Subject: No more affordable cars
Steve, you have been saying this for a long time.

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...


Where Did All the Affordable Cars Go?
By Clifford Winston, The New York Times, April 12, 2026

...
The average transaction price for a new car now sits around $50,000. In December, it became just about impossible to find one for less than $20,000....

For anyone on a budget, an aging car is a trap. Auto repair costs jumped 15 percent in the last year alone, driven by the complexity of modern sensors and labor shortages. An average trip to the mechanic now costs roughly $840, an amount that around 40 percent of Americans likely could not cover with cash they have on hand. When faced with a costly repair, many are forced to choose between paying to fix their vehicle or making their loan payment. Little wonder then that repossessions — the extreme outcome of the modern automobile affordability crisis — roughly doubled in the last five years and are projected to surpass three million by the end of 2026, echoing the peak of the Great Recession....

The death of the econobox has eroded the independence that used to define American life, leaving motorists in a state of permanent financial and mechanical dependency....

While hourly compensation for the typical worker remained nearly stagnant [since the 1970s], massive stock market bull runs and rising home equity have enriched the most affluent households. Today, there are so many wealthy people who can afford luxury cars that it simply isn’t that profitable for companies to produce cars for the bottom 40 percent of Americans by income....[end quote]

This is a free-trade article that urges dropping tariffs and letting inexpensive, sometimes superior quality, Chinese and other cars into the U.S. at affordable price points. If that happens the marketplace will see the adjustment that happened in the 1980s when reliable, cheap Japanese cars began to erode the U.S. automakers' lock on the U.S. market.

Wendy