Yeah, but that TruCoat

January 18, 2018 6:52 AM

"Ok, I’ll try and keep this brief, but lets talk PT Cruiser and the 2007 recession. FYI, I’m not *blaming* the crash on the PT Cruiser, just generally laying out how the story of the PT Cruiser and the people who bought them provides an early window into the lending meltdown..."
posted by griphus (68 comments total)

I experienced all of the stages of grief while reading this.
posted by lextex at 7:17 AM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Anecdotal, but I can tell you the company I was working for ar the time approved a sale of a $50,000 truck to a guy, no money down, 84 months. Buddy’s occupation on the application was “bass player” and the only POI he brought in was an old bank account statement and a poster from a show his band was going to play later in the week. But what really stood out about it was that he had recently gotten what turned out to be an ARM mortgage from a major lender for $375,000.

Never loan anything to a bass player. Ever.

But seriously, anybody who blames this meltdown on the borrowers needs to look hard in the mirror. If some dope in a suit is willing to let you borrow a $50k car and $375k house when they know you'll never be able to pay for them, why not take it? You have no assets, negligible income; screw it, may as well enjoy something.

The people writing these loans were criminals. People who skated on them were just doing what should be expected, given the circumstances.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:20 AM on January 18, 2018 [44 favorites]

I was a sucker who liked the look of a PT Cruiser. I admit it.

Then I drove one.

It had no pickup and the handling was akin to driving a swarm of angry bees down the highway.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:25 AM on January 18, 2018 [14 favorites]

I have made many mistakes in my life, but I never bought a PT Cruiser.
posted by yhbc at 7:26 AM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

Of all the sins of the PT Cruiser, perhaps the worst was that it encouraged Chevy to make the HHR, undoubtedly the most unpleasant hunk of shit I have ever driven.
posted by selfnoise at 7:31 AM on January 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

I had a rental HHR for a day or two, when my (also a piece of shit) Volkswagen was in the shop. It was more-or-less like driving a squished U-Haul. What a garbage car.

A friend drove a secondhand PT Cruiser for two or three years until it basically blew up. Well under 100k on the odometer.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:33 AM on January 18, 2018

The only thing worse than a PT Cruiser is an article (or tweet storm) with reaction gifs every other paragraph. Interesting read otherwise.

I remember listening to the Breaking Bad podcast. There was an episode where Walt and Skylar wanted to buy Walt. Jr. a car so they bought him a PT Cruiser. The writers of the show said they asked themselves "what would be the most uncool car you could possibly buy for someone?" and the PT Cruiser won, hands down.

There's a guy at work who bought a PT Cruiser a few years ago, probably one of the used ones that the original buyer. It was... a PT Cruiser.
posted by bondcliff at 7:33 AM on January 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

I liked the look of the PT Cruiser. It was affordable and I got one. I really liked it for many reasons, not the least of which you can fit an entire band's gear into it with no hassle. Tell me any non-van where you could do that, and I'm listening.

I ended up hating Chrysler, because they made, very poorly, a really well designed car, and found any excuse possible to claim that their shoddy manufacturing issues weren't covered in the warranty.
posted by tclark at 7:34 AM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

I was stuck in a loaner PT cruiser for like 3 months as my normal car (an Accord) was being fixed after being near-totaled as a separate car accident in front of me caused someone in another highway lane to veer to avoid and go right into my car and destroy the whole passenger side. It was surprisingly spacious. It was also the worst car I ever drove from a handling perspective.

The morale hit of people giving you weird looks as you drive by in one was the shit icing on the shit cake.
posted by tocts at 7:38 AM on January 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Also, griphus, I can't read the title of this post in anything but Jerry Lundegaard voice so thank you for that and I think it's time to watch Fargo for the millionth time.
posted by bondcliff at 7:40 AM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

Tell me any non-van where you could do that, and I'm listening.

Toyota Rav4, Honda CRV, basically any other crossover SUV. Also any station wagon from before car companies stopped making those and started making crossovers instead.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:44 AM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

I will never forget the worst car I ever saw. It was outside the Uwajimaya in Beaverton, OR. It was a shiny red PT Cruiser with a matching red surfboard on the roof rack. Upon closer inspection the roof rack and surfboard were one piece, purely ornamental. I am still pissed 15 years or so later.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 7:45 AM on January 18, 2018 [73 favorites]

I drove a rental PT Cruiser once. The thing that got me was behind the lift back was, like, 6 inches of space before the seat backs. They left plenty of room for the passengers, I guess.

Regular Car Reviews take on the PT Cruiser. I'm not sure I buy their narrative, though.
posted by dirigibleman at 7:47 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I once interviewed at a place where the person doing the hiring was a huge, HUGE fan of the PT Cruiser. Like a good portion of the interview was how cool their car was.

Was almost relieved when I didn't get the job.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:00 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

> Of all the sins of the PT Cruiser, perhaps the worst was that it encouraged Chevy to make the HHR, undoubtedly the most unpleasant hunk of shit I have ever driven.

I couldn't remember the name (or manufacturer) of the car that was in my mind when I read your words but it turns out I was thinking of the Plymouth Prowler.

having googled 'Chevy HHR', though, I can't say that you're wrong.
posted by komara at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2018

It wasn't just the PT Cruiser, people were encouraged to by a $40k car with little money down on the idea that they'd have enough value left in it after 4 years to make the down payment on the next one, and they'd get to drive a car they really couldn't afford to buy. All they had to do was buy one car that didn't maintain it's value and the whole chain falls apart.
posted by sfred at 8:10 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Anecdotal, but I can tell you the company I was working for ar the time approved a sale of a $50,000 truck to a guy, no money down, 84 months.

This is all anecdotal. Actual evidence shows that people who bought homes during this period had the same down payments as ever, and the PT Cruiser was consistently popular until the financial crash, which was crashed because of anecdotes like this flowed until they became truth.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:11 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm sure the people who paid $40k in 2000 were mad, but that's true of any new car. I think its interesting that $15k for a new car is deemed to be too low such that the wrong kind of people were buying them (never stated directly but you know what they mean by first time buyers and people with bad credit).
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:12 AM on January 18, 2018

Putting aside hatred of the PT Cruiser for a moment, it does remind me of conversations I had with a coworker ~2007 who used to work in the home loan industry. He saw all the stuff going through and knew it would all fall apart, got out when he could. Then we watched as the CDO tranches started collapsing and knew it was going to be a rough couple of years.

Sorta like now. Which could be even worse.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:15 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Of all the sins of the PT Cruiser, perhaps the worst was that it encouraged Chevy to make the HHR, undoubtedly the most unpleasant hunk of shit I have ever driven.

Funny thing - they were both designed by the same guy.

Granted, the original Pronto Cruizer Prototype was a little bit cooler. I'd really like to learn more about how the sheet metal morphed from the auto show hit into the wacky final design.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:16 AM on January 18, 2018

The_Vegetables: This is all anecdotal. Actual evidence shows that people who bought homes during this period had the same down payments as ever, and the PT Cruiser was consistently popular until the financial crash, which was crashed because of anecdotes like this flowed until they became truth.

Aye, in the end, it was primarily prime borrowers who bought second "investment" homes who ended up defaulting, not subprime borrowers. Multiple studies have come to that conclusion.

People who took out second mortgages to buy PT Cruisers, though, I can't speak for.
posted by clawsoon at 8:20 AM on January 18, 2018 [14 favorites]

We bought a house in 2007. Our real estate agent had one of the first-wave PT Cruisers. True story.

(Our credit union also offered us an ARM for $1,000,000. I don’t think there was a house on the market within the nearest 5 counties with that price tag, but that’s what the computer told them to offer us. )
posted by BrashTech at 8:26 AM on January 18, 2018

I remember listening to the Breaking Bad podcast. There was an episode where Walt and Skylar wanted to buy Walt. Jr. a car so they bought him a PT Cruiser. The writers of the show said they asked themselves "what would be the most uncool car you could possibly buy for someone?" and the PT Cruiser won, hands down.

Naturally, this is the same show that firmly established Walter White as a frustrated loser by saddling him with that fern-green Pontiac Aztek.

I could not care less about what makes one car look "cooler" than another, to the point where I feel like I could be just as happy driving around a featureless grey box on wheels. But somehow the design of the Aztek (and the PT Cruiser, for that matter) cuts right through my blase, purely functional approach to automotive aesthetics and immediately triggers an instant sense of revulsion.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:28 AM on January 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

I got to drive an older PT Cruiser once, and it seemed fine for what it was, though it was hardly a pleasure to drive, it was adequate. It belonged to a young lady I was seeing off-and-on. To add to the anecdata of "what kind of person buys a PT Cruiser?", I will say that while they were both cute, the car was much more reliable and trustworthy than she ever was.
posted by some loser at 8:35 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I thought the PT Cruiser was neat looking, though I have never been inside one. I thought the HHR looked like a fridge that was turned into a car.
posted by jeather at 8:36 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I like the weird, angular Aztek exterior but it's bigger than anything I'd be interested in buying.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:40 AM on January 18, 2018

Probably the most amusing thing about the PT Cruiser is that all of the ones I see around here all have this "Special Edition" chrome badge on the back. It's just that I can't even imagine using the words "Pt Cruiser" and "Special" anywhere near each other.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:45 AM on January 18, 2018

Car design is funny. My wife hated the PTHHR whateveritwascalled with a passion, I thought it looked kind of stupid and fake, my neighbor and another friend liked it a lot. I can kind of torture my mind into seeing how it could have appeal but it just looks dorky to me. Kind of like this twitter/gif format of transmitting information.

PT Cruisers and sub prime auto financing were not the cause of the financial crisis.I would go further that the cause was not persons borrowing money for housing either, in the sense that it isn't the rivers fault if your hydro dam fails and causes a blackout, its the fault of the dam builder. The river does what rivers do just like people.
posted by Pembquist at 8:47 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine just had a goodbye party for her beloved PT Cruiser. Her parents told her as a kid that if she paid for half of it, she could have any car she wanted, and by her mid-teens she had saved up exactly half the price of a PT Cruiser because she loved them so much. It ran for 15-odd years, taking her from high school through college through several job transitions in NYC, and when it finally died for good, she was so devastated that she pulled off the logo thingy and framed it and mounted it on her wall.

I just can't hate! They might be weird-looking cars but they clearly inspire devotion in some people, so fuck it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:03 AM on January 18, 2018 [10 favorites]

my (late) mother bought one as her first-post-kids-post-minivan car, and then I inherited it in college and drove it for about five years. and then gave it to my sister, who is currently driving it into the ground (it's about dead, it leaks oil like a motherfucker and isn't worth fixing).

i got so much shit for it, but, like, to me it was free. yes, it was a bad car.

It could hold a lot of stuff, though, I fit a loveseat in it.
posted by dismas at 9:03 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I only just got rid of mine. I cried. But god, it was bad, and yeah, people were merciless about it.
posted by Sequence at 9:08 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I once drove a rental PT Cruiser up a mountain (first time I'd ever driven up a mountain) in a fog so thick I couldn't see the end of the hood. It was incredibly traumatic, and the fog was pretty scary too.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:22 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

One of the nice things about the PT Cruiser was that it was, in terms of form factor, a low-riding SUV. Loading bulky stuff in and out was a lot easier than doing so in an SUV, and the upright seats also made it very easy for people to get in and out.

Basically Chrysler took something that could have been the next Checker Cab in terms of practical utility and ruined it with a weenie motor and a lot of very bad engineering decisions.
posted by ardgedee at 9:23 AM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

I really liked it for many reasons, not the least of which you can fit an entire band's gear into it with no hassle. Tell me any non-van where you could do that, and I'm listening

Honda Element. I drove one for 8 years and with the rear seats folded (or removed) it has by far the most cargo volume of anything its size. The load floor is a little higher, but is completely flat all the way up to the front seats. It also has the benefit of Honda reliability.

PT Cruiser: 62.7 cu. ft.

Honda Element: 74.6 cu. ft.

The PT Cruiser, while scoffed at now, was part of the wave of retro modern vehicles that came out in the late 90s to early 2000s. At its debut, it was quite a departure from the lozenge shaped vehicles of the time. It’s notable both for its success and later failure.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:27 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Basically Chrysler took something that could have been the next Checker Cab in terms of practical utility and ruined it with a weenie motor and a lot of very bad engineering decisions.

I think people have a selective memory or are just unaware that the PT Cruiser in GT or Touring trims had a turbo engine that was quite peppy. Probably there were just so many of the base engine equipped models that people associate it with being slow.
posted by Fleebnork at 9:30 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Aye, in the end, it was primarily prime borrowers who bought second "investment" homes who ended up defaulting, not subprime borrowers.

Who defaulted not because they wanted to but because the tightening of lending standards was crashing the economy and mass numbers of people lost their jobs. Make sure the direction of the actions is correct.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:37 AM on January 18, 2018

tightening of lending standards was crashing the economy
And tightening lending standards was done because too many people were buying houses and cars, which is somehow wrong. It worked, they stopped.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:39 AM on January 18, 2018

Say it until people listen, the expansion of dirt cheap credit was the bandaid to hide that wages hadn’t risen for 40 years and it made everything so much worse.
posted by The Whelk at 9:46 AM on January 18, 2018 [45 favorites]

I bought a PT Cruiser even though I thought it was the ugliest car on the market. Why? It was easy to get in and out of, which was important for taking my elderly mom places. Comfortable ride, nice interior, lots and lots of space for stuff. It was the perfect all-purpose vehicle for anyone preferring function over form.

Chrysler initially targeted the young adult market, but the actual buyers trended middle-aged and older, who, like me, were looking for a comfortable roomy car reminiscent of the land yachts we'd grown up driving.

By the third year of its introduction, demand was so high that dealers were bringing in new PTs from Canada that they could sell for thousands under the US MSRP. (Bet you didn't know that new car list prices can differ that much between the US and Canada.) I bought mine for $6K under MSRP, and there was nothing comparable, feature-wise, at that price.

There's a bubble going on in the current used-car market; has been for several years. Why? Financing. All these second-hand car places aren't so much selling cars as car loans. It's much easier to qualify people for loans for used cars versus new. As more people bought used car loans, it drove up demand for used cars, which drove up prices.

Basically, if you need to borrow money, you need to shop for the best deal on that loan. Walking into a car dealership or a mortgage broker's office is like walking into a lion's den. Go to your credit union first; odds are no one will be able to beat their terms. They are often able to be just as flexible on lending as the shark lender, but without screwing you over.
posted by Lunaloon at 9:53 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Say it until people listen, the expansion of dirt cheap credit was the bandaid to hide that wages hadn’t risen for 40 years and it made everything so much worse.

It's been the policy of the Fed to raise interest rates (since about 1980) (what everybody wanted) every time the economy gets 'frothy' because a 'frothy' economy represents full employment which means rising wages. Higher interest rates temper economic growth, which holds down wage growth.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:54 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

I think people have a selective memory or are just unaware that the PT Cruiser in GT or Touring trims had a turbo engine that was quite peppy. Probably there were just so many of the base engine equipped models that people associate it with being slow.

I had a 2007 base model with a manual transmission that I liked a lot, it had plenty of pickup. That wasn't too hard to find at the time because nobody drives a stick anymore. But they did have to drive one up from a dealer in San Diego to get it in the color I wanted. At $16K it was a nice little car, I'm not sure there's anything they could have added to it to make it worth $40K to me.
posted by InfidelZombie at 9:59 AM on January 18, 2018

→ Of all the sins of the PT Cruiser, perhaps the worst was that it encouraged Chevy to make the HHR

For the first time, I've just realized that the Cruiser and the HHR were different cars. For years I thought the HHR was just a different model year Cruiser, or maybe one that had become infested with parasitic wasps.
posted by scruss at 10:19 AM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

The principal of my high school announced triumphantly in the middle of my senior year that he had bought himself the first new car of his life. He proudly parked it in the front entryway to show it off. It was one of the first generation of PT Cruiser, in an ill-advised shade of dark purple I had never seen before and don't think I've seen again since, with wood paneled doors. It was easily the most hideous conveyance I had ever seen, and I drove a 25-year-old truck built of sedimentary layers of rust. All talk amongst the soon-to-be-graduates immediately turned to how we were going to steal it and park it on the roof of the school the day before graduation. Plans advanced (or so I'm, ahem, told by a reliable source) as far as renting a flatbed truck and sneaking into his driveway, but it turned out to have a drivetrain construction so utterly foreign that none of the assembled parties could figure out how to pop the thing into neutral, and no one was really up for destroying the transmission to make a point.

Anyway, five years later the real estate bubble popped, and now my entire age cohort is swimming in student loan debt and eating avocado toast or something. Coincidence?
posted by Mayor West at 10:47 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I saw this link this morning and then leaving for work I swear the first car I saw on the road was a purple PT Cruiser.
posted by atoxyl at 10:53 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Am I the only person who liked that the PT Cruiser at least came in colors, and not varying shades of wet cement and the unobjectionable red that is burgundy? We have a new car and more than six months later I cannot pick it out of the other cars in the lot.
posted by JawnBigboote at 11:00 AM on January 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

I always thought they looked sharp, but I love wood panelling and was and am still enamoured with what I used to call "Dick Tracy Cars".
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:01 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

My PT cruiser story involves getting the last car at the San Jose Airport Hertz, which turned out to be a purple PT Cruiser convertible. I had to drive it a big name tech client the next day and I was too embarrassed to park it anywhere near their quad.

Now I'm rereading this thread and I'm just wondering why were so many of these things purple?
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:04 AM on January 18, 2018

I liked the PT Cruiser, but I was a teenager at that time who chose not to learn to drive. Most cars are butt-ugly and have been since the early 70's, and it's really unfortunate that the only car that has had any style to it since then was so heinously poorly made.

The benefit of a car that isn't beige, silver, white, or black is that you always know where you parked, but the downside is that it's much easier to be identified when you're breaking traffic laws.
posted by blnkfrnk at 11:29 AM on January 18, 2018

I have one of those bright orange Subaru Crosstreks. Its CVT means it is also dog slow. This thread is making me a bit uncomfortable, though at least I don't have wood-panelling!
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 11:44 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

why were so many of these things purple?

I think that some cars have weird colors (highlighter green, purple, cobalt blue, whatever) because there's a certain segment of the population that wants to be different and/or appreciates being able to pick their car out of the parking lot quickly. I love my little red car, but I regret not getting one of the sort-of-burnt-metallic-orange ones of that make and model that were out that year. Ditto for the time in the late 90s when I was car-shopping and passed up a Golf Harlequin.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:52 AM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

We have a PT Cruiser. It's pushing 13 years old, but it's a nice non-objectionable little workhorse of a car/truck/thing in a dark blue that should be boring and not stand out but given that every other car in a parking lot is the color of oatmeal, I can find that car with my glasses off. (Look, I can't find my KID with my glasses off in a crowd, but I can find that car)

The PT Cruiser comes in so many seemingly funky colors because it was meant to be a Different Looking Car - it was meant to stand out, in body design and color and in a atmosphere where - okay hold on (I am looking out my office window, and there are 21 cars/trucks parked within view and ONE of them is not white, grey, silver, tan or black, and that one is a red sports car) - the car color landscape is boring, you want your funky little retro car to come with funky colors. Purple is the Most Weirdest Color when it comes to cars as well, and it has connotations of Different and Unique Personality without being offensively loud. There's a reason so many people dye their hair PURPLE and not Bright Fucking Orange
posted by FritoKAL at 11:57 AM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

car culture always struck an immigrant kid like me as one of the most irrational sub-cultures that people bought into without question. functionality, utility and efficiency being second-class constructs in a world of horsepower, handling, and design is just such a quintessentially American attitude about things - short-term outbursts of fun and glamor, the longterm consequences be damned. the PT Cruiser also seemed like one of those evolutions towards a more Japanese, utilitarian design that people just hated, especially since it followed so soon and in the same style as the Prowler, the car that pretty much embodied those materialistic signifiers of 'cool' that have found a longterm durability in people like Guy Fieri
posted by runt at 12:30 PM on January 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

I have to say, the HHR has given me a single moment of pure, unadulterated happiness. That came from spotting a pure white HHR with a vanity plate that said CHEVRE. And there’s no feeling quite like that instant of revelation when the veil falls away and you see that, yes, this car looks exactly like a log of goat cheese.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 1:06 PM on January 18, 2018 [11 favorites]

I have one of those bright orange Subaru Crosstreks. Its CVT means it is also dog slow

Oh man, I love the orange Crosstreks. I would drive two of them at the same time if I could. I don't know what year yours is, but I assume the drivetrain is the same as the Forester, and the new Forester is acceptably sprightly. (Although my mother-in-law has a few-year-old Crosstrek and it really is miserable to drive, so maybe they're just fundamentally different in some say.)
posted by uncleozzy at 1:17 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also, I read somewhere that people bought PT Cruisers as their business cars because they attracted attention, and there you were with your brand name on the sides and back windows. So at the same time you started your shaky new business you got a bad loan for your hideous purple Cruiser.

Do you know why I hated PT Cruisers? Because they were at the wrong scale. They were designed to resemble a classic roadster, but they were much too small and instead resembled a blown-up Matchbox car.
posted by acrasis at 4:15 PM on January 18, 2018

My PT cruiser story involves getting the last car at the San Jose Airport Hertz, which turned out to be a purple PT Cruiser convertible. I had to drive it a big name tech client the next day and I was too embarrassed to park it anywhere near their quad.

No offense intended but this sounds more like a problem with patriarchy and toxic masculinity than a problem with Chrysler.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 5:17 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

From the reddit thread PT Cruiser owners, what tragedy burdened you with your car? the story of a daughter whose father thought she wanted PT Cruiser instead of Mini Cooper.
posted by ShooBoo at 5:36 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

That tweet thread sure makes the "PT Cruiser is hella lame" explanation do a lot of heavy lifting in order to blame the entire 2008 Financial Crisis on Chrysler. Lehman Brothers didn't fail because people with "bad" taste bought too many of a car some people thought looked weird.

I mean, if we're just going to make up some bullshit reasoning and tie a car make/model to it, why not use the Hummer H2? That seems to fit better with the "dumbass car ruined the economy" theme and definitely lead to more bad debt that the cheap PT Cruiser.
posted by sideshow at 5:38 PM on January 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Something about the timeline of this article is off.

My parents bought a PT Cruiser somewhere around 2000, because it reminded my mom of the car her family had when she was a kid. (I know it's 1930s styling, but we're talking India pre-capitalism, so a 30 year style delay just about fits). I drove it my senior year of high school, 2002-2003. It was a godawful terrible car -- in order to merge onto a highway, you had to turn the A/C off. It was plain silver, not a heat-retaining color, but baked all day, to the point where you had to wear gloves in the middle of summer just to put on your seatbelt without burning yourself on the metal. I didn't know any better, and I sure didn't want to ride the bus, so I drove this doofus of a car until I left for college. My folks sold it shortly thereafter and bought a Civic.

Point being, first-gen PT Cruiser predated the financial crisis by 5+ years. This is like blaming the meltdown on boho chic.
posted by basalganglia at 6:05 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I actually liked the look of the PT Cruiser when it first came out, because it was at least distinctive looking in an era of hideously uniformity in cars.
posted by tavella at 6:17 PM on January 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Though I never even sat in one, I always thought the PT Cruiser was a pretty good looking car, unless it was a convertible, which was the worst looking thing ever.

I have a Kia Soul which I love, but I'm going to have to sell it. No raise this year, and I could use the car payment money for lots of other things.
posted by lhauser at 7:15 PM on January 18, 2018

To say that the thread "blames" the PT Cruiser for literally anything at all is a gross misreading. The whole point is "the writing wasn't just on the wall, it was on every wall", and it uses the situation where lenders were underwriting really, really bad loans on PT Cruisers as a case and point. The car itself being kind of a turd is just the table setting for the entree, which is a story about how dysfunctional the whole system of loan financing was back then (and continues to be).
posted by tobascodagama at 7:42 PM on January 18, 2018 [8 favorites]

I had always thought the PT Cruiser was cute, but I was solidly locked into a long-term relationship with my 1996 Corolla and wasn't in the market. But then I had a PT Cruiser for a rental, and oh man, it was awful. I felt like everything outside the car was one huge blindspot, like I just couldn't see enough even though I messed with the seats and the mirrors for a long time. And even though it didn't have too many miles on it, it drove rough. And I did feel like people cut me off more, or treated me like I was driving a toy. My latest "just looking" obsession is the Ford Flex, but now my LTR is a paid-off 2012 Chrysler Town & Country, and I'm trying to make that one last as long as possible.
posted by candyland at 9:02 PM on January 18, 2018

For those who aren't familiar with the car Regular Car reviews the 2004 PT cruiser and touches a bit on driver economics. Also postmodernism.
posted by pwnguin at 10:39 PM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

And tightening lending standards was done because too many people were buying houses and cars, which is somehow wrong. It worked, they stopped.

It wouldn't have been so much an issue had they merely stopped writing new loans. What they actually did was accelerate repayment and jack up interest rates on basically everyone with outstanding revolving debt and less than a 720 FICO. Suddenly you're paying four times as much monthly on that debt, your HELOC lender closed draws, and you were in a pretty tough spot even before you lost your job. Then you and everyone like you quit spending money and there it goes, massive layoffs.

As with most crises of this sort, it was a lack of liquidity rather than some sudden overextension on the part of borrowers. They were only overextended in hindsight, after everything changed. This was even true of a lot of the banks and other companies that went under. They had plenty of earning power to service their debt under the previous terms and work off the bad assets, but when the money markets froze that didn't matter a whit.

In some ways we choose these things by failing to have a system for the orderly dissolution of large businesses in a way that spreads the impact out over a longer period of time so that the necessary adjustments are not so sudden and harsh. Better social programs would be even better, but the US' puritanism requires any benefit not tied to work be tiny if at all existent.
posted by wierdo at 9:06 AM on January 19, 2018

Uncleozzy, fyi, Crosstreks do NOT have the same drivetrain as the Forester/Outback. They're dreadfully underpowered at only 150hp or so, and there's no upgraded engine option. The Forester, by contrast, has a 250HP engine.

We test drove all three Subaru options when we were shopping last year. A nice Outback accelerates kinda okay, but the CVT robs it of any fun. Same deal with the Forester. The Crosstrek is slow enough I worried about merging on the highway; it was far and away the least peppy thing we tested.
posted by uberchet at 7:55 AM on January 25, 2018

The XT trim might make 250HP, but the standard is the 160? 170?ish HP 2.5L. The CVT seems to find the right ratio pretty quickly, though, which makes it feel peppier. I really like driving my wife's Forester.

But yeah, maybe the Crosstrek has a totally different engine / transmission. Because the 2015 or 16 I've driven is a noisy, unpleasant dog.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:03 AM on January 25, 2018

Ah, you're right, the base models have that baby engine. We didn't even bother; nothing that big will move well with so little power.

The CVT seems to find the right ratio pretty quickly, though, which makes it feel peppier.

My assumption is that you and I have very different definitions of "peppy."
posted by uberchet at 9:51 AM on January 25, 2018