TheDonEffect

Agreed. I totally get your situation dictating what you can get, and if you got the means and all things equal, why not get the more performance version of an otherwise appliance vehicle. But like you said, it gets to a point, the weight is just nuts, but like you said the majority of the world aren't enthusiasts. Actually, to specify, informed/educated enthusiasts are rare. There are lots of people who are enthusiastic, interested, vested in the auto interest, but not many are informed, simply just buying whatever influencers (social media, traditional media, forum folks, the neighbors they're competing against, etc) tell them to buy. BMW has been that way for a while, but along the way they made a handful of great cars, this new M5 does not appear to be one of them.




If luxury car people truly emphasized comfort about all else, you can't beat a minivan, or a converted overlanding van, etc. The riding position, the space, the ease of getting in and out, etc etc. I'd much rather ride in one of the middle captain chairs of most fully loaded minivans than backseat in any luxury car under 150k for the most part.


I generally agree with you in merit, but I'd like to raise this point- the disparity of median/average income vs median/average home price in the areas you eluded to in later posts strongly suggest that there are other market facts at play than just gainfully working professionals needing to make more. I don't think it's talked about enough that as a prospective home buyer you're not just competing against your local peers, you're also competing with essentially professional home buyers. What I mean is, there are tons of individuals, businesses, families, foreign actors, etc pooling money and approaching home purchasing as any commercial venture. A crude metaphor would be the used car market where the Carvanas, Shifts, Carmaxes, etc of the world essentially used investor money to overpay for used vehicles, with the intention to owning the supply chain and effectively pricing out their competition, to then dominate the market and can dictate prices. As such, you didnt see a ton of vehicles being sold by private parties anymore and used car prices inflated dramatically. The fall of Shift and Vroom has already made an immediate impact on the used car pricing (among other factors as well of course, such as higher interest rates, employment confidence, inflation, etc). You see this in pretty much every market (cars, real estate, watches, basketball cards, pokemon, etc etc), where everything has become an investment. This is me spit balling here, but I think the pandemic essentially created a hyper focus on growing existing capital since working/operating a business was very limited, so those that had the means essentially focused their energy into that, and the reality is that most investors aren't investors, they're just gamblers. Let's not forget that it wasn't that long ago that NFTs were a thing. Also, across most industries, conglomeration is becoming the norm, effectively creating higher barriers of entry and higher cost to operate within markets.

In short, it's not that you need to make more, because average income and such hasn't changed much, it's that you need get more creative. Simply moving away from a major metro may not be viable, because as the trend of getting employees back into offices is clealy illustrating, buying a nice house hundreds of miles away from a major metro is not viable, just as opening a business that's reliant on high skilled labor away from where schools are concentrated (usually around higher population density areas) is usually not strategic.

In any rate, we as a society need to re-evaluate the game we are playing and realize that while people are too busy arguing over personal responsibility vs redistribution of wealth, we should be talking about how the game is becoming increasingly non-competitive, which is anti-capitalism and therefore anti-American no matter which side of the aisle you belong to. Yes, there has always been creative advantage creation, aka cheating, and with competition over (perceived) limited resources there will always be folks coloring outside the lines, but we as a society have not checked in on what's going on in for a while. People keep pointing towards corporations and the ultra wealthy creating alot of these inflationary problems, but the reality is that these entities do not quite have the numbers to dictate markets this effectively, because that would be easy to regulate out (monopoly). Conglomorates, investment companies, etc fly just under the radar and seem innocuous until you realize their impact.

Of course, there are many many many other factors as well, but I don't think this is talked about enough because on the one hand I totally understand why a person can't get into the energy, steel, banking, etc business because of the barriers to entry, but opening a restaurant, garage, mini mart, real estate? Without outside investment that isn't a loan? Good luck.

Bullwings

Look at it in motion at Goodwood. It moves like a uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh - Dakar Rally Truck. haha

jeffbrig

Is it just me, or did it sound like the tires were squealing in protest even when it was going straight?

TommyDeVito

1. What I said was accurate. Orange County is not the majority of the United States of America. Neither are the other places you listed.
2. I don’t live in any of the areas you listed. If those places are too costly for you, move.
3. Nobody put a gun to someone’s head and said “you must have 2 children”. Having children is a personal choice not a requirement.

I bought a house over a decade before the pandemic. Got plenty of equity in my current home, but even with that doesn’t mean I’m a millionaire. Other people here are telling you the same thing, you just aren’t listening. I also lived in Seattle for a year, 20 years ago, and decided in 2004, it was too expensive, and left January 2005. Homes were overpriced back then for what you got. And there is too many people living in too small of a geographic area and too little highway infrastructure. It’s no newsflash to see some list where Portland, Seattle, LA, San Fran, San Diego, Honolulu, NYC, are the tops of the US in terms of cost of living. It was the same 20 years ago. Your little list, I could have named those off in 2004.

Millions of people have flooded into my metro area. Between property taxes and homeowners insurance I’m just about $1k a month, and that is not even my mortgage. We are projected to tie Chicago for the #3 metro in the US in 2028, and tie LA for #2 metro in 2030. I couldn’t afford to buy the house I currently own, if buying today. I hate it but it’s outside of my control. I have family in Maui and wanted to move there and could have bought a brand new built home, 5 years ago, for $650k. But every house on the street would have 8 people living in it, with cars parked in front of my house, and all down the street. I also looked at condos but they all came with $1k a month HOA dues. I decided it was just too expensive to live there. Right after, well people had been moving here in droves, but the pandemic poured race gas on that fire, millions have flooded in here. Eventually I’ll be taxed out via property taxes and homeowners insurance cost. So I bought acreage out of state, where I want to live in the mountains, next to a clean lake with killer mountain roads to ride and drive, and forest trails to ride in off road machinery. I cannot control how expensive it has become to live where I live. It’s just outside of my control so I bought land elsewhere and will spend the next few years of my life, locked down 100% financially so I can build my Morton, finish it out, move, and sell my current home. Everyone has the same ability.

silvio1522

Someone who actually drove the car

windhund116

Watching this "agile or nimble" doesn't come to mind.

Bullwings

Someone else who drove the car, and gets straight to the point in half the time without getting rose colored glasses over the straight line speed. Says it in the nicest ways possible, given that this is a press drive.
- Weight, heavy, weird braking feel
- Electronics interfering
- Loses M5 DNA, Step back from the F90
- Fake sounds
- Soft

silvio1522

Doesn't sound like the kind of car you would want to take to the track. I guess that's why "Joe" pointed out that most potential buyers would never see a track, and rather use it as a daily driver. Must be those typical millionaire types.

QUIKAG

engifineer

I started looking at cars that this is heavier than. The answer is way too many lol. Even 70's caddillac road boats are lighter than this car. Hell a lot of the versions of the new Silverado are lighter than this thing. That is mind blowing.