Cars, Trucks & Automotive

Buying your first car is often an exciting yet exhausting experience. Often, it is the first major purchase after getting a job, and transitioning from walking or riding a bus to work to driving is something most young men and women anticipate. Yet you don’t just walk into a car dealership, point to the car you want, and drive off.

Long before you walk into the dealer’s showroom, you should decide what exactly do you need or want in a car. The needs of someone who needs to drive a mile or two to work are definitely different from that of a salesman who has to travel from one city to the next. Fuel efficiency is sure to be high on the priorities of the latter. A working mom who has to drop the kids in school before going off to work will also have different needs from a young man who loves to go camping in the mountains on weekends.

Once you have decided on whether to buy a Ford Mustang, Toyota Prius, Chevrolet Orlando, or a GMC Canyon, take a look at your wallet and your future income to see how much you can afford to pay. Installment options are available, but you will need to study the repayment schemes offered by the banks or other financing companies. Don’t limit yourself to a single company. Call a few and compare their rates. This will also weigh in on your decision whether to buy brand new or used.

This brings us to another difficult decision –brand new or used. Often people believe that brand new is always the better option. This may not be true at all times. Often what you are paying for in a spanking new car is its distinctive smell, the prestige of driving one, the shiny new paint, and the lesser possibility of mechanical breakdowns. You will not get the new car smell nor enjoy the envious looks of your neighbors with a used car, but you can have that shiny paint and trouble-free engine.

There are plenty of slightly used cars in car dealerships. Most companies take pains to keep their used cars in prime condition to protect their reputation, and some even offer limited warranties. Or, if the car is only one or two years old, its original warranty may still be valid.

Buying a one- to two-year-old car can cost 20 – 30% less than when buying brand new. This reason is the moment you drive off from the car dealership, the car is no longer brand new, and it immediately begins to depreciate.

In April 17, 1964 Ford Motor Company, then under Lee Iacocca, launched the Ford Mustang. It was an instant success and it created a new class of automobiles, which was later to be known as the pony cars. The term was coined the then editor of Car Life magazine, Dennis Shattuck, obviously in reference to the first car of the new car class.

The seeds of the pony cars can be traced to the late 1950s with the transformation of the Ford Thunderbird from a two-seater to a larger personal luxury car with four seats. Both buyers and dealers, however, missed the original Thunderbird which prompted Ford to revive the car.

In addition to this, sportier cars with bucket seats in sizes ranging from compacts to full-size were becoming popular. Some of the cars that were attracting attention were Chevrolet Corvair Monza, Plymouth Valiant Signet, Dodge Dart GT, and Rambler American’s Rogue. Ford, for its part, offered the Falcon Futura and Futura Sprint.

Iacocca, however, believed that there was a growing number of young car buyers who were looking for sporty and fast cars with an image that breaks from the past, but with an affordable price. Instead of reviving the Thunderbird to meet this demand, Ford came up with the Mustang.

The distinguishing features of the Mustang and all subsequent pony cars are their “long hoods, short decks, and open mouths”, the now classic description of cars belonging to this genre. They were affordable, or at least their base models were. When first introduced, their prices were under $2,500 (1965 dollar value). With all the options available, however, this could get considerably higher. To help keep prices down, the cars were assembled from mass-produced “off-the-shelf” components.

After the Mustang, other car manufacturers scrambled to grab their share of the market. The Plymouth Barracuda, although introduced 16 days earlier, was marketed as a pony car. While GM initially attempted to restyle the Corvair as a pony car, it eventually gave up and instead brought in the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird in 1967. Ford’s Mercury Division also introduced the Cougar while AMC joined the fray with its Javelin, also in 1967. In 1970, the Dodge Challenger was also launched.

The Challenger was the last of the pony cars launched during the era. This was because their redesigns made them bigger, heavier, and more expensive which defeated the very purpose for which they were launched. The oil crises of the early 70s did nothing to help either. Most buyers began to move to smaller and more compact cars, while those who had the money shifted to more luxurious models.

A revival of the pony cars began when a redesigned Mustang was unveiled in 2005. Like its predecessor 40 years earlier, the new Mustang was also a success. This prompted Chrysler to revive the Challenger in 2008 and GM to reintroduce the Camaro in 2010.