Buying new is brilliant, no one can deny this.
They can.
Unless you are speccing up your dream Lambourghini or perhaps a new RS6 V10 for the family, your choice of car is constrained by money. In the real world almost everything is constrained by money.
The new car buyers in this thread are not people with brand new top of the range models of the cars they've always wanted with every option ticked. They are people who have, like most people, had to compromise in the purchase. Perhaps on model, engine or options.
There appears to be an underlying sense that the bottom line is that people who can afford it buy new and those who cannot buy used but of course it isn't that simple. This is why people buy a 320d new but cannot stretch to a 330d, or why people ordered a Focus ST1 and not an ST3, etc etc. So to say 'I can afford it!' is rather missing the point some of us are making about the benefits of used.
Buying/Running a car consumes a huge pot of money almost whichever way you look at it. You can't really escape that but you can vary the mix of spending within this huge pot of money motoring will consume. Some people decide (or ignore) that they'd rather lose thousands and thousands of pounds in depreciation but pay small amounts of road tax, have low servicing costs and get good fuel economy. Others decide they want as little depreciation as possible but are instead happy to spend a pile on servicing, fuel, tax and repairs. Both are valid ways of doing things and which is best doesn't depend on whether you 'can afford it' but what your personal priorities are.
The only people who can really justifably and smugly claim 'Yea, I buy new. I don't care about the depreciation - I can afford it' are those tooling around in a new F458 or perhaps a 911 Turbo or a Range Rover or an S class or something. Your average Golf 1.6 TDI owner doesn't really fit the breif of the loaded person who doesn't care about motoring costs, somehow.
The other issue is that many people do not even look at total cost of ownership. It's all about the monthly cost. They likely don't know or care whether in total they'd be spending £100,000,000 on a Corsa provided that the monthly numbers are right. Provided they can meet the monthly payments they seem completley unconcerned about the enormous overall cost of owning some fairly normal cars. Dealers love these people - it's why finance packages with huge APR and massive balloons were invented - because for some all that matters is the month by month cost, oh and 'buying' that white A3 TDI S-Line because 'I don't buy used... I can afford not to' whilst totally missing the point.
Me personally? I can't get over the fact you can run some pretty awesome cars for the same or lower TCO as PCPing a diesel hatchback and therefore would never be able to look past the tasty used alternatives when choosing a car.
Always look beyond the monthly cost.
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