This morning my H had to go pick up my daughter after a graduation party sleepover (she drives but we live on the 95 corridor with horrible traffic so she drives only to familiar places - she’s 18 but only got her license a few months ago -several of her classmates don’t even have theirs yet). When they got home, she said “Nice car!”. I asked, “So Dad drove it to pick you up?”. He came in the room and said, “No, we’re still only looking at the car, not driving it!”. We had a discussion when we bought it yesterday that because it had cloth, not leather seats, our girls were going to be banned from even riding in it, ha ha. Guess he was only partly joking. Maybe we’ll let them ride in it in a few weeks 
.
“…a 2008 silver PT cruiser with purple flames with heated power leather seats and a moonroof…”
I am laughing so hard! My kiddos would not be caught dead in that. Congrats on your new wheels!
Cloth is actually much easier to deal with than leather. So much easier to spot-clean. Try to get ball point pen marks off leather…
@LeastComplicated, our new Yaris IA is sitting in the garage since Friday night. Same reason as you stated, not much difference between new and used. The car had been on the lot for a while; they wanted to get “rid” of it and we didn’t care about color or options, so we paid $3500 less than the listed price. Now we have to donate the old 1999 car.
@LeastComplicated Congrats on your new Corolla!
Re: Prius - I love, love, love mine. It’s a 2005 with 119k miles and nothing but routine maintenance so far. We expect to get another 80k miles - or more - out of it, and it will probably head off to college with S18 when he goes, and that’s something I never would have expected since we bought it in '04 when he was still riding in a car seat. 
If I were to buy a new-to-me car right now, I’d get another Prius, probably a gently used one.
@BunsenBurner LOL, my kids have been riding in “Flame” for eight years now (since they were little) so they’re used to it! If we had gotten it when they were teenagers, they WOULD probably have been mortified! We’ve been telling D2 that it’s going to be her car and the other day she asked “Can I take the decals off when I start driving it to school?” I told her absolutely not and gave her the excuse that taking the decals off would ruin the paint, ha ha! I just like Flame the way she is! After I bought the PT I found out that most owners were middle aged ladies like me, which kinda bummed me out. But I recently joined an online PT forum of total PT fanatics and most of them are men of all ages who love to collect them and “cherry them out”, so that made me feel better about driving such a crazy car!
my experience in new vs low mileage used is that the used cars tend to be almost as expensive as the new cars with less “toys”. We tend to buy new cars (long commutes so low mileage is essential) that have basic features: AC, radio, but no moon roof, seat warmers, built in navigation system, bluetooth, or upgraded stereo package. Not sure what the next car will brings, as I want to get the more advanced safety features now that i am getting older (ugh!) and fear those will cost more. We drive our cars for a long time, but I have a long commute and don’t want a car that is on its last legs to fail on the highway.
Do people really find good deals on low mileage used cars?
Just purchased a used 2015 Prius with 16000 miles on it. 17yo D will get my 2009 Prius with 205,000 miles on it. I a, hoping the 2009 Prius will last a few more years, then I will give her the Prius I just bought and buy something else for myself. It doesn’t make sense at this point in my life to buy new, I put too many miles on a car.I looked at new and it would have cost me another 10K, just is not worth it right now.
@mamom - you got a 2 year old Prius with 16k miles that would have cost $10k more new? Nice
One thing I appreciated about buying new was that I got a lower interest rate on the loan. My finances (and credit are still recovering from an-almost foreclosure/divorce so I didn’t get zero, but I got a very low rate and definitely lower than the same lender was willing to give me on a used car of any age.
But the lifetime warranty was my primary incentive. I’ve owned used cars - outright, always paid cash - forever and repair bills were just killing me.
@MAmom That’s what we were expecting - that a new car would cost much more than the 2015’s we were looking at -
we spent 2 hours test driving five used low milage cars so we were pretty convinced that was the best choice for us - until I asked about the price difference between our top two used and new. If the difference would’ve been 10K rather than 2-3K, then we would’ve bought used definitely. But that wasn’t the case. I even did some online research last night and this morning to compare the prices of new vs 2 years old just in case they had their used car prices inflated, but everything I found showed that there wasn’t a significant difference in the prices and the prices being asked were typical for the same model of car in our area. There wasn’t a 2015 Corolla with low miles even close to $6K which would have been $10K less than what we paid. So you got a great deal.
While a used car may not be cheaper than a new car, a certified pre-own from a dealer will give you extended warranty coverage beyond the factory warranty. Many will provide extended warrenty to 8 yrs or 100k miles (from date of first sale) so you don’t have to buy an extended warranty.
I used the web site CarGurus to help determine what a good price would be for the used cars I looked at. @LeastComplicated , I am sure the make and model probably have a lot to do with price difference between used vs new.
Last time I bought a car, the difference between certified and non-certified was $1500-$2000. So in essence you are buying an extended warranty, it’s just built into the price of the car.
Some cars do depreciate faster than others. Years ago I bought a case-model Nissan Maxima. The dealer had some three year old cars with 60-70,000 miles on them, and they were selling for about $1500 less than what I paid for my new one. I couldn’t understand why anyone would by the used one in that situation.
The last car I bought was a three-year old RAV4, which a bunch of fancy options like leather heated seats, sunroof, aluminum wheels, fancy stereo, etc. It was about 25-30% cheaper than a new one that was similarly equipped. So I wonder if the more tricked-out cars depreciate faster.
I think you can do better with private sale cars, but then you are taking a lot more risk. You have nothing/no one to fall back on if there are problems.
@notrichenough @NoVADad99 But that’s the difference between a certified and non-certified USED car, right - so that makes sense that a certified car would cost more? We weren’t interested in a non-certified used car, because like you said, you assume more risk buying from a private owner or non-certified. We’re headed into retirement soon, we hope, so we want this new car to last a long time without major repair expenses.
We test drove a cute 2016 Scion with 28K miles (certified) that should NOT have been certified in our opinion. It had been ridden hard in that one year - smelled of smoke, had a small cigarette burn on the driver’s seat, had a small dent on one of the back side panels, and had major scratches all over the place in the plastic interior and trunk. I also looked up the CARFAX on another certified car we were considering and it had been in a minor accident and I would think that would disqualify a car from being certified.
And yeah, I don’t know why anyone would buy a used car with 70,000 miles on it for $1,500 less than new. That makes no sense whatsoever. We didn’t look at anything that had over 30K miles. My 2008 PT Cruiser with all the fancy stuff had a sticker price of $26K new - I bought it two years old with about 20K miles for 11K. We’ve been driving it for almost 10 years with no major problems until last year with the AC and heater, so I guess it was a good car, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to last more than 20K more miles or so (it has a little over 100K now). My D2’s high school is about a mile and a half from our house so I think it will be fine for her until she graduates.
I don’t generally go for extended warranties; so far, 4 years later, I haven’t had any issues. IME most cars these days will hit 100K miles without major powertrain or transmission problems. All of mine have, anyway. Knock on wood.
We just purchased a 2014 Toyota Corolla for our 20 year old daughter. It was certified with a one year warranty. We purchased the extended warranty because it seems as though the cars nowadays are heavy on electrical/computer components which are extremely expensive to repair. We may never need it, but gives us peace of mind where our daughter is concerned.
I actually went to a Hyundai dealer the other day to look at Elantras and Sonatas. They both look like nice cars. The Elantra is small but not one of those micro tiny cars and it has good interior space. Both models are being heavily discounted. I might buy one,(many can be had for < $20k) but there is such a wide range of intended use and preferences in my family what we actually get could end up buying an Elantra sport (with 6 spd manual trans) to please me, or a Sonata with full leather (to please the wife), so we will most likely get nothing for a while. This is the luxury of car shopping when you do not desperately need one. A new Corolla for $16k sounds like a good decision to me.
@NJres I actually had a moment of buyer’s remorse yesterday when I was looking at an article rating the top ranked small sedans (I know, you’re not supposed to look back after a major purchase, but I did it anyway). Hyundai’s are getting very good reviews especially with the very good warranties they offer. They are significantly better than the one’s offered by Toyota and both cars’ overall ratings are pretty much neck and neck. (Toyota was ranked a tiny bit higher for reliability, but with Hyundai’s better warranty it’s kind of a moot point) Apparently, Hyundai had to attract buyers away from Toyota and Honda somehow, and their warranty was the approach they took and it’s working. I also think if you have time to wait for the right market conditions, you can get either one of your preferred models for a lot less than $20K. We’re happy with our decision, but I think we would have been equally happy with an Elantra.
@LeastComplicated If it makes you feel better, Toyotas generally have better resale value than Hyundais. I like Hyundai/Kia, but I think they wear out faster than a Toyota - after 150k the differences in fit and finish really start to show. It is very likely you will go far over 100k without any major repairs.
My family truly drives our cars/trucks into the ground. We have 5 vehicles with over 200k, one (Honda) at 385k. I think H won’t part with it because it is the only car he’s bought new.
@ollie113 Thanks! It did
I know that the new Hyundai Elantra’s have a lot of bells and whistles. Mine is 7 years old and
I like driving it. The road noise is awful even in after models and the guy at the dealership confessed he would not drive one due to the road noise. Really too bad.
We have owned many Subarus and D is driving a 22 year old one. The issue is that the seats, esp. the
passengers are super uncomfortable…friends(many) have the same complaint.