I've never owned a new car, all of the vehicles I've ever owned have been used.
The best car I ever owned was my first, a 1970 Volkswagen beetle. Cheap on fuel, cheap on parts and most repairs I could do myself. Even tuned it, I didn't own a set of feeler gauges so I set the points gap with my credit card and it ran perfectly.
I'd be driving it still had not some character in a ute (pick-up) ignored a STOP sign and T-boned me. That made the little car very unhappy, fire-fighters had to cut me out of it.
My first brand new car was a midnight blue 1968 Plymouth Roadrunner with a three-speed Torqflite automatic. I still have fond and happy memories of that car. :)
My first 4-wheeled car, after a motocycle then a curious three-wheeler car powered by a modified bike engine, was a VW 'Beetle'. Second-hand.
Everything I have owned since, including my present Renault Kangoo, was "pre-owned" as the posh folk and second-hand car dealers say.
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Oh, and like Slartibartfast, yes, I've used improvised feeler-gauges (usually a piece of cardboard) to re-set the points - but at the roadside after using a kerbstone to rub down the little spike that would form on one of them. The temporary repair was enough to get me home, where I did have proper gauges.
Actually I found an old plastic card "feeler-gauge" ideal not so long ago, not on a car but on a magnetic measuring system on a workshop machine. I had to set the gap between the magnetic strip and read-head quite accurately, and the card was both the correct thickness and non-magnetic.
Slartibartfast 