RE: Plymouth Prowler (with trailer!) up for auction

[spreadsheet monkey]

Sandpit Steve said:

Are there people buying any slightly quirky car now, with the intention of storing it for a quarter of a century and hoping to cash in when we’re all being driven around in autonomous electric cars in 2040?

I don't think this is a new phenomenon. Rightly or wrongly, for a long time people have been buying cars as investments and storing them away without driving them.

I think the Prowler is well beyond "slightly quirky". It's a properly outrageous design and will attract attention wherever it goes.

[unsprung]

J4CKO said:

Will people stop wanting cars that express some individuality, will manufactures suddenly stop trying to provide stuff the customers want to buy instead selling upturned buckets that can drive themselves, the answer is no, it will be an evolution of what you see now, that will have an option to drive itself when the technology and legislation is ready for it.

Total cost of ownership.

When some people see that figure drop significantly, owing to autonomous transport coupled with ride sharing schemes, they will indeed stop wanting cars that express some individuality. And this percentage will be greater in many countries with lower household incomes.

A couple of variables, though:

. We're still very far from autonomous vehicles that will do what our most ardent imaginations wish they could do

. We don't yet know what nascent technologies like 3D printing can do to create the ultimate bespoke vehicles and to disrupt the traditional linear path of OEM - dealership - end user.

. Some of the greatest gains in traffic management have come from people working from home and from people time shifting their commutes. We haven't seen the end of "new ways to work", alternative calendars, cooperative spaces, etc.

. In dense cities that resemble the 19th-century model, trains and buses are capable of moving large volumes of people very efficiently -- and more so than unleashing private or semi private pods.