$800 Monthly Car Payments Are Hurting Car Sales

WarOnPrivacy

https://archive.fo/TmUWf

999900000999

No one has any money. Expect more articles like this

bm3719

Maybe everyone shouldn't have a car anyway. Turn on the satellite layer in Google maps sometime, and you'll see how it's affected everything about how we organize society. Life for most humans is just sitting in various boxes only accessible by car, interspersed by car rides between them. 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.

prepend

It’s surprising to me how expensive cars are. There was the Covid spike, but prices have stayed high. I suppose the manufacturers understand demand enough, but I’ve had friends buy cars recently and they didn’t even consider new cars. $30k for a new Honda Covic seems off. $25k for a 10 year old civic seems even crazier.

bluefirebrand

Why have cars become so expensive? 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

jaybrendansmith

Cars are not expensive. A $60,000 car, when calculated for inflation, costs the same as a $30,000 care did in 2000. What's not kept up is wages, including the minimum wage, for most of America. Had the Epstein class allowed wages to grow alongside inflation, as had been done since 1950, nobody would be complaining about affordability.

dmitrygr

> Many new models come with parking sensors, forward-looking radar and cameras, and blind-spot monitoring. > 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

vcryan

Also, people not having money.

Shitty-kitty

The case they gave us to consider is a guy thinking of replacing a 2020 model? Jeez, and here I am thinking my 2012 still does everything I need it to do.

tzs

It should be noted that a significant reason that the average selling price (in constant dollars) is so much higher now ($50000 according to the article) than it was many years ago is that people are buying a higher percentage of large cars and/or luxury cars. 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 I bought a Honda Civic in 1989. According to the bls.gov inflation calculator the $25890 for a 2026 Civic LX would have been $9600 in 1989. The MSRP for an 89 Civic LX was ~$10200. 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.