>>510718766 (OP)It is, in fact, a giant scam.
You can buy an older used car for 2-3k and you might get a working, reliable vehicle.
You can buy a barely used car off of Carvana for like 10-12k and you can be fairly certain that it will be reliable. You could make a 5k down payment and only end up owing 5-6k in debt which, if you are financially smart you should be able to handle.
OR
You could buy a brand new car, cheapest of which is 20k-22k after tax and other bullshit, make a down payment that in the grand scheme of things is somewhat insignificant to your debt payment, have a warranty on the vehicle- guaranteeing reliability and continual use, but by the time you successfully pay the car off, you will be responsible for maintenance costs on that vehicle, like with any other.
Which deal sounds the best to you? Remember, if you buy a used car you can always demand that the seller allow your mechanic to look it over and perform a full diagnostic to let you know if it's worth buying or not, or if it has problems that you can get a quote for- use those problems to negotiate the price down even further. That is, if you want to deal with those problems upon purchase.
Suffice it to say, if you want a reliable vehicle you are going to need bare minimum 5k to throw away on it- between registration, inspection and diagnostic costs and possible mechanical issues that you'll need to have fixed, if you do go with an old car that somewhat passes inspection- with some issues. (Which is generally likely.)
New cars are a scam because of regulations, trade deals, dealership prices and being tied up with debt slavery profit generation model that banks and manufacturers use to keep cars selling.