I'm surprised you're not looking into Rivian. My buddy who was in the same boat (86 > Giulia) put pre-order for Rivian and he can't wait to get a hand on it.

Top 3 EV I'm looking at are Volvo XC40 Rechage, Ford Mustang Mach-E & Nissan Ariya now. Thought about used Audi e-Tron... but used price of e-Tron, I can get new Mach-E or Recharge.

Neither of the standard e-Tron models appealed, as you said, due to cost and being essentially ICE chassis converted, which loses out on one of the benefits of losing an engine. Not sure we get the Rivian here, certainly not seen much, and the QV wouldn't be new, so not sure how costs would compare (also keen to have a couple of large engined cars before the move to full EV - being in the UK we tend to drive 4 bangers so a crazy V6 and/or V8 for my fun car would be a good hurrah). I think the XC40 would be too small, it's comparable to the E-Pace I think and I wish that we'd gone slightly larger for buggies and bags etc. Is the recharge not a PHEV? If so, I'd worry about losing more space to the batteries. I love a Volvo but I would be looking at a XC60 or even a V60.

XC40 Recharge is full EV, it's pretty much Polestar 2 EV tech w XC40 chassis. Volvo PHEV, you have XC90 & XC60 option, but like you said, you might loose a bit of space to the batteries.

Ah, here it's available in PHEV and EV. Still it's using a ICE base chassis so I expect it to be somewhat compromised. I quite like the Polestar actually, if they did one similar size to a V60 I'd be all over it.

That is exactly the point. A car is meant to be driven. Especially a sports car. It's not meant to be looked at like a painting, or 'saved' for something. Drive it.

Doubly especially the BRZ/86. These are inexpensive cars. It's not some insane multi-million dollar collectible that will depreciate $10 for every mile driven or each paint chip.

Good for you for using your car for exactly what it was meant for: to have fun in.

I agree with you... BUT at the same time, that’s not always the case for everyone who own it & it was build as a blank canvas for every owner. Nothing wrong w driving til engine blows up. Nothing wrongs w not driving. Nothing wrong w tracking it. Nothing wrong w rallying through the snow. Nothing wrong w keeping in the garage. Nothing wrong w putting a snail in the engine. Nothing wrong w keeping it NA. It keeps going...

That’s why it make this car great.

You're absolutely right. The point is to enjoy the car, whatever that means to the owner. Most of the things you mentioned involve actual driving, whether on the street, track, snow, whatever.

I fairly regularly see nice, fun cars for sale with few miles. Especially big-buck exotics and 'collectibles' on Bring-A-Trailer, but often just nice cars like the Honda S2000 and CRX Si. While the new owner is probably thrilled with the find of an 'almost new' old car, I think it's sad that someone would own something that much fun and not drive it.

I used to be guilty of that myself. When I first bought a 2006 S2000 (a car I deeply regret selling), I didn't drive it that much. One day at a Cars & Coffee, someone remarked on the low mileage on the car and quipped how someday, someone was going to get a great car, and it hit me: what am I saving the car for? By not driving it, all I was doing was 'saving' the car for the next owner. At that moment (already being in my 50's at the time), I decided life was too short for baseless, ridiculous self-denial. I didn't want to 'save' the car for some stranger who would someday be the next owner. I wanted to be that person, to drive it myself and have fun with the car the way it was meant to be driven. So I did.

I realize many people buy cars as investments. On BaT some of the rich and famous glitterati (Silicon Valley tech bros, hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, etc.) comment on the return on investment possibilities with a particular car. They think they're being so witty when they quip about how unlike their stock portfolios, they can take the car out occasionally and drive it. That's their choice, and all else being equal, I guess I too would rather have something interesting in the garage over seeing numbers on a spreadsheet (if I had the garage space and throwaway money to do things like that)(though I wonder what the real 'return on investment' is after considering insurance, maintenance, etc. costs).

But I still think it's a shame to not use a car for what it was intended for. Especially with something like the BRZ that will never be 'investment grade' or a 'collectible' (except maybe long after I'm gone, in the next century when any surviving relic of the internal combustion era might be 'worth something'). The BRZ is an inexpensive car. It's not a low-mileage original 1969 Dodge Daytona whose value will go down with every mile driven. But the grin on my face sure gets wider with every mile.

I postulate the Dodge Daytona has entered (or is at least near) the category of cars that Everyday Driver describe as always having value regardless of what happens to it. They usually discuss exotics whose value exist in the VIN regardless of how many times it has been rebodied, but I’d say rare American Muscle cars are already in the same category; the VIN is the value.

I think the value of the Daytona will keep increasing regardless of use, but the BRZ/FRS/86 value depends on lack of use.

Then again, 40 years ago my dad and my uncle were jumping Shelbys over barns, flipping them on their roof and torching the springs to pull rear-end housings, and otherwise scraping/mangling/destroying what would now be many millions of dollars in cars because they had almost no value at the time and nobody imagined they’d be widely desirable again. So who knows what the future holds for the Twins.

Everyone should enjoy their car in any way they see fit, unless their enjoyment entails parking the car in a field/barn/on blocks and letting it melt away into oblivion while refusing to sell it.

Shelbys ALWAYS had value even 40 years ago!

Just wanted to add this here, sort of a UK channel but very unbiased and with correspondents in China and the US. This video covers all models that have been or are available plus pending release anywhere in the UK, Europe and USA so quite a good quick snap of the market for the near future.

https://youtu.be/oQqEHd0gQCM

The Mach-E won Motorweek's Driver's Choice Best of the Year for 2021. I will say, I did enjoy test driving it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsCGftvDF5M

Ugh.... I've been a MotorWeek fan since the beginning, but this might cross the line...

To be fair it wasn't "Driver's Car of The Year" it was "Driver's Choice Best of the Year"

Not rated based solely on performance driving.

True, I did get the award wrong. I've corrected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R-d...=CarSceneKorea

Veloster N vs Ioniq 5

What surprises me most about vehicles like the Mach E and IONIQ 5 is that they are actually quite small in terms of footprint, but their packaging is so damn good.

But like a lot of people, I thought the 5 was going to be a compact hatch when it is a CUV.

The 5 has a little too much "futurism" going on with all of the lines going all over the bottom areas of the car. The Mach E is the winner of EVs right now in terms of design.

In other news, Morgan Stanley reports the Mach E is siphoning substantial sales from Tesla.

I didn't really consider the Mach E a "small" footprint when I saw it.

It is right around the same size as an Escape, which I consider small... relative to the F150s and Suburbans that are running around everywhere.

Well, OK, in that case everything is a small footprint!

As a follow-up to the Motor Week video above, here is the Road Test video for the Mach-E. I have to say, in my test drive the Premium AWD model seemed faster than they have listed here. I was driving in "Unbridled" but you would think that is also what they would have been using.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pJ721uE6_s

http://www.spidermancrawlspace.com/w...5/electro3.jpg

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I am seeing a lot of those in the streets, and they are not ugly at all.

I see some growth on charging stations also.

Not sure about the sales numbers so far, but looks like Tesla finally got a competitor.

Looks like they sold 6,614 in 1Q21 and it represents about 1.3% of Ford's total sales volume. It did drop quite a bit from Feb to March though.\\

If I'm reading it right, it looks like the Mach E was about 25% of all electrified US sales in Q1 (6,614 of 25,980)

Article here.

Just saw that transaction cost was 48.5k usd, which is a bit too much in my view for a vehicle of this size.

There will be a lot of work before EVs becomes a product for the masses.

In the US, Ford still qualifies for the Federal tax credit which drops it some (unless you are including that in transaction cost). Honestly though, when I compared it to similarly equipped Escapes at the Ford dealer, it wasn't too far off in price.

As I'm sure will come as a shock to no one, now that GM has lost its tax credits the 2022 model Bolt is priced well below the MSRP of the 2021 model. I'm sure that is partially due to manufacturing efficiencies, but not wholly. Tesla, as I recall, also had a price decrease after it lost it's eligibility.

Agree with most of your points, but average transaction price for a Ford Escape is 28,978 usd.

EVs are still heavy and batteries are expensive yet, OEMs and suplly chain needs to work really hard to minimize this gap.

The average Ford Escape is not tricked out like the base Mach E though, hence why I said "similarly equipped".

No argument from me there. The whole marketing spin on "total cost of ownership" of an EV may be accurate but it doesn't sell cars. It also tends to fall short of the point of including a battery pack change-out if, like me, you tend to keep a car well into 200K miles.

I've seen maybe 7-8. Not a fan, but it's not horrible. The Mustang "styling" and name is far too gimmicky for my tastes, however.

Have also seen around 4-5 Taycans on the road. Ugly in my eyes.

For grins I went and looked at the price of the 2021 Bolt. Chevy is offering almost $15,000 cash back on the current model. That make some LTs just around $24,000. and the Premier is under $30K. That's on Chevy's inventory site. On CarGuru there are some LTs as low as $20K new.

Well, here's some news that is a harbinger of things to come. Ford is selling as many Mach-E models as it is "real" Mustangs.

I wonder how much of that is influenced by the chip shortage though. I haven't seen a Mustang on my local Ford dealers' lots in months.

https://www.businessinsider.com/must...as-car-2021-12

IMO sales numbers right now are meaningless due to chip shortages and companies prioritizing production of one model over others. Given political pressure right now it would be insane for Ford not to prioritize, over all else, the production of it's only EV car (Lightning is a truck).

I also think one being an impractical 2 door sports car, and another being a 4 door practical family sized SUV/CUV also has much to do with it.....

I agree, one of these is not like the other, but having had a Mustang in my family for the past 17 years, I wouldn't say it impractical. It has 4 useable seats and a good amount of trunk space, although a bit less so if its a convertible.

You just have to keep it away from crowds.