Yes, a new car is how we all at one time or another have made that worst investment of life's needed goodies.

The dealers get them while their young, when signatures flow easily and when they are definitely starry eyed!
My first large vehicle was a brand new XLT Ford truck. I thought a domestic truck would be more useful than a car, hold its resale value, use it for moving me about and a lots of others as it goes! The trucks engine turn out to be lemon at 19k with a 12k warranty and no such thing as a lemon law then. No more new vehicles for me!

I have four cars that I got way on the cheaper side of retail and I do not pay any parts men anything close to $1,500 a year to maintain ALL of them. I learned a long time ago that I rather pay a parts man (or junkyard) than pay a salesman a commission for smiling and smelling better than the out gassing fumes of a new car.

A new car just comes with to much depreciation, from too many directions to make it worth it, just to carry my sorry butt around!

There is a certain amount of satisfaction to know how to repair a car, to know I can make it go and beat back at the systems that robs you.

Phil