Well I paid for it 20% of the price of new, 6 years old with 90k km on it. Even if I had to invest another 20k into it on repairs (which I wouldn't and I won't), its so much better value than new ones. After 1.5 years and 20k km, seems like aircon died (getting it fixed soon) but that's it.

I'd never buy a new car, price/value compared to used ones is ridiculously bad, not grokking who does that unless its like 1-5% of their annual salary. Even then its just throwing tons of money away. Electric cars seem to me much worse in this, hopefully this changes over time.

So no ultra expensive cars, you can have it for the price of really basic new cars (if I ignore maintenance but this can be managed by not using official repair shops, which is good idea anyway since they just love swapping whole expensive blocs instead of fixing actual problems). On top of massively better crash security, comfort, proper fun driving etc.

Because on average you'll pay the same in repairs or replacement compared to a more recent car. You got lucky, and that's ok. But the prices aren't completely made up. Your BMW costs a lot less, because the expected average time it will survive is low. Anecdote != data and all that.

On the other hand, having an ex-demo car from a dealer meant no silly markup and when the transmission fell apart after 4 years, I got it replaced for free instead of paying thousands to an independent shop. There are pros and cons.

(And yes, completely new cars have silly markup, but used ones with low mileage don't)