Rass, I am not sure buying something that devalues so quickly can be called a reasonable fiscal attitude.
If you have cash and want to dump it into something, buy a Charger and put it in cold storage. With the economy very few will sell, and their resale will remain high as an instant collector car. Sort of like the 03-04 Cobra which still commands $22K.
There is value in having a new car other than fiscal. I do mostly agree with what you are saying. I was very tempted to buy a new car because of the bad economy and looking to snatch a deal that would be better than buying used. Doesn't exist with cars that are decent. All dealerships are down 30-40% but they don't want to cut some deals just to keep in business.
End result, I'm going to buy a 4-5 year old car with 80k miles like I initially thought I was going to and be done with the whole thing. Then sell the car in a year or two at a minimal loss since I put very little miles on cars(especially with split duty on the moto). The issue is all the cars I want to buy are "summer" cars and I need a winter car. I might have to be a faggot and buy a used WRX. I just don't trust those vehicles in used form. To me they will come beat and bruised and they were already fragile to begin with. I have no desire to fit broken drive train parts on a 4-5 year old DD. I'll probably end up a ghetto Whitey getting an older V6 Accord Coupe. I like them a lot, but I kind of want a HB for road trips. I have a strong desire to see more of America and HBs are much better for the job.
One of the '06+ with the 2.5, they seem to have most of their problems fixed. I still wouldn't try to do burnouts on dry concrete in one but they hold together pretty well. You might try to get a repo for less than NADA trade in (what the bank loans on) and fix the one or five things that are always wrong with repos for a sum total of less than trade-in. Then you drive it for a couple years and sell it for a break even price.
The last hawkeye I tuned had phantom knock from the exhaust being bent so it rattled against the chassis (very common, causes the vehicle to run like shit under boost, great way to buy a car "that has something bad wrong with it OMG!!1!"), the owner said "I think it happened yesterday, I took the car off some jumps." It has 50K miles, dirty, mud everywhere underhood. I suspect the oil has been changed twice, three times tops. If that sort of person can't break the damn thing then Subaru's priduct quality has improved.