New cars
are a scam.

New cars have problems too. J.D. Power's 2026 Initial Quality Study found 175 problems per 100 new vehicles in the first 90 days [6]. At three years old the figure is 204 per 100 [7]. That's only about 29 more problems per 100 cars after three years of driving.

Brand-new designs tend to be the least reliable. Consumer Reports has found that first- and second-year redesigns often drop in reliability, while models late in their run do best [8]. A used car has a track record you can check. A new one doesn't have one yet.

Do this: get a vehicle history report and pay an independent mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection. Look up the exact model year's reliability before you buy.

Certified pre-owned cars come with warranties too, and some last longer than the new-car coverage. Toyota's Gold certified program includes a 7-year / 100,000-mile powertrain warranty with a $0 deductible, after a 160-point inspection [9]. HondaTrue Certified also gives 7 years / 100,000 miles of powertrain coverage [10].

A 2–3 year old car is also often still inside its original factory coverage, and that transfers to the next owner.

The rate is higher. Edmunds reports an average 7.0% APR for new and 10.6% for used [2]. But 0% deals went to only 1.2% of new-car buyers who financed [3].

Look at dollars instead of rates. The average new loan is $44,156 and the average used loan is $30,414 [3]. Over the same ~70-month term, that works out to roughly $9,800 vs $10,500 in interest, nearly the same. The used payment is still about $185 a month lower, and you avoid the steepest years of depreciation.

Buyers are keeping payments manageable by stretching loans longer. In Q2 2026, 36.5% of new-car loans ran 73+ months and 23.9% ran 84+ months, both records. One in five buyers took on a payment of $1,000 or more [3].

Long loans tend to leave you underwater. Nearly 30% of trade-ins toward new vehicles had negative equity, averaging $6,884. Those buyers rolled the debt into the next loan and averaged $944/month and $16,270 in interest [11].

University of Michigan psychologist Norbert Schwarz and Jing Xu found that people expected nicer cars to make them happier. But when drivers described their most recent drive, the car's value had no correlation at all with how they felt [12]. After the first few weeks, driving becomes routine and you stop noticing the car.

Regret is also common. In a LendingTree survey, nearly 40% of car buyers had regrets, and 10% said they'd bought a car they couldn't afford [13].

Most of the major safety features are already on recent used cars. Twenty automakers pledged to make automatic emergency braking standard on at least 95% of their vehicles by September 2022, and ten of them hit that target by 2020 [14]. A 2021–2023 used car from a mainstream brand very likely has AEB.

Keeping a car a long time is the smartest way to own one. It's even cheaper when the first owner has taken the biggest depreciation hit. The average vehicle on U.S. roads is 12.8 years old [15], so a 3-year-old car still has most of its life ahead of it. Buy at year three and keep it ten years.

Used prices are up. Cox Automotive's August 2026 average listing hit $27,239, 7% above last year and the highest since 2022 [16]. But the average new transaction price is $50,089 [1], a gap of about $22,850. That isn't basically the same.