This seems to be a problem with just about every car nowadays. The factories/dealers make the money from all that “standard equipment” which used to come on luxury cars. The gov’t. has done more than their fair share to make a cheap car as expensive as possible,too. For somebody who wants cheap,reliable basic transportation....good luck. Those disappeared back in the 70s or thereabouts. The “cash for clunkers” program got a lot of affordable used cars off the market. When these “basic” cars are older & hit the used lots,they will probably cost more to repair the various “luxury” items & gov’t. required “safety” & emissions items than the piece of crap was worth in the first place. Some of that stuff will have to be fixed to make it saleable & in many cases this will mean it is fit for nothing but salvage. The higher priced used cars will just be a bit more expensive to fix & I have a hunch many of them will not be cost effective to sell,either,except as salvage.
High-tech gizmos in the new cars — be careful what you wish for.
Buyers of new cars are having more problems with them during the first three months of ownership than they did at this time last year because of the cars’ complicated technology systems, a new survey said today (June 18, 2014.)
The “initial quality study” released by J.D. Power, a market research and analysis firm, showed that the problems experienced by vehicle owners increased by about three percent over the year, largely because of the increased sophistication of the high-tech systems consumers demand in their cars but also find hard to use.
“Automakers are trying to give consumers the new features and technology they want without introducing additional quality problems into their vehicles,” said J.D. Power vice president David Sargent. “However, almost all automakers are struggling to do this flawlessly with some consumers indicating that the technology is hard to understand, difficult to use, or simply does not always works as designed.”