[thill]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Well, in my experience this has always been the case (the average income family could not afford the average new car) regardless of when you look at it in history. But, in the end you are correct the "average" price of a car has risen over time faster than the "average" salary. I would argue though that this is partially due to the willingness of people to finance cars over the years, resulting in the increase of higher end cars sold, amongst other contributing factors.

The ratio was pretty steady until the 1980's but then skyrocketed. Seems to me this correlates to when the larger vehicle market (SUVs, "fancy" nonwork trucks, etc) took off and folks were able to lease and finance cars for longer terms. You could argue that it is a chicken/egg thing, but the bottom line is if someone wasn't buying $50,000 pickup trucks and $40,000 cargo conversion vans, the manufacturers would not be building them.

Here's a little comparison of average income to average car price over the years. Source:

Good info, and there have been a number of articles out in recent years where we see the shift in demographics even more to baby boomers:



That is an old chart. In 2013 this was announced:

The 55-to-64-year-old age group, the oldest of the boomers, has become the cohort most likely to buy a new car, according to a new study by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. Graying boomers replaced the 35-to-44 year old age group, who were most likely to buy four years ago.