LexFather

http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/auto...92ZXJwcmljZWQ-

America's Five Most Overpriced Cars

1. Dodge Ram 2500

2. Mercury Grand Marquis

3. Jeep Liberty

4. Dodge Nitro

5. Dodge Durango

CDNROCKIES

Just further proof why it is ridiculous that our governments are giving any money at all to Chryco.

Nobody wants these vehicles new or used.

IS-SV

The depreciation rates on this cars are incredible. Isn't the Durango EOL?

mmarshall

I'm not sure I agree that the Grand Marquis is actually overpriced. True, it's not the type of car that many at CL would buy, but its popularity among older people and many Midwesterners can't be denied, and it's a BIG car for the money, with a V8, good riding comfort, and a full-length, ladder-type frame for strength and towing. Cars like that are almost extinct today.

mmarshall

Depreciation rates only affect residual values as used cars, not the price that new ones can command in the marketplace. Both, in most cases, in a free-market economy, are set by supply and demand.

If a new car is truly "overpriced", then it won't sell, even with factory/government incentives. The Grand Marquis, as I noted above, still sells, brand-new, to a regular group of buyers, so I don't see how it could be called "overpriced" if demand supports that price.

IS-SV

Yes, I'm aware and formally educated in this field. Poor cars such as these, are poor cars new and heavily discounted new and poor high depreciation rate cars down the road too. There's a connection. Junk is junk and the consistency of mediocre products carries from new to used demand and resulting pricing.

I8ABMR

They should put some german cars on that. I dont know if they have to be american or not but German car manufacturers are a little high when they set the prices for their cars

kalvano

Shocking, Chrysler vehicles are cheap pieces of crap.

In related new, water is wet.

mmarshall

That's partly because Germany has some of the highest labor costs in the world. While that may not effect German-nameplate cars assembled in non-German plants, any German cars built in home plants will obviously be expensive to produce.

kyang91

iTrader: (5)

This is a very interesting list......never really think of those before.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

i think porsches are by far the most overpriced cars. i love 'em but the prices are absurd.

Threxx

I'm not sure the way they worded this article makes sense. Are these cars truly overpriced, or do they just have an imbalance of supply vs demand that put the consumer in a position where they can demand/expect a huge discount.

As already said in this thread, some Porsche models, particularly with certain options, are a very good example of a car not worth the money to most people... but the fact is that they control their supply tightly enough to where there's only enough for the people who DO think they're worth the $$, and thus their price doesn't fall too much below MSRP.

Gojirra99

We've had reports of how much $$$ Porsche typically makes per car LOL ...

geko29

Gotta agree here, especially the way they nickel and dime you on options--like making you pay separately for EACH PART that's covered in leather ($140 for the e-brake boot, plus $120 for the e-brake handle, for example). The last time I spec'd one out for fun, I selected every single possible leather option (which, granted, includes a few parts most mfrs don't offer) and the cost of the leather alone was nearly $7k. It looks like they now offer all the individual options in a package for "only" $3700.

Lil4X

In its defense, Chrysler was capable of building some very reliable cars. The mystery is why it didn't seem to relate to design or manufacture. The Dodge/Plymouth Neon was a disaster. A local dealer was swamped with warranty work, and a salesman opined to me that they lost money on every car sold thanks to warranty claims.

The late PT Cruiser was built on an identical platform at the same Monterrey, Mexico plant. After the sale, the dealer would never see it again. The little wagons were about as reliable as a hammer. Why practically the same car, built in the same plant would soldier on for years with few if any problems, while its predecessor was a maintenance nightmare remains a mystery. If Chrysler's management gets to the bottom of it, they might be able to produce a reliable car again.

I am still amazed at our 17 year old Plymouth minivan's quality. My sister-in-law purchased it new and had it serviced by the dealer religiously. It never had a major problem and never had any warranty issues. My wife bought it from her in 2001 because she was selling it cheap and we needed a second car occasionally. In the last eight years we put only 10,000 miles on it and only recently upgraded it to daily service after doing a moderate restoration on it.

The thing rides well and is pretty comfortable, considering it was originally a "stripper" with no options except a radio and AC. Terrified of being trapped in the car, Sis ordered it without power windows. Of course, now you reach down around your left ankle to wind down the window (requiring four complete turns of the crank). THAT is maddening - I'm tempted to put one of those JC Whitney aftermarket motors on it - the ones that just bolt what looks like a starter motor to the inside door panel to rotate the crank.

We've since added a lighter paint color, heavy roof insulation, limo tints on the windows, a clear curtain to isolate the front two rows of seating - all in an attempt to improve the efficiency of the AC. It works - you can hang meat in there with an outside temp of 104. We've replaced the alternator, a couple of batteries, a set of tires, struts, shocks, tie rod ends, headlights, and added a new radio, speakers, GPS, and a back-up camera to bring its telematics into the 20th century, if not the 21st.

It is still solid and silent - except for the exhaust note. I eliminated the resonator years ago not because I wanted to hear that little 3.0 Mitsu V6 purr, but because being used on short trips, the resonator, 'way out at the end of the exhaust line, never got hot enough to boil off moisture, thus it rusted out annually. No resonator, no problem . . . . except it drones like a ricer at freeway speeds. Not a great idea for a DD, gotta fix that.

While I owned a number of Chrysler products in my teens and early twenties, I abandoned them for years as uninteresting and unreliable. In the late '70's the company I worked for shuffled a company car into my local stable - a Dodge Aspen wagon. It was a beauty, but like many beautiful things, when reality sets in, the bloom is truly off the rose. After those first few months, things began to go wrong. After the first year, the Aspen was the car nobody wanted because it was in the shop more often than not. Most of the problems seemed to be centered around that "Lean Burn" injection system on the 318 V8. Chrysler's vaunted engineering leadership had walked them off a cliff, with a technology they, or at least their dealers, didn't understand. Then it began to fall apart. We sold it with less than 60K miles on it - from a fleet that averaged more than twice that before trade-in.

Fast forward to the 2Gen minivans some 15 years later. There are a LOT of them still on the road - a few still in taxi service. In fact, most of the taxis in our city are 3Gen Dodge and Plymouth minivans. Whatever their shortcomings, they have a lot of true believers out there. After all, ours, just sitting in our driveway, keeps getting offers to buy it, and it has nearly been stolen twice. At least fleet buyers and smugglers are on that list of true believers . . . . and I'm about to join them.