CPO's are all I will look at for the wife and offspring. The warranty is just too good to pass up.
Yeah, with rare exception buying brand new is very hard to justify given the value of CPO. Lettering someone else take the initial depreciation hit while also getting a longer warranty, in some cases significantly longer.
Volvo’s current CPO warranty isn’t as good as it once was- an extends the the original 4yr/50k to 5yr/unlimited. This is a mild hybrid so those components are 8yr/100k. When we bought my wife’s CPO S60 I believe it was 7yr/100k.
It’s funny because one of the Boston area dealers had a “New” 2023 XC60 that was actually a loaner/demo with 6,000 miles. Not exactly “new” in my book but they can say that since it was never registered. They were asking $63k which was the MSRP in 2013. I asked for real price and they came back with $56,000 and then tried to shame me into being ungrateful for their generous offer. I sent them CPO listing with the same trim and options and similar mileage being listed around $50,0000. The salesperson tried to justify a $6000 difference by saying their car had 1000 less miles. For $56,000 I probably could probably get a new 2024 after negotiations.
The dealer I ended up working with was great. I think I negotiated a very good deal for myself. Having shopped around for some time and having records of past listing’s definitely helped.
I would have preferred the dark brown leather but I can’t be too picky buying CPO. I also would have liked the air suspension option but that’s a very rare option (I’ve seen 1 in the last couple months of looking) and in terms of long term ownership probably for the best not to have. Any car with it is 100% going to have problems at some point and it’s never cheap to fix.
I’d like to replace my wife’s car which is a 2013 S60 T6 AWD. It’s been a great car and doesn’t even have 100k but I’d like to have a car with modern amenities and safety systems (blind spot monitoring is basically it’s only modern safety tech). I tried to get her a new car a couple years ago but she’s not really a car person and thought it unnecessary to replace a perfectly good car.
We’re planning on hopefully starting a family in the near future so I do want to replace the S60. I really do like the new S60 but my wife will likely need something bigger. She might actually end up taking the XC60 but that might be too small too. Everyone I know with a kid though usually quickly finds their small SUV (ie X3, Rav4, Q5) too small for their first child and all the stuff they need to lug around.
Our friends were visiting us from out of town and had a rental Mazda CX-90. I’ve got to say, the products Mazda has been putting out lately are quite impressive. I think it competes better with premium vehicles like the MDX and XC90 than mainstream options like a Highlander or Pilot. But it has an inline 6 with RWD based AWD and surprisingly good handling which makes it feel more like a BMW SUV than the family hauler it is.
Back in college when my wife, at the time GF, had a Prius she would drive her parent’s 2002 Land Cruiser in the winter. She loved that thing. Maybe she’ll be interested in the new Land Cruiser / Lexus GX. I just think it’ll be a years before you can buy one without being on a waiting list and paying some crazy dealer markup.
. Even the center console screen interface used to be much better, before a stream of increasingly shitty updates.
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