The car industry is at a weird inflection point right now. The federal government’s elimination of emissions standards for vehicles built in 2012 and later means automakers no longer need to redesign cars and engines to squeeze out even more efficiency and range than before for fear of federal penalties, at least in North America. California is the exception, because it has its own fuel economy laws, but the Department of Transportation is currently suing to revoke the State’s exemption allowing it to make its own standards. So who knows how long that exception will last.
For normal cars, like the hundreds of grey, uninspiring crossovers you see on your commute to work every day, this deregulation doesn’t mean much. Automakers will continue to give those cars normal lifecycles and redesign them as necessary to keep showrooms fresh and fuel efficiency higher than competitors’ vehicles. For some enthusiast cars, though, it’s a different story.
There are a few reasons why sports cars have been disappearing from manufacturer lineups. More than ever, the average person can no longer afford a second weekend car as a toy, prompting carmakers to offer sportier versions of everyday cars instead, so people can have one car that can do it all. But fuel economy was another reason. To meet CAFE standards, which required fleet-wide averages for carmakers, sports cars were often the first on the chopping block because they were usually the least efficient and least profitable.
Now, though, because fuel efficiency isn’t a concern, automakers have one fewer reason to kill their fun cars. At the same time, because the sports car market is more of a niche than ever before, there are fewer incentives to develop all-new models. The result? Enthusiast cars that are suspended in limbo, not dying, but not evolving, either. And for people who like cars, I think that’s a good thing.
Here’s what I mean: Let’s say things just continued how they were, and federal emissions standards were still in place. Every year, these emissions regs get stricter. That means automakers have no choice but to eventually redesign their vehicles to meet those regulations. That’s not really an issue for a car like the Chevy Traverse, where GM sells enough to pay for development costs for the next model, and still makes a healthy profit.
On the flip side, when the emissions regs catch up to something like a Camaro, it becomes tougher for GM to justify that spend. Not only do you have to spend the money to make it faster, more capable, better-looking, and better-suited for crash tests, but you also have to make sure it’s more efficient than before. And because of the ever-tightening regs, you can’t just keep the current one on sale. So instead, the car simply dies, with no replacement.
But because of this deregulation move, carmakers can now keep their current sports cars on sale without fear of them dragging down CAFE numbers. Because there aren’t any emissions penalties to worry about, what’s to stop them from continuing to produce the same cars for years? Sure, manufacturers still need to keep things fresh in terms of design and equipment, but that’s less of a concern for enthusiast cars than for everyday commuters. Even with the regs in place, the life cycles for sports cars are usually longer than those of your average vehicle.
The WRX is a great example, as it really hasn’t changed much in the past 12 years. Sure, it looks a little different and has a few more horsepower, but otherwise, the bones are virtually unchanged. In America, Subaru can continue to sell that car here for the foreseeable future, while in places like Europe, emissions regulations are forcing the company to eventually pivot to an all-EV fleet.
While the next-gen Miata is rumored to be in development, Mazda could now get away with simply building the current ND-generation car forever, if it really wanted to. If justifying the cost of an entirely new car were not possible, Mazda could theoretically just give the car a heavy facelift instead of killing it outright to keep its CAFE numbers in check. While that wouldn’t be as cool as having an all-new Miata, I’d rather have a refreshed version of the old car than no Miata at all.
The same goes for cars like the Golf GTI and Golf R. In their current form, they’re likely doomed in Europe due to emissions regulations. But in America, the only reason they’d need to be redesigned is if the crash safety regulations changed to make their crash structures obsolete. Otherwise, why not keep building them? So long as demand is steady, it’s not like it costs the automakers anything to take this approach. Every time they build another example, the cost of development and assembly is amortized over a greater volume of vehicles.
The current Mustang is pretty new, having been released back in 2023. But the logic still applies; Ford no longer has to worry about whether GT’s 5.0-liter Coyote V8 is dragging down its fleet-wide fuel economy averages, which means that, if this deregulation stays in place, Ford wouldn’t have to eventually choose between building a new one or killing it off, so long as it still meets crash safety regulations. The Mustang is also the only game in town for pony cars these days, giving Ford even fewer incentives to refresh it more often than necessary.
While I don’t think this applies to every sporty car on the market right now, especially the high-end, exotic stuff, I do think it’s a net positive for people shoppers who want something truly sporty. We all want to live in a world where every automaker has a lineup of sports cars that it totally revamps every five years. But that hasn’t been a reality for decades. If I had to choose between the current selection of fun cars getting old or some of those cars disappearing from showrooms altogether, I’d choose the former every time.
Top graphic images: Subaru; Amazon
Another benefit for long running platforms is more aftermarket parts development and support.
And more youtube videos and clever repair hacks!
Yes more group knowledge for sure!
The fact that the debate in these comments remained as civil as it did is yet another reason I am delighted to be a paid member of The Autopian.
This, too, shall pass.
Agreed. This sometimes radical changing of regulations, potentially every four years, makes life difficult for industry, what with development cycles, large capital committments for big projects like factories, etc… Assuming that our current president doesn’t rule forever, with his orange-tinted brain pickled in a jar somehow, a regular/normal administration will eventually be in power again, be it Democrat or traditional Republican. At that time, it’s likely that some or even much of recently imposed ‘deregulation’ will be reversed, including emissions rules.
Also, I agree that the ND3 Miata is just about the perfect sportscar in terms of new/affordable offerings.
“The WRX is a great example, as it really hasn’t changed much in the past 12 years.”
The WRX is a sports car?
Sure it hasn’t changed much – other than an all new platform, engine, transmission, sheetmetal and interior in 2021….
(Facepalm)
but will reduced costs ever hit the Monroney sticker?
There are a few reasons why sports cars have been disappearing from manufacturer lineups.
I would hazard another reason is more and more enthusiasts are living in multi family/multi generational/multi roommate living situations so parking and maintaining those toys is a much bigger problem.
Another reason, pretty much everything, even Camrys have performance that used to be exclusive to muscle and super cars. A Camry won’t beat a Mustang on the drag strip, nor hang with a Miata on a track but who cares? That Camry’s limits are way beyond what’s safe for public streets anyway.
The Camry eclipsing 300 horsepower was something that truly broke me
We have a few more years until things snap back and regulations are real again. Until then, it’s such a mishmash of new cars now. Honestly, that new Mustang looks great, but there are 0 new cars I think are worth it currently. When I say worth it, I mean the price of buying any new product.
Really, never worth it to buy new, but that’s just me. I couldn’t live with myself buying a new car and dealing with that insane depreciation, whether you are underwater on a loan or paid cash. It’s just lighting money on fire to be the first ass to sweat a lil bit in that seat lmfao.
Sports and sporty cars have withered on the vine, sales wise.
The regulations aren’t the real bad guy here. Nor is cost, not really.
At best, the regulatory environment gave a tiny nudge, but the real reason they’re trapped in amber is that they’re just not selling.
Automakers are just amortizing their costs over a longer production run, because capital investment in sports cars is probably a bad decision from a return on investment point-of-view.
Until very recently, regulations were set up in a way that incentivized automakers to sell more SUV’s, and less cars. Regulations were definitely a major problem.
Correction: STUPID regulations with gaping loopholes.
Now your just repeating yourself.
Idk man… when America doesn’t compete with the rest of the world, we wind up behind. See: 80s/90s and the incoming Japanese cars. Now China is teeing up to do the same thing again, and now we’re saying we’re not evne going to bother competing with the rest of the world? Ehhhhh
I’ve bought (and sold) a handful of American cars in my time. But they were for flipping, while my Japanese cars were for driving.
China is all-in on EV’s. That’s such a niche market that it doesn’t really matter that much. Until China starts making somewhat compelling ICE vehicles, established automakers have nothing to worry about outside of the Chinese market.
Exactly! Japanese and to a lesser extent German cars rose up in the aftermath of WWII. American cars were top of the pile, but ignored in the incoming goodness. American cars were also rans at best. Trump has GIFTED China automotive market dominance, and we’re going to fall even further down. Look at the UK, and the British car industry, because that’s where we’re headed.
What are the criteria for sports vs. sporty? Is a GTI a sports car? Is a Miata?
Yes.
But what makes one sporty and another sports? What’s the checklist?
There is none, that’s kind of why my response was so short. What one considers “sporty”, someone else might consider a “sports car”.
Arguing semantics can get you into some long conversations and I guarantee you there will be exceptions to any rule anyone makes that differentiates the two.
That’s fair. But we have sports cars, supercars, hyper cars and the like and while we accept them universally; I have no idea what concrete differences exist.
Sports car, sporty car, supercar, hypercar (as well as sedan, convertible, hatchback, sport utility vehicle, etc.) are simply jargon used by auto manufacturers and journalists to differentiate offerings in the attempt to appeal to a specific consumer base. They are all simply cars, a derivative of the Latin word Carrus, meaning a wheeled vehicle.
two doors?
M5 disagrees. Maybe.
This is a total non-story.
For decades sporty cars have had longer refresh cycles. There is absolutely nothing new about that. And the lack of CAFE standards now has little to do with it. Ford sold almost 1/2 million F150 in 2024 (and another 1/4 million heavy duty F-series trucks). They sold just 44,000 Mustangs. And the Mustang was the best selling sports car that year.
The math ain’t mathing.
The Mustang could get like 5 MPG and barely even affect the overall corporate average fuel economy for FoMoCo.
In terms of years between redesigns, the Mustang is all over the place because Ford has historically been a horribly run company. Only ONE generation saw just a 5 year life cycle. Most other generations went about a decade before Ford got off their lazy asses and gave the engineers some money for a redesign.
But Ford is not unique to that. Nissan has gone from 5 years to 11 years between redesigns of the Z, and Toyota about 6-7 for the Supra. And all these cars have been around for decades, so this is not a new thing and definitely not related to anything pedo-in-chief has done.
I’m not sure it’s quite a Morgan situation where everything is just stopped in time. Dodge seems to say the mussle car won’t die. Though even the modern ones weren’t all that modern. That was one of the arguments when the Challenger came back that is was 1973 design with modern components. Then it didn’t change in notable way its whole existence.
Looking at the Japanese they are pretty lax on emissions standards compaired to the rest of the developed and less developed world. They still have what are basically Japan only platforms the rest of the world wants. When a company like Mazda or Honda that is heavily invested in North America even with North America only models. Thowing a sports car together with parts on the shelf is probably not completely off the table. It’s just no one is going to invest in a clean sheet design for a regulation that might change overnight. The reality is ice is now the slow option so it’s more to Brits and Japanese enthusiasts cars. I’ve heard more middle aged engineers say things about having to build what they want because it doesn’t exist. Basically modern hot rods. We might be there the era of kits and modified cars. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if Honda pulled a Dodge and started production on something from their past though.
Nonsense. Japan has very strict emissions regulations for passenger vehicles. Far stricter than the US. Additionally and very importantly they have strict inspections.
Plenty of states in the US have little or no inspections allowing one to drive around with no emissions reduction devices at work.
Real world facts more like.. If that is true explain why the jimney can’t be sold as a passenger vehicle in most markets in Europe. It was also a big reason Suzuki left the US they couldn’t meet new epa regs and didn’t want to design an system that good. The last update to Japanese emissions standards appears to be in 98 as well. It’s especially lax in the smaller engines. Inspection sure you have to have the 2 year inspection at least in most areas of Japan. Where many areas of the US you don’t. Standards are different then inspections. I’ve lived in markets where you need a safety inspection every year and and emissions every 2. It just turns into theater. In Japan it’s common to put the car back to stock before going into the inspection too.
Japan was historically less strict on emissions than the US, but that pretty much ended in 2016, when they brought their regulations broadly in line with 2014 Euro VI and the US regs that phased in between 2007-2010, there’s no longer a significant difference.
have you ever seen the air in Tokyo?
I’ve seen the smog. Apparently it’s cleaner now.
I’m pretty sure the current WRX is a complete redesign. When it came out Subaru was claiming the WRX was no longer based on an Impreza, but its own chassis.
I recall something about a world chassis. I think now there are other vehicles possibly the Forester on it or a version of it.
Good for Subaru. That is a rare sensible decision from them.
Now if they would abandon making an engine that requires two heads and a timing belt that could wrap two fat men to produce 75% of the power of an inline equivalent.
Not likely, but unfortunate Subaru owners can dream.
Fuel economy is what will get them in the end. Doesn’t matter what you do the stupid things they are going to get 22 to 25 mpg.
I’m also disturbed by their use of the term e-boxer. I hope it’s marketing and not engineering. But when you drive a recent Subaru you have to wonder if there is infact any engineering or they just slapped something together went good enough.
I can get over 30 if I hypermile my Forester. but I annoy many people (including myself) to achieve that. In general use driving normally, 26 mpg is where I sit.
I’ve gotten 99+ downhill in a Forester if you can believe the gom. I was in the middle of a Subaru line a few times and got maybe 29. Always seems to sit around 22- 25 otherwise. I had the terrible factory tires on it and maybe got close to 26 sometimes but they were super scary. I didn’t feel comfortable with my daughter driving it. So threw better tires on it after maybe 1500 miles. It probably only changed .5 mpg at most. But won’t side around when the road is damp.
I got 99.9 mpg in my 2025 Fit. Shall I disclose that we were coming down Cadillac Mountain in Maine?
At least you were in a vehicle that can get over 30mpg. The Subaru gom loves to say it can do 500+ miles on a tank when you fill up. Then you watch it for the first quarter of a tank treat 2 miles like 20.
2015
I had the boxer engine in my fr-s eat itself at 38k miles.
That put me on notice, and I still bought an Outback and a Forester after that. I prioritized a good AWD system over a good car with current features.
Now that I’m looking at an automatic transimssion whether I buy a forester / rav4 / crv or anything else, I’ll probably go with ‘anything else’ for the AWD commuter next time. The third pedal was the only thing that had me in their showroom. That reason no longer exists.
I hate driving Forester so much it’s so nice to jump in a 20 year old 200k mi pos ratted out hybrid Highlander after. Or a 3/4 ton diesel pickup. Even a leaf is super pleasant to drive after. I think that’s Subarus real calling making you appreciate literally anything else. I can’t stand the cvt in the Subaru ecvt is just so smooth powerful and quick in comparison.
You know what’s killing me?
I will absolutely buy another BRZ/GR86. If they make a hatchback WRX, I’ll probably buy that too.
I should seek counseling.
I know so many engineers that buy wrx. They grumble about how bad it is but buy it because about the only game in town. I can’t blame them for not wanting to buy European.
This just reminded me of those 6 spoke wheels they were putting on foresters where the 5 lugnuts glaringly didn’t align with spokes. Like the ultimate embodiment of sure just push it out there people will buy it mentality.
Subaru will make you question everything you have ever thought about Japanese effenency, engineering and pride.
Never believe marketing departments.
I’ve been in marketing for almost 20 years, and you couldn’t be more correct. They will say anything as long as it’s not illegal or brand-tarnishing. And then still, they will sometimes anyway.
RIP Bud Light.
It neither tasted great nor was it less filling. But dammit to Hell if I don’t remember those ads.
True.
Because of the interior, exterior and body style I didn’t bother digging too deeply into the claims since I was not going to buy.
I was no longer Imprezzed by the WRX after 2015-ish.
Samez here :/
CAFE had next to no effect on fuel economy or sports cars dying. The number sold and penalties are simply too low.
Prior to the Biden administration the fine was $55 per mpg. That was raised to $140 per mpg. Who cares – pay the fine and pass it on to the customer.
Paying an extra grand or two doesn’t move the needle on $40K to $100K toys.
Just look at the M4 and RS6 — the new ones don’t comply with European MPG regulations, resulting in a ~€10k fine per car.
And the new generations are… approximately that much more expensive than the last generation.
… and the EU has massively higher fines than the USA. 95 euro per g/km CO2
Gutting fuel economy regulations isn’t going to make American automobiles more competitive, but $8-$10 gas might.
The footprint rules made zero sense and were totally counterproductive.
This. If gas stays high, the market will respond just as it did during the housing crisis when gas was high and home budgets stretched. Hummer disappeared, the Honda Fit came to our shores, and tons of investment in hybrids (Volt), smaller turbocharged engines and high-gear-count transmissions began. That is a huge part of why a modern F-150 gets about 30% better fuel economy than one from 20-years ago.
We’ve already begun to see an increase in sales in traditional sedans which are cheaper and more fuel efficient (less a reaction to gas prices than car prices, but still), I would not be surprised if that continues or accelerates if gas prices remain high. People will realize that hauling a family of four is just as comfortable in a less-expensive Camry or Accord hybrid than a Full-Size pickup truck, while getting double the fuel economy.
People will realize that hauling a family of four is just as comfortable in a less-expensive Camry or Accord hybrid than a Full-Size pickup truck, while getting double the fuel economy.
But it makes you look like a *insert slanderous adjectives here*!
In a Full Sized Pickup you are a GOD! What is few drops* of gas wasted compared to that? And who knows, you might actually need to move a couch someday.
*Drops…barrels…swimming pools…tankers, who cares when ego is on the line?
The problem with that is that it hurts families – and generally the ones who can least afford it / are less financially literate.
Hummer disappeared, but after a ton of people stretched their budgets to buy H2s that were now worthless. So owners either had to keep driving a car with terrible fuel economy (while gas prices were sky high) and paying a large monthly note on a vehicle worth a fraction of their principle balance or let it get repo’d and deal with the consequences.
Footprint rules are also not-so-secretly what kills off sports cars too. They have smaller footprints than anything except the subcompact hatchbacks!
The Mustang and now departed Camaro and Challenger all have a larger footprint than a Honda CRV or RAV4
The “Truck rule” was abused and twisted in some weird ways too CAFE was not perfect.
Ive had very mixed feelings on the fuel economy chasing over the last two decades if only for the fact that the cost has so directly fallen on the customers.
I love the power benefits weve added but high pressure pumps, turbocharging, arbon depositing, electricfying, all of this has turned the top end of cars into a temperamental nightmare again.
Im glad I like clean air because if it was purely a numbers game, you gotta save a lot of gas to offset these costs
Maybe an unpopular take here, but I would give up all the sports cars if it meant I could Thanos snap Trump 2: Epstein Boogaloo out of existence.
I would dearly miss my boxster, but agree to the bargain.
Me too (also a Boxster owner)
The fact that nobody is doing anything about all the pedos running our entire government for another government’s benefit is batshit insane.
Unless we get a 100,000 Luigi Solution, this probably won’t change. The intelligence bureaucracies, law enforcement agencies, and courts are protecting the guilty. That’s their real job. Assuming the files are still up, look up “jerky” on the DOJ website if you want something particularly grotesque. What’s sad is that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Consider what we’re not allowed to know about.
99,999.
Assuming the files are still up, look up “jerky” on the DOJ website if you want something particularly grotesque.
https://search.justice.gov/search/docs?affiliate=justice&dc=3851&query=jerky
Mkay, what am I looking for?
Look in the Epstein files and search there. This one’s a doozy without mentioning the “jerky”:
https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA00147661.pdf
I’m sorry, I find nothing creditable here. This sounds like the ravings of an opportunistic, unbalanced individual seeking attention, not an actual victim.
That may or may not be the case. Keep reading the files, and you’ll see an undeniable pattern.
No need. Someone else already has and they concluded here jerky just means fancy beef jerky:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/epstein-jerky/
Which makes a lot more sense than a Cabal of Carousing Cannibal Elites Consuming Commoner’s Kiddies. What’s that saying? Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good headline. Especially in so fertile a topic as the Epstein files.
I don’t disagree the elites do some FU things but that? That’s going to take more than unsupported testimony from what are clearly mentally deranged individuals.
If you (or anyone) is looking for a conspiracy theory one of mine is the death of Michael Hastings was not the tragic high speed accident it was made out to be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_(journalist)
This guy (supposedly) had received death threats from people whose job is literally to get away with mass murder:
In his 2012 book The Operators, Hastings describes a conversation with Dave Silverman, General Stanley McChrystal’s chief public relations officer. Hastings had just joined McChrystal’s entourage as an embedded reporter.
Its worth remembering some of those people are highly trained in assassination so they know very well how to make murder look like an accident.
Hastings also believed his car was being tampered with, yet he died driving that car into a tree hard enough to send the drive train over a hundred feet down the road. At the time I recall some witnesses claimed to have seen other cars chasing the Mercedes but there is no mention of such things now so I could be misremembering.
With my tinfoil hat firmly stapled in place on my head I see it as possible his car HAD been messed with and he was manipulated into thinking his life was in imminent danger so he tried to escape in that car which failed as intended at high speed causing a crash and explosion, making his death a plausibly deniable certainty.
A deeper dive into the theories can be found here:
9/8/2013 – The Michael Hastings Police Report – A Critical Examination
8/27/2013 – Eyewitness Account – Michael Hastings Car Crash
8/27/2013 – Michael Hastings’ Last Ride
Was it an accident or was it murder? You decide.
I would absolutely switch to SUVs only… easier to load the Avengers into to go collect some Infinity Stones.
What do you mean the Mustang has no natural enemies? What about parking lot curbs?
I think Brian was referring to the guys who leave Cars & Coffee with a heavy right foot being a natural enemy…
Or crowds
Those are the prey of the mustang. Hard immovable objects that appear out of nowhere like trees and curbs are the predators of the mustang.
I believe those are prey, not predators
And yet, the curb always wins
Sigh, this again.
A Miata costs less adjusted for inflation than it did when introduced in 1990, and both the average and median wage are up significantly in real terms over that period.
Real Disposable income is up basically linearly going back to 1960.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96
I get that it isn’t as interesting to say the past kinda sucked and normal people weren’t as rich then as we think, and that things are actually better now than people like to imagine, but it is rather tiresome to read this statement or a variation of it in basically every single article.
Everything else went up though, most notably housing, health care/insurance and higher education along with childcare (and it’s a long term goal of the Epstein Class to make K-12 more like those rather than vice versa). All of those are major drains on how much is left as disposable income.
Those things are accounted for in the inflation-adjusted metric.
Or do you seriously believe it was easier/more common to buy a second car in 1950 than today? Or 1970? Or for that matter 1990?
Judging by the US sales numbers for the Miata in the 90’s vs today i can say yes, it seems to have been more common. Currently selling about half as many as in the 90’s ignoring the peak during the first few years. 8700 in 2025 vs 20000 in 1995. The peak for the ND is only 11k too vs 35k for NA, 20k for NB, & 17k for NC generations
Maybe that’s just due to buyer preferences. There simply just isn’t the interest in ‘enthusiast’ cars that there used to be.
… or they can’t afford an enthusiast car because they moved up on their daily driver. A Corolla is way cheaper today both adjusted for inflation and in weeks of median household pay.
People love to focus on average transaction price vs median income but that increase is from people moving from Civics to CR-Vs not because a Civic or CR-V costs more than 30 years ago.
A CR-V today is even the same or less inflation adjusted price as most Civics 30 years ago. A ’96 Civic LX w/ auto and A/C was 15.5k, adjusts to 32.8k. An LX CR-V today is less and that’s spitting distance from an EX CR-V.
Maybe, but even Mustangs are seeing the hit.
Even though they’ve been the only pony car in the game for 2 model years now as mentioned in the article
Again going back to 1990, sales are about half over the past couple years compared to then
https://www.cjponyparts.com/resources/mustang-sales-throughout-years?srsltid=AfmBOoqMIjFt8Y8fW24in1ZHnHh5IbVBcTOSBds8YObbDpDsO08YwY2x
Mustangs are seeing a hit because they made it a super impractical car with a tiny greenhouse. I won’t even take one as a rental anymore.
No, it’s that young people don’t buy new cars, they are too poor. I am never buying a new car, ever. Bad value.
The average annual cost of car ownership, for the composite average 13 year old car in the USA with well over 150,000 miles on it, is now approaching $13,000 per year.
You could work a full-time minimum wage job in the USA today, and end up priced out of living in a car, nevermind affording your own place PLUS a car in addition to it.
Amen, it was easier for me to buy shitboxes from marketplace before but now they cost more, groceries are up, while salaries are not keeping up with the overall market conditions. Add kids getting older and needing more things = #help
Housing, healthcare, insurance, and education are all in the CPI.
Real inflation adjusted median income is up. Both household and family
Household: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
Family: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEFAINUSA672N
(The difference is that Household includes single people)
Break that income down by age groups, and I think you’ll find the younger the groups go, the more fucked/completely poor they are.
Younger workers have always made less than older workers.
But the BLS has data by age. Average weekly wage 16-24
Year – Nominal – Real
2000 – $381 – $691
2005 – $418 – $670
2010 – $449 – $647
2015 – $543 – $725
2020 – $625 – $757
2024 – $796 – $796
The average 16 – 24 year old in 2024 is making 15% more in real (inflation adjusted) dollars than in 2000.
Numbers are of limited meaning in this context – people don’t buy expensive toys if they feel squeezed. Any treats will be small – avocado toast, not a new Miata.
The question is WHY people are feeling squeezed.
It isn’t because earnings aren’t keeping up with inflation. It also isn’t because cars are getting more expensive when adjusted for inflation or in weeks of median income.
The above are two commonly given reasons – that are factually wrong.
It’s because the milestones arent being met for people to get the freedom they feel life should offer.
The median age of a home buyer was 59 last year. The median 1st time home buyer was 40. In 2015 they were 31. For generations Americans have expected that if they work, and get a good job, they should be able to afford a home. And for many that is a big step towards starting a family as well. Consider working to save up a down payment while paying back 40-70k in student loans. Evin doing the 2 year community to public state school pipeline can easily cross that number
Many are purposely delaying milestones. I work with quite a few people in their 20’s. A good number of them are delaying everything until they get this whole life checklist done.
A big one is marriage or at least partnering up. Single life delays everything. Everything cost more as a single person, housing, food, utilities, health care, car insurance…. Two incomes makes it way easier to move ahead in life, to pay off debt, and to save for that downpayment.
I know people in their 20’s that own a home. They are all married or partnered and both of them work. Most of the single people in their 20’s are struggling.
Another thing that has changed a lot over the last few decades is the willingness to move. There are a lot of places that are expensive and hard to get ahead. There are also a lot of places that need new people and much cheaper to live.
I live on the west coast in an expensive city. That is where the company headquarters is located. As mentioned above – I work with a lot of people in their 20’s. A lot of them complain they will never be able to own a home. I send them positions in other locations where they could make 90% of their salary and easily own a home for less than they pay in rent. They won’t even entertain moving to someplace where they can get ahead financially
As to the cost of collage. My niece starts in the fall – pursuing a nursing degree. Community college is free and a state university is $12K a year. No reason to rack up massive amounts of debt for an education. College is a job not a party.
College is another thing that has changed – or at least how people partner. 81% of people with a college degree today marry someone else with a college degree. That wasn’t the case in generations past where it was quite common to have one partner with a college degree and one without. So instead of those higher paying jobs getting split and lifting more households into the middle class you have assortative mating were people with degrees partner with each other and people without partner or stay single.
My wife and I married 2 weeks after I turned 21. 2 weeks later we moved to another state. One where we could afford a house. Was it where we really wanted to live – no – but it was a place where we could live AND I could pay off my significant student loans. I didn’t have $40K in loan but I had the equivalent at the time. (I was stupid and started at a private school I couldn’t afford before wising up 2 1/2 years later. Spend $80K on a bachelor’s degree when my wife spent $40) We lived in low cost states for 15 years before making the move west. Turned down several opportunities to move to cool but expensive areas because we could not afford to live their and work our financial plan.
(A financial plan we put together at 25 after the company I worked for started laying people off and I calculated I could make bills for less than 2 weeks without a paycheck).
To be fair, that chart doesn’t really tell you much, as it’s an aggregate. Fewer people holding more of the disposable income since the 1970’s.
I don’t have a chart handy, but I think it’s fair to say that the gap between high income and middle income households have widened over the decades. What would probably be more telling is what the median disposable income is over time. Inflation adjusted income also doesn’t tell much, because costs have not risen proportionally over that time (health care, child car, housing all up well over inflation rates).
Sure, the rose-colored view of the past is probably over blown to an extent, but I think it’s still fair to say the average Joe doesn’t have as much financial flexibility now as in the past, certainly for a purchase as big as a second “fun” car.
You’re right, that was the wrong chart. Here is the one for per capita personal income.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0
FRED doesn’t seem to have a median disposable income chart, but one of my old standbys, the real median wages chart is probably a decent stand-in.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
I don’t dispute the idea that things aren’t perfect, or that people aren’t struggling, but the idea that there has literally *never* been a time where second cars were harder to afford is laughable. Just the idea of owning a second car at all was ridiculous for much of the history of the car in America.
What’s different now is that two car households used to have maybe a wagon or minivan for when they needed to take the kids somewhere, and then a personal luxury coupe or econobox commuter hatch, or even an MGB as the second car. Today, a two car household is two SUVs. Its no longer a family car + another car, its two family cars
And both of those cars absolutely sucked back then compared to what your money can buy today
My contention would be that a household willing and able to purchase two $50,000 SUVs would not struggle to buy a sports car if they chose to, but everyone in this thread is telling me it’s never been harder.
The very fact that we see your scenario as unremarkable, at least among middle to upper middle class families, is a stark contrast to the “no one can afford anything” rhetoric.
In the late 70’s with the gas crisis in recent memory, buying a Civic for the commute and an American wagon for kid duties made more sense.
Now unless you go with a full size SUV / pickup and drag launch at every light, mileage is all pretty acceptable. Not a huge difference between a Civic and a minivan these days as far as mileage goes.
And what is dad (excuse the traditional gender role) going to do with a fun car anyway? Unless he has a whole lot of free time to prep it and race it, the windy roads are all full of regular traffic these days. My Miata gets fewer miles added to the odometer with each passing year.
Your last sentence is why I constantly put off buying the ‘fun’ car. In addition, I used to be poor, even if that was 40 years ago, and that’s still in the back of my mind.
I used to be able to get up early on a weekend, have a spirited drive through NH / ME and be home for lunch.
Now it’s an hour wait at the tolls and then a slow procession before I turn back in frustration.
When I get around to it I may just buy an old Jaguar XK. That way at least I can fit the dogs in the back and I won’t feel like I’m wasting treadwear on performance tires in traffic.
Thank you. So sick of all the doomerism. It’s a fantastic time and place to be alive if you let yourself believe it.
Or if you’re so privileged that you’re isolated from all of the very real horrors occurring every day! Or maybe you are well aware and choose to ignore them so you can let yourself believe everything is great. Frankly I’m not sure which is worse!
I’m glad things are great in whatever isolated world you live in. We have masked men and soldiers kidnapping people where I am, a massive swath of the city just lost their healthcare, and I’m sitting in front of the local government every week trying to convince them not to cut vital safety net programming from children that rely on it so they can fund a billionaire vanity project with our taxes instead.
But that 401k! And the Dow! WOWZA! Line sure is going up, so who cares about all those victims of demotic terrorism and school children getting liquefied in the Middle East to feed the military industrial complex, am I right?
I mean…really man? Sometimes I swear we need a separate Wealthtopian site for a small but vocal demographic here.
I think reddit leaking into the Autopian
The statistics themselves regarding inflation, unemployment, ect. aren’t straight numbers, but “adjusted” to paint a rosier picture than the reality. The current statistics cannot be directly compared to those in the past because the criterion used to tabulate them is not consistent.
The reality is that more than half a century ago, a single minimum wage earner used to be able to buy a house, support a stay at home wife, and raise children, all on that one income. We’re told wages have gone up, yet two median wage earners will be hard-pressed to do that these days, nevermind minimum wage earners without dependents affording even a room to rent in most of the USA.
The original point behind the minimum wage was that it was a living wage. But today’s median wage is below an actual living wage, which is why two-income households are now mandatory.
Consider how many ounces of silver which an hour of minimum wage labor bought in 1964, and how many ounces of silver an hour of minimum wage labor buys today. The cost of things like homes, college, and healthcare, over the long term, have tracked their cost in terms of ounces of silver quite well, when evening out the curve for price spikes and crashes. Min wage 60 years ago vs today priced in oz of silver per hour is off by more than an order of magnitude in most US states, and definitely so at the federal level. This is the consequence of going off the gold standard and going to the petrodollar. The petrodollar’s days are clearly numbered.
The people of the USA live in what can be called a 3rd world country with a Gucci belt, and our so-called 1st world living standard is supported by a game of musical chairs, played with revolving debt. When the music stops is when it will be shown for all to see, and the ruling class will come to collect practically every asset in existence which isn’t already in their hands for pennies on the dollar.
“The reality is that more than half a century ago, a single minimum wage earner used to be able to buy a house, support a stay at home wife, and raise children, all on that one income. “
No, a minimum wage worker in the 60’s could not afford a house and raise a family on one income. Where do people get these crazy ideas? My parents struggled to make ends meet with 2 above minimum wage jobs in the 60’s. (Mom was a teacher and my father worked in a non-union factory)
I’ve spoken to multipole old men who grew up in the 1950s/1960s. One of them bought his first house at 18, by delivering newspapers on his bicycle between age 11 and 16 and then working at a restaurant after. He bought his first car at age 16 in full: a brand new 1969 Ford Mustang fastback. He also paid his way through college without scholarships, working a part-time job, albeit it was above min wage at the time.
My own father, as a teenaged janitor in 1970 making minimum wage, was able to BUY a 1970 MGB GT with cash, and lived in an apartment in a good neighborhood, while paying for college.
Consider the prevailing wages of the time, and what things cost then. Then compare today, WITHOUT substitutions, hedonic adjustments, and other statistical screwery that the CPI engages in. There’s a stark difference as the years have gone on, and it’s not for the better…
My father worked in a factory making Green Stamp competitors, and he bought new cars every 3 years in the 1960s. That ended in the 1970s. Mom worked as a housewife. We always had enough money, somehow.
Minimum wage in 1975 was $2.10 per hour. About $4,400 per year. Or $364 per month. The average mortgage payment in 1975 was $264 per month.
No one was affording an average mortgage on a single, minimum wage job in 1975. Or ever. Quit believing that shit.
$264 mortgage < $364 wages
Technically doable if one could be qualified, although one would be house poor.
The average mortgage payment in 2025 was $2,329, but minimum wage at 40 hours a week amounts to $1,160. A minimum wage worker today has to work almost 3x as many hours to afford the mortgage.
Dude just give up, these people have minds like cement mixers, all mixed up and permanently set.
Did you live through the Korean war? Vietnam? Bosnian war? Old enough to remember the first gulf war? What about the Iran hostage/contra situation of the ’70s?
I live in the MSP metro. We had ICE and the dumb “metro surge” here. Two citizens killed because they were voicing their opinion. I completely disagree with the immigration enforcement strategy the administration has implemented. However, no one is being fucking “kidnapped” and using that type of terminology just diminishes the valid and appropriate criticism of such strategy.
The world is a violent place. Always has been, but we live in the most peaceful time in history. Millions aren’t dying in world wars (yet at least) or being placed in gas chambers. There are major issues to deal in the world and our government. That doesn’t mean we’re not living in the best time in human history. Two things can be true at the same time.
Sometimes I feel like a separate Doomtopian site is needed for a large, vocal demographic here that comments about their terrible life from their $1,000 iPhone.
Ok Boomer. I didn’t, but I did live through the first Gulf War, the senseless forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 9/11 (I was a couple miles away and could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon, and two kids from a neighboring school were killed on that flight), the Great Recession, a global pandemic, the whole UGH YOU LOSERS HAD IT SO EASY shit is just tired and incorrect.
The most peaceful time in history? Last I checked were sprinting into another forever war, largely at the behest of the jingoistic freaks that make up the majority of your generation, there’s a genocide being perpetrated in the Middle East, etc. These aren’t happy and peaceful times!
What exactly is your definition of being kidnapped? I’m not sure how being thrown into a van and disappeared by an essentially untrained gestapo with virtually no legal ground to stand on doesn’t constitute a kidnapping, but you’re free to keep gargling those red white and blue marbles!
Here’s the thing that none of you people understand because you can’t be bothered to-I actually have a great life. My wife and are comparatively very well off. We have a nice house, a happy and healthy kid, two paid off cars, enough disposable income to be going on a Viking cruise next month, etc. My life is great!
But I care about other people and leaving the world a better place than what I came into…and that’s becoming increasingly challenging, mainly because your generation would rather burn the world down and piss on its ashes then pick up the ladder you sprinted to kick down behind you and actually try to help other people find their way to same sort of low stress existences that me, but especially you, have gotten to enjoy.
You all are welcome to enjoy living in your little comfy, protected bubbles of consumption and bitterness. Frankly it wouldn’t be anyone’s problem if you and yours weren’t actively destroying the world in the process. Frankly I don’t give a shit if someone is richer than me, or poorer than me, etc. The vast majority of the time I’m more than happy to live and let live.
But I committed to a life in the trenches. I work in the mental health field. I spent years doing crisis work that was very much life of death, I probably have some stories that would make your buddies that were in Nam or whatever other dumb military industrial conflict want to crawl out of their skin. I don’t have any regrets, either.
The work I do is very hard but also very rewarding and I’m paid more than fairly for it. But I have to see the suffering every day and try to help people solve it as best I can, and to act like shit isn’t really fucking bad out there right now is just beyond the pale. My life is fine and I’m grateful for everything I’ve been given. Hell I even come from a military family on both sides, I’m not going to sit here and act like that’s meaningless or that my grandfathers weren’t fighting for the greater good in WWII, because they were.
But my goodness. If you don’t look at what’s going on right now and feel any empathy for the wanton human suffering then it’s best that you just stick in your suburban palace counting your money and stay out of our way.
I don’t think the biggest conflict is intergenerational, but one of socio-economic class. Not all boomers grew up well off. The problem is that people who work for a living are getting an ever diminishing piece of the proverbial pie vs people born into privilege whose main income source is passive and earned without having to labor for it themselves, as time goes on. Couple this with a currency that becomes increasingly debased, and asset owners see gains while those who have to labor for their money see price hikes in real terms.
I would not be surprised if most of your customers’/patients’ problems would be solved if they had enough money to live on and take a break from the grind every now and then, not having to juggle debt/bills around on a monthly basis and/or worrying where their next meal is going to come from.
I won’t say everything would be better, but I certainly think a lot would be solved by addressing the horrific wealth inequality in this country.
I need several more opportunities to like your post.
One can both feel empathy for human suffering and those left behind in today’s economy while at the same time acknowledging that , on average, things are better today than in the past. It isn’t an either / or thing.
A village of 100 people where there is one villager with $100 million, and everyone else is broke, means that on average, it is a village of millionaires.
The bottom 90% of Americans on average own almost nothing, and the bottom 50% on average own less than nothing(crippling debt outweighing all assets).
If you can afford the modest “Leave it to Beaver” lower-middle-class lifestyle of the 1950s today without being in crippling debt, congratulations, you’re in the upper 10%.
I make slightly over $100k/year as an electrical engineer, and I couldn’t afford that unless I wanted to be in debt for the next 30+ years, and I’m in my 40s. 60 years ago, a grocery bagger, store shelf stocker, landscaper, or janitor had a similar real purchasing power, assuming they wanted to stay debt free like I do.
The averages I have been quoting are the median. In your example the median is $0. (also the mode)
Economists use median numbers because it removes the effects of small numbers of outliers.
Hey now, don’t fret! There is still plenty of time left to send the youth to die once more in the Middle East! Then we can all enjoy the horrors of decades past!
It’s a fantastic time and place for certain people.
Until the 70’s a women could not open a checking account, get a credit card, line of credit or mortgage without a male cosigner.
Then there is Jim Crow to consider.
Those “good old days” weren’t that glorious for everyone.
So it has been, and so it shall always be. Someone must always lose for someone else to win. Especially if winning is only superficial. How else would people be able to justify a superiority complex?
N1pnt hit the nail on the head. Disposable income does not account for changes in expenses it only accounts for taxes and savings. The inflation adjustment does not effectively account for housing as a share of income because inflation adjusted housing prices are way up.
Furthermore there has been a huge divergence between the bottom 90% and top 10%, with the bottom gaining a bit less than 50% and the top 10% tripling. So the aggregate data looks much better than what the vast majority of people are experiencing. Housing now accounts for an average of 35% of income for the bottom 90% vs 16% in 1960. There has been some gain even when adjusted for housing(~25%) but there are other categories that have blown up as well, primarily health costs(quadrupled in inflation adjusted dollars since 1960) and childcare.
The housing piece is particularly brutal. My mom bought our family home in 1988 for $80k. This was a little over her yearly salary at the time. The same house now is 3-4x the yearly salary for a similar job today.
Is your contention then that it was easier to buy a second car in 1950?
Remember, the statement in the article is that it has *never* been harder than right now.
You said 1960 so that’s when I went from. We can definitely agree that never is hyperbole, before the model T most households didn’t even have one car!
I looked up some more data(I need to review more carefully and can cite if you want). First, discretionary income is much more useful to look at than disposable income. While they sound similar, disposable is just net income after taxes and savings while discretionary is cash after necessities.
If we look at discretionary income for the bottom 90% vs median new car price, it took about 4 and a half years of discretionary income to pay for a new car, while today it takes 7 and a half years(makes sense why loan lengths are up!). I was curious about sports cars specifically and they weren’t hit quite as hard, going from similar pricing to the median to cheaper than the median, so it only takes 6 years to afford the average sports car today(the Miata helps this a lot).
The point another made about buyer preference is salient, however. People used to have a family car and a sports car and now often choose two SUVs or a truck and an SUV. So it’s a bit of both that are driving down sports car purchases.
1960 is when the data starts in that chart.
“Never” was the terminology used by the author, which inspired this thread of responses.
I would appreciate seeing those sources for the discretionary income data. I’m always open to revising my priors, but I will say that no matter if its 4.5 or 6 or 7 years, the doomerism rhetoric here is so far out of whack with material reality that it really puts a damper on my enjoyment of the comment sections. It really does seem like the modal commenter was born in the late 1990s and never lived as an adult through any actual difficult times.
Are there challenges to the economy today? Yeah of course. I have real sympathy for people who can’t get on the homeownership train, or who are struggling with high food and energy costs. Or perhaps more germane to the point, struggling with high car payments. That doesn’t mean those types of people didn’t exist in the past either! Rose-tinted glasses about how the middle class lived in prior decades don’t do anyone any favors, as they’re judging themselves against a standard that doesn’t represent anything like how people actually lived back then.
While there’s a lot of shitty shit going on in the world (and crucially here) people do tend to forget that much of the human history? Sucked. Certainly there are some thing that are worse (housing, critically, especially for young people) and the job market is… getting a wee bit scary. Things could, and really should, be better than this. But I also remember the late 00s and uhhhhh, yeah it could be worse, lol.
That being said, the past sucked too. And I’m not going to pretend like everyone was having a blast in decades prior.
I can only cite my personal experience. In 2012 I bought my first house for 110K I sold it for more, it sold again in 2020 for 260K and is now valued at over 360K.
My salary has gone up over that time, but it has NOT tripled. I was bored last night and went window shopping on Zillow in my typical places for the first time in a while, there’s a giant hole in available houses in that area for less than 500K; ten years ago an expensive house in the same are was 300K, and there were many below 200K and few closer to 100K. Most of those are knocking on a million now.
I personally am not benefitting from this upswing in costs even with two job changes in the last six years with significant pay raises.
It’s all about housing. If you got in before the pandemic, you at least have a reasonable advantage. I did and while my house is an unmitigated piece of shit, I at least have a low mortgage.
If I were entering the housing market today I could not afford this house. Or really most houses around here. And this is a relatively low cost area. People my age that havent purchased yet have given up for the most part.
We have a legit housing crisis and if you are spending far more of your income on housing than expected, you’re inevitably going to have to cheap out on fun shit like cars.
Location, Location Location. Looking at houses I have owned and my parent’s house in Michigan. Zillow values 2016 vs 2026
$137K $293K +114% (House in TN)
$157K $287K + 83% (House in AL)
$257K $430K + 67% (House in OR)
$ 65K $ 91K + 40% ` (House in MI)
Both my house in Oregon and my parent’s house in Michigan have declined in value in the last 4 years. My parent’s house was valued at $120K in 2021
Their house is 1000 sq ft, all brick ranch with basement and attached 2 car garage. They also have a detached 32″ x 32″ garage / shop with a semi sized roll up door and natural gas heat. (my dad was a diesel mechanic on the side) All that for $91K
That’s a really narrow take. Now look how much more the cost of education, healthcare, and housing costs.
As has been stated multiple times, the cost increases of those items are accounted for in the inflation adjusted (“real”) charts.
It really isn’t.
Take min wage in 1970, vs average cost of a house, or average cost of tuition. See how many hours it would take working minimum wage to pay for one mortgage payment, or one semester of school.
Now do the same thing with minimum wage today, vs a semester of school or a mortgage payment.
Go ahead. Do it. I don’t give a fuck what your numbers say because I know how this breaks down. Younger generations, the type of people who want to buy sports cars, are increasingly fucked.
The average AGE of a new car buyer keeps going up and up and up because boomers have all the disposable income, Gen X is maybe doing okay if the boomers in front of them finally retire, Millennials have been hustling for decades, and Gen Z is proper fucked.
Minimum wage is basically irrelevant. Something like 1% of workers make it.
Look at medians, which were the charts posted. That is a better representation of how the middle income people are doing.
The country is much older now than in 1970, and of course older people have had more time to accumulate wealth.
Since you don’t give a fuck what my numbers say, I don’t know why I bother typing anything, but you are wrong, dead fucking wrong, and people who think like you do about our country’s economic prospects are why we got the election results we did in 2024, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not exactly thrilled with how pervasive the false doomerism is in our society.
Have a nice weekend.
While I agree, it seems we now also spend money on computers, phones, data plans, radio streaming, TV streaming and/or cable. I’m sure I’m missing something. It doesn’t affect your data, but it does the wallet.
I think my point is that there are many more ways we dip into our money than in the blissfully unconnected 1990s.
I’d rather deal with not having a fun daily than deal with worsening air quality for ourselves and future generations so line can go UP and the most obnoxious people you know can continue to refuse to do anything that inconveniences them even vaguely for the greater good, but that’s just me.
it’s not like cars have gotten slower.
Fuel economy has nothing to do with local air quality.
Elaborate?
EPA regulations limit local air pollution (HC, NOx, PM, CO) based on grams / mile. All light duty vehicles under 14,000 lbs GVWR are held to the same standard. What comes out of the tailpipe as local pollution is entirely dependent on the effectiveness of the emission system.
A large vehicle will need a larger and possibly more complicated emission system to clean the greater volume of exhaust that enters it but what is allowed to come out the tailpipe is the same.
You can look at vehicle certifications and find that a 7.3L Godzilla V8 puts out less pollution per mile than a tiny motorcycle. (Because US motorcycle emission regulations haven’t changed since 2010)
On the other hand CO2 is directly related to fuel economy. The more fuel burned the more CO2 produced.
I could see this for cars built in the US for the US market. I doubt it would work for imports though.
I’ve been thinking about this. Seems like most product launches since covid have been the same car with a newly integrated tablet. See GTI, Mustang, and Z.
If affordability and having one car to do it all is the thing, why can’t Ford give us another Focus ST? The recent generation sold in Europe would have been perfect to replace my Mini.
The Focus has been discontinued completely.
The Puma ST doesn’t quite match up to the Focus/Fiesta ST. But seems like a hoot to drive.
The short version is they made no money on the Focus so it was discontinued
Good. The truly small pickup truck was killed off due to emissions regulations. Time to bring it back.
Was it emissions? I thought it was a combo of crash regulations, chicken tax, poor unit margins, four-door everything and the Giant Emotional Support Truck trend.
Correct. Small trucks didn’t sell enough to keep making them in the USA. The Chicken Tax plus the USA’s unique regulations meant that automaker could not simply import a small number of trucks that they could sell to US buyers from factories where lots of people buy those small trucks.
I would also point out that the Mustang is still using a refreshed version of the D2C platform from 2005, which, in turn, is a de-contented/cost reduced variant of the DEW98 architecture from 1999