The result? A widening disparity between the richest buyers and everyone else.
They are people like Natalia Ponce De Leon of North Palm Beach, Florida. She had been leasing a Toyota Tacoma pickup she acquired as new four years ago and had been using for her custom drapery business. When it was time to replace it recently, she didn’t even consider a new vehicle.Instead, she settled on a 9-year-old vehicle with 14,000 miles on it — a Toyota RAV4, a small SUV, that she bought at Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach.
The new-vehicle market is another story entirely. Among all purchases of new autos last month, nearly 79% were trucks and SUVs. A decade ago, that proportion was just 52%.And that’s despite a whopping 22% jump in the average price of a new car since the pandemic struck two years ago — to more than $46,000, as of December.
“I can’t imagine a situation in which we’ve had so many people willing to spend so much money,” Drury said. “It’s just abnormal for someone to go out and spend or above. I can’t think of any other time period unless it was on specific models. And this is every car on the road.”Left largely out of that pool, buyers of more modest means have been vying for the most fuel-efficient used vehicles — and forcing up their prices.
Behind that trend lies an economic reality: Americans as a whole have less cash to spend. Although America’s job market is robust and many people have received pay raises in recent months, the acceleration of inflation has more than wiped out those gains in most cases., the fastest such pace in four decades. In addition, stimulus checks and other federal aid that most households received after the pandemic have long since expired.
Abbott and Putins fault