I can't speak to the specific years, but there's no doubt that a fair number of small, less expensive, cars have been knocked off - the Rio, the Prius C, the Fiesta... I think there are more than just those (though maybe some of it is lineup consolidation, considering the eventual Kia K3). At the same time, some of the remaining options have had (IMO) huge MSRP hikes.
But you are right that a lot of the price increases relatively track inflation. It may just be that cars going up at the rate of inflation and used cars depreciating less, combined with uneven wage growth and high maintenance and repair costs is leaving a lot of consumers feeling pressured.
Though it's hard to track this down in a way that seems accurate, cars that are under 10 years old and 100k miles always seem remarkably close to MSRP to me, while those that are over those thresholds often seem massively depreciated, but that's anecdote and I haven't done a study. Interest rates me be another piece of the story. When I last bought a car they were basically zero or 1% I think. It gave the latitude to use debt w/o much thought. Very different now.
Which is to say, I do think it's plausible that it's true that some segment of the car market is tracking inflation, and that cars aren't affordable any more.
If that's the case, there's probably more going on, and it may not all be on the cars. Once again, venturing into anecdote, I know multiple people who've had significant wage increases since prepandemic, don't have much if any lifestyle inflation, and somehow seem to be in the position of finding cars and homes less affordable despite making quite significantly more. I'm not really sure exactly what's going on, but the way people are feeling doesn't match the numbers for a fair number of folks with above average incomes, and I can only imagine it must be a lot worse for those w/ less.
