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Comment by ninetyfurr | Hacker News Reader

Consumer Reports coined the phrase decades ago. That purchasing a new car is the worst financial decision anyone can possibly make.

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Eh, people have lost much more money buying overpriced McMansions.

If you intend to own the car for a long time, it is less risky to buy a reliable brand new car than a used one of the same brand. Unless you know the owner.

Knowing the owner doesn't affect the rate of random failures in the middle of the bathtub curve. The only thing it gives you is maintenance data.

These days, it is extremely easy to get maintenance data for many late model used vehicles. Many manufacturer websites will spit out all of their maintenance records as soon as you register an account on their "owners" portal and put in a VIN.

This is a good point. That will tell you if the car has been given regular oil changes, which is super, super important.

It doesn't tell you how hard the car was driven. But if you're like me, and mostly in the market for a hybrid, it probably wasn't driven that hard.

You can get a good idea from maintenance records; hard driving wears consumables faster. Compare a few vehicles of the same model and it'll be easy to see which ones were driven harder.

I also like to take a peek at the tire date codes, to make sure they corroborate with maintenance records: https://images.tirebuyer.com/visual-aids/pages/education/how...

The last car I bought had two original tires on it at 60k miles, and the service history showed the other two were replaced due to nails in the tread. I am confident the vehicle was not driven hard based on this.

That's nonsense. I've purchased one new car so far. At the time of purchase I needed reliability; no maintenance issues, no shop time fixing anything. Zero. If anything did come up the dealer would have me covered with a good loaner for however long was necessary (which did actually happen.) This was worth many times the value of the vehicle to me. Working wheels, no excuses: it was an important time for me during my career.

I paid off that vehicle in 3 years and I still have it 18 years later. I know everything there is to know about it. I know what to expect, what's been neglected, how it's been treated and what the state of everything is. I've acquired tools necessary to do the bulk of both maintenance and repairs on it, and I know to whom I can turn for the stuff I shouldn't be touching. I have all that and I haven't had to make a car payment in 15 years. I estimate it's good for at least 5 and possibly 10 more years, at which point parts will become difficult to acquire and/or questionable in quality.

The narrow minded 'finance' view of the cost of a new vehicle misses the real value. I imagine the CR model will be the typical bonehead that jumps back on the new car debt treadmill about the time the second set of tires are needed, but we're not all that idiot.

You could have bought a 3 year old car that was still under warranty. You would have saved a ton of money and still had good reliability.

Not necessarily. There are certain makes/models that hold value so well (deservedly or not) that the prices of used models that are 2-3 years old is within $1500 of an equivalent new model from the same manufacturer, which would have the advantage of a better warrantee && no miles on the tires.

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