How things have changed since the Pony.

You are right.

How many months until the “average” vehicle sold in the USA costs $100,000 ?

You can still buy a cheap vehicle in India, and their coal production keeps setting all time monthly records.

I would never own a KIA,and there isn't one made that I would pay 83k for!

A nice one for the thieves to steal. Hyundai is near the top in most stolen cars.

wasn't it not too long ago, the average price of a pickup was in the high 60k price range ?
how the hEll do these people with minimum wage jobs and 8 kids afford these things ?

Buy them or afford them?

84-month notes is how they are able to buy them.

Afford them? Not in most cases.

Unlike the $100K+ Jeep or the $150K Cadillac?

World wide the greatly sought after “budget vehicle” is the Korean made K1 tank,
especially the model with bulldozer blade to expose buried mines, and add on backhoe.

If K1 seems similar to M1 Tank,
that because we gave them permission to copy many past Abrams Tank features - for free.

Damn, I need one of them.

Consumer borrowing & indebtedness hits a new high every year.
Not hard to connect the dots.
Last time I had a car payment was decades ago at about $200/month and the light went on.
No more depreciating assets for me since, unless there's a metaphorical gun to my head.

It's ridiculous. Remember when Hyundai had the cheapest car on the market??? The $9,999.99 Accent hatchback? Oh how times have changed.
I still have my little Tiburon, mostly because it's so worthless that nobody will give me a buck for it - When new in 2004, it was almost a $30,000 car! I suppose that's the reason they didn't sell too many of them.
My Mustang cost me $46k (after taxes) in 2016. It was my first and more than likely LAST brand new car. Not only does NOTHING on the market make my genitals fizz, but the cost of some of them doesn't make it worthwhile.

I'd rather sink a little bit of money into something older, better looking and repairable by me.

Most people driving new cars only are because they're stuck in them. They do these 84 and 96 month finance deals and are instantly thousands under water on them, then they trade in and that negative equity gets added onto the new car and its even worse. Nobody is going to write a check for the difference, isn't like 75% of people only $1000 away from going broke?

The first thing I can remember concerning Korea was veterans saying “It was unbelievably cold.”

Later, I remember slightly older than I Vietnam veteran coal miners would say during lunch talk “Those ROK Marines are tough.”

Later I met Korean graduate students who were both smart, and at work in their labs before 6 AM most days - including Saturday and Sunday.

I have watched Kia and Hyundai autos come into the USA market,
go broke financially,
get bailed out by the South Korean government and combined,
and adopt a sales strategy of longer warranties and a philosophy of improving quality.

DNA analysis tells us now that the Japanese are descended from the Koreans, but that did not prevent the Japanese from turning Korea into a slave colony for 50 years.
Korea hates Japan in a deep way most in the USA do not realize.

To what level will Korean products improve?

It is thought provoking that the USA turned to South Korea to buy 155 mm shells,
then just months later Russia turned to North Korea to buy 152 mm shells.

On the dark side I have seen a South Korea electric generating company sign a contract to buy coal from a small private company in Alaska, then ignore the contract when they could buy cheaper coal from Indonesia.

If that is a Genisis then yea, it's in direct competition with Cadillac, Lincoln, Lexus, Infinity,... V-8 and rear drive they are swinging for the fence.

i agree to the above and will ad they finance almost everybody these days no matter how much they owe.

about 4 years ago i repaired a 2 year old dodge ram quad cab truck. it was fully loaded with every option except diesel power. truck had 50+ miles on it.
truck had bald tires spun out on the freeway in a light snow storm. it was wrecked really bad. it needed everything from the front doors back including a frame. .
i really didn't want to fix it and thought it was a easy total loss. adjuster showed up and 2 days later we were approved for $60K in repairs. the owner had gap insurance and owed $130K on a 2 year old truck.

after the repair truck still had bald tires on it because that is not covered by insurance. . owner didn't have the $$ to buy new 20" truck tires so he drove to a new car dealer traded it in and bought a new truck.

Yup! A funny story I heard when I was working closely with a few Nissan dealers years ago. The used car manager said it was nearly the same case for every Kia / Hyundai that came in to be traded for a new Nissan. They had bought the Hyundai for $0 down over 84 months and came with a really low payment (they offered this deal for years on the sonatas etc). The owner thinking since its been a few years, he must have paid off a decent chunk. The used car manager would be the bearer of bad news that they had barely paid the tax on the thing. All of them would get up and leave in utter shock.

Many people here lease new stuff and get a new one every few years. It looks like they have more money than what they really have as they are driving something new and expensive all the time.

I've known people who trade vehicles frequently in order to have the latest cool car or truck. To own something that is 5-6 years old would be a total embarrassment to them. They just trade-in over and over again so long as the payment fits their monthly budget.

If you look at the pricing history of most Asian cars you will find they started as cheap econo boxes and slowly gained ground. Those like Honda, Toyota etc. slowly raised prices while adding features and maintaining quality.
A few like Mazda Hyundai and Kia had some quality issues that gave them a black eye. They addressed the issues while keeping the prices low to regain customer confidence. Once accomplished the price increases started along with features.
So we now have 80K examples of what used to be an affordable car.
I have seen Mazda in particular starting to slide backwards in the quality area. having worked for canon 35 or so years ago that was not to be tolerated at any cost.
I believe it has to do with the generations changing much as they did in this country. After WWII Japan and others were in shambles. The US was strong and built quality.
As we went into the late 60's early 70's the men that fought and built this country started into retirement. The generation that took over had it a lot easier and the quality maintained.
next generation had it easier yet and we started to slip.
Wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing happen to Japan, as Korea, Taiwan and China take over. their is also India, Vietnam and others fighting for a piece of the pie.

The East got the foot in the door by flooding cheap stuff in the Marketplace here.
Remember the mini trucks sold for 99 bucks?

The average new car is now over $48k.

Hard to believe but that's inflation and rising costs. To each his/her own. I also would NEVER own a Hyundai. You can get a Hellcat for that money. That's how my mind works.