The Art Of Buying A Used New Car

Taking a stroll through a dealership’s new car lot can quickly lead to a bad case of the “sticker shock”.  The average new car price in 2018 was over $35,000, with a heavy bias towards SUV’s.  If it’s a full size SUV or Pickup truck that tickles your fancy it isn’t unheard of to come across vehicles with an MSRP of twice that amount.  According to AAA the average cost of owning a vehicle per year is nearly $9,000, with a large part of that being eaten up by deprecation alone!  Some cars depreciate quicker than others but generally, if you purchase a $35,000 car in 2019, you can expect that it will be worth only $28,000 after just 12 months.  Take another 10% off each year over the next four years and your 5-year-old set of wheels is suddenly worth about half of what it was new and unless you came in with a hefty down payment, you’re underwater.  Suddenly, buying a brand new car doesn’t seem like such a good idea.

I for one am a sucker for that new car smell and have purchased my fair share of brand new vehicles.  From Acura’s to Z cars I have owned over twenty vehicles over the past 10 years with three of them being new.  While most people on average own their car or truck for 3-5 years I’m averaging 2 vehicles a year and I currently own six.  If there were an AA group for car addicts I would surely be a candidate.

Throughout my years of buying and selling cars, I have learned a few very valuable lessons, with one being that it is possible to buy a used new car… well, basically new.

 

 

Take this 2009 Dodge Challenger for example.  Still wearing the same dress as the current 2019 model, this 10-year-old Mopar is only discernible as not being so to the trained eye, and with only 9,800 miles on the odometer it might as well be.  From a maintenance perspective, that’s barely two oil changes!  Being that this Challenger is the high performance SRT8 model with the 425 horsepower 6.1L Hemi, Tremec 6-speed manual transmission, and is fully loaded with all the bells and whistles, you would have paid close to $45,000 to buy it new.  I paid about half that for this car (taxes included) and it even came with that new car smell… no blue smelly tree on a string needed.

Image Credit – Chrysler

 

The current generation Dodge Challenger came out in 2008 with its body lines calling back to the original of 1970.  Fast forward to 2019 and you get a 60 horsepower bump in power from a displacement increase to 6.4 liters (392 cubic inches), a slightly different grille, updated taillights, and a refreshed interior.  Aside from that, this 2009 SRT8 with under 10,000 miles isn’t very different from the 2019 392 and a similarly optioned brand new 392 will top $50,000 (MSRP).

392 Hemi Challenger

Admittedly, finding a deal like this isn’t going to happen every day but they are definitely out there.  Sports cars tend to be the easiest to find in this condition due to the fact that people tend to buy them and drive them sparingly.

 

While driving a car sparingly does help reduce the rate of the depreciation, they will inevitably still take heavy losses over time unless they are very low production numbers, highly sought after limited editions, or have become old enough that they are considered collectible.  Your typical run-of-the mill commuters tend to not sit in garages for years without having a lot of mileage but they do still exist.  Stereotypes aside, the best places to find low mileage and well cared for used vehicles are with the elderly, overly particular, or technologically challenged.  This particular Hemi Challenger was for sale for nearly two years but remained well hidden due to where it was located and it was barely visible on the Internet.

Looking for a new used car of your own?  What’s your ideal low mileage gem?  Perhaps we can find one together.