If you like automatics (and I refuse to mess around with early 20th century technology, so I do) you can save even more by buying a modern year old car. Modern autos are computer controlled and the computer will not allow the engine or the driver to abuse the auto box, so by around 10 000 miles you know all the bugs are out, and that the transmission hasn’t been abused. With a manual, of course, one careless owner can wreck the expensive bits in a year.
The last car I bought was three years old and top of its range but had only 1300 miles on the clock and had been stored for two years because the owner died. I got it basically a little over half price, the only thing that went wrong was the battery (I should have replaced it because I know batteries react very badly to storage) and even that had the decency to fail in the garage.
The moral of course is do your research. But the potential savings from paying cash and knowing a bit of engineering are enormous.
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