If today you are buying something equivalent to what you would have bought in the past there is a good chance you will be paying a similar amount in constant dollars.
The article links to a site that gives a list of the cheapest new cars right now. Here they are. These all include the destination charge.
1. 2026 Hyundai Venue SE: $22,150
2. 2026 Chevrolet Trax LS: $23,495
3. 2026 Kia K4 LX: $23,535
4. 2026 Nissan Sentra S: $23,845
5. 2026 Hyundai Elantra SE: $23,870
6. 2026 Toyota Corolla LE: $24,120
7. 2026 Volkswagen Jetta S: $25,270
8. 2026 Mazda3 2.5 S: $25,785
9. 2026 Honda Civic LX: $25,890
10. 2026 Buick Envista Preferred: $26,495
Guess what the average selling price of a new car was in 1989? $12000, which using the bls.gov calculator would be around $32000 today. In 1989 a car like the Civic was a lot closer to what the average car buyer bought than it is today.
Note: the bls.gov inflation calculator is based on the consumer price index. It might be better to compare using the Social Security index factors, which is what the Social Security Administration uses to normalize earnings from different years when calculation benefits. Using SS index factors $25890 today would be $7450 in 1989.
I've done similar calculations for my 2006 Honda CR-V with similar results. Same for the Sentra I had before the Civic.
Considering how much more safety and driver assist features are in these cars compared to the same models from even only 10 years ago, the price being nearly the same in constant dollars is actually great remarkable.
For those of us who prefer cars that are just big enough for our actual passenger/cargo carrying needs or big enough to not feel cramped (whichever is larger) the last 40+ years have been great. We pay about the same in constant dollars or a little less each time we get a new car, and it has better fuel efficiency, better safety, and better driver assist.
At least my country, the issue is with used car prices. The first car i bought, i bought for 300€ (+200€ of repair i knew about beforehand), in a garage, around 2010. If i want to buy a car in a garage (not using the craiglist equivalent), the minimum i have to pay is 4k, and 1k of repairs. The inflation in europe is _not_ close to x10 in 15 year. Even if i use the local craiglist, the first option i have is a car that can't start at 1.3k (it's a nice model though, easily 12k if it worked).
I can easily afford to buy a 22k new car, so i'm not the one who really suffer from it (i need cargo space for my windurf, and i got it), but for those who are still working minimum wage jobs, and need a car to go to that job, you can't bet on a 5k car. You will either have to go to a very basic new car (9-10k) or a 6-7k used car that you're sure don't need any work for the next 15 months (so that you will have finished paying your car before you have to pay for fixing stuff).
I bought my first new car in 1989, a Camaro with T-Tops and it cost me, $12,250.
There is more technology in modern cars, but the cost of tech always trends down in constant dollars. (See cost per megabyte/megahertz/whatever for example)
And while there is more size in modern cars, the build quality is worse.
So those are two downward forces combining on car prices.
$30k for a new Honda Covic seems off. $25k for a 10 year old civic seems even crazier.
It had more margin and manufacturer squeezed it to keep prices. If you want to see real prices look at cheapest cars. Those are no-margin. And that is why their prices are up.
This is not “an excuse”. I literally was in meetings where these cameras and extra compute were priced out in $pastJob. More cameras means more wires. More power supplies. More compute means higher end MCUs which are already very not cheap when it comes to automotive parts. More power supplies for the higher-end compute. Per-unit licensing costs for vendors’ algos to implement EAB and the like. Etc…
At $25k total it had less margin than most of the domestic SUV market. People talked about safety or extra (i.e. less) cargo space or off-road capacity but that was the rationalization for all of the other frills built in to the trendy models. No-frills cars still exist, still pass safety tests, and cost literally half of the average MSRP. Safety features aren’t free but they’re not driving prices anywhere near as much as people claim: it’s just convenient to say that you’re broke because the big bad safety regulators forced you to buy the leather seats, integrated TVs, etc.
Sides you show up on my site in a brand new truck, I expect your prices to reflect that, and I'll be looking at your competition. Other equipment is a different story, but a truck yeah no.
> While those devices make driving safer, they also raise the cost of repairing cars.
I love the passive tense, as if all those things just happened, in a vacuum, not as if politicians we voted for mandated all of that, despite warnings of costs it would incur
My understanding is that the used car market was gutted by "cash for clunkers" style government programs
Used to be more used cars on lots, so used cars were more affordable
May not be the whole story but it seems likely it played a part
Per google it was started in 2009, which means any car worth less than $5k around 17 years ago isn't materially impacting new or used car prices today.
I could have sworn the cash for clunkers thing was much more recent. Thank you for the correction
We're a species of motile organisms. Not only do we have legs, to not use them is actively unhealthy. If we're going to just sit in chairs all the time, we might as well get rid of all this useless leg biomass and redesign our houses and offices accordingly.
It's worse than this though, because that's just the physical dimension to our existence. The car is a mediating apparatus that alienates man from his social field. Man is a social animal, and needs sociality to maintain mental stability. If there's always a car between you and members of your own species, intersubjective experiences will simply occur less, which is exactly what happened when everyone got one.
And a hundred years ago life for most humans was just sitting in various boxes only accessible by walking, or horse if they were rich enough, and there were far fewer boxes to choose from.
There isn't always a car between members of our species and intersubjective experiences happen more often than they did prior to mass transit because cars allow for greater range and more efficient travel, and thus access to more people and more experiences.
There are entire cultures that have developed around cars and car ownership that facilitate bonding and community between individuals.
I'm all for reducing automobile usage and creating more walkable environments but the premise that cars primarily serve to alienate and isolate people seems wrong on its face.
The car casts every social group that temporarily forms to the wind. When you go visit your distant relative 3 hrs away, you only have that genetic connection left. You've lost the multiplicity that would've existed otherwise. The car gives, sure. That's why we ended up with them. But it also took away, and some of those costs were secondary, transitive, or hidden.
Both locations have cars.
Exceptions in both locations prove some rules.