True. I hear so many stories about car problems and having to fight with the dealer that all the stories run together. Last week I helped a client download the court docs from 2yrs of suing the MB dealership (so Gemini could parse them).
Our last purchase was a 31k mi 1992 Buick w/ an Iron Duke for $1300. I loaded it w/ son #2s bedroom and drove it 1k mi to his new place. I spent a week visiting family in different states.
Caveat that I did spent $80 + 20min to swap the alt (sticky brushes).
The Buick replaced the 96 Toyota (bought @ 42k for $500 +$1k bc it sat for 10y). The Toyota runs great and never let me down (6yrs) but I wanted more leg room.
In case I'm not completely unbearable, son #2's daily driver is a 63 Dart he pulled out of the weeds. He welded in tags to get a floor and just recovered the seats and door panels using a stack of my old blue jeans.
He's drives it to RI (1.5k mi) every year or so.
A high quality used car beats a new car for value 99 times out of a hundred. The only exception being the weird outlier that is rare and desirable enough to appreciate in the two years after sale. If you can spot those you already know more than me. (The Toyota Tacoma springs to mind)
Look at prices for 20 year old cars. Find the cars tha have the highest resale value (avoid the ones that fall off a value cliff). Then find that one like that but five or ten years old, avoid the three main things that go wrong with that model and you’ve got a stable, reliable car that holds its value well. Maintain it and keep it clean. Drive it for five years and you’ll be able to sell it for almost what you paid for it, it’s basically free to drive for five years. This is called the value plateau. If you like it just keep it, the high value at 20 years means the maintenance costs are minimal.
I’m currently driving a car that’s worth about as much as it was when I bought it 3 years ago. I’ve got a car I bought 8 years ago that’s worth more than I paid for it.
Compare that to a $70k new car that is worth $20k five years later.
Buying new cars is a suckers game. (Thanks to all the suckers for buying them because otherwise there’d be no used car market)
Publishing an article saying new and used are comparable is idiotic at best.
And in a country like China you probably want to just buy new anyways, although car prices are much more sane there at the lower end.
My 1st Nissan PU was a manual stick, hard to find, but ultra reliable since no automatic trannie to fail. Had to replace clutch every ~80K.
All I ever did on the other 3 PU's with auto trannies was install an extra trannie cooler (after market), change tires, change oil every 5K with Mobil One synthetic, filters, change power steering and brake fluid every 2 years, change auto trannie fluid at 85K to 100K. None of the 4 were ever in the shop for any other repairs. Proper seat belt retraction was always a nuisance issue, Nissan has never solved it to my knowledge.
Bought all of the Nissans used, with low mileage, except last one, none were available in my area from private sellers around Covid. Recently added a victory red 2007 Pontiac Solstice GXP turbo convertible to the mix, I found it with only 22K miles on it for $11,500.
My best friend for >50 years used to sell cars at a dealership, he told me dealerships don't make hardly any money off selling cars for cash, most of their money is made off selling cars on finance and extra "options" on new cars - - - and selling service. I found ~30 years ago when I drove my Chevy into the Houston dealership for service I was lucky to survive with no less than a $400 bill, they always found items they claim need replacing. Cox Automotive, parent company of Kelly blue book says in 2026 the typical cost today for servicing your vehicle is $838 each time you take it in.
pseudolus•3w ago