Are cars unaffordable?
Apparently, JD Vance thinks so.*
Not to go all anecdotal here, but in 1981, I bought my first car, a brand-new Mazda GLC hatchback, for $5770. In 2024 dollars, that’s $20,000. It had no radio, no air conditioning and no passenger-side sun visor.
I recently bought a 2013 Honda Fit four-door for $15,000, and it came loaded with features like a radio and CD player, cruise control, air conditioning, and front and side airbags. It even has driver- and passenger-side sun visors, giving me way more car for less money. After finding this great deal through one of the used car dealerships nova Scotia, I wanted to keep my new ride in top shape. So, I took it to a local shop like Cool Auto Detail for a professional cleaning, and they made the car look even better than when I first drove it off the lot!
Kevin Drum has a post with actual, you know, data. He plots the average cost of a new car as a percent of average household income and shows that the trendline has been flat for over 30 years.
JD Vance isn’t just weird, he’s unmoored from reality. While that makes him a good fit for the Trump ticket, he’s not the sort of Vice President America needs.
*What Vance actually said was “Thanks to Kamala Harris’s spending policies, the average new car costs nearly $50,000 a year.” Not only does an average new car not cost $50K/yr, but the VPOTUS does not set spending policies. If Biden committed a gaffe like that, there would be bleats all over the MSM that he should step down because of dementia.
Cars are not unaffordable in 2024
I did a quick search on Bing and got this…
How Much Does a New Car Cost Right Now? The average price for a new vehicle was $48,389 in May 2024 — just about the same as the revised price in April ($48,368), but about $442 lower than the year-over-year price.
Report: The Average Price of a New Vehicle
Seems like Mr. Vance’s comment, “…the average new car costs nearly $50,000 a year.” is pretty accurate. As for the spending policies of an administration, you may not have noticed because VPOTUS hasn’t been around much, but there is an election coming and this sort of rhetoric is quite common. Hope that help!
@Barry,
LOL! Vance is completely wrong and so are you. Your link does not show that the average price of a car is $48K *a year.* It shows that the average price of a car is $48K *this year.*
Not to put too fine a point on it, when I bought my first car in 1981, I paid $5770 that year. I didn’t pay $5770 a year for the entire time I owned the car.
Hope that helps!
As for the comment about the spending policies of the administration, you may not have noticed but the VPOTUS has *nothing* to do with the Biden Administration spending policies. And of course, budgets originate in Congress, not the White House. But this sort of nonsense is quite common from the Trump/Vance campaign.
Hope that helps!
Of course Vance is a deceiver; but car prices are not as benign as the chart shows, because the typical American does not have an average income. The typical American has a median income, which is considerably lower, because of the last several decades’ upward transfer of wealth and income;
A proper comparison would then require that you also find the median new car price. I could not find it. Of course, you would then also need to understand whether consumers have changed their behavior in retaining used cars.
I also note there are an increasing number of buyers increasing the cost of their pickups with a lift package. Is that part of price, or are third party packages out of the scope of the data. Given that it is clearly a choice, it seems to me it says something about affordability.
Arne:
Notably, the ones who never use a pickup for work and only transportation buy the lift or jacked-up vehicles which present a greater danger to pedestrians.
Am I being over-sensitive or do some people buy it because they know they will get a reaction from “the libs”.
Arne:
Most of these people buy such for macho reasoning. Look at me and my big truck. And I have a Tonka truck too! The toy maker did a huge disservice to the American male. Then too height or lack of other physical attributes (hair, looks, etc.) too. You can spot them a mile away with the ball cap on backwards, construction style shoes, Levi jeans or the other brands, etc. The vehicles are always loud, the tires oversized, and they are gas or diesel guzzlers. In Illinois they license them differently and you will end up with a B or C vehicle license as the state does not consider them to be for passenger transportation. They cause more damage to the roads and are noisy.
Notice me and my Big Wheels.
I like them in front of me so I can keep an eye on them. And they are very obliging in being so as they drive fast.
there are lots of things that are in new car prices that seem to be all but ignored. average sales prices include more than just the price of the vehicle, it includes add on options (extended warranty, nitrogen instead of air in the tries, and many more, course for some there is that market adjustment that added on, most of these are dealer add ons, and of course there is the delivery charge, plus sales taxes, tags, title more). course the OEM saw what dealers were doing (market adjustment were in some cases as high as the MSRP , so raised prices too. course that its to do when inventory was low (in some cases a dealer might have 10 vehicles on their lot, and cant get anymore. course one wonder why the banks etc financed these over priced vehicles that exceed the MSRP quite handily. today i think dealers think its just like it was in 2021, when if a customer wouldnt buy with as much extra fees etc, they would sell it to them, but wait to the next person to come along and buy. today their lots are full of gas pickups with $80,000+ prices, i think dealers will take a while to figure out that times have changed. if the dealers stay in business