If you watch the television commercials and listen to the radio advertisements, you might easily subscribe to the belief that your life will not be complete unless you buy a new car or truck. When it comes to auto sales, the industry has always placed a heavy wager on convincing people that pre owned cars and pre owned trucks are much better options than used cars would be. That is not always the case.
The truth is, there was a time when buying used cars could be a very tricky proposition. Many times they could end up being unreliable, especially if they were not taken care of properly by the previous owners. You could look for a good, long time before finding anything worth considering. Maybe you could find a diamond in the rough while looking through the ads in the newspaper, but those diamonds were rare, indeed.
Now, in our modern day and age, it is so much easier to find used cars that are reliable, have been well maintained, and are affordable. If you are considering purchasing another car or truck, you might want to also consider taking the time to visit a used auto dealer near you. What you find just might surprise and delight you. Here are three reasons why buying used cars or trucks instead of new might be the better idea.
1.) You are maximizing value.
You have probably heard that when you buy a new car or truck, the moment you drive it off the lot it is losing value. That is absolutely the truth. In fact, as soon as you wave goodbye to the nice salesperson who sold you your new vehicle, it already lost as much as 11% of its value.
As far as value is concerned, by the time a typical vehicle is four years old, it only retains about half of its value. After that, though, the depreciation curve slows down quite a bit. When you buy a car that is slightly older, you are getting it at a price that makes economic sense.
With the technology we have today, a car that is four or five years old has enough in the way of standard features to make it a smart buy. Cars built in the last ten years have many features that only the higher class models used to have. For example, nearly half of the used cars on the market have air conditioning. That was not a standard feature twenty years ago.
2.) You are getting dependability.
The way cars and trucks are being built today, they are being released with better technology, more standard features, and are more apt to stay on the road for more years than cars from the past. You have likely seen claims that cars in the last decade are only just getting started at 100,000 miles. This means that when you find a car or truck with 25,000 miles, you are likely finding one that still has many more miles left to go.
3.) You are contributing to the sustainability of the planet.
The manufacturing process of producing a new car and bringing it to market has an ever-increasing, negative effect on the environment. Studies done by the automotive industry itself have shown that somewhere between 12% and 18% of carbon dioxide emissions that are given off during the life of an automobile actually happen during the manufacturing and shipping process. When you purchase used cars instead of new ones, you are getting one that has already gone through those phases. This helps the environment tremendously.
On average, a vehicle will have three owners during its lifetime. Being one of those owners will mean you have found great value, gotten something dependable for the road, and have contributed to the sustainability of the planet. Not a bad way to purchase your new ride.