Automakers Are Lying To You

It’s not what you drive, it’s how you equip and maintain it that delivers safety, capability, and dependability

When it comes to your ability to safely drive through inclement weather, rely on your vehicle in extreme circumstances or into high mileages, and achieve the kind of performance you see in ads, it’s not the car or truck itself that matters, it’s how you take care of it. This is a problem because that fact runs counter to automaker marketing and advertising, and the wider culture it informs. This point was driven home by an accident Friday night.

“You think it’s totaled?” The kid choked back tears to ask me. He’d just been T-boned in his 3rd gen Tacoma by another college student in a new-ish Subaru Forester. One of those sad low-speed crashes where you can see exactly what’s about to happen, powerless to stop it.

The corner in front of our house here in downtown Bozeman is badly sighted due to parked cars and, currently, six-foot tall piles of snow. The kid in the Taco pulled out from a side street, unable to see the oncoming Subaru. And by the time he realized it was too late, it was way too late. He slammed on his brakes and skidded across the intersection. The Subaru kid hit his brakes too, and didn’t shed a single MPH thanks to the combination of packed snow, and all-season tires.

Believe it or not, but this is an unrealistic commercial.

We were just about to pull enchiladas out of the oven, and I really didn’t want to go help. But the airbags had gone off in the Taco, neither kid appeared to know that meant they needed to disconnect and reconnect the battery to restart the truck, and they were blocking traffic on the busy street entirely. Sigh.

Subarus, Tacomas, and all-season tires are frequent topics as I write about adventure travel in the outdoors. None represent the value most of their buyers seem to think they do. All three are perfect examples of the delta between advertising-induced consumer perception, and really disappointing realities. Here in a mountain town, people buy one of those two vehicles thinking they’re getting an all-in-one solution to summer adventures and winter hazards, and because of the tires they’re stuck with, end up getting neither.

And those common topics lead to an equally common question or complaint. Something along the lines of, “I can’t afford a second set of tires.”

No, his truck wasn’t totaled. But both of the Taco’s driver’s side doors were smashed so badly we couldn’t get them open, and the door sill (the portion of the body below the doors) was also dented. That, probably some minor damage to the front fender, and the airbags, adds up to how much? I’ll guess something in excess of $10,000. The Subaru’s entire front clip was destroyed, the front fenders were bent, and its hood was way beyond repair. There was likely more damage below the skin given that vehicle’s unibody configuration. It wasn’t gushing any fluids, so at least that was a good sign. Let’s round that out to another $10,000.

Let’s assume a best case scenario where both drivers have comprehensive coverage. Add up the $500 to $1,000 deductibles, insurance monthlies going up, some missed shifts, a few Ubers while the two cars wait on repairs, impaired future resell values with a crash on the Carfax, and we’re probably looking at a total out of pocket for both drivers (or their parents) of $2,500 to $5,000 a piece. All from a 25 MPH crash in which no one was hurt.

The Tacoma in this ad offers identical capability to the Colorado: very little in stock form.

With a Costco membership, Bridgestone Blizzak WS90s can be purchased and mounted to that Forester for $199 a corner. On TireRack, a set of Blizzak DM-V2s for that Taco comes in at $185 per-tire, delivered. For around $1,000 per-vehicle, this accident could have been entirely avoided.

I shined my flashlight on the Tacoma driver’s tires after we’d established he was carrying no tools, borrowed an 8mm box wrench from another driver who’d stopped to help, and showed him how to disconnect a battery for the first time. They were a half-worn set of the stock Dunlop all-seasons.

“I thought those were good for all seasons,” he told me, after what I promise was a friendly lecture. Spoiler alert: they’re not.

All of the children in this commercial are in danger.

To recap, despite the misleading name, all-season tires begin to experience reduced grip and extended braking distances even on dry pavement when temperatures fall below 45 degrees. Winter tires are made from a rubber compound that remains pliant in cold temperatures, and which wicks away the thin film of water the weight of your vehicle melts as it rolls over ice, allowing the much more open tread to continue to grip that surface. With them, you can tackle winter conditions as confidently as you can dry pavement in warm weather. The caveat is that they wear out quickly if used in warmer weather.

In order to safely and responsibly drive in a place like Montana, or anywhere else that experiences winter, you need to own two sets of tires. Swap off the economy or the off-road tires around October, and put them back on in April.

But safety and responsibility don’t stop at tires. If I run into either of these kids at a remote trailhead, or up in the mountains on a fire road this summer, what do you think the odds are that they’ll have a matching spare, a tire repair kit, or an air compressor? What about MaxTrax, or a set of shackles and a recovery strap? And when will be the last time they took a peak at their air filter, changed their oil, or thought about suspension bushings? Think they’re changing their halogen headlamp bulbs once a year, or are they just driving around like normal as those things continue to grow dimmer?

Yes I know friends of mine shot this commercial. The point here is that the vehicle is presented as the solution to the problem, when the truth is a Prius on Blizzaks would have been the safer, more capable choice. Tires really are that important.

The entire problem here is that they, and likely even some of you, are asking themselves why they would need to do any of those things. Surely the few hundred bucks a month paid to Toyota Financial or Subaru Motors Finance endows them with the ability to go anywhere without any further thought, right? After all, that’s what the largest advertising and marketing budgets on earth tell them. And, for most drivers, once that payment has been made, there’s nothing left over for any of this anyways.

I suppose my argument here is that rather than maxing out your automotive budget with the highest car payment it’ll take, you should instead factor in all the other stuff, then find a payment amount for a car that allows you to equip and maintain it adequately.

Let’s use that now-disabled Subaru Forester as an example. It’s costing that kid about $450-a-month, assuming he’s on a 72-month finance plan. If he’d instead opted for the mechanically very similar, but slightly smaller and cheaper Crosstrek, he’d be out about $350-a-month. Not only would that pay for five Blizzaks at Costco with $200 leftover in the first year alone, but that Crosstrek-on-Blizzaks would currently be undamaged. And with the $1,200-a-year in savings, Subaru bro could also easily afford a $180 set of Maxtrax Minis, a $30 tire repair kit, a $220 ViAir compressor, a $55 ARB E-Z Deflator, a $150 ARB Weekender Recovery Kit, and a $50 receiver recovery point, with $515 leftover from the next year’s budget. Altogether, that would actually endow him with the ability to safely, reliably, and responsibly use that Crosstrek on rural dirt roads, as the company’s advertising suggests you can in stock form.

This is the same math I use when selecting and building a truck for my own family. I don’t drive a Ford Ranger because that’s the most truck I can afford, I look at the capabilities of various different platforms, and compare the effort and money it takes to turn them into the kind of vehicle I want to drive, then select the vehicles that get me closest to that for the least money, in order to create a total spend that meets my budget.

This reality holds up no matter what you’re shopping for. Even considering something very capable in stock form—say something from Ford’s lineup of Raptor trims across the Ranger, F-150, and Bronco—you’re not going to be jumping off dunes, or traveling to Mexico, without parts like air compressors, lights, campers, etc. A $55,000 Ranger Raptor, set up with $20,000 in parts, will be much more capable, much more reliable, and much more enjoyable to jump off a dune than a $78,000 F-150 Raptor ever could be in stock form.

Or consider something absurdly mundane like a Toyota Sienna. The couple grand you’d save by buying a Kia Sedona instead would pay for tires, and the kind of tire repair gear you need to ensure not only that you can drive your family around safely, but also that you don’t leave them stranded on the side of a busy highway, with 18-wheelers flying by during a rain storm. And that’s the better, safer, more responsible choice for your family as a result.

In short, I don’t want to ever hear someone say they can’t afford a set of tires ever again. Not only can you afford them, you can’t afford not to.

Wes Siler is your guide to leading a more exciting life outdoors. You can read more about what he’s doing on Substack through this link. Want to read more articles like this one? Consider supporting independent journalism through a paid subscription.