Double Take: Saturn Aura XR vs. Toyota Camry SE

[The Pirate]

You don't think resale doesn't matter that much after 6 years or when you've paid the car off?  Let me put it this way, lets say that 6 years ago you were looking at either an Impala or a Camry.  Both cars were $20K and you would have had the same payments and interest an everything on either, so in the end you would have paid the same for either.  If you were to sell either car today, you could get around $6K-$6.5K for the Impala while you could probably get close to $8K for the Camry.  If operating costs are the same between the two (and I suspect they are probably pretty close), that means you ultimately saved $1500-$2000 by going for the Camry and keeping the cars 6 years.  That's not exactly chump change, especially for a working class American.

I'm not saying that resale doesn't matter once the car is paid off, because it does.  I probably could have worded my original post a  bit better.  Just, that for someone who trades their car in every 3 years or so, resale is more important.  For somebody who buys an Accord or an Impala, then drives the car into the ground (200K miles or so), resale is less of a factor in that scenario.  I do doubt that most people opt for plan B however.


As far as the resale being a factor, I'm guilty of that line of thinking too.  I bought a Honda Civic over a domestic competitor, because even used, it's resale would hold better.  I now plan on keeping the car for a while, but were I to sell it, I would certainly be able to pocket a couple more.

My only point with my above post (a poorly made point in that post, as well), is that somebody who is going to keep their car for ~8 years or run it into the ground, isn't going to get burned by the plummeting resale value, because they have no plans to trade in said car during the loan period, thus avoiding the complication of being upside down on the loan.  Resale is certainly a factor in most scenarios.


Just for reference, my car is currently worth about $5300, per KBB, and the Saturn SL1 I almost bought is worth about $3100 with the same mileage.

Regardless of KBB being higher than the real world or not, that's a big discrepancy, and more than the price difference between the cars at time of purchase.  I'm glad I bought the Honda, as it's value now is more than twice what I currently owe on it.