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Buying a new vehicle hasn't made sense for about 30 years now.
I've been driving for about 30 years and in all that time, I've never owned a new vehicle. I kept buying used vehicles for about $2,000 - $3,000 per vehicle. The oldest one I've ever had is a 2004 Volvo station wagon and I still maintain it and it's still running as one of my main vehicles. My other main vehicle is a 2010 GMC Truck which I also maintain. They don't look new, they show a bit of rust around the edges, but they are still very good vehicles that will last several more years.
Once they break down enough ... I'll buy another used vehicle. In all, over the past 30 years, I've spent about $30,000 on multiple vehicles (I think I've gone through 8 or 9 in that time).
It has never made sense to me to buy a brand new $40,000 car that will only be used for about five years before you buy the next one.
Speak for yourself.
I have purchased multiple new cars over the last 25 years, and, while they’re more expensive than a used car (although that difference is shinking all the time), I also run them for years because I can keep up with maintenance. My last new car was bought 14 years ago and is pretty much still new condition. I still even have the plastic film over the climate control screen.
I don’t care about depreciation or resale values.
EDIT: Punctuation.
You're an actual dumbass. New cars lose 20% of their value the moment you drive it off the lot.
Clearly. You'd rather get ripped off by the dealership.
How about you get some life experience and try buying and maintaining a used car? Then you can see for yourself how stupid your assumptions are.
If you buy a piece of equipment new and keep it for the expected lifespan of the machine, then you get to 'keep' the depreciation. Depreciation only matters if you plan on replacing the machine BEFORE the end of use life. And with things like cars, people often get rid of them long before the use life span is reached. And it's at that moment that the depreciation is a problem. I too, find it doubtful that hydrashock has kept multiple new cars long enough to personally use up the depreciation value of any one of those cars.
Example: That shiny new iPhone you bought took a depreciation hit the moment you paid for it. And when you trade it off when the next new model comes out you pay the cost of that depreciation through the trade in value. Had you kept your phone until it no longer worked before you replaced it, you would have recouped the cost of depreciation.
I used to think like you, but then my time became worth money. It's no longer such a clear cut case.
If I spent even 100 hours a year working on my car, that's now several thousand euros. More than a year's worth of lease payments on a brand new budget vehicle or (and this is my preference) a 3 year old executive car. And at the end of the lease I have the option to buy it for what's likely significantly under market value and then either keep driving it, or sell it immediately to recoup some of the depreciation.
Then consider that with the new vehicle you can get full coverage insurance which isn't even available on a 20 year old vehicle (and full coverage gives you peace of mind that if YOU fuck up or an animal fucks your car up, you get the residual value back). This occurred to me when my friend's old, around 1000 euros worth car slipped into a ditch in the winter. Its value just dropped by half and there's nothing to do about it. If it'd been their significantly newer car, it would've been a 350 euro copay to get it repaired or totalled and paid out. My car at the time was worth around 3k and if I'd totaled it by either driving into a ditch in the winter or hit a moose, I would've been out of a car and out of money. My next car after that was a lease and if something would've happened to it, insurance would've made me whole. In fact I got a brand new OEM Mercedes windscreen fitted for free, no copay since it's usually 0% for windows. That alone was worth over a year of insurance payments.
Currently I'm back to driving a shitbox. Nice car attracted gold digger, gold digger ruined finances, now I'm living as cheaply as possible. But the shitbox life is not great either - I'm going to have to either change the transmission on mine to keep it going another few years, or sell it for a loss compared to what I paid for it just 5 months ago. This is after I've already done brakes, belts and some electrical work. Sunk cost fallacy becomes way too real way too quickly on cheap used cars.
I dunno. I bought a Honda new twice. Once showed up on the city bus and negotiated them down to a nothing down & low monthly payment that I could manage for 5 years (I am an accountant and first built a spreadsheet with present value calculations to figure out my target price) car is built to last 20 at least, I paid it off easily enough, then someone ran a stop sign and absolutely smashed it to bits, I took the insurance money as a down payment and got a better car new, same low monthly, paid that off years ago and have been driving it since 2014. This was mostly possible because Honda did a zero or 1% loan both times. Used to buy beaters but this has been so much nicer, and it's easier on cash flow. I hope I can keep this one for as long as I need a car (mostly use the electric bike now) because it has all the tech I want but none of the tech I don't want. Like at this point if I won the lottery I still don't know if I'd want a car of today.
New car at today's prices, and what they are, I kind of agree with you but used cars at today's prices seem just as bad of a deal. And it was not always like this. You used to be able to negotiate, they had too much inventory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory