Almost Ditto. In my case, buying new *was* a better deal (by about a grand).
Didn't make any sense to me, either. But, I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
We are in the market for a new (to us) car. I haven’t bought a car since the last century (1998), so I had some sticker shock at the Ford dealership. Then, I went home and looked on KBB (Kelly Blue Book) and found that there are new cars that are much cheaper, if you are willing to try a Kia or Hyundai.
Not sure what we will do. Our buying power is less than what it was in 1998, yet our needs are similar.
Last car I bought was in 2004, a 7 year old Honda with 75K on the odometer, roughly $5,000. It served us well, had roughly 201K on the odometer, but had enough little things going wrong that I thought it wise to move up before interest rates shot up.
So I figured with inflation, the same type of thing might be $7 or $8K in 2012. Try $12K, if you could find it. The closest thing to it I could actually find was a four year old Scion xD, 45K on the odometer, $14.5K price tag. Yeah, they would arrange financing, but for something like 3% to 4% higher than I could get on a new 2013 Honda Fit for $2,500 more.
The monthly payment would have been pretty much identical with the higher interest rate. And $2500 more for four more years and 45K more miles in warranty didn't seem like a bad deal at all.
And the 1997 Honda with 210K on the odometer? I listed it at roughly double what the dealer offered as trade in, had 27 calls on it and sold it within 36 hours of the Craigslist listing. The buyer had cash for the asking price, another prospect waiting behind him and a third on the way. He didn't even try to price dicker. Smart man.