Honestly I do make an effort to dodge brands that cut costs like that.

I’ve owned a BMW, the pennies they saved cost me thousands. I’ve sworn off them too.

I think we all should dodge brands that cut costs, and we would all get better quality vehicles for it.

The loudest voice we have as consumers is voting with our wallet, so it personally offends me to be ripped off for a sub par vehicle while they make record profits. It’s bullshit. It confuses me when people get an objectively shitty car, and then go buy another car from that same brand, we have a choice! Rewarding a company for failure at your expense isn’t how capitalism is supposed to work.

Sell me a car I don’t regret buying, and I wish nothing but the best for the company and it’s execs. I hope whichever Toyota exec who decided to raise the prices rather than cheap out at my expense, gets his third yacht or vacation home. He earned it.

But so far I’ve got a pretty long shit list of cars I wouldn’t pay over $2000 for, that includes BMW, Chevy, Ford, Volvo, I won’t buy any of them on purpose.

I avoid anything FCA just on reputation.

I had good luck with older Nissan (all pathfinders and an Xterra), but from what I’ve heard their transmissions are garbage nowadays.

I’ve had great luck as expected with Toyota, and surprisingly good luck with Mercedes (I keep waiting to regret that, but I happen to have gotten lucky with the ones I’ve owned).

My girlfriend has a Mazda with almost 500,000 kilometres on the odometer, so I’m pretty impressed with them too.