Looking for an econo box ?
 

Here something interesting. The top depreciating cars on the road.
A couple of them are high gas mileage Kia's and Suzuki's.
I had a Suzuki Aerio rental for a few days and it wasn't a bad little car.

From the article;
Take Kia Motors' popular value-priced Sedona minivan, which tops our list of value-losing vehicles. It comes with an industry-leading 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty and has earned the Insurance Highway Institute's "Top Safety Pick" tag in the minivan category for the past three years.

But after five years of ownership, the Sedona retains an estimated 20% of its value. That works out to about $4,280 when using the base MSRP of $21,420 for a basic, entry-level Sedona. That's about $3,000 less than Edmunds.com's projected $7,101 true cost of ownership during year five. (Edmunds.com projects true cost of ownership data for all vehicles.)

Suzuki is also working to boost its brand image. Three Suzuki vehicles made the value-losing list: the Reno, the Forenza and the Aerio, which was discontinued at the end of the 2007 model year. Its replacement is the 2008 SX4. The Reno and Forenza are projected to retain 25% of their original value; the Aerio 26%.

ten-cars-that-lose-value-fast

even before reading the article, my thought was that perception plays a major role.

buying new or getting that fantastic used price, a vehicle that depreciates at an accelerated rate means nothing if the owner intends to keep it for the life of the car. the trick is to research and/or find one that is going to be reliable.

i've had great success buying used GM cars in the past, which obviously lose value more rapidly than many imports. currently i own a mostly toyota parts chevy prizm, so we'll see how that goes. again it's perception--the prizm sells for less than its twin, the corolla.

don't forget about cost of ownership...
buying price, fuel economy, price of parts, etc

certainly someone like theclencher puts to shame many(most?) import owners with his "depreciated" ford, in relation to cost/mile.

I had a similar thought the other day when I was browsing craigslist.org.
If I searched for a Civic and limited the price to $4k to $6k, I'd get a list of cars from 1992 to 1997, approximately. If I searched for a Mirage at $4k to $6k I'd find most were from 1995 to 2000. Mileage of those cars kept up with their age.

It's to bad there isn't a good way to figure out the cost of ownership of vehicles before you buy them, my family has always kept track of that kind of stuff when I was little, so I do with my own vehicles, I think I'm down to nearly 21 cents per mile with 8 cents per mile being the cost of gas, a friend of mine just bought a Kia Sportage (I think) that it turns out needs a timing belt every 50,000 miles, compare that to the civic at 100,000 miles, sure that is only one thing, but they all add up.

The key thing with purchase is keeping regular maintenance up to date. This will increase the life expectancy of the car in almost every case by 50%! Vehicles of all kind will depreciate more this year because of the fact of the return leases coming due; over 550,000 lease returns in Canada alone in 2008 is predicted!