If you?re looking for a new ride, you might ask yourself, ?Do I really need a new car or am I willing to consider a nearly new car"? New cars are great, but there?s a lot to be said for major savings?if you?re about to buy a new car, the potential tradeoff between new and nearly new might amount to $5000 or more.
Before we get any further, let?s define our terms a bit. You know what a new car is: It?s a never titled, current-model-year vehicle, typically with very few miles on the odometer. The term ?nearly new,? for our purposes, would describe a used but titled, pre-owned vehicle of the previous model year. (Currently, ?new? would be a 2018 model, and ?nearly new? would be a 2017 version of the same make and model.) To keep the comparisons from getting cloudy, the models you consider should be of the same generation. The advantages are diminished when the brand-new vehicle is the first in its generation while the other model is on an earlier platform and therefore lacks current technology and is visually different from the new car. As you have heard over and over, the value of a vehicle plummets the second it’s driven off the dealer?s lot. While that description of the timing might be a bit of overstatement, vehicle depreciation is a big deal. Typically, it is a car owner?s biggest expense during the first several years of ownership, with the largest doses of depreciation coming in years one and two of your ownership.
While to a new-car buyer that mountain o...