There is this weird thing going on here in Australia where you buy a new car, drive around for a year or two, and sell it second hand and make a profit.

I think people must assume that second hand cars are cheaper and not actually checking what price they can get on a new car.

Perhaps they just check the advertised price and not realize you can get the dealer to knock off thousands if you pretend you are not interested.

I'm in the US, and I bought the car I currently drive used for $2,000. It is, without exaggeration, the best and most reliable car I've owned in my life (even counting the new car I owned). Used cars can absolutely be cheaper than new ones even if you have great haggling skills at the dealership.

I bought it pre-covid, though, and I know that used car prices became insane during the pandemic. But they'll settle back to norm (if they haven't already).

Sounds like if you buy a used car in future, you'll have to worry about which of the previous owners can still tamper with it.

Edit: previous owners and script kiddies, since it probably stopped getting security updates 5 years ago.

Depends on how old the used car is. I'll be sticking with the old ones, personally. The ones that don't have any sort of data connection.

I've already decided my next car will be something built before 1984.

Back when I owned cars, they were always pretty old, and it was an endless job replacing various parts as they wore out. These days, I just walk, it's faster.

Your cars must have been pretty old if they're slower than walking!

They would go at the speed limit, when they were working, but once I added on the time spent maintaining and repairing them, it just didn't seem worth it.

Thanks for the WEF spam! Any more great tips?

World Economic Forum and the 15 minute city thing? I guess I was an early adopter, but some places take me longer than 15 minutes to get to.