Depreciation can be a royal pain in the tuchus if you’re buying a new car. After all, the average car loses 17 percent of its value in the first year of its life; weigh that against the average new car transaction price of around $40,000, and that’s $6,800 that just evaporated over 12 months, spent on the privilege of having a vehicle with seats undisturbed by the farts of past owners.
And that’s just the average. Many cars lose more than that 17 percent in that first year — and, to add insult to injury, the cars suffering from steeper initial depreciation are often among the more expensive models to begin with. (Just ask anyone who held onto a 12-cylinder German car for half a decade or more.)
So, having already shown you the cars that you absolutely should buy new instead of lightly used, we at the Gear Patrol Motoring desk now bring you the converse: the cars you should buy pre-owned as one-year-old used cars instead of new ones.
The 15 cars here all, according to iSeeCars.com, suffer the greatest depreciation over their first year in their original owners’ hands. Choosing a low-mileage, one-year-old version of any of these cars can save you big.
1. BMW 5 Series
www.daniel-kraus.comPercent Drop: 36.4%
