Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Motor oil madness

I drove by a gas station last evening and saw that a gallon of premium 91 octane was over the $7 mark. A gallon of diesel was nearly $9! That is quite high, even for California. No wonder my coworker has stopped driving to work and instead is taking public transit. That extra half hour of commute time is worth the trade-off at the gas pump.

Meanwhile, my 10 minute walk of a commute remains unchanged.

Nevertheless, petroleum isn’t just purely at gas stations. It permeates and affects many things we buy and consume. The ongoing war with Iran is putting a self-inflicted squeeze on the petrol supply chain, and we haven’t yet seen the full brunt of it. Gas prices finally cresting $7 per gallon here in California might be the proverbial canary.

Word on the street is motor oil is suffering through a shortage, and consequently pricers are increasing. I’ve got two cars, both of which are gas burners. Every calendar year, they will need a flush and replenishment of oil. Much like the great toilet paper stock-up of early 2020 pandemic, the supposed smart wisdom amongst the car enthusiasts discussion is to stock up on engine oil before the prices inflate any higher.

Sadly for me, I don’t have the space to store copious amounts of oil containers. The inflation hammer will just have to hit me whenever it may fall. My Golf GTI is due for an oil change next month, so I bought six liters of the good German stuff at a little over $13 per liter. According to what I can find, that price has remained stable from the start of the year. In before the lock? Seems like it.

My Miata isn’t due for a change until next July. Out of curiosity, I checked the pricing for five quarts of Castrol on Amazon. A jug is $32, which honestly seems reasonable given the surround news. According to records, the last time I bought the same oil back in 2018, it was $31! That is super surprising. Either Castrol has done the consumer a favor and kept the pricing friendly throughout, or the company has cut corners to the same product. Shrinkflation is a heck of a drug.

It seems, at least for the two particular cars that I own, the great motor oil inflation has yet to reach the shore. Of course I am fully expecting things to change sooner or later, given the lack of end in sight for the Iran war. I’ll simply enjoy the mulligan that I’ve got this time round. Happy motoring!

We're all going to feel it

This morning I woke up from a dream that I'd bought a Mercedes G Wagon, the preferred wealthy housewife car of choice. I knew it was a dream even when I was in the dream because there’s no way I would drop six-figures on a singular automobile. Did that once, enjoyed it, not YOLO-ing like that again. To comfortably afford a car priced in the six-figures, you really should be earning well past the quarter-million mark. Unfortunately, my salary is closer to zero than it is closer to $250,000.

I am happy and grateful for what I already have: the perfect two car solution. A MK7 Volkswagen Golf GTI for the utility factor, and a Mazda MX-5 Miata for pure driving fun. Both combined cost less than what I paid for a brand new BMW M2 back in 2019, which is saying something given the abject inflation that’s gone on since then. Is this German and Japanese duo the ones to ride into the proverbial sunset? Difficult to predict, the future is (Yoda). I’m just really satisfied right now.

And thank god neither of my cars run on diesel. Thanks to the ongoing war with Iran that was supposedly going to end quickly, the oil shock stemming from the Strait of Hormuz closure is finally materializing fully. Here in California, it’s over $8 for a gallon of diesel! Even if you don’t have a personal diesel vehicle (thanks, Volkswagen diesel-gate), the repercussions of such high pump pricing will directly affect your wallet. Commercial transportation is hugely reliant on diesel. Cost of goods sold will continue to trend higher because the cost of shipping is increasing.

Never mind that petroleum is an ingredient in so many products that you wouldn’t think of. As if the AI build-out inflation isn’t already bad enough…

So you EV owners can’t sit there too smugly about your cars not using gas. Though they can be slightly smug at the news of Costco rationing the sale of motor oil and raising prices due to shortages. (The upcoming annual oil change on the GTI is going to cost nearly $100 in materials alone!) But, the downstream negatives of the oil shock will affect us all. This collective hurt is quite the revenge on the individualistic streak so prevalent in American culture.

Klarna pay-in-four at the gas pump, when?

Here we have the GTI in its natural habitat.

Losing car enthusiasm?

Lately on the car enthusiast inter webs I’ve seen quite a few posts and videos lamenting the decreasing passion for cars. One person was asking if it’s alright to be car guy/gal and not own any “fun” cars. The Savagegeese Youtube channel put out an explainer on why people are losing interest.

The crux of it seems to be the fun cars we all love and want have massively increased in price. We are being priced out. Take a look at the Porsche 911 - the sports car icon: before the pandemic, a 2019 model year 911 started at $93,950 for the poverty spec Carrera trim. Fast forward to the present, and that same spec Carrera is now $135,500. That used to be high trim GT3 money, but now one of those is $238,150 starting. Utter insanity.

And because the current 911 range has inflated so highly, the used Porsches have equally jumped in value. A used 911 isn’t the bargain it used to be. Bottom line is, if you are looking for a 911 of any vintage and trim, 2026 is not a good time to be doing so. And this pricing phenomenon is shared by many other enthusiast car nameplates. A new Ford Mustang GT with a few options is into the $50,000s. Before the pandemic, it was only in the high $30,000s.

But we are not entitled to a 911 that we can afford. Nor a Mustang, or a BMW M3 Competition.

There are affordable enthusiast cars. The Mazda MX-5 Miata and the Toyota GR86 (and its Subaru BR-Z twin) are right in the mid 30,000s in pricing, and have everything that car enthusiasts care about: naturally aspirated engine, manual gearbox, rear-wheel drive, and limited slip differential. The Miata even rides on a completely bespoke and unique chassis. It’s as pure a sports car as it can get for any price. Instead of pouting about the heavy Porsche tax, go buy an MX-5 or a GR86.

Ah, but they won’t. The cars we drive are an extension of how we want to present to the world. The Mazda and the Toyota don’t carry enough cachet, not enough status. Owning a Porsche 911 means something more, something you can peacock outward to the world. That’s why you can’t go to a Cars and Coffee without seeing at least a dozen of them. So they nitpick the MX-5: it’s too small, and not powerful enough. Can’t buy.

People saying they are losing enthusiasm in cars is but a smokescreen for the real problem: the cars we want to show off to others with have become out of reach financially. You didn’t lose interest in automobiles, you’re just mad the cool cars that maximizes social media clout have gotten too expensive. Oh, another million dollar hypercar that I cannot afford?

Because if it’s truly about driving, then economical options still exist in today’s wacky new car market. The aforementioned Miata and BR-Z. Want a bit more power? Nissan sells a Z with 400 twin-turbo horsepower with a manual for less than $50,000. Turbocharged and all-wheel drive? Subaru sells a WRX for $32,495 base.

This is similar to people saying new cars in general have gotten too expensive. Average new car prices in America is above $50,000. However, the Toyota Corolla is a perfectly fine sedan for $25,000 that will run for the next decade on just oil changes. But nobody wants a Corolla. Everyone “need” the latest SUV thing with all the gadgets. Of course the latter will cost a proverbial pretty penny. Cars aren’t too expensive, the cars you want to buy, are.

Monetarily sensible options exist in the market, and yet people abjectly refuse to entertain them. instead, they create a straw-man of automaker greed and bludgeon it to death. Every news article of Porsche’s struggle is met with jeers from the Reddit peanut gallery about how it’s because they are charging too much for the 911. Even though actual 911 sales have never been better. Jealousy wrapped up in hatred is what it is.

It should not cost this much

Used car prices are kind of insane.

On occasion I like to window browse on Carvana and CarMax. Just to see if anything weird and interesting pop up. Recently there was a 2016 Toyota Corolla with a manual transmission up for sale. It brought me back to my very first car: a 2006 Toyota Corolla, also in stick shift guise. It’s very rare to see the common commuter sedan with a manual gearbox. Good on the owner(s) of the 2016 Corolla to have put over 70,000 miles on it. We like to see cars driven.

What we don’t like to see is ridiculous pricing. The listed price on CarMax for that 2016 Toyota Corolla is $16,000. Keep in mind the original MSRP of the car 10 years ago was $17,300! Even if you account for inflation - $24,155 in today’s dollars - 16 grand for a decade old poverty spec sedan is laughable. Especially when it’s equipped with a manual gearbox that nobody wants. This isn’t some Porsche sports car with a stick.

Even if you account for the CarMax premium for let’s say $2,000, a 2016 Corolla still isn’t a $14,000 car. It’s not even a $10,000 car. A gut-feeling fair price for a 10 year old compact sedan is around the $7,000 mark. $8,000 perhaps if the mileage is sufficiently low. Is this simply the era we are living in? Just like how there are zero new cars available for under $20,000, the reasonably conditioned used car for under $10,000 - that every personal finance guru says is available - has also disappeared into history.

I used to have a 2016 Mazda MX-5. That same model year of Miata in today’s market looks to be hovering near $20,000 for a low mileage sample, which is insanity. A decade old MX-5 should be less than $10,000, no matter the miles. It’s not a rare car; Mazda has produced plenty, and continues to do so to this very year. Used examples should not be encroaching on the price of a new one.

Because then why wouldn’t you throw in the extra thousand for one with zero miles and zero farts on the seats? You’d get better financing terms buying new, too. The lower interest costs might even make the price delta disappear completely.

We're all paying for it

You know RAM prices have truly gone off the deep end when Apple of all companies is raising prices on their products. The same Apple that famously already charges a premium for extra storage and memory. It seems even those fat margins are not enough to swallow the hyper inflation of semiconductor chips due to the supposedly AI revolution. It now costs $1999 for the base MacBook Bro, up from $1699. Kind of insane.

I guess this M1 Max MacBook Pro of mine will solider on until it literally dies.

All eyes now turn to the annual September iPhone event. Will the iPhone get a price bump for the first time in a long time? Place your bets at your prediction market platform of choice.

AI has been cashing checks and making promises (still a solution looking for a problem if you ask me), and yet the downstream negative effects are burdened by everyone. We’re all paying for it, just so Silicon Valley can keep on minting fresh new millionaires and bilionaires. An iPad for grandmother is now $150 more expensive - thanks to AI-caused inflation, even though AI won’t touch her everyday life in the slightest. Our utility bills keep going higher thanks to data centers drawing energy the equivalent of entire cities.

Whether you use Chat-GPT or not, you’re paying for it one way or another. That’s not very fair, is it?

Stay put and wait

With AI companies buying up all the world’s memory chip supply, it’s tough out here for the average Joe buying or building computers. Our combined economies of scale cannot begin to match a batch order from the likes of OpenAI. So of course you have entire chip companies saying they are bowing out of the consumer business altogether. There’s more than enough money serving B2B. Because fuck us, that’s why.

Just today the base model Mac mini is marked as unavailable at the Apple Store. Too many people are buying them to run LLMs locally. Higher tier models with increased memory and storage are backordered for months. Other manufacturers have computers to sell you immediately, but they’ve raised the pricing tremendously in response to the chip shortage.

It’s simply not a good time for the computing enthusiast. First was the GPU pricing squeeze from years back, and now another critical component is seeing highly inflated prices. If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for an extended period, other components will surely be affected as well. These companies cannot swallow increased logistics costs for very long. Amazon Prime free shipping might go from two days to four.

As I type this out on my 2021 MacBook Pro, I guess numerically speaking I can use an upgrade. But the current aforementioned computing landscape is so constraining that I reckon it’s prudent to keep waiting if possible. Thankfully the first generation of Apple Silicon chips remain eminently powerful and efficient, even some five years later. I have to say it was smart of me to have the foresight to spec for 32 GB of RAM when I bought this laptop. Even as successive macOS releases use more and more resources, this M1 MacBook Pro is still not running out of memory space.

The memory chip shortage is also affecting memory card prices. I’ve been looking to buy higher capacity SD cards for my camera, but the pricing has ballooned 30 to 40% in the past month. I guess I don’t need the additional space anymore! I rather offload the camera more often than pay the inflated pricing.

Staying put and waiting is the play right now.

Under pressure

Mustn’t forget to check your tire pressures periodically! Even the most sealed up wheel and tire combination will lose air overtime. Especially those us driving around in internal combustion cars. In these troubled times of exorbitant gasoline prices, every bit of conservation helps. You are figuratively throwing money away if the car is running lower than optimal tire pressures. Friendly reminder the prescription is on the front driver door jam.

I wonder how many people who can otherwise install chargers at home are kicking themselves right now for not having an electric vehicle. Notorious PG&E shenanigans aside, the likelihood of electricity rates going up 25% over a span of weeks is practically impossible. Not so, as we are seeing with gas prices. Fully electric vehicle owners are sure to be pretty smug right about now.

If this war with Iran goes on for long enough, the paradigm of how the United States view EVs might permanently switch to the positive. The federal EV tax credit expiration was a setback for growth. Those that want an EV probably already bought one. However, consistently elevated gas prices can be incentive enough for those outside the fence to consider opening the gate. Especially those with considerable commutes.

Ride-share and delivery drivers, too. There’s no way the apps are benevolent enough to raise the prices - and therefore the commission for the drivers - to accommodate the sudden spike in gasoline. Nor would customers be cognizant enough to tip more. So the workers will just have to eat the additional, not unsubstantial, variable cost. When the margins are already purported to be minimum wage levels, who’s going to deliver DoorDash to make zero dollars?

Those food delivery drivers already on those zippy electric scooters must also be pretty smug right now. President Trump got rid of the EV tax credit, but his war with Iran just might re-reverse the tide of adoption. The longer the Strait of Hormuz is closed, the more of an accelerant it is for Americans switching to electric motivation.