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Comment by thehoff | Hacker News Reader

A Mazda3 and a Prius are such expensive cars?

Relative to the second hand market? Yeah. Unless you want something that is going to be absolutely no bother, and that doesn't need anything at all done to it, then you can spend a few thousand pounds at most and still get something in reasonable nick. For instance, my current car came with around 17,000 miles on the clock and cost £1,300.

A Prius would cost me £21,995 - around 16 times as much. Though there are far more expensive cars out there, that they can't even get basic security right is fairly disgraceful....

Minor nitpick: new cars are not without bother. It's just that when (not if) something breaks, you don't pay for the repairs. But you still have to go through the hassle of taking it to the garage, driving a rental in the meantime, etc.

And if you take depreciation into account, you can do a bloody lot of repairs on a used car before it's more expensive than a new one with free repairs.

Depends on where you live. 20k for a car where I live is very expensive. I honestly would not risk even a 5k car on this broken system, is it that hard to put a key in a hole?

Most cars I see on the road and in parking lots are 5-20 years old. Anything newer is a low-end model. Expensive cars stand out.

OTOH, by definition, most cars are going to be 5-20 years old.

I bought my Prius used for much less than 20k, and it has this system. (And when you buy a used car, you don't choose what features you get!)

I think the more accurate statement is: cars are expensive.

Any car theft will hurt a lot for most people.

I roll around in a 15 year old Saab 93 which has a book price of around 300 quid. A Mazda 3 or a Prius would be expensive to me.

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