The best are refreshingly affordable, making them particularly attractive as the average transaction price of a vehicle car climbs toward $40,000.
SUVs tightened their grip on drivers’ fancy in 2020, but the year only its mother could love also saw the arrival of some great new sedans. The best are refreshingly affordable, making them particularly attractive as the average transaction price of a vehicle car climbs inexorably toward a record $40,000, according to TrueCar. That’s counter to a cranky, but common, view that sedans are as dead as a New Year’s resolution on Jan.2. In fact, SUVs’ sales ascendancy may free — or force, depending on your degree of cynicism — automakers to make better cars. “Fewer competitors can mean higher profitability for the cars that are left. That allows for more emotional design and profitability,” IHS senior analyst Stephanie Brinley said. In short, compact and midsize cars long derided as appliances and commodities may evolve into statements of personal style. According to Cox Automotive, traditional cars — sedans, coupes, hatchbacks and station wagons — held a paltry 24.2% of the market in the third quarter of 2020. That’s chicken feed compared with historical levels over 50%, but up a tick from a COVID-19-battered nadir of 23.4% in the second quarter of 2020, when it seemed the only people who could afford a new vehicle wanted pickups and SUVs for a post-apocalyptic flight from population centers. Reality check: Coronavirus is everywhere, some people still want cars and a few automakers are building ones that are better than ever. Automakers responded to surging SUV sales by shifting investment from cars to SUVs that sell in greater numbers at higher prices. That’s Econ 101, but if you got my mail, you’d know that some buyers take it as an assault on their personal liberty to drive whatever the heck they want, even if the manufacturer goes out of business making it for them. They think Big Auto conspired to take their nice, little cars away and force them to buy Chevy Suburbans. Or maybe it was 5G.
