We recently sold our 2003 Accord. While this wasn’t the best time to be selling a car, we didn’t need this one anymore, and soon one with the steering wheel on the other side will be a lot more useful. Anyway, the depreciation on the Accord seemed a little high to me, so I compared it to some of the other cars we were considering at the time.

It was July 2006, gas was around $3.00 a gallon and we were looking for a new car. The Honda Civic and Fit were on the list, but due to high fuel costs and their recent release, both were quite popular and hard to find. Aside from these two, we were also looking at 4-cylinder Accords. The 4-cylinder Accord with an automatic was surprisingly shockingly lethargic, so we drove a V6. And, that is how we went from considering a 109 hp Fit to buying a 240 hp Accord V6.

Now it is three years later. How would we have done with the Fit or a Civic? Well, I took the rough sale price of the Accord and compared it to the other cars we considered. The current value of the other cars was determined using the Kelly Blue Book value with the mileage from the Accord and an average of the ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ conditions. Here are the results:

Honda Depreciation, 2006-2009 (USD)

It appears as though the Fit would have been the best purchase as it had the smallest initial purchase price and the least amount of depreciation. The Civic followed the Fit, and then our Accord and finally the then-new Accord. One caveat is that our Accord was purchased as a ‘Certified Used’ car and was on the high end of what it should have cost in 2006. Was paying for a certified car a good idea? Maybe. While the Accord had exactly zero problems during the three years we owned it, I would have expected the same from a lowly un-certified Accord.

What is my conclusion? I’m not sure. It is clear that the then-new Accord would have been the most expensive to own, and the 2003 we bought was a better buy. The comparison between the Accord and the Civic and Fit is a bit murky. Objectively, the Fit would certainly have been the cheapest to own. While I’ve read good things about the Fit Sport with a manual transmission, something about an automatic and 109 hp does not sound appealing. Having suffered an automatic transmission these last three years, I am glad we had the V6 instead of the four-cylinder options. I suppose ones tolerance of automatic transmissions would determine if that extra $3-6k of depreciation was worth it.

As luck would have it, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) recently compared the Accord and Fit. While thier creiteria are a little different, they are of the opinion that the Accord is the right choice.