Those looking to buy a new car on a budget are in a worse position than they would have been just five years ago.
In 2018, a price-conscious auto shopper in the United States could choose from among a dozen new small cars selling for under $20,000. Now, there's just one: The Mitsubishi Mirage. And even the Mirage appears headed for the scrap yard.
At a time when Americans increasingly want pricey SUVs and trucks rather than small cars, the Mirage remains the lone new vehicle whose average sale price is under $20,000 — a figure that once marked a kind of unofficial threshold of affordability. With prices — new and used — having soared since the pandemic, $20,000 is no longer much of a starting price for a new car.
This current version of the Mirage, which reached US dealerships a decade ago, sold for an average of $19,205 last month, according to data from Cox Automotive. (Though a few other new models have starting prices under $20,000, their actual purchase prices, with options and shipping, exceed that figure.)
The Mirage, with hatchback and sedan versions, costs less than half of what the average US new vehicle does. That average is now just above $48,000 — 25% more than before the pandemic struck three years ago.
Michelle Krebs, an analyst at Cox Automotive said she expects new-auto prices to drop slightly as factories produce more vehicles, likely forcing automakers to offer discounts. Price declines among electric vehicles, led by Tesla, have helped lower overall auto prices, too.
But don't expect the return of the $20,000 new car.
"I can't imagine that unless a Chinese automaker came in and sold cheap," Krebs said. "Politically, that doesn't seem likely."
Here are the five new vehicles with the lowest average selling prices in the United States, according to Cox.