Ezra Dyer: Buying Time

From the October 2023 issue of Car and Driver.

I always know it’s time to buy a car when the one I have completely falls apart. By the time I sold my engine-swapped 1979 BMW Alpina B6, I was so desperate to get rid of it that I took a personal check. That car was like the bus from Speed, in that it would blow up if you drove it slower than 50 mph (and by blow up, I mean extravagantly overheat because the cooling system had no fan). What I needed was reliability, so I bought a two-door Jeep Cherokee and promptly lifted it, such that the rear driveshaft U-joint exploded on the highway, and I temporarily had a rare front-drive XJ. After that, I’d had enough of flatbeds and AAA, so I bought a lightly used Camry. Just kidding—I got a Saab. As the expression goes, those who cannot remember the past are doomed to get a great deal on a 9000 Turbo.

There are, of course, other reasons to seek a new ride. Perhaps, like my niece, you conducted an impromptu side-impact test on the family’s Ford Bronco Sport. Or, like some neighbors of mine, you had a baby and traded your pickup for a Ford Expedition Stealth Performance.

Another friend’s son just got his license, so a Ford Explorer joined their driveway. Finally, one of my college friends bought a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 392 just because he likes stupid V-8 things. I mention this both to underscore that car buying can be an entirely elective decision and to prove that I know somebody who didn’t buy a Ford.

Elsewhere on the car-shopping spectrum, between incipient emergency and pure whim, lies the four-year itch: Your car is fine, but given some justifiable rationale, you still might trade it in. This is one reason why car companies plan mid-cycle refreshes—so when an existing customer stops in for an oil change, a salesperson can talk up the latest model and its imminent superiority. “Yeah, the 2020 like yours was great! That thing had a DVD player, didn’t it? I think I’ve seen one of those at my grandpa’s house. The 2024 model is amphibious and streams holograms and comes with a golden retriever puppy. There’s a robot who changes the tire if you get a flat and . . .” Next thing you know, you’ve got a fresh car payment.

I recently encountered this situation when I tested a 2023 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, the updated clone of my 2020 model. The newer version has a revised front end with LED headlights, a wireless phone charger, a bigger infotainment touchscreen, Amazon Fire TV for the entertainment system, and USB-C outlets. The 2023 wore the same exterior color as mine—ceramic gray—but its seats were black because the eyeball-incinerating red interior that I love so much got axed.

Granted, my car’s flamboyant interior wears a Technicolor dreamcoat of crushed pretzels and dog fur, but that would also be the case with a new one within two weeks. True story: I got a gift voucher for car detailing, and I left it in front of the coffee maker, which then malfunctioned and stained the coupon beyond legibility. You’re really embracing the minivan lifestyle when you can’t get your car cleaned because the cleaning voucher is too filthy.

My impression, though, was that the refreshed Pacifica doesn’t offer anything I can’t live without. My wife, who logs the bulk of our household minivan miles, opined that wireless phone charging is nice but not a justifiable reason to buy a new car. Sure, every time one of our van’s sliding doors opens, it sounds like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad climbing the grade, but my threshold for new-car neediness is calibrated to a much higher degree of catastrophic crappiness than that. They’ll build more Pacificas, if and when I require one. There’s no urgency.

Nonetheless, I’m staying away from dealer oil changes. I might not need a car, but they’ve got a stupid 475-hp Durango SRT 392. With a red interior.