>>605145778-10% applied to the scale of a typical car loan is still financial retardation. Imagine knowing you could get a guaranteed ROI of 8-10 tax-free for a period of years. Anybody not totally gamblerbrained would want to at least have that in their portfolio...
It's admittedly anecdotal; maybe someone who cares more could dig up some numbers. But in my life, people I've known who've gone for the mid-model toyota or honda for a few K have done as well as (or BETTER than) those who've bought new-off-lot as far as repairs go. Coworkers with a several-year-old turtle car drive (or get a tow) for dealer-only service and shell out thousands to keep their locked down rolling iphones on the road once stuff starts to go sideways.
I got a 25ish year-old yota for 1k and put about a day of work and maybe $500 of rockauto parts into it, road tripped it numerous times without issue... I know most people are going to refuse to learn anything about tools but again, if somebody offered you a way to make a few hundred dollars an hour tax-free, yada yada...
But I think the biggest thing is that, in the event that it utterly, absolutely shits the bed, I'm still so far ahead versus a financed new car it's almost immaterial. You'd have to have an incredible bad-luck run or really not know what you're looking at before buying shitboxes off craigslist even came close to the all up cost of financing new cars