Toyota Camry

There is no single mileage number that makes a used car a bad buy, but there is a useful baseline: American drivers average roughly 13,500 miles per year, so divide the odometer by the car's age and you know immediately whether it lived a normal life. The honest answer is that mileage stopped being the number that matters most.

A sleeper is a car with serious performance hiding under a completely unremarkable exterior. The classic formula is an economy car, family sedan, wagon, or even a minivan built to embarrass sports cars while looking like it is on its way to a dentist appointment. The whole point is that nothing warns you.

Stand in any new car dealership and do a slow scan of the lot. Then do the same thing at the dealership next door. The silhouettes blur together. The crossover proportions are interchangeable. The front ends all have versions of the same aggressive grille flanked by the same split headlight treatment. The colors are white, gray, silver, black, and maybe one brave soul in red. You couldn't tell a Nissan Rogue from a Hyundai Tucson from a Chevrolet Equinox at fifty yards and that's not an accident. It's the output of a specific set of industry forces that have been running in the same direction for twenty years...

The relationship between color and resale value is real, measurable, and counterintuitive enough that it's worth understanding before you make a decision you'll live with for several years.