Here Are All the Best Used Cars You Can Buy

Based on reliability, resale, and safety, iseecars.com breaks down the best buys for every segment. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of Hondas and Toyotas here.

Right now is a great time to sell a used car, not a great to buy one. That’s because chip shortages, COVID plant closings, and the resulting pent-up buyer demand have all combined to see used car prices and availability skyrocket.

“In a four-week period that we just ended two weeks ago… the new car inventory, on average, across all types of models and all dealers, dropped 16.6%,” said iseecars.com executive analyst Karl Brauer. “So in one month, we lost almost 17% of the new car inventory. If it did that three more months there would basically be no new cars on dealership lots at all.” 

Which has a direct effect on the used car market:. “As new cars go, so go used cars,” said Brauer. “When there aren’t any new cars to buy, because of chip shortages, people don’t go buy new cars, they keep their old car, which means there aren’t any used cars to buy because you don’t get used cars till people give them up for a new car.”

So if you are in the market to buy a used car right now, it makes even more sense now to research a little and make sure you get a good one. And how do you determine that? The people at iseecars.com sift through almost 12 million used-car trade-ins and cars returned at the ends of leases to see which ones are the best among the millions of cars that trade hands in a given year. “The winners are cars that have demonstrated long-term reliability, hold their value the best, and have the highest average safety ratings from the National Highway Transit Safety Administration (NHTSA),” the company said.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a36455247/best-used-cars-by-category/