If you haven't been car shopping in a while, brace yourself

[Bluetus]

29. FWIW, this report says the average new car costs 9 months wages

which is actually pretty consistent with history and down considerably from a year ago. That is mostly because for the first time in 40+ years, real wages for a broad swath of the American work force have gone up.

https://www.theautopian.com/the-average-new-car-now-costs-a-family-less-than-9-months-of-income-to-afford/

And one should also consider that cars last MUCH, MUCH longer than they did a generation ago. Every day, I see 15-year-old cars that look almost new and seem to have no mechanical problems. One of the more surprising cases to me are Saturn cars, a brand that GM shut down in 2009. I still see lots of them and they look great, probably because they used resilient plastic door panels and fenders. It is very ordinary for cars to last 150,000 - 200,000 miles without major repairs.

Part of the statistical anomaly here is that about 15% of the purchases are EVs or hybrids. They cost more, but there are but fuel savings over the useful life, so that distorts the "price of a new car" statistic.