carsales announces Best Used Cars for 2024

As supply finally catches up with demand, used cars offer great value once more bcu editorial banner 1024x166 pumg

A great selection of six-year-old cars in 10 different categories have been assembled for the 2024 carsales Best Used Car awards, proudly presented by Bingle.

In recent years, it’s been a seller’s market for used cars, but prices are beginning to fall again, now that the new-car market is catching up with demand in the post-COVID era.

So there are generous savings to be had from buying a used car in 2024; a vehicle costing $45,000 when new six years ago could cost as little as $20,000 in today’s used-car market.

Used cars are not purchased by impoverished university students and pensioners alone – they’re also chosen by pragmatic buyers who can get all the comfort, safety, performance and economy they need at a much more affordable price.

And buyers are more concerned for the environment these days, which is another sound reason for buying a used car. It’s also why carsales’ Best Used Cars adds a new category for electric vehicles in 2024.

Best Used Cars for 2023 looked back at a range of vehicles from 2016, due to a year missed (2021) while much of the country was in lockdown during the COVID-19 scare.

For 2024, we’ve reset the date to six years ago, skipping the last year of local manufacturing by Holden and Toyota. Without Commodore and Aurion in the mix, we’ve scrubbed the former large car category in favour of the new category for used EVs.

Other than those changes, Best Used Cars for 2024 continues with the same format as before, mixing RedBook’s quantitative data with votes from judges (qualitative data) to arrive at a verdict that covers all bases.

The RedBook data comprises 50 per cent of the total score and the balance of 50 per cent derives from the five judges scoring each vehicle out of 10.

carsales’ Best Used Cars for 2024 – proudly presented by Bingle – bases its 10 categories on VFACTS market segments, although the small cars category embraces small, light and micro passenger-car segments; the off-road 4x4 category is spread across large and upper large SUV segments; dual-cab ute models can be either 4x2 or 4x4; and the new electric vehicle category includes two SUVs and three passenger cars varying in size from small to large.

Seven finalists are chosen in each category, although only five met the pre-requisites for selection in the electric vehicles category.

RedBook data is calculated from the flagship variant in each model range. The difference in price between flagship and mid-range models after six years will be negligible, but the flagship will typically be the more desirable vehicle.

This year’s Best Used Cars categories are:

Small passenger car
Medium passenger car
Small SUV
Medium SUV
Large SUV
Sports car
Luxury car
Electric vehicle
Dual-cab ute
Off-road 4X4

An aggregate of judges’ votes and RedBook data decides the winner in each category, and two ‘honourable mentions’ for second and third place.

The RedBook data ranks each vehicle according to ownership, safety, retained value and market appeal. Ownership is calculated from running costs over 15,000km for every year of motoring, including maintenance, registration and insurance.

Fuel is a factor too, of course, extrapolated from a fixed price per litre multiplied by the official combined-cycle fuel consumption. RedBook’s market appeal factor relies on a ‘demand and supply’ metric – how long a used car sits on the lot, on average, before selling.

The five judges are carsales managing editor Marton Pettendy, former technical editor Ken Gratton, RedBook data services director Ross Booth, carsales used-car buying expert Cliff Chambers and road test editor Scott Newman.

Over the several years carsales has conducted Best Used Cars, Mazda has consistently won in more categories than any other brand. In 2024, Mazda won three categories and took out three honourable mentions as well.

Hyundai and Toyota each snatched two wins and Toyota scored three honourable mentions to Hyundai’s two.

And that leads us to the 2024 carsales Best Used Cars, which are…