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Comment by csours | Hacker News Reader

These immobilizers are commonly installed on cars from "buy here, pay here" used car dealerships - the kind of place where customers physically bring cash every month for their car payment. I'm very surprised to learn than an official Kia branded dealership would install these, and then act this scummy - not a good look for the brand.

> Iny said Lallier's case is a good example of the conditions faced by borrowers with bad credit.

> "Immobilizers are most often seen in cases of sub-prime borrowers with questionable credit," he said. "The devices are very effective at keeping people on time with their payments."

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Didn't realize the "buy here pay here" was a formal concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Here_Pay_Here

Just like with other brands, in the automotive industry, there are different tiers. At the top, you have the ultra premium (Bentley, Ferrari) and premiums (BMW, Audi, Mercedes, etc.) followed by brands like Toyota and Ford where cars are still desirable and people will buy them no matter what. So they can be picky and only sell to folks with good credit. Once you get to the bottom you'll have stuff like Dodge and Nissan. At the very bottom, there's brands like Kia that are not much more off the "buy here, pay here" stuff. It's often the only way they can move the metal at all.

EDIT: getting a lot of heat. Oh well, I guess I should've linked to 5 articles supporting what people in the industry already know.

Dodge and Nissan aren't bottom tier brands.

If Dodge was bottom tier, there never would have been an $85,000 Dodge Viper.

And plenty of people would buy a Maxima before they would buy a Taurus.

The Korean automakers (Kia and Hyundai) both entered the US market on the bottom, but they have comparatively high quality at the price points they started at, price points that other automakers sell plenty of vehicles at.

Nissan is slightly moving upmarket but the amount of incentives they have to give out to sell is still way above industry average (which my comment was based on). Toyota or Honda have to barely discount their vehicles to sell, do you really thing Dodge or even Chevy can get away with that? They can't, thats why you can get $5-10k off MSRP on pretty much any Chevy right now, good luck trying that at Toyota. [1]

The Dodge Viper is a notable exception but even FCA realized that it hurt sales and spun it off as a separate brand: SRT, which they discontinued this year, and with it, the Viper is dead. [2]

EDIT: down voting doesn't change the facts I stated above.

[1] http://www.autonews.com/article/20170508/RETAIL01/305089965/... [2] http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/news/a29664...

What are you basing these rankings on?

JD Power Initial Quality Survey, Consumer Reports, etc.

He's correct that Dodge and Nissan have low scores in these studies/surveys, but Hyundai and Kia [0] have improved their vehicle quality SIGNIFICANTLY in the last few years, and score at or near the top of these studies now.

However, Kia still has a reputation for terrible dealership experience. I don't have a link that shows this, so take that with a large grain of salt.

0. Hyundai owns 34% of Kia, but they have a strong internal rivalry

Disclaimer - I work for GM

Depreciation/market values do not correlate at all with your rankings. What did you base them on?

A combination of following and working in the industry, personal experience as well as manufacture incentives.

Depreciation tells only one part of the story, and actually Kias are very high within their segment. Try comparing something like a Toyota Camry vs. Kia Optima - it's night and day difference.

I've noticed a good pattern to indicate car value. Junkyard availability. If you want junkyard parts for a car in my region, you're looking at good availability for 15 year old American cars, 10 year old Japanese and German cars, and 5 year old Korean cars. That obviously is skewed by demand and taste, but is a nice indication of when a car is too old to be worth fixing.

Also a good way to figure out what used shitbox you should buy next if you want cheap parts. :)

Not 100% sure that the immobiliser strategy was a Kia strategy or a dealership strategy. I drive a Kia in Germany. Thank goodness they or their dealership does not have any such thing here.

Dealership for sure, they are independent from the manufacturer.

I'm sure you know this, but for others: dealerships are separate businesses from manufacturers, but they are bound by something like franchise agreements.

They also represent the brand to the public, and (good) manufacturers care deeply about this perception and spend a lot of time and money tuning the dealership experience.

Normally, yes, but I imagine a brand like Kia is more loose with enforcing standards as opposed to say, Toyota.

It's not about the brand of car, it's that it was a dealership and not a low end used car lot. "Buy here, pay here" is a thing, they're in bad neighborhoods and run ads about how no one is denied because they do the financing themselves.

They're essentially loan sharks handing out cars instead of cash. They make a lot in interest, but they really make a lot by selling the same car again and again through very quick reposession (they do not mess around, weekly payments are standard). The same lot will sell many different makes, even higher end sometimes.

Not for new cars, you'll need to be certified by the manufacturer. In this case, it was an "official" Kia dealer. They are way down the ranks when it comes to keeping their brand "clean". If it was an Audi dealer they wouldn't even have sold the car to a bad credit customer in the first place.

Yes, that is why it is surprising this type of device and behavior was used. It is something you'd expect from a sleazy car lot, not a new car dealer (regardless of brand).

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