alt Hacker NewsYou've got the cause and effect backwards here. The average purchase price of a car in constant dollars is about double now because those are the only cars to purchase and the only group that can afford those cars are those who are affluent. In general the people who purchase new vehicles ironically are not the ones who own them. They consistently purchase new vehicles at a regular cadence.
The existence of some base model Honda Civic or similar doesn't imply you or anyone can actually buy one.
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>because those are the only cars to purchase and the only group that can afford those cars are those who are affluent
What is the basis for you to assume this and not, for example, the fact that people simply spend a bigger percentage of their earnings on cars now?
You can definitely buy the base model Civic that you see online. It was only during COVID that you couldn't due to inventory shortages.
>The existence of some base model Honda Civic or similar doesn't imply you or anyone can actually buy one.
There's a regulatory required number (it's not many) of those supper stripped down below the base model cars they have to make to advertise the "starting at price" so you can find them if you really try.
I know this because I know an old lady who (close to 20yr ago now) sought out the super base model of the.... wait for it.... first year of the CVT Nissan Altima! It didn't even have a radio.
It proved to be really reliable because it was well cared for and not driven hard, she gave it away to a nephew a year or so ago.
I wasn't talking about just base trims of the cheapest models.
For example in 1989 the Honda Accord ranged from $11.5-18.2k depending on trim. Converted to today's dollars using CPI that is $31-50k. Converted using the Social Security indexing factors [1] it is $38-60. The SSA indexing factors are probably better for comparing car affordability of infrequently purchased big tickets items.
The range of new Accord prices right now is $28-39k. They are all readily available. Honda lists 11, 20, 24, 12, 11, and 21 available nearby for the LX, SE, Sport Hybrid, EX-L Hybrid, Sport-L Hybrid, and Touring Hybrid trims.
The 1998 CR-V was $18.4-$21.1k. Converted using CPI that is $31-43k, and converted using SSA indexing it is $44-50k.
New CR-Vs today are $27-42k. (I'm omitting the $50k plug-in hydrogen fuel-cell model which is not readily available). They are all readily available, with Honda listing 15, 50, 48, 118, 49, 96, and 84 of the LX, EX, Sport Hybrid, EX-L, TrailSport Hybrid, Sport-L Hybrid, and Sport Touring Hybrid nearby.
[1] These are what the Social Security Administration uses for normalizing across years when computing total contribution amounts. This is based on the mean annual salary.