martinjlm
Retired from GM
I wish I did have that data. I've been in meetings / at conferences where those numbers are tossed around but they have yet to find a nice resting spot in my over-worked memory.actually that's not that big of a factor. The prices are skyrocketing because the money to the consumer is "cheap". Consumers are buying payments, not final prices. Just listen to your local sales guy. He's pushing payments as the metric of affordability.
the average (?) consumer (@martinjlm I'm sure has the data) can afford only ~500/mo payment. When the loans are written for 60, 72, even 84 months and banks are very willing to roll negative equity onto the new loan (previously unheard of) there is no longer any downward price pressure. If 36mo terms at 500/mo the car has to cost less than 20K. But that can now balloon out to 36k and more. Go back 15 years and new car prices were solidly affordable. Go back further and people were paying for cars out of cash savings.
Once the easy finance took off manufacturers kept hiking the price to match the longer/looser standards.
Go back 20 years and people were taking out home equity loans and buying their vehicles "cash" from the distribution and then writing off mortgage interest on their income taxes. Ah, those were the days.
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