A diamond in the rust.

Well, I've gone and done it. I've went and bought a new car.

Okay, it's not a new car. Marty don't buy new cars. There ain't no style points for how you get places, and I ain't hell on pretty as me Grandpa Joe used to say. So it's a used car. But it's new to me.

2007 Chrysler Town and Country minivan. 125,497 actual miles. Yes, actual. Seventeen hundred bucks. Drives great all the way around, and the front end feels solid. The AC is strong. Poor AC wouldn't have been a deal breaker but AC is a nice perk. I do have some taste for frivolities.

There's some rust under the sliding doors on each side and a little around the driver's side rear taillight. That don't bother me none; refer to me Grandpa's quote up above. If I really become inspired I might sand it and spray a spot of paint on it. Might. It is intended solely as a work van.

It's at the alarm place having an alarm installed as we speak. Why? Because quite honestly I'll often have equipment in it worth more than the vehicle.

I won't really know for several weeks if what I have is all that good, of course. But I'm confident that I have a diamond in the, uh, rust.

Pulling Demand Forward?

Automakers are worried that lower financing costs on new cars might cause a drop in used car prices in the coming years. As more new cars are sold there will be more used cars in the future, and as we all know, when there is greater supply than demand, prices fall.

And this bad why?

Okay, perhaps it is for car producers. With stiffer competition from used car lots new car lots might suffer. But then, why should those who want used cars be expected to pay, indeed arguably to underwrite, new car dealers and manufacturers simply because they want greater sales?

Analyst Adam Jones frets that ... "we are taking consumers out of the normal trade cycle, pulling forward demand from the future." We're not really sure what that means in part because we're not sure that there is such a thing as a normal trade cycle. But if it sounds like buzzspeak it likely is buzzspeak. In this case, it sounds like car makers, or those most interested in new car manufacture perhaps, wanting to protect what they view as 'their' turf. They can't have too many used cars available because that will, naturally enough, affect new car sales. That would be bad.

But for whom? All those associated with new cars of course. Yet that says nothing about those who cannot afford or merely do not want new cars. Those latter groups simply should not be expected to buy new just because it helps the automotive industry or even, by specious argument, society as a whole. We don't live in Terry Gilliam's Brazil; we live in the real world where we have options, one of which is that we are not obliged to buy new anything merely because it helps those associated with the production and sale of that anything.

There's nothing wrong with buying a new car if that's what you want. But there's nothing with buying used cars either. So how about if we just the markets decide such issues? Why not force the new car industry to deal with the pressure of used car sales? We might actually get better, cheaper new cars anyway. It sounds to us like the best of both worlds.