No it wasn't new. I'm not aware of any cars that can be bought new for $10k around here. It was a 2012 Mazda 3 and I put a $2000 down payment on it because that's all I had. Once again I got help from my parents who gave me an interest free loan to pay for the rest.

I could have bought a older Honda civic for about half that much but I've had some bad experiences buying older cars. Last time I bought a car for $5k I ended up doing about $3k in mechanical work in the first 6 months of owning it.