Canada

I went on a rampage in 2019 about SUV costs, the zero miles we put on it, and the pain in the ass that thing was to wedge into my microscopic parking spot downtown at my last job, so I bought a sports car. About 3.5 microseconds after buying the sports car my wife was like I'm pregnant (and she also sucks at driving stick, but moot point). So we got her a barely used Cruze, and we got a pretty good cash deal on it. Happy wife, car actually has a ton of room and she didn't have to wedge a kid and stroller into a sports car, and all is good. It's been a great problem free car these past few years too, but I don't think she's even put 30k on it total.

So yeah, like 2.4 seconds before COVID, we bailed out of our teeny tiny DINK-dweller condo and now live in the burbs. We don't get great snow plowing, so we usually have a few days or even a week where the cars are buried in the garage and I can't get them out because they'll get stuck, which means the kids are staying home. We both work from home now, and I don't even drive my car in the winter anymore, and my wife is like I want an SUV again. Basically, I can't bitch about having to park it downtown, and who cares about the fuel milage it gets, because we barely will drive it anywhere. We have kids plural now, and I mean, I get the appeal. Our latest compromise is a small truck, because I'm also sick of having to try and get 4x6s home from Home Depot in teeny tiny cars, and having to mount bikes, on a damn Cruze. We've acquired a great hatrid of roof racks for my (our) bikes, and all the noise that comes from them, so I've become excited about being able to have a hitch rack again, or even just filing my bikes into the back of a pickup.

But now we are in this scenario, of what do we sell the Cruze for? The comps are bananas, like they are averaging about $8-12k more than we paid, with more milage. Now I'm not necessarily expecting we are going to get that, like that's asking, but that's the comparables. Every time she gets an oil change, my phone literally rings off the hook for a month afterwards. The place we bought it from offered $3k more than we paid for it last month, and I wouldn't sell it to them because they know what I paid, but that sets a theoretical floor. Basically I'm hoping for 6-8k more than we paid for it at a dealer, and if I go it alone, I'd probably ask closer to 8-10k more. It's such a friggin bizzare situation.

Ah, from Google (and the MSRP), now it's $20k on their site directly. See: https://blog.clutch.ca/posts/6-cheapest-new-cars-in-canada

There are cheaper options actually. My Kia Rio cost 14k€ (and that was with a deal) back in 2015. So it's not that far off I guess. But that was actually the new price, with navigation, camera for driving backwards and so on with 7 years warranty on top.

Prices suck of course, but on the low end they are still affordable. Mid-tier is probably a lot of leasing (as you'd have to spend a big chunk of life savings on a direct buy) and high tier is only for rich assholes (or company cars).