I think a lot of people don’t realize how much more work owning and maintaining a car used to be, or how they’ve gone up in price much slower than inflation.
Part of it is model creep where a budget/economy model of 1990 retains its name in future generations until it’s a larger luxury flagship: the Camry, Corolla, Accord, Civic, F-150, Altima, etc., are all much larger, more powerful, and just loaded with features, and no longer occupy the same spot in their companies’ lineups.
And the simple comparison of objective performance and efficiency metrics also shows that cars have much higher 0-60 times, tighter cornering characteristics, better fuel efficiency, plus significantly improved crash/safety performance. And the cars routinely last beyond 100,000 miles, when older cars weren’t (to the point where the 6-digit odometer didn’t become standard until the early 90’s).
Meanwhile, the actual sticker prices of cars today are generally below what would be expected from just applying the inflation rate to car prices from the 90’s.
Cars today are just so much better than they were when I first started driving.
I think a lot of people don’t realize how much more work owning and maintaining a car used to be, or how they’ve gone up in price much slower than inflation.
Part of it is model creep where a budget/economy model of 1990 retains its name in future generations until it’s a larger luxury flagship: the Camry, Corolla, Accord, Civic, F-150, Altima, etc., are all much larger, more powerful, and just loaded with features, and no longer occupy the same spot in their companies’ lineups.
And the simple comparison of objective performance and efficiency metrics also shows that cars have much higher 0-60 times, tighter cornering characteristics, better fuel efficiency, plus significantly improved crash/safety performance. And the cars routinely last beyond 100,000 miles, when older cars weren’t (to the point where the 6-digit odometer didn’t become standard until the early 90’s).
Meanwhile, the actual sticker prices of cars today are generally below what would be expected from just applying the inflation rate to car prices from the 90’s.
Cars today are just so much better than they were when I first started driving.