The Average $10,000-$15,000 Used Car Now Has Almost 100,000 Miles
The Drive ·
It's not just new cars. Used cars are becoming less affordable, too. The post The Average $10,000-$15,000 Used Car Now Has Almost 100,000 Miles appeared first on The Drive .
Like seemingly everything else in this age of tariffs and other geopolitical crises, new cars are getting expensive . Transaction prices reached an average of $50,000 late last year and have hovered there since. And according to a recent study, those looking for relief on the used car market are increasingly out of luck.
Published by Edmunds , the study found that truly affordable used cars are becoming rarer, forcing budget-conscious shoppers into older cars with higher mileage. Researchers found that used cars priced between $10,000 and $15,000 today are almost nine years old on average, with approximately 98,000 miles. It’s true that the average age of cars on U.S. roads has crept up , but that’s still four years older than the average $10,000-$15,000 used car in 2019, with 40,000 more miles.
This is the result of what Edmunds aptly calls a “striking” shift in the used-car market. In the second quarter of 2019, used cars sold for under $20,000 accounted for 55.2% of that market, but that shrank to 31.8% in Q2 2026. The share of cars sold for under $15,000 went from 31.6% in 2019 to 17.8% in 2026. Meanwhile, the share of used cars sold for $50,000 or more nearly quadrupled from 2.3% in 2019 to 8.3% in 2026.
This shift is being enabled by strong demand for used cars—even at higher prices. According to Edmunds , the average transaction price of a three-year-old used car in the second quarter of 2026 was $32,461. That was a record high for Q2, up 4% from the same time last year and 15.5% from Q2 2021, when pandemic-related supply constraints began to artificially raise used-car prices. Yet three-year-old used cars sold just as quickly in Q2 2026 as they did in Q2 2025, averaging 38 days on dealer lots in both quarters. Dwell time on lots is a key industry metric of sales pace.
As Edmunds notes, prices for used cars have been increasing steadily since the pandemic thanks to a drought of used inventory. That’s likely to continue to be a problem for used-car shoppers, as even the relatively short production stoppages necessitated by the pandemic meant lots of cars were never built, leaving a smaller pool of used ones.
The unchanged sales pace of three-year-old used cars shows that shoppers aren’t balking at higher prices. Given the current situation, it would admittedly seem naive to expect used-car prices to drop soon. Shoppers haven’t reached a breaking point… yet.
The post The Average $10,000-$15,000 Used Car Now Has Almost 100,000 Miles appeared first on The Drive .