Thankfully, I had my new phone with its wide-angle camera to get a zoomed-out shot to wrap up this set. (A bit too zoomed-out, it turned out -- I had to crop the left side off of the photo since that's where I was parked!) I think the (ugly) Porsche SUV waiting for the brand-new Hyundai EV to leave its parking spot across from a Tesla tells you all you need to know about the demographics of this area! (OK, there are some less fancy cars here, but they're still all quite new by Seattle standards!)
The silly Porsche SUV aside, and I suppose the Tesla, the cars here look pretty normal especially given the high-dollar location. I'm pretty sure the cars in the Lake Oswego Marina Safeway left you more perturbed than this one, lol.
ReplyDeleteThe VW Touareg is a bit of an oddball, but it looks like it has Oregon plates so maybe that explains the oddity! I suspect the big SoCal cities are much like Houston in that people drive a lot and so cars wear out pretty quickly because of that. That said, there are some older cars in this photo. That maroon Honda Accord would have been over a decade old even last year and I see an older Lexus IS as well. The maroon Accord driver might be an old money type since it looks like they sprung for the Accord V6. Maybe in your area the old money types go for Subarus, but around here and probably in California as well, the old money types usually liked higher-end Toyota Camrys, Honda Accords, Lexus ESes, and stuff like that. I'm sure the Lexus SUVs and such are more popular now, but I suspect some of the more conservative (stylistically, not necessarily politically) old money types still have a preference for sedans!
As you probably saw in Mike's photos for the Artisan Krogertsons HHR post I did, the parking lot was full of Toyota and Nissan sedans. They aren't old money ones for sure, but it is just like what I tell you about those being the Subarus of this area, lol.
Ha! I guess I'm just looking at things from a Seattle perspective. The Lake Oswego store had a Porsche right out front too, but there were plenty of older cars there (granted, that was 5 years ago). Someone I work with (who I'll note drives a newish Audi SUV) recently brought up how everywhere they go everyone seems to drive new cars, compared to the old and run-down cars you tend to see around here -- I mean, even in my neighborhood (a total old-money part of Seattle, at least when you get a little bit further up the hill from my condo), the typical cars you see around are significantly older than most of the cars in this picture. (Strangely, VW SUVs just like the one in this picture are rather popular in my neighborhood too -- though generally on the lower part of the hill where I live.)
DeleteI'd say early-mid 00s is what I would consider the limit for "older", for the most part. There are some cars here that are on that bubble, but the average age is certainly a lot less than what I'm used to! The oldest ones are probably the red Honda and whatever that is between the Mercedes SUV and the Chevy Express (which itself might be pretty old, but it doesn't have the peeling paint I normally see on older Expresses).
DeleteThe car next to the Chevrolet Express is a 1998-2005 first generation Lexus IS. These cars are famous in car design circles due to their clear taillight lenses (these are often called Altezza lights as the IS is/was known as the Toyota Altezza in Japan). In many ways, those clear taillight lenses are probably more associated with other more popular cars, probably the 3rd and 4th generation Nissan Altimas since they were and still are immensely popular even these days around here at least, but the Lexus IS/Altezza pretty much started that trend in the US at least.
DeleteThe Chevrolet Express/GMC Savanna paint plague is usually worse on the front end of those vans than the back end. It usually starts with the hood and the roof above the windshield. GM still makes those vans and I don't know if they ever fixed the paint problems. A lot of 1990s GM cars had really terrible paint and, in typical GM fashion, they were very slow to fix these problems (if they were ever fixed!). Mid 1990s Chevrolet Corsicas were probably the worst as far as bad paint goes. A lot of those had paint that peeled off in large sections while those cars were likely still under warranty. I guess GM wasn't too worried about that since most of those cars were sold to rental fleets anyway.