Do I need a PHD to understand the charts above?

 

This is a fantastic work! Need a lot of time to consume the info delivered. No wonder how much time you spent on this! Thanks bro.

 

Ah the joys of statistical analysis. Reminds me of 6sigma..

 

This is fantastic

 

Second read and still really interesting and informative. The question of course is what to do with the information in our own individual buying decisions. For me, as I said only half joking before, the purchase of a seasonal use sports car is highly emotional. On a mostly emotional level I want to drive a very low mileage car with all that goes along with that. I am willing to spend $ for that. So If I spend a few thousand dollars or more over a five to ten year period of time I am perfectly happy doing that. This confirms what I already suspected is the case.

But, it does seem pretty clear that if your focus is money you are better off buying a higher mileage car. This is not really a surprise. We all know that cars depreciate in value at a much higher rate when they are new than they do when they are old. This data transfers that concept to mileage to a vehicle that is no longer manufactured. Low mileage equals higher rate of depreciation. High mileage equals lower rate of depreciation.

I do wonder a bit about the impact that the use of actual sales prices for the data, (instead of asking prices), might have on the results. I suspect not much - but is there a way to test that?

 

There is no way to get selling prices I've seen. Even guys here delete the asking prices from their "for sale" posts and don't reveal what they were able to get for their car when they sold it. One guess is this is because they're embarrassed they got so little for their high asking price. We do hear of the occasional episode where some guy paid an exorbitant price which he reveals because it turned out to be a rip-off.

There is a "what'd you pay for your used S2000 thread" but the amount of data is insignificant and the geographic and time spread too wide.


-- Chuck

 

Very nice analysis and an interesting read. Thanks for putting that together! I enjoyed it.

While I was reading I was thinking a bit about seasonality and purchase prices. Prices surely have to be considerably higher in the spring than later in the year.

Also, I found it interesting that AP1 asking prices were so flat. I think there a few things coming into play there. My hunch is that with lower mileage 2000 model year cars, you're going to see some type of 'collector' markup applied to the asking price of those cars. People always tend to think that if they have the first model year of a fairly limited production car, that it should carry a considerable premium. Whether or not that is actually real, I don't know. In the case of the S2000, I think the '02's and '03's are considerably more attractive due to the array of improvements made to the car during those years. They're all small changes, but they add up to a better overall experience IMO. That said, I guess the overall scarcity of clean, low mileage AP1's makes people a little less picky. If you see an exceptionally clean one, you snag it...even if it doesn't have a glass rear window!

 

Wonder if there is much of a skew between s2ks on CL vs like autotrader or cars.com?

 

someone give this man a prize!!!

 

Each successive "Version" of the S2000 (in North America) was improved over the previous. Changes are well documented several places so need to list them here. These are, of course, unofficial names. If you're going to gut the car and make it into a race car most of the road improvements help little.

AP1V1: 2000-2001. (Includes the 1999-produced cars which have minor differences.)
AP1V2: 2002-2003.
AP2V1: 2004-2005
AP2V2: 2006-2007
Ap2V3: 2008-end of production.

-- Chuck