Asklemmy

ex-lease cars are just as good as new

They literally aren’t. If the car is going to last 200k miles then getting a car with 36k miles on it already means you’re that much closer to it failing.

It’s also going to be that much closer to needing more expensive maintenance to be done.

A three year old car will often have a lesser feature set than the current year’s models. Stepping up to the higher trim that had those features 3 years ago can negate the cost savings of buying used in the first place.

Ex-lease cars are frequently well-maintained and driven responsibly, but that doesn’t mean they’re “as good as new.”

come with a new car warranty

Do you mean “comes with what’s left of the original warranty?” Because that’s generally true but doesn’t mean you benefit from it the same amount. If it has a 5 year, 60k mile warranty (Mitsubishi) and you only get the warranty for 2 years and 24k miles, that’s not the same.

With CPO cars you also get the CPO warranty but that doesn’t usually make the total warranty you get as good or better than what you would have gotten new.

Kia and Lexus both have very competitive CPO warranty programs. Kia has a 1 year / 12k miles bumper-to-bumper warranty. Lexus extends their 4 year/50k miles new car warranty by 2 years/unlimited miles after your purchase date or after the original warranty expired, whichever happens first. If you buy a CPO Lexus at the 2 year mark then you’ll get a full warranty out of it, but that’s not true for most other manufacturers.

And I don’t know of a single manufacturer that completely refreshes their warranty term for CPO cars.

and don't come with the absurd depreciation.

The cars that make the most sense to buy used have the least depreciation, though. For example, looking at CPO Toyota RAV4s, for the ones that aren’t former rentals/didn’t have accidents/multiple owners, the 3+ year old models are very comparable in price, like 26k for a RAV4 with nearly 50k miles vs 30k new, or 27-28k for one with under 30k miles.

If the lifespan of the car for you is 10 years then a 3 year old car is 30% less valuable - so a 13% discount is hardly a bargain. You’d need to keep it for 20 years - until it was 23 years old - for your 13% savings to be more valuable than the extra lifespan of the car.

You also frequently get a worse interest rate on CPO cars than on new.

There are many times when it makes sense to buy a CPO vehicle but also many where it makes more sense to buy new. Do the math in your specific case rather than acting like there’s a one size fits all solution.