[quote=The-Shoveler]I bought my first new car in 1976, by the time I paid it off in 1979 I could have sold it for about the same or maybe a little more than I paid.[/quote]
Actually, that’s a similar situation right now for a lot of used cars.
A lot of preowned cars that my friends bought in 2018 are selling for the same price or more in 2021
There’s a couple of reasons for this.
1. Supply chain issues have reduced the number of available new cars. Some previous low volume production cars are now even harder to find.
2. Because of new car supply issues, lots people are either staying in their cars longer or if they really need a car, buying more preowned…So that’s reducing preowned supply
3. Rental car companies are also finding they can’t get their new car allocation, so some of them are going to the preowned markets and buying preowned cars and putting them in their rental fleet. That’s also driving supply down.
You can also learn a lot of this from miatas. You can’t find a first generation miata easily these days… They officially moved from the “cheap crappy dumpy sportish car” to the “collectible” designation..