Should you buy a car more than 10 years old?

Buying a used car rather than new is a practical necessity for many people, but at what point of the vehicle age curve do you jump in?

Naturally, we are not all looking to buy the exact same car with the same amount of money; some of us simply have a price range and will buy almost anything we like that hits that price sweet spot.

Most people will also have something more specific in mind that they either need or want, whether that’s a practical and economical hatch, an SUV, a sports car or a ute – or anything in between.

But for those who just want the best car they can get hold of for the money, aside from obvious things such as setting a budget, deciding on a specific type of car and seeking the lowest-kilometre example in the best condition, what else should you look for?

Well, have you considered how old the car is?

With used car prices increasingly rapidly in recent years, buyers have found themselves looking at older vehicles or adjusting their budget upwards.

Age can be an important factor for condition and longer-term reliability of a car, but it runs much deeper than that.

What’s more, the Australian car parc is already old by international standards, with the average age of passenger vehicles on our roads at 10.8 years, according to the most recent data published by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE).

Should you fight the tide and try to get something newer than that 10-year average marker?

Yes, definitely. And here’s why…

For starters, more recent cars are safer. While crash safety ratings started to be a noteworthy marketing tool from the early 2000s, it is really only in the past 10 years that comprehensive safety equipment has taken off.

There has not only been the inclusion of electronic stability control (ESC) as a mandatory requirement for all new passenger cars since 2013, but many other safety features have turned up even on the most basic new car.

Autonomous emergency braking (AEB) started to appear around 2009 with the Volvo XC60, but was soon found in many other cars as standard. It’ll also soon become mandatory in all new vehicles available for sale in Australia.

Other safety features to look out for include side curtain airbags, a reversing camera and, on more recent cars, lane departure warning and lane keep assist systems.

While there are exceptions, generally speaking newer cars also tend to be more fuel-efficient and pollute less.

What about that time-warp older car that has, for one reason or another, hardly been used and presents like new a decade or more after it left the assembly line?

Surely this sort of low-kilometre, barely-sat-in car is as good if not better than a newer one, at a fraction of the price?

If you are a collector or want the very best example of a classic, then obviously, yes, such a car is the pick of the litter.

But for a daily run-about, you will get more than you bargained for.

The fact is that a car deteriorates even if just sitting in a garage, unused (in fact, it deteriorates more if just sitting in a garage than being used regularly), and you will find stuff falling apart even on the most well-preserved older car.

Water pumps, drive belts, cam belts, brake seals and brake lines may need replacing. Even if the fluids have been changed regularly over the years (and often, given the car has been parked up, they’re usually not) you still have things like rubber seals and plastic or rubber trim that simply does not last.

Tyres are not designed to last much more than five years, even if they have plenty of tread left, as the rubber hardens and perishes. Although quite rare, circuit boards can have leaking capacitors, causing electronic malfunctions.

If the car has not been kept out of the weather in a carport or garage, then it will certainly be a faded and even a rusty version of its former self. In any case, recommissioning any car for regular commuting that has sat for a long while will involve much more than rinsing the dust off and pumping up the tyres.

Depreciation is the biggest cost of car ownership, but most of that depreciation happens early on. Generally, cars lose roughly half or more of their new value in the first five years.

So if you buy a car about five to 10 years old, it will be unlikely to depreciate as much as it did from when it was new to when you bought it. It is already worth half what it was when new.

With ever-longer new-car warranties being offered, you may even have a couple years of such warranty left when you take on ownership.

So buying a five-year-old car versus a 10-year-old version (depending on the make and model, of course) doesn’t have to mean you have to spend up big, and is arguably the value sweet spot for a used car.

That doesn’t mean all five-year-old cars are dirt-cheap or will cost nothing to run.

Firstly, you will need to do your due diligence and make sure that the car’s kilometres and service history are legitimate.

It makes sense to get it checked out by a professional before buying – a careless owner or less-than-honest reseller can do a lot of damage or make a big effort to hide it even in a car just five years old. RedBook Inspect is a good way to go.

Prestige cars, which tend to have more advanced features than more affordable cars when new, are still going to cost you a considerable slice of money even when they turn five.

A BMW 5 Series (G30), for example, was a $100K-plus proposition when brand-new, but is still going to set you back from around $50,000 when five years old for an example with nominal kilometres and in good condition.

Spare parts for older cars can be harder to find and more expensive

One of the problems with a fragmented car market, where there are so many brands competing, is that any one particular model of car is not likely to sell in great volume.

There are notable exceptions to this with popular models such as the Toyota RAV4 or Ford Ranger, but for many brands each model they sell is in the few thousands, if not only hundreds, per year.

There is nothing like the volume there used to be when there were fewer models of fewer brands; remember that in their heyday, Ford and Holden sold the Falcon and Commodore into six figures – per year.

What that means when buying a used car today is that spare parts can become increasingly expensive and difficult to find as a car gets much beyond 10 years old.

You might think that getting used parts is a good replacement alternative, but even here the lack of new-car volume for any one model generally means fewer wrecked cars to source used parts from.

Not many used parts yards are going to bother investing in a 15-to-20-year-old car for their inventory that is going to just sit there with hardly any call for used parts. Such cars quickly end up either in the crusher or in the hands of enthusiasts who have space to store them for spare parts for their own vehicles.

Then there is the matter of supply and cost of older second-hand cars. They are not necessarily cheap or freely available anymore.

If you have your heart set on a particular model that you remember owning a while ago, but is more than about 15-20 years old now, be prepared to be disappointed.

The used market seems flush with plenty of examples of a particular model, up to around 15 to 20 years, when many of them then seem to disappear, either to the wrecking yard or to collectors. Any that do turn up for sale are often expensive or very tired examples – or both.

The fact is that, generally speaking, the fresher from the factory floor a car is, the better it will be.

The sweet spot is often between five to 10 years old, but you should buy the newest car you can afford that suits your needs and budget.