re: How bad of an idea is it to buy a new car?

My experience has been that high end luxury used cars have depreciated as a percent of value a lot more than "regular" cars.

You can get a lot more bells and whistles for the buck used rather than new.

That said we tend to buy new or barely used and drive them to 200K or more.

For example we once bought an expedition for my wife that was two years old and only had 25000 miles. Looked new detailed. We paid about $10k less than a comparable new one and never had a problem. We put 175K miles on it and I still see it around town now 5 years after we owned it.