parts situation is nothing like as bad as the price implies.
Arizona Sells 38% White Cars. Wisconsin Sells 20%.
The colour split between states is almost twice as wide as anything you would guess, and it lines up with latitude. The price gap between colours looks just as dramatic until you control for how old the cars are.
A Used Car Averages $27,361 in Montana and $10,633 in DC
State price averages get quoted as if they measure how expensive a state is. They don't. They measure what happens to be parked on the lots, and we can now show exactly how much of the gap that accounts for.
We Said Four-Wheel Drive Costs 61% More. Compared Properly, It's 6%.
Our earlier figure compared pickups with saloons and called it a drivetrain premium. Here is the same question answered on the same car with one axle different.
The Market Pays 15% for the Fifth Safety Star. Three Quarters of Cars Already Have It.
Used listings with a five-star rating sell for a quarter more than four-star ones. Control for what's actually being compared and the premium halves — but it doesn't disappear.
A Manual Adds 33% to a Mustang and Takes 10% off a Honda Fit
"Manuals are worth more" is repeated as a rule. Compared model by model against the automatic version of the same car, it's true of one category and false of the rest.
Thirsty Saloons Hold Their Value. Economical Ones Don't.
Buying an economical car saves money at the pump and is supposed to be the sensible choice. On the used market that same economy turns out to be a liability.
A Transmission Problem Costs 14% of the Car. An Airbag Problem Costs Nothing.
The used market does react to what owners complain about — but only to some of it. Sorting by which part generates the complaints reveals exactly what buyers are afraid of.