Yet another reason to love the Internet: Free, helpful tips from OCD stats geeks.
If you’re considering a car purchase, you might want to read this treatise first.
If you’re broke like us but still really like performance and leather interiors, consider getting a luxury car that’s 5-6 years old. More luxury owners want newer models than older ones leading to a pretty steep depreciation for the first few years; the average new E320 loses about $12k per year no matter the mileage (112 datapoints). Compare this to the depreciation curve for a Camry: the car holds value like people *want* to drive it into the ground. Crazy! (1,523 datapoints).
http://blog.carsabi.com/2012/01/31/hacking-the-used-car-purchase/