DETROIT — Two years after the pandemic tore through the economy, America’s auto market looks something like this: Prices are drastically up. Supply is drastically down. And gasoline costs drastically more.
The result? A widening disparity between the richest buyers and everyone else.
The most affluent buyers keep plunking down big money for new vehicles, including the least fuel-efficient among them — trucks, SUVS, large sedans.
As for the rest of America, millions are feeling increasingly priced out of the new-vehicle market. They are competing instead for a shrunken supply of used autos, especially smaller, less expensive ones that consume less fuel. The jump in pump prices since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only intensified their urge to keep costs down.
They are people like Natalia Ponce De Leon of North Palm Beach, Fla. She had been leasing a Toyota Tacoma pickup she acquired as new four years ago and had been using for her custom drapery business. When it was time to replace it recently, she didn’t even consider a new vehicle.
Instead, she settled on a 9-year-old vehicle with 14,000 miles on it — a Toyota RAV4, a small SUV, that she bought at Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach. Though it cost her $23,000 to buy the SUV and pay off the remainder of her lease, Ponce De Leon is happy with her decision. For just under $400 a month for six years, she said, she has a vehicle that’s easier to drive than her old pickup yet spacious enough to carry a 6-foot ladder for her business.
Best of all, with gasoline having scaled $4 a gallon nationally, she’s enjoying superior fuel efficiency.
“I’m thinking I’m going to save, per month, between $100 and $200,” Ponce De Leon said — money that she plans to spend for online marketing to help grow her business.
The new-vehicle market is another story entirely. Among all purchases of new autos last month, nearly 79 percent were trucks and SUVs. A decade ago, that proportion was just 52 percent.
And that’s despite a whopping 22 percent jump in the average price of a new car since the pandemic struck two years ago — to more than $46,000, as of December.
Based on March prices and interest rates, the monthly payment on an average new vehicle would be $691 — far beyond the reach of what a household with a median gross income of $65,732 should spend, according to calculations by Cox Automotive and Moody’s.
Not so for many of the wealthier-than-average buyers who now dominate the new-vehicle market.
“Those that can afford it are still buying what they want,” said Jeff Schuster, president of global forecasting for LMC Automotive, a consulting firm.
Ivan Drury, a senior manager at the Edmunds.com auto site, has been surprised by the demand among affluent buyers for high-priced new vehicles.
“I can’t imagine a situation in which we’ve had so many people willing to spend so much money,” Drury said. “It’s just abnormal for someone to go out and spend (sticker price) or above. I can’t think of any other time period unless it was on specific models. And this is every car on the road.”
Left largely out of that pool, buyers of more modest means have been vying for the most fuel-efficient used vehicles — and forcing up their prices. At auctions where dealers buy many of their vehicles, the average price of a 2-to-8-year-old compact car rose 1.1 percent during the past three weeks to an average of $12,560.
