Buy Old or Buy new?
I know this is kicked about a lot, but has anyone actually done some figures to compare buying new as against old? I mean the whole spectrum of expenditure, including depreciation and cost of use. What promptd this is seeing a Mooney for sale at £30k! Ok, it is 1966 vintage but that means nothing really with relatively low airframe hours and good maintenance. It occurs to me that the only advantage of a new aircraft is low operating costs (if diesel or it runs on mogas) but you tend to have high depreciation.
It seems to me that you could buy cheap, spend £30 or £40k on repaint, new avionics etc and still have an aircraft which in absolute terms will cost you far less in total over a period of ownership than buying new or nearly new (unless you fly huge amounts per year). Is an old Astec cheaper in the long run than a nearly new TB20, for example.
This is all a gut feeling and unsupported by actual figures. It would be interesting to hear from those who have done one or either or both and know what the actual figures come out at. Some views of course already expressed here.