No, I remember when I bought my car all those years ago. There was 1 mpg penalty for the AWD and an additional 1-2 mpg penalty for the automatic transmission. I went for AWD 5MT. No trouble out of either systems at nearly 300K though I did replace the u-joints last year (?) for ~$60.
Drive whatever you like but I'm not going to sweat 1 mpg. To me it's splitting hairs. If I wanted to split hairs I'd point out that living in cold parts of the country are going to increase your fuel consumption and your home heating bill, dealing with frequent snows has a cost, switching from winter tires to summer tires has a cost, driving an automatic transmission has a cost, etc.
1 mpg to is the difference of 500 gallons over 300K miles. We make easy, different choices in other parts of my family's life that negates the cost of that fuel.
I'm not going to worry about whether I use this much toilet paper or that much toilet paper. That's about how important I see the difference between AWD and FWD week to week. ;)
Edited for clarity.
Lets add the fact that the MSRP of an AWD model is probably $2,000 more, and tires will go bad faster, with potential AWD maintenance as well
I'll disagree with you again. I got 81,000 miles out of my last set of miles. AWD likes fresh rear diff oil every 50K miles or so. That costs me about $20 or so. Needs new universal joints every 275K miles (that's how long the original set lasted). Rear axles are still original as we approach 300K miles. MPG penalty for AWD is ~1 mpg on my brand vehicle. About the same for choosing an automatic vs a manual transmission. I went with the 5MT.
I'm guessing the average car owner that discards their vehicles long before 250K would never see any maintenance or repairs except perhaps rear diff oil during their ownership.
So if anyone doesn't want AWD - I get it. Enjoy. I just don't see alot of reoccurring costs to driving AWD at least with the brand we bought many years ago now.
AWD is great, I would prefer it over FWD. However FWD is much cheaper.
A used 2010 Nissan Versa Hatchback with 60,000 miles can be had for $6,500.
Can you get any 2010 AWD hatchbacks with only 60,000 miles for $6,500?
Since your previous assertions about the costs of AWD have been disproven, now we're going to talk about a different vehicle altogether and just throw out all relevant comparisons? That hardly seems reasonable.
My previous post was
"Lets add the fact that the MSRP of an AWD model is probably $2,000 more, and tires will go bad faster, with potential AWD maintenance as well"
I'm still talking about MSRP, I still say tires will go bad faster, there is still potential AWD costs that wouldn't exist in a FWD, and the MPG is still better in a FWD.
Just because you "say" tires will go bad faster does not make it true. Unless you have locking differentials and are regularly driving your car like you're on a racetrack (i.e. burnouts/tire squeal/breaking traction) there is no reason that an awd platform would wear out tires faster than a fwd or rwd one. It was already stated that the difference in MPG can be negated in most models by opting for a manual as opposed to an automatic transmission, and a base model Subaru impreza ($18.2k MSRP) falls in between the price for a base model ford focus ($17.2k) and the lowest trim level available on a civic sedan ($18.6k). Those are numbers from the manufacturer websites taken today for the 2016 models. AWD isn't necessarily more expensive than FWD, manufacturers have just been adding awd as an "option" on previously fwd or rwd only platforms and charging more for it because it's part of a higher trim package. So no, MSRP on an AWD model of a comparable vehicle is not "probably" $2000 more, it's pretty much average price for vehicles in that class, depending on which manufacturer you choose.
Additionally, the imppreza is probably closer in size to the accord or fusion, meaning it actually costs LESS than its competitors AND is an awd vehicle.
The only valid argument you have is "more moving parts require more maintenance [sometimes]" which has been previously pointed out as only being necessary every 50,000 miles or so if you follow the maintenance handbook provided by the manufacturer.
Even with tire rotation, you will often have some tires going bad before others. With an AWD you are supposed to replace all 4 tires at the same time, rather than merely replace 2.
This is a list of 10 cars for smart people, the Nissan Versa should be on the list, but I can't think of any AWD cars that should make the list. I believe you are saying you can't find a 2010 AWD hatchback with only 60,000 miles in very good condition for $6,500. Something like a 2012 Subaru Impreza MIGHT be able to make the list towards #10 or so, but there will be a lot of better options in front of it. Also, I don't understand why people keep saying AWD MPG can be negated by switching to a manual transmission, manual transmissions are available in FWD cars as well believe it or not.
Um ... you should never be only replacing two tires at a time. If you rotate properly every 5000 miles they will wear evenly (or at least at the same rate/in the same sections of the tires) and need replaced all at once. Even with a 2wd vehicle, as long as all of your tires are the same size the only real "excuse" for only replacing two is you're lazy (never rotated your tires) and can't afford 4 new ones. My wife worked at a shop and literally the only people that would come in with uneven tire wear were the ones that had an alignment issue or never rotated their tires, both of which can be avoided with proper regular maintenance applicable to any car.
Used AWD cars do tend to depreciate slower than new ones though, you've got me there.
Even if you got a fwd manual, you're only looking at 2mpg difference on average. If we are assuming a fwd manual gets 30mpg, that would mean an awd auto gets 28, SOMETIMES (have to keep in mind that with brand new cars, a lot of automatic transmissions are as efficient as or more efficient than their manual counterparts). If we assume a 10gal tank (for the sake of easy math) this would give us 300 miles per tank in the fwd mt and 280 miles per tank in the awd at. If you drive a slightly-more-mustachian-than-average 10k miles per year (again, for easy math, but also not unreasonable), you would buy 333.3333 gal of gas per year in the fwd mt and 357.1429gal in the awd at. That's a difference of 23.8096 gallons per year. If we assume an above-current-market price of $2.5/gal that is a $60 ($59.5239) per year difference. You would have to fill up slightly more than two additional times PER YEAR. Most people would see variations that exceed that in their utilities or medical expenses from one year to the next. $60/year is $5/month and is negligible to the vast majority of people, mustachians included. We are quibbling over pennies when there are much bigger mistakes to make when buying a car than choosing awd over fwd (such as a v6 or v8 as opposed to a fuel-efficient 4-cyl, or choosing a heavy and aerodynamically inefficient pickup/suv over a smaller car).
There are times when 2 of your tires still have a lot of tread when you only need to replace 2. No need to replace all 4 and throw away 2 tires that still have some use. Tires are very bad for the environment. I only rotate the tires on my girlfriends car every 7500 miles per the manual. Name an AWD car that you think should be on this list, and we'll see if I can name 10 FWD cars that are more mustachian.
If you have two tires seeing excessively more wear than the other two, are they on the same side of the car or are they both on the front/back? If you don't have directional tires, you should cross the rear ones when you rotate them to the front to save from left or right side wear bias caused by repeated driving patterns. If the two that wear faster are on the front or back, then the rotation intervals are either inconsistent or the driving style is abusive. If properly rotated, a set of tires should be able to last well in excess of 60-70,000 miles and all four should need replaced at the same time.
If we are talking new cars, everything by Subaru is comparable to the cars in the same class from other manufacturers, as I cited above, and all Subaru vehicles (with the exception of the Subaru/Toyota GT86/fr-s/br-z) are AWD. I will concede that you will have to get a car that is slightly older/higher miles if you want a used awd for the same price as fwd, since they tend to hold value longer. I STILL maintain that awd with the proper set of tires gives the driver better ability to control their vehicle than fwd does. If the shopper lives in an area with unpaved roads or where it frequently snows heavily, then awd might be a better choice for that individual. There is a reason WRC (World Rally Championship) cars are mostly AWD, after all.
FYI, the kbb price of a 2010 Subaru impreza base model with 60k miles in a private party transaction is about $10,000 so you've got me there. The only reason not to pick an awd car over a fwd car is the used price, but one could also argue that because the cars depreciate slower, you will get more out of it when you go to sell it.
I don't think the slower rate of depreciation is a good enough reason to entirely exclude AWD from the list though. The new prices are comparable, the difference in fuel economy and maintenance cost over the lifetime of the car are near negligible assuming proper maintenance intervals, and inclement weather capabilities are (arguably, assuming the proper tires) improved with awd. Since mustachians are theoretically only supposed to use cars as an absolute last resort, there is no reason a 2005 impreza with 150k miles (which goes for about $4,000 in my area) isn't a smart choice.