…
…
...
Although it's my viewpoint any new vehicle is a waste of money, I'm 19 and love shiny things and cars in general but I doubt anything out a new GM pickup or Mustang would even interest me, and even so the cost to benefit ratio isn't there. I gave $200 for my 2000 Explorer 5.0, been in it over a year now, and it's been a cheap dependable vehicle, all one can ask for. I don't get the appeal of dropping $40K on a high end family vehicle, I don't.
Me neither, personally. But there are many people out there who are barely capable of holding a wrench right.
And on most modern cars, if you just buy all the OEM parts for the complete vehicle and assemble them yourself you'd end up paying over 3 times as much as buying the car with the price as listed.
Of course that is a total ripoff by the manufacturers, but for many brands repairing older cars is anything but cheap because of the overly expensive parts and the cost for labor when having it done by a shop.
I seriously have a friend who studied mechanical engineering and would not touch his own old 2nd generation VW Golf / "rabbit".
He'd have all the regular inspections done by the official VW dealer every year plus all the little repairs. And then one day he saw this advertisement of a brand new 5th generation Golf there at the dealer.
- And guess what, he seriously calculated that with all the money he spends every year, plus the reduced monthly German auto tax on a brand the new vehicle, and the full warranty and thus no repair cost he would end up paying just as much and hardly any more for driving a brand new vehicle.
So that's what he did and he seriously financed himself this brand new car.
Well a week later his windshield got cracked and the deductible from his insurance was 500 €, so about $550 US dollars.
So he had to pay that and then three weeks after that some a.... (or ex gf?) scratched up the entire side of his new car from front to back. And bad luck, he now couldn't afford the $550 deductible for that anymore, so he left it like it was instead of having the insurance repaint the entire side of the car. And so he lost a fat bunch of resale value on his brand new car and kept being upset every time he'd get in and look at that nasty scratch.
I on the other hand parked my explorer downtown a year ago and some a...hole scratched the entire side up as well. luckily not as nearly as bad as my friends new Golf got scratched up back then, but well.
Now on my 9 year old Explorer with all the little cracks in the paint and the (cheap yet still very accurately done) sprayed paint hood, I really couldn't care less about that scratch. I totally don't give the slightest bit of a f.. about that scratch. If it was a beautiful shiny brand new car I naturally would also be upset and annoyed of course.
But on a 19 year old "wannabe off-road" vehicle that's regularly kept a little dusty and dirty on the outside anyways... why would that scratch bother me? I could probably just polish it out If I really wanted to anyways. And when I have to get to fixing the spot on the roof of the truck I might go ahead and fix that scratch up as well. And no matter how cheap I fix it up - or not, it certainly doesn't reduce the resale value of the vehicle either.
Also many people believe old cars just can't ever be reliable and new ones automatically always are. I just slammed over 4000 miles onto my explorer driving half way across the US and back. It now has just over 190k miles on it. My friends were seriously worried it would undeniably have to break down somewhere along the way and I had to let them know everything was fine regularly. All that really happened on that 4000 mile trip was a bolt on the rear window (where the glass mounts to the hatch) coming loose - that's it!
If I had done that full 4000 mile trip in a brand new car of the factory line I would likely have had a check engine light come on for nothing, the park assistant beep continuously, the heating in the seat not turning off or whatever other funny gadget go nuts.
Not that I don't like new cars, I really love some of them, but the common assumptions and prejudices people tend to have about old and new cars are not always backed by actual probabilities, statistics and facts - or as we they're commonly called these days: "the fake news".
) most have been 1st and 2nd gen. But my wife's last two cars have been Explorers. A '06 (4th gen) which we bought a few years old and she now has a '16 which we bought brand new.
Look at your own signature! 
