New/Used and impact of age and features on price?

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intro image two cars, one new one used

Now I have decided on what 7 seater best suits my needs, it leaves me with the next question, should I buy a New or Used Ford Everest. 

There are lots of benefits of new, beyond the smell and sense of prestige. Some things that come to mind are: 

  • Choice of model / colour / options
    • Although colour choices are fairly limited these days, maybe a topic for another day
  • No chance of poorly repaired accident damage, nor falsified maintenance history
  • Brand new everything, new tyres, air filter, cabin filter, wiper blades, brake pads... basically no maintenance for a full service interval, and beyond 
  • Full warrantee, and the peace of mind that brings
  • Availability of Finance
    • Though is this really a good thing
  • Ability to trade in old car
    • Another, is this this actually a benefit
But Price is not one of them!

First up, Ford Australia gives me the following prices for New Vehicles:
7 Seats - 4WD - No cost colour - No Other Options - Drive Away
  • Ambient - $67,218
  • Black - $69,000 - LIMITED TIME OFFER
  • Trend - $73,988
  • Sport - $82,653
  • Wildtrak- $84,133 - RUNOUT
  • Tremor - $84,698
  • Platinum - $90,786
Thats a lot of cash for a family runabout, so let's have a look at the price difference between new and preloved. I have used www.carsales.com.au as a muse, and collated all Ford Everests for sale within the state I live in. I don't want something too old so have limited my search back to 2015 (10 yrs). This landed me with 351 vehicles available for sale, from 58 to 300k km, $19k to $115k, and less than a dozen colour options!

How does Year affect Price?

Box-plot chart showing relationship between list prices of cars per release year
So what are we seeing here:
  • A 1 year old vehicle has a huge range of prices, and in outlying cases some are priced above new! But most prices are quite tight, lets presume most of these are 'new', but MY24 stock
  • 2 and 3 year old vehicles are priced similar, in the range of $60k to $80k, likely hugely dependent on km variant, and again have quite a broad range
  • 4 and 5 years sees a significant drop-off before a linear reduction year on year out to 10yrs
    • Its worth noting, MY22 vehicles are an updated 'new generation' model, including the large centre console touch screen infotainment system
Ultimately, MY22-MY24 gets a ~$10k discount from new, MY19-MY21 $20k-$25k discount.

So the sweet spot looks to be MY21, looking at an expected price range of $45k-$52k.

How does Variant affect price?

Chart showing the distribution of price and variant per year
Synopsis:
  1. Titanium swaps out for Platinum from MY22, and sees a prominent jump in price across the years, so let's ignore these upper spec grades
  2. Trend looks to be the ideal grade for MY22-MY24
  3. For the target MY21, and also MY20/MY19, there is a big overlap between the grades. As such the Sport variant is likely to be available at an equivalent price to lower grades
  4. If we were looking back as far as 2018 and prior, Trend looks to be the smart choice

But what about Km?

Scatterplot with 2*polynomial trend showing price verses km travelled
  • There is definitely a relationship between age and km. No surprises here
  • What is interesting is that price plateaus from 200k km. So basically don't bother buying a vehicle with this many km unless your desperate
  • 0-100k km looks to be a reasonable relationship, although below 50k km there are vehicles from a greater age variance meaning there is a price group much higher than the trend line for near new vehicles
  • If you want a vehicle with < 100k km on the clock you could get away with $30k spend on an 7-10 year old Everest!
  • If however you want something with less use, say < 50k km, you'd be hard pressed to find one below $45k, but these are unlikely to be more than 5-6 years old

Outcome

So where does this leave things.?

If I was to buy New, the decision is easy. Go with the new Limited Edition Ford Everest Black. Limited colour choices (no pun intended), but driveaway price of $69k (to try and pinch some would be Prado buyers) beats the Drive Away price of the Trend it's based on.

However, MY21 models will save a minimum $20k depreciation. It looks like Sports variants will be the pick for around $50k, or a Trend should I find a clean example for under $46k. 30k-60k km at this price objective is fair. Can't be picky with colour, full log books, and with a towpack (I am yet to find one without one fitted), but only if there are no signs its well used (don't want an offloaded 3.5T daily tradeies tow vehicle). 
Actually, maybe it would be safer to buy the Black edition new!

What would you pick? Have I missed something obvious that should sway my decision?

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