Never Buy These 8 Cars in 2026 — Even If Dealers Beg You

[00:01] dealer just offered me $8,000 off of a brand new car, and my immediate reaction was not score. It was, what is wrong with this thing? Because healthy cars don't get offered for free. Healthy cars get marked up. Healthy cars have waiting

[00:15] lists and smug sales people and a guy named Kevin who won't budge on floor mats. Eight grand off means the car has been sitting there so long it's starting to develop opinions. Okay, we're well into 2026 and the car market is in full

[00:28] psychological crisis. Used cars cost more than your first apartment. New cars think that $50,000 is a reasonable starting price. Interest rates are actively trying to end your financial life and insurance companies have

[00:41] Camry is a threat to national infrastructure and should be priced accordingly. And yet, right now across the dealer lots in every state of America, there are thousands of brand new vehicles just sitting, accumulating

[00:54] dust, developing personality disorders, waiting for someone, anyone to come give them a forever home. And dealers are getting creative with the desperation. they're sliding into your inbox with just checking in energy that would get a

[01:09] normal person blocked. They're throwing cash on the hood. They're stacking like little peace offerings from a guilty conscience. So, here's the question. Is that a deal or is it a trap wrapped in a bow? Because sometimes a

[01:24] discount is a genuine gift. A car the market overlooked, produced too many units and priced to actually make [music] sense now. And sometimes a discount is a dealer handing you a financial raccoon and asking you to call

[01:36] through the slow sellers of this year, the lot lizards, the window sticker horror shows, the cars that have been sitting and sitting and sitting while the dealers quietly question every decision that led to this moment. I'm

[01:49] whether the discount is real, and which ones are worth actually negotiate on versus the ones that you should literally wave goodbye to as you drive I'm Brad. Like, subscribe so we can hit 2 mil by the end of the year, and let's

[02:03] go. Hey guys, real quick, the giveaway for the Shelby and Supra in the $100,000 has ended, and well, the winners are being picked right now. But, we're coming back bigger and better and better. So, click the link in the pinned

[02:15] first comment because, like Rocky who won the GT-R, like Greg who won the 100K, you can sign up to be notified and get 100 free entries once it goes live. So, click the link down below, go put in your email, and I can't wait to show you

[02:28] the show. Now, the first victim is the Volkswagen ID.4. You see, the ID.4 is what happens when Volkswagen looks at Tesla, looks at Hyundai, looks at Kia, looks at literally every EV crossover eating their lunch, and responds by

[02:42] making a crossover that is fine. Not bad, not good, fine. The beige of electric vehicles, the participation trophy of SUVs. And that's the problem. In a market where buyers want maximum range, maximum tech, maximum hype, or

[02:56] maximum discount, the ID.4 is trying to be sensible. And nobody buys a car because it's sensible. People buy cars because they felt something. The ID.4 makes them feel nothing. The EV market moved fast. Tesla dropped prices, the

[03:10] Ioniq 5 happened, the EV6 happened, that the Equinox EV showed up and basically actually made sense." And buyers started nodding. Meanwhile, the ID.4 is sitting could measure with a calendar. The Volkswagen software reputation, let's be

[03:26] charitable, has historically made people nostalgic for physical buttons and shouting at the radio. Volkswagen infotainment has had its moments. Those moments were mostly when it was off. Now, can you get a deal on one? Yeah,

[03:40] absolutely yeah. But, you need to negotiate with extreme aggression, and you need to be clear-eyed about EV depreciation. These things can drop hard when battery tech changes, charging standards shifts, and incentives

[03:53] evaporate. Don't pay new EV money for an ID.4. Pay this thing has been here You'll know the right number when the salesperson stops laughing. Next is the Chevy Blazer EV. Calling this thing a Blazer is already a comedy bit. The

[04:07] original Blazer was boxy, tough, simple, the kind of machine that looked like it opinions about government. The new Blazer EV looks like five design departments had a conference call that nobody was in charge of during a coffee

[04:20] shortage while someone played aggressive EDM in the background. It's not a wearing a name tag from a different vehicle. The positioning was strange, the trims were expensive, early software drama showed up and made itself

[04:33] comfortable. And buyers realized they could cross shop about 800 other electric crossovers, many of which also had software drama, but at least came with better vibes. Here's the deal with the Blazer EV. If Chevy's throwing

[04:45] serious money on it, it could make sense as a lease, genuinely, because with EVs, oops, the market changed again, batteries got better, your car is now worth 14 cents problem. Buying one close to sticker, absolutely not. You are not

[05:00] a volunteer. You're not a test subject. You are not here to subsidize GM's EV learning curve. Make them hurt on price. Check the actual out-the-door number. Don't let a finance manager turn a real discount into a 72-month haunted house

[05:13] and an extended warranty built into the walls. And if you're buying an EV without home charging, that's not ownership. That's a lifestyle subscription to parking lot suffering. Now we have the Dodge Charger. Oh.

[05:25] Oh, no. Dodge had one job, one job only, brother. Keep the muscle car people happy. Instead, Dodge walked into a bar full of V8 loyalists and said, "I want you to really feel this. Good news, we made it electric." And every single

[05:39] person in that bar turned around slowly like they'd heard a record scratch. To be fair, Dodge brought back gas with the six-pack turbocharged inline-six models, which are genuinely fast. The new Charger can move. It can look the part.

[05:52] It has presence and attitude and the general energy of a car that knows where the trouble is. But the problem is identity. The old Charger and Challenger had clarity, big, dumb, loud, glorious brother. You knew exactly what you were

[06:05] signing up for when you grabbed those keys. The new Charger is trying to be electric muscle car, gas muscle car, two-door coupe, four-door grand tour, retro icon, and modern tech showcase all at once. That's too many personalities

[06:18] for one vehicle. That's a car with unresolved trauma and a LinkedIn profile. And muscle car buyers are emotional creatures. They want theater. feel like it was assembled during an argument. Market day supply has been

[06:33] enormous. First year bugs are always possible. Resale on a new generation is a genuine mystery. And insurance on something with horsepower numbers like this might make you audibly gasp on your phone. My advice, don't be the hero who

[06:46] generation. Let someone else fund the beta test. You come in later, discount locked in, reliability data available, wearing sunglasses, and not paying the main character tax. Okay, and now two quick ones. The Polestar 4, gorgeous,

[07:00] interesting, has no rear window because it decided cameras were good enough, and that is a bold call for a $60,000 car. Great if you lease it and let someone [music] years. Terrifying if you buy it and try to explain it trade-in time to

[07:14] someone who's never heard of Polestar and assume it's a Nordic spa brand. Alfa Romeo Tonale. Yes, beautiful badge, complicated reputation. The Dodge Hornet sharing its DNA didn't exactly help the Italian passion narrative, brother. If

[07:28] you can lease one cheap, it's a stylish move. If you're buying long-term without a massive discount and solid service access nearby, that's not romance. That's a cry for help with leather seats. All right, the Mercedes EQS and

[07:40] the broader luxury EV problem. You see, Mercedes made an electric S-Class shaped like an aerodynamic bar of soap, slapped a massive screen on the dashboard, and expected people to line up. Instead, people looked at the price, looked at

[07:52] the depreciation curve on similar luxury EVs, and said, "I'll take the GLS with the actual engine, thanks." Yes, luxury EV depreciation is not a slope, it is a cliff, one that wears expensive shoes. Rich people are not immune to

[08:06] spreadsheets. Rich people got very good at spreadsheets, actually. And and when rich people started watching slightly used EQS units drop 30, 40, 50% in value inside 18 months, they started making different choices. New? Only if the

[08:20] discount is so disrespectful that the salesman needs to sit down afterwards and process what just happened. Used with warranty after the cliff has somewhere. Let the first owner be the

[08:32] shows up with a water bottle and a calculator. So, here's the actual lesson. A slow-selling car is not automatically a bad car, but it is automatically leverage. High inventory means the dealer has a problem, and you

[08:45] are the solution to that problem, which means you hold the power, which means you do not walk into a dealership acting grateful and overwhelmed and excited to be there. You walk in knowing exactly what you want to pay. You sit down like

[08:58] someone who has other options because, well, you do, brother, and you make them uncomfortable enough to actually deal. But, and this is important, you have to separate the overlooked but solid cars from the ones that are slow for a reason

[09:11] that will personally hurt you. Good slow sellers, solid cars that get buried under bad marketing or bad timing, great opportunities with the right discount. Bad slow sellers, brutal depreciation, scary ownership costs, uncertain tech,

[09:24] razor-thin resale, and a dealer network that closes early on Fridays. The cheat code is simple. EV, lease unless the discount is outrageous. Luxury EV, never pay near sticker. Never, repeat me, never. Niche brand, check serves access

[09:38] before you fall in love with the badge. New generation, don't fund the beta actually going off-road, not just aspiring to. Charger, wait, let the market decide what this thing is. Alfa, lease the buy, don't marry the chaos.

[09:54] And that's what dealers don't want you to know. A discount is not automatically automatically affordable. And a salesperson saying we really had to earn your business today is not warmth. That's panic wearing khakis. Do your

[10:08] want to skip the whole game entirely, well, get signed up for our next comment down below. Because sometimes Todd in the finance office over nitrogen in the tires. It's getting the car for

[10:21] free and not knowing anyone named Todd. I'm Brad. This is Ideal. Like, Ideal vids over here. And promise me one thing. Keep living the Ideal lifestyle.