We all know that buying a car is never an easy task. As I love to optimize everything in my life, I was thinking about a way to find a car that offers the best value/money ratio. Let’s see how I did it.
Let’s start by choosing some cars we want to compare. In my specific case, let’s say I’m interested in buying one of the following cars (I’ll limit my picks to only 5 for the sake of simplicity):
Having a list of cars we want, let’s find what is the price evolution over time (in euros) for each one.
But before we can plot a price history, for a better accuracy, we will consider the average of 5 samples for each car-age pair as follows:
Age | Sample1 | Sample2 | Sample3 | Sample4 | Sample5 | Average |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 34 500 | 29 999 | 26 030 | 31 746 | 32 000 | 30 855 |
2 | 15 800 | 22 700 | 17 500 | 22 700 | 19 990 | 19 738 |
3 | 14 500 | 10 400 | 13 325 | 16 590 | 10 599 | 13 082 |
4 | 6 999 | 11 850 | 12 650 | 9 200 | 10 600 | 10 259 |
5 | 10 450 | 8 699 | 10 799 | 8 900 | 10 300 | 9 829 |
10 | 5 550 | 4 250 | 6 350 | 5 600 | 6 100 | 5 570 |
20 | 405 | 1 237 | 1 500 | 2 100 | 900 | 1 228 |
We can see a high variation in the initial price of a Passat, mainly because of the many available customisations
Age | Sample1 | Sample2 | Sample3 | Sample4 | Sample5 | Average |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 29 700 | 18 990 | 19 170 | 20 870 | 16 800 | 21 214 |
2 | 11 390 | 9 950 | 15 400 | 17 000 | 11 390 | 13 026 |
3 | 9 800 | 10 950 | 12 000 | 10 680 | 9 990 | 10 684 |
4 | 8 400 | 9 780 | 7 700 | 9 300 | 11 990 | 9 434 |
5 | 7 999 | 10 000 | 8 750 | 8 000 | 7 590 | 8 467 |
10 | 2 450 | 3 900 | 5 360 | 4 390 | 3 490 | 3 918 |
20 | 1 400 | 652 | 900 | 1 100 | 950 | 1 000 |
The main variation in price is due to the available sport options.
Age | Sample1 | Sample2 | Sample3 | Sample4 | Sample5 | Average |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 35 130 | 26 470 | 32 200 | 30 140 | 28 231 | 30 434 |
2 | 18 500 | 19 800 | 26 950 | 16 650 | 18 490 | 20 078 |
3 | 18 000 | 16 490 | 20 500 | 18 499 | 14 900 | 17 677 |
4 | 16 000 | 9 890 | 12 000 | 11 499 | 15 999 | 13 077 |
5 | 9 700 | 9 950 | 12 100 | 9 700 | 10 800 | 10 450 |
10 | 4 200 | 5 950 | 5 100 | 6 700 | 7 500 | 5 890 |
20 | 1 250 | 500 | 2 500 | 1 200 | 1 500 | 1 390 |
Like the Passat, the A3 has lots of options to choose from, which leads to a higher variation in the initial price.
Age | Sample1 | Sample2 | Sample3 | Sample4 | Sample5 | Average |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 19 799 | 18 500 | 14 680 | 15 500 | 19 950 | 17 685 |
2 | 9 990 | 15 500 | 11 000 | 10 700 | 10 950 | 11 628 |
3 | 7 850 | 8 670 | 12 000 | 5 999 | 8 199 | 8 543 |
4 | 7 150 | 5 990 | 6 000 | 7 150 | 7 350 | 6 728 |
5 | 8 700 | 6 400 | 5 750 | 5 900 | 5 333 | 6 416 |
10 | 2 890 | 1 909 | 3 300 | 2 350 | 2 590 | 2 607 |
20 | 600 | 900 | 1 200 | 750 | 1 200 | 930 |
Having lesser options, the initial price of the Megane is pretty stable.
Age | Sample1 | Sample2 | Sample3 | Sample4 | Sample5 | Average |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 12 398 | 17 287 | 11 990 | 19 300 | 13 448 | 14 884 |
2 | 15 950 | 13 500 | 18 590 | 9 600 | 10 500 | 13 028 |
3 | 8 150 | 6 580 | 7 415 | 11 500 | 9 750 | 8 679 |
4 | 7 300 | 7 400 | 8 500 | 6 699 | 9 350 | 7 849 |
5 | 6 250 | 8 499 | 6 250 | 7 500 | 5 590 | 6 817 |
10 | 3 499 | 4 390 | 2 600 | 3 499 | 2 500 | 3 297 |
20 | 850 | 1 000 | 850 | 900 | 550 | 830 |
Like the Renaul Megane, The Opel Astra has a smaller initial price range.
Taking the averages for each car-age pair and putting them all together, we end up with the following table:
Age | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 10 | 20 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
VW Passat | 30 855 | 19 738 | 13 082 | 10 259 | 9 829 | 5 570 | 1 228 |
VW Golf | 21 214 | 13 026 | 10 684 | 9 434 | 8 467 | 3 918 | 1 000 |
Audi A3 | 30 434 | 20 078 | 17 677 | 13 077 | 10 450 | 5 890 | 1 390 |
Megane | 17 685 | 11 628 | 8 543 | 6 728 | 6 416 | 2 607 | 930 |
Astra | 14 884 | 13 028 | 8 679 | 7 849 | 6 817 | 3 297 | 830 |
Now, let’s plot this histogram in excel
Looking at the graph above, a few conclusions can be extracted: