Kelly Blue Book is the gold standard for figuring out how much—or more realistically, how little—you can get for the piece of junk you’ve been driving for 15 years. There is one of the leading authorities not just in cars, but in the dollar signs we collectively attach to them. So when that authority publishes a blunt assessment that the sub-$20,000 new car is likely dead, that is a dire warning about the state of things.
The conclusion is based on an analysis by Sean Tucker, managing editor for compact and full-size vehicles at Kelley Blue Book. He thoroughly combed through the industry and found that there are no longer any mainstream new cars for sale in the United States under $20,000.
Mitsubishi ended production of the Mirage in 2024. Nissan has now halted production of the Versa, which briefly advertised a base model just under $20,000—though very few were actually built, and most sold for over $22,000. With those exits, the entry-level price point that once served first-time buyers and working-class families has effectively vanished.
Middle Class Americans Are Getting Priced Out of New Cars
Meanwhile, the average new car buyer paid $49,191 in January. That’s down slightly from December’s record but still nearly 2 percent higher than a year ago. Discounts have tightened, and automakers are focusing on higher-margin vehicles. Compact SUVs, which are now the best-selling segment in America, averaged $36,414 in January. Full-size trucks often top $70,000.
Industry analysts cite pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, higher labor and material costs, and tariffs. All likely true to an extent, but there is a deeper, far more troubling economic trend going on here, one you might have noticed in several other sectors of the economy, from grocery stores to online clothing retailers to pretty much anything: rich people are the only people buying new cars. Households earning $150,000 or more now account for 43 percent of new-car purchases. That’s a huge uptick of about a third from 2019.
Automakers are building for the customers who can still afford to buy them new, and that increasingly isn’t the average person just barely scraping by.
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