74% Of Americans Say New Cars Are Unaffordable

If it feels like everything is more expensive these days, and you're struggling financially even on what used to be a healthy income, you aren't alone. It may sometimes feel like you are, especially if you spend a lot of time on social media, but I promise plenty of other people are struggling, too. In fact, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll, nearly half of those surveyed said they no longer make enough to maintain their standard of living, and 74% said they feel like new cars are unaffordable. 

In fact, more Americans consider new cars unaffordable than any other category covered in the survey, including a weeklong vacation (60%), healthcare (56%), going out to dinner (49%), groceries (45%), home energy/utilities (45%), their current rent/mortgage (37%), and gasoline (28%). So yeah, you may not be able to afford to replace your old car, but at least you can probably still afford to put gas in it. That's something. Sort of. 

As you can imagine, affordability is a much bigger issue for lower-income Americans, but middle-income families are still feeling the squeeze, too. While 87% of those making less than $50,000 consider new cars affordable, that figure only dropped to 82% among those making between $50,000 and $100,000. Meanwhile, among individuals with incomes greater than $100,000, 64% still consider new cars unaffordable. 

Since young people don't have any money, you'd also probably expect there to be a divide among age groups, and there is, but the vast majority of older Americans find new cars to be unaffordable, too. In the survey, 82% of those between the ages of 18 and 49 said new cars are unaffordable, while 67% of those over 50 said the same. Put another way, for every American over 50 who feels like new cars are still affordable, two would say the opposite. 

Considering the average transaction price on a new car finally crossed the $50,000 threshold for the first time back in October, it also probably isn't that hard to understand why new cars feel so unaffordable. That's almost as much as the median individual income in the U.S., and yeah, you probably shouldn't spend an entire year's salary on a new car. In fact, I'd even go as far as to say you shouldn't spend the majority of your annual income on a new car, either. 

The Trump tariffs that Republicans defended so aggressively have only made new cars more expensive, but once you start adjusting MSRPs for inflation, you realize older cars weren't all that much cheaper than they are today. In some ways, it's a miracle that current prices aren't any higher than they already are, now that even a base Toyota Corolla comes with radar cruise control, a backup camera, and enough crash protection that drivers can expect to walk away from crashes that would have previously been considered unsurvivable. 

No, the real problem is that companies refuse to pay people enough, and it's been happening for decades. Year after year, workers were expected to do more with less, all while those sitting in the C-suite awarded themselves more generous salaries and bigger bonuses. They found ways to get rid of the unions, tricking millions of Americans into thinking they would be better off without the benefits of collective bargaining, and today, even with a resurgence in union activity, only about 10% of the U.S. workforce is unionized. 

As an individual worker, you're never going to beat a giant corporation at the negotiating table. They've made sure the deck is stacked in their favor. The only way to win is to organize your coworkers and come to the bargaining table as a unit. Sure, starting a union can feel incredibly intimidating, but the good news is that there are plenty of organizations out there that can help you. From a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee to the company that owns Car and Driver, MotorTrend, and Road & Track (and even here at Jalopnik), when workers come together we win. And maybe one day we'll finally win enough to buy those new cars we can't afford at the moment.