DIYbanter - View Single Post

Brent Philion wrote:
Gunner Asch wrote:

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 18:42:42 -0800, (daniel
peterman) wrote:

This is the time of year for deep discounts on cars. New models coming
out and all.
A few years ago I walked into a Nissan shop just kicking tires and I was
bored so I decided to mess with these obviously tired salesmen.
So the story goes like this. I said I would make a small down payment on
a Sentra.
They had some incentive so it seemed Ok
I told them I would have a flatbed truck load the car and drop it off at
my house where I would park it in a dry garage under a cover and up on
stands so no flat spots on the tires. I would start it monthly just to
keep it going and in 9 months I would have the flatbed bring it back
with zero miles but a model year older.
Why would I do such a thing? To findout what it was really worth. I
tried to explain that it was still a new car just not stored on their
lot.
They had no answer. We all know that a 99 model year car might be made
in early 98 or mid 99.
I guess the answer is that cars are worth about half of what you pay for
them in cash. There is simply no reason to pay 400bux a mont for a chunk
of metal that sits probly 20 hours out of 24 and only goes down in value
for every mile racked up.
I used to work for a guy that probably spent more on car washes for his
Explorer and lexus than I did for my little honda civic.
Rant mode off.

Of course. Which is why Ive never bought a car newer than 4 yrs old,
and then haggled for low blue even then. Simply driving it off the
lot costs about 20% of the value, the moment the rear bumper passes
the curb. Hell..signing your name on the dotted line costs about 20%
of the value at the least. Its now a "used car"

Always the best reason to never buy new if you have ANY mechanical
aptitude at all

Cars last so well these days that you don't even need the mechanical
aptitude. Just get something that's a couple of years old and wasn't
driven too hard, and drive it 'till it costs more to fix than a newly
used one costs to buy.

We do own one car that we purchased new (well, it was an orphan from 2
model years back), but that's mostly because we wanted to say that we'd
done it once. It's nearly 10 years old now; it's going strong but the
rear seat has collected quite a few stains from our kids -- we have a
cover on it now. It simply isn't showing significant signs of wear, and
it has around 140k on it now.

In my opinion new car buyers were put on this earth to knock the first
40% off the price of a car while only knocking out only 20% of the value.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com