If I were on the market for a daily commuter car right now, I would consider buying a used car over a new car. This is really a no-brainer financially speaking. However, I feel this is more true than ever today, hear me out.
ICE Cars Have Matured
I feel we reached peak ICE 4-5 years ago. Any new modifications to the powertrain and mechanicals are mostly due to regulatory changes. For example, the 1.2-litre Kappa petrol engine that we see in many Hyundai cars has been in the market in some form or the other since 2010! The new 3-cylinder they use in the models is mostly a regulation-driven change. There was nothing inherently wrong with the previous 4-cylinder (Although it is a little underpowered to tug along a chubby 1.2 tonne 2017 i20 I tell you!)
Even if you look at enthusiast cars at the very top, downsizing is the name of the game. Kerb weights are going up and the cylinders are going down.
Transmission technology has also largely stayed the same. AMTs are relatively new, however they do not measure up to the smoothness of the DCTs, CVTs and torque converters that have been around much longer. Hence, from a powertrain perspective, there really isn’t much to write home about in the past few years.
This also means that spare parts will be abundant even if support for the particular car is stopped. That is the one advantage of going with vehicles which have high sales numbers.
But here’s the thing: this is usually the case. You don’t buy a new car because of a new powertrain or transmission. Design, technology and marketing have been mainly driving new car sales. However, even here, I feel we have reached maturity. Let us look at each factor.
Design
Back in 2017, I was in the market for a premium hatchback and ended up going with the Hyundai Elite i20. The little guy has been quite trusty till now and I still have it. However, take a look at the car now.
I could be biased here, but I certainly feel the Elite i20 looks like a car that could’ve launched today, design-wise. I’m not just talking about the i20, but a lot of the 2018-era cars still look relevant today. I’ll put some pictures here to jog your memory a bit here.
We’re talking about 6 years ago here, which is actually pretty much the oldest you would probably go when buying a used car.
Interiors/Tech
The interiors in cars have aged a little worse for sure. Cars of today prioritise the touchscreen and some ones come with digital driver displays and so on. Many interiors today have adopted the floating dash design for the touchscreen, which was not a thing a few years ago when they were trying to integrate a touchscreen into a previously designed dash.
That being said, many cars, especially the higher variants, started coming with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, and had decent displays to boot around 2018-2019.
Interiors are where I personally see the most progress in the past few years, especially with Hyundai cars. The 2020 Creta was a noticeable step up in interior quality from the legendary 2015 one, and the 2024 facelift has done even better. However, the higher variants of Creta have also become much more expensive. This leads me to tech.
The biggest new tech addition in cars is ADAS. Mahindra first started the race with the XUV700 in 2021 and soon the price at which you can buy ADAS kept trickling down. I’m still a little sceptical about ADAS as a whole on Indian roads, so it personally doesn’t make a big difference but you be the judge.
Moreover, most ADAS is restricted to the top end or the top 2 variants of the cars, which means you would have to pony up quite a bit to get those features, at which point you’re not in the market for something cost-effective!
I do have one counterpoint from an ageing perspective with these floating dash designs. When these touchscreens inevitably do become outdated, they’ll kinda be in your face. A good example of this is the 2018 Tata Harrier.
While the rest of the dash has aged very gracefully the touchscreen dates the car exactly to 2018, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Either way, the present convenience outweighs the future aesthetic, so we continue to get better-designed dashes centered around a large touchscreen display.
The COVID Effect
A couple of things. Firstly COVID meant that almost all cars sat idle, not collecting mileage for virtually an entire year. This means that the ODOs will all be a bit lesser compared to buying a 4 year old car from some other time frame. The reliability issues from not moving a car for so long should have worked themselves out by now, so as long as you do the due diligence, that shouldn’t be an issue.
Secondly, April of 2020 is when BS6 came through, meaning that cars purchased before that timeframe were cheaper. BS6 has not been kind to pricing, and we are footing the R&D required to make these engines pollute less. In fact, if you bought a BS4 car around 2019/2020, you could probably sell it at a low depreciation rate because newer cars have gotten that much more expensive!
Conclusion
2024/2025 is a transition period from ICE commuters to EV commuters. Engines are becoming too expensive for small cars, and EV parts are becoming cheaper than ever. The bigger segment cars are also affected by this, but not as much as smaller cars which operate on razor-thin margins. EVs from these transition periods also depreciate more because of how much the tech progresses in just a few years! So, until the equation fully shifts towards EVs, it’s probably better to stick with ICE cars in this segment.
The most significant change in the past 5 or so years in the sub Rs. 12 lakh segment has been with the A segment SUVs like Tata Punch, Hyundai Exter and now the Syros, or the newly sprung up coupe SUV segment, a bit higher up the price ladder.
Unless you’re in the market for those cars or are looking to buy an EV commuter, a used car is a good buy today. You should do your due diligence and figure out the service history, incident history, and so on. With used-car startups on the rise, the process of sourcing and buying a used car is also more straightforward. That being said, used cars miss the aura of buying a new car, getting the latest tech, newest designs and so on. So if that’s what you’re after, this might not be for you!