Buying a year-old car usually means a big discount. Unless it’s a LandCruiser
Buying new or one year old? A year-old car typically saves you 14.8%, but a LandCruiser Prado saves under 1%. See where buying used really wins.
Chinese used cars are losing value faster than their rivals
Used cars from Chinese brands priced between $20,000 and $35,000 lost value nearly a third faster than other cars in the same price range over the past year. That creates an opportunity for buyers, but a tougher market for sellers. Here’s how much values have fallen and why the impact varies by model.
The cars bought new a few years ago are coming back
Most Chinese-brand cars entering the used-car market were bought new a few years ago and are now being sold by their first owners. Private sellers listed 2,142 of them in August, up 58% on a year earlier, compared with 13% growth across the wider market. That means the supply of used Chinese-brand cars is growing much faster than the overall market.
Much of that growth is coming from four- and five-year-old vehicles, with first-owner MG ZS and Haval Jolion models increasingly appearing for sale. Sellers listed 1,519 of these cars in August, up from 948 a year earlier.
Chinese-brand cars lost nearly a third more value than other cars at $20–35k
Chinese-brand cars are losing value faster than the rest of the market. In September 2026, the same used car from brands including MG, GWM Haval, BYD, Chery and LDV was worth 9.7% less than a year earlier. Across all used cars, excluding dealer demos, values fell by 6.5% over the same period.
Those figures compare what a car was listed for when it sold against the same make, model, age and kilometres a year earlier. Dealer demo cars, the near-new cars a dealer has registered and driven, are left out, so it's your car getting cheaper rather than a cheaper mix of cars on sale.
