Vehicles under $15k are 1.6% of the market, and their share of the market has dropped over 90% since 2019. The old advice that you can get a beater and drive it in to the ground for $5k hasn’t been true for years but it still seems pervasive in personal finance spaces.
Toyotas and Hondas have pretty huge markups right now. A new Prius for example (in Texas at least) costs 39k (with taxes and everything) for the base trim.
I’m seeing advertisements for MSRP for both Prius and Civic, so ~$30k for 2023 model years for base trim. This is before taxes, just advertised price, so maybe $35k out the door after taxes, registration, fees, etc.
That said, I haven’t requested a quote from any local dealers, so those advertised prices could be unrealistic. But advertised prices are down from last year.
I went in person last month to two dealerships in my area, and they both had over 5k markups.
They also stated ~30k on their website.
