The Sweet Spot for Buying Used Cars
amolas.dev
amolas.dev
1. Does your area have significant road salt? This brings your frame's lifetime way down.
2. What are the consequences of your car being in the shop, cost- and convenience-wise?
3. Going along with (2), how quickly do you need to fix your AC if it dies?
4. For lower volume cars, does your area have a good mechanic that likes to work on your car and has parts (90s Saabs and their Saab graveyards come to mind.)
5. Some cars are designed with a pile of ridiculous features because their owners' blindspot for anything past a 3 year ownership length. My limited awareness suggests that this is common in the 50k+ range of SUVs.
6. Do you know the seller? You should be willing to pay up and make compromises for a car from someone you know and believe to be a conscientious owner.
Don’t be so sure. 2009 Lexus, Nissan, Infiniti, BMW for sure and others might surprise you.
Cars in Japan often had all those features in the mid 2000s and slowly exported
Backup cameras were far less necessary because the introduction of these cameras enabled the drastic reduction in rear visibility that now necessitates the cameras.
Blindside warning pales in comparison to well-integrated convex mirrors on both sides. The 2012-2014 Ford Focus executed this concept superbly, but I don't know of any other vehicles that have it.
As a grumbling aside, backup cameras are really about the safety of those outside the car, and I deduce from the popularity of SUVs and trucks that such a consideration carries almost no weight when buying a car.
Hard disagree about backup cams. I can't think of a single new or old car that would be objectively better off without a backup camera. No amount of rear glass will make you see a cat or a dog that's standing right behind the trunk.
no computers is definitely better than bad computers.
This assumption really calls the conclusions into question. I understand the problem is easier to model this way, but it’s neither pragmatic nor realistic. People do fix cars, all the time, and it’s often economically rational to do so.
You can keep a good-quality 20-year-old car in nearly-new condition for much less than payments on a new car. Many cars that are legendarily reliable are so because they’re easy to maintain; finicky cars are more fragile and harder to repair.
So this is a fun thought experiment, but it’s not useful to think of it as car buying advice until it accounts for maintenance.
Mid to late 90’s onwards are very different
I wonder how correcting this data point would influence the resulting recommendation.
https://www.cars.com/amp/articles/here-are-the-10-cheapest-n...
These are also the prices for the shittiest base model version, once you add decent options the price will increase considerably.
Call me crazy but I don't believe cloth seats age well.
I've had acceptable outcomes purchasing older higher-end fully loaded Japanese vehicles like Toyota and Honda.
Clearly ymmv, I appreciate you sharing yours.
My 2015, 24K mile LEAF has noticeably more wear on the leather seat’s bolster.
With cars, more expensive doesn't necessarily mean that it will last longer. In fact, the opposite is often true. I would be willing to bet that a typical Corolla is capable of getting more miles than a $100k Mercedes.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/274927/new-vehicle-avera...
Yes, the average car is far more expensive, but if you are looking to optimize for cost and just need something to get from A to B (which is what the article seems to assume), then a Corolla is a perfectly good vehicle.
COVID did some wacky shit with the car market. The upside is that my junky old pathfinder is worth more than I paid for it in 2019
Even a 15 year old car without major issues is hard to find for less than about $5,000 USD where I am though, which is more than I've paid for a car in quite a while. You can find cars for less, but they get ugly pretty quickly.
That is spot on. I bought mine 5 years old after it already took its huge, gigantic, depreciation curve. Moreover depending on the car segment you pick, the depreciation curve can be even more dramatic.
I bought my car used but with an extended manufacturer warranty, which I extend yearly (or for two or three years at once) and which I can renew up until 15 years and/or 200 000 km (whichever comes first). So there's no issue of "unforeseen costs": car has got a problem, it's the car manufacturer's problem, not mine. Sure, I pay for that extended warranty, but I prefer it that way.
Wife recently bought a five years old car too.
Four or five years old is also long enough to know if the model is a lemon or not and what to look out for on that model when you buy it: some manufacturers do really come up with a model full of problems once in a while and when you buy new, you're the guinea pig.
Maybe a 14 year old California or Arizona car is a good deal but not in New York.
Once a car is 8-10 years old, the age really doesn't matter anymore. It's all about the condition of the individual car. At that point the lemons are pretty much gone; the remaining cars are survivors, but some were taken better care of than others.
- I like to maintain my own things, and the car and parts are cheap enough that I don’t worry about screwing something up.
- Having owned it for a while, I know it’s quirks. E.g. I know if the radio starts going in and out, the battery is not charging and needs immediate attention.
- I don’t have to worry about it being stolen or getting dinged.
I planned on driving it to the ground, but I’m starting to believe that it will out live me.
I like to buy things on their own merits, because they last, etc, but for example new cars usually have warranties. So the 'financialized' mode of purchasing is sometimes a better route; buy new with comprehensive warranty, get free replacements if anything breaks, buy on free credit and invest the money you'd otherwise have spent in a lump sum, etc, etc. ie contract and financial tricks can beat out simple solid engineering choices.
Old teslas with parking sensors are safer than the newer ones where they were removed.
Age is not always indicative of technological safety.
Intuitively it seems to me like there would be much better ways to spend the hundreds of thousands spent over a life time to always be driving relatively new cars. Or just not earning the hundreds of thousands in the first place.
In alternative points on this continuum, you put a family of 5 on a moped.
You have to remember the cheapest cars are gamed to not make the cheapest vehicle a good value.