Howdy all
I’ve been looking at cars lately and was wondering what the thought process is when someone opts for a European car over an Asian (namely Korean and Japanese) alternative.
I don’t understand the logic. When new, model for model spec for spec the Euro car is at least 10k more in more cases like 20k more and in some cases almost double the price. And it’s not like the euro car has more tech or features than the Asian car.
Then there’s the depreciation which is ungodly. For instance F30 3 series are under 20k these days even with the Covid tax. That’s over 50k lost value.
Then in the used market there’s the reliability, VWs, BMWs, Mercs, Fiats and Audis dominate the worst cars lists in almost every category. They just seem to fall apart after a few years.
I can understand when buying an uber luxury or sports car that’s well over $100k, they bring a level of engineering, sophistication and style that the competition can’t necessarily match but when in comes to the mainstream normal every day cars I don’t get it. Why would someone choose to buy an Audi Q5 over a Mazda CX-5 or if you want luxury a Lexus RX. The Japanese/Korean car will almost certainly last longer, be more reliable, hold its value better, way easier and cheaper to maintain and straight up cheaper to boot. I just don’t understand.
Can people tell me why someone looking to buy a mainstream car would choose a European brand. Cos from a rational perspective it just doesn’t make sense, even when it comes to justifying it by it comes with that European cachet. Because it’s just a mainstream car that’s more expensive, its not some exclusive, sophisticated, cool whatever.
Japanese > Euro > Korean
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