The $25k car is going extinct?

One fact not mentioned in the article - Americans now owe $1.64 trillion in auto loans, and cars make up 9% of all consumer debt in the country. In fact we now owe more on cars than student loans. The average loan term is rising - almost 6 years now. 60-day delinquency on auto loans is at 6.6%, the highest ever recorded, and is as high as 9% in some states.

So while car prices keep going up, people also keep going deeper into debt to buy one they can't afford.

You can blame manufacturers or banks, but ultimately the problem is unchecked consumerism and treating cars as a status symbol, which is sadly pervasive in this country.

As if the car was ever only a utilitarian commodity at any point in its history. The car has always been a status symbol.

When, as the article says, the $25k car is going extinct, I do blame manufacturers and banks (and the dealerships).

Occasionally see pizza delivery signs atop super duty trucks where I live.

> problem is unchecked consumerism

Problem is if the US consumer had the “moral awakening” you propose (and to be clear you are claiming that basically we are in this situation due to the weak moral character of the average American) then coincidentally our entire economy would begin to crumble. It’s not just car loans, our entire economy works because of debt, and has for at least the last 20 years. The idea that nearly every one benefits financially from this behavior and yet we see this behavior at scale solely and coincidentally because of a sudden mass moral failing is a bit hard to believe.

Sure, status is a factor. But for people who do a lot of driving, having a nice car really benefits their quality of life. No one wants to spend hours every day in a miserable little penalty box.

This is very subjective. The cars people today call a "little penalty box" are easily equivalent or better to many of the luxury cars of the 1990s. Bluetooth, AC, ABS, backup camera. There's almost nothing that isn't required / standard. Plus they tend to be the efficient 35+ mpg cars.

I disagree relatively wholeheartedly. Beyond some absolute basic comforts (that I would argue have been well catered to in the last 25-odd years), it's mindset. Unfortunately mindset has a fair percentage of 'status' wrapped up in it.

Almost all cars have turbos, all have abs/airbags/cameras... even counting the seat foam & covers, wheels, door cars... how cheap do you think a vehicle safe and comfortable for humans can be?

The average car has tons of moving parts that have to be weatherproof, shakeproof, pothole-ready... stuff consumer tech doesn't dream of. It also has to be repairable, be engineered to meet all the regulations in various countries so the manufacturer doesn't make 15 versions for different countries...

A lot of things are overpriced in the world; I'm not sure cars in general are high on this list. If you want a car similar to a high end 2015 car, the 2025 Jetta has more than anything you could have gotten in 2015 and I'd say with inflation the price is lower today when you account for inflation.

I had a Jetta as a service loaner recently and it drove great. $25k cars are still out there, you just can't get a $25k 4Runner.

Well said, but I would add that it seems reasonable if we take debt too far, it will indeed crumble.

I'm not sure we didn't pass that point before the pandemic, and decision-making since has not helped.

Almost all cars have turbos since that's about the only way to get similar performance out a sub-1L three-cylinder engine that you could get from a cheap, naturally aspirated 1.6L iron block back in the 90's. Emission and safety standards are nice, but the customer pays for it.

Price of vehicle seems to have little bearing on the comfort of driving anymore, other than if you're tall and being shoved into something small like a Yaris (although at 6'4" my Saturn S-series wasn't bad at all). Cars seem to keep getting more aggravating to sit in, not less, and doubly so for "premium" stuff people like to buy. Manufacturers keep jamming what feel like racing seats into everything (everything has to have "racing" parts) and other things that make no sense at all for the task at hand, like enormous wheels with rubber band tires. It was way easier and more comfortable to log huge miles on older stuff like 90s and early 00's Chevy trucks (even the S10s) or a regular old Impala or Saturn as they were way, way more comfortable and not a persistent bloated irritation to drive.

Cars must be the textbook case of Stockholm syndrome. People keep buying Audi/BMW/Mercedes and European cars in general for god knows what reason (even though when they inevitably need service, it is always an expensive nightmare, among other big problems), they buy stuff that is functionally useless and stupid looking like CUVs (many of which which have less interior room than a Camry, burn more fuel and still ride and drive like ass), and have caused the market for full size body on frame trucks to turn completely on its head (hard to find anything other than pavement queen king ranch doodoo trucks that will cost you at least your first born son). This whole "it's shit if I don't pay a huge premium, and it's shit if it's not huge and loaded to the gills with useless shit you're never actually going to miss or use but will cost a small country's GDP to even flash to pair up when you need to R&R" is something that's probably one of life's great mysteries to me.

In the rural midwest, it's extremely common to see dumpy trailers with one or two 75k new super duties parked outside.

I don't get it at all, and thought "well, maybe they didn't have a choice and needed it for work?" before realizing any old used truck would probably work as well(if not better).

I have to say it's a status symbol, a weird one at that. I'm more in awe of rat rods and fixed up old trucks than brand new ones, YMMV I guess.

There's a rural mindset some have that looks outside at the world not inside at the house.

A dumpy trailer where you sleep is fine as long as you have .. a good horse, freedom to roam, a powerful truck to tow horses, .. etc.

eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHJFfSmnCnY prefer the sky and land to a good house in the city.

> cheap, naturally aspirated 1.6L iron block back in the 90's

VW sold the 2.0L naturally aspirated engine that made about 115 horsies and got a whopping low-30s mpg on the highway until 2015 in the base model US Jetta.

The same engine I had in my 1993 Jetta. Legitimately available since the 70s.

Thank goodness regulations forced that engine off the market. The only upside was it had decent torque... it wasn't even reliable after all those years!

Plenty of tech, but are the seats as comfortable?

Exactly. Same reason Europe hung onto manuals so long. Only way to make that kind of car drive good in a pre-turbo and direct injection era was to give the user the option to wind it out and shift when they pleased.

Again subjective, and varies by model.

I can't speak for every car. I test drove a Civic and did not find it comfortable (way back in ~2007) and that was mostly due to my own dimensions, but I found the 2007/2008 Honda Fit seats great, as well as the 2014 Mazda 3 I had owned.

As comfortable as an $80K car? In some cases, no, but often more comfortable than the luxury cars of a few decades ago. Hardly a penalty box!

The thing you're missing here is that the automakers have spent billions upon untold billions of dollars lobbying politicians and on PR campaigns targeted at the public to convince people that literally the ONLY way American cities could possibly exist is in a form that is utterly dependent upon the automobile.

Transit ridership in the US was higher in the 1950s than it is today and it was the automakers that killed public transit. They literally bought up popular and profitable public transit companies just to shut them down so people would be forced to drive.

The problem isn't "Consumerism" it's a culture of car dependency that's largely the result of intentional action on the part of the automakers to grow and protect their profits.

The reason there's so much auto loan debt in the US is people literally HAVE TO OWN a car just to get to work to support their families in the vast majority of US towns and cities. People don't want to go into debt just so they can buy some shitty fucking KIA so they can sit in traffic for two+ hours a day so they can get to one of their three minimum wage jobs, but when the alternative is being unemployed and homeless, a lot of folks will do what they have to do to provide for themselves and their families.