I don’t know that you have to agree with typical consumer behavior to accept it as a reality, though. And resale value does matter to people who don’t drive cars into the ground, because trade-in value affects your purchasing power when you do decide to get a new one.

And even if you do keep cars indefinitely, it can still be an important consideration because it affects how things work out when you need to make an insurance claim. It means your car is both more likely to be declared a total loss and more likely to be worth less than what you still owe for it when it does get totaled.