The Depreciation Game: The Top 12 Cars To Buy One Year Old And The Top 10 To Buy New

Automakers are wooing car buyers with ads for the latest models, but a new study by iSeeCars.com has found that only some cars make good financial sense to buy new due to large differences in price between new and one-year-old used models. The savings from purchasing a lightly used car over a new one can be substantial, ranging from $6,099 to $19,966.

“Most people know new cars depreciate the most in the first year and that different cars have different depreciation rates, but we wanted to determine which used cars experienced the largest price drops compared to their new models,” said Phong Ly, iSeeCars.com CEO.

MDarringer - 10/21/2016 7:20:07 PM

+2 Boost

Articles such as this always seem to "make sense" until you try to find a gently used, one-year-old vehicle, which is not as easy as finding a 2-3 year old CPO.

A lot comes down to answering "Why do I want to buy?"

In this time of heavily subsidized leases, leasing may be the smartest way yet, especially if you want to change cars every couple of years.