Wednesday, June 10, 2009

The Best Car Money Can Buy

Remember your dream car when you turned 16? I remember thinking a candy apple red Ford Mustang would do the trick. I even went through a Chevrolet Corvette phase. As I grew older and wiser to the wide world of automobiles, I began exploring the offerings of our friends across the pond: the BMW 3-series and Mercedes E-class.

In recent years, our friends across the other pond have been producing cars heavily sought after by Americans: Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. Neither of those automakers can even shake a stick at the most popular car in the United States: The Little Tikes Cozy Coupe.

Yes indeed, the Cozy Coupe is being inducted into the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland, Ohio this month. In 2008, the Cozy Coupe outsold all other cars in the U.S. with 457,000 units. In its storied 30-year history 10 million units have been sold and it ranks as one of the top-20 best-selling models of all time.

The Cozy Coupe has been (and always will be) the eco-friendly vehicle of choice, as it runs entirely on foot power. Likewise, maintenance costs are kept low due to the minimal number of moving parts on the vehicle. I’m told the insurance premiums are very affordable, too, and would be even more so if the Coupe had side-impact airbags. The MSRP on the Cozy Coupe is $49.99, but be on the lookout for dealer rebates and incentives.

All kidding aside, I can’t help but smile and shake my head. We spend a lot of money on our cars. As a matter of fact, the average monthly car payment in North America is about $470. We’ll even attempt to impress others at stoplights we’ll never meet by leasing luxury cars (70% of luxury vehicles are leased). Given the state of the auto industry, it sure is encouraging to see an American-made vehicle topping the popularity charts.

Who knows: maybe Little Tikes will start making larger versions of the Cozy Coupe for the kid in all of us operating on an adult budget.

No comments: