Increased safety, more complex infotainment systems, higher quality materials - they all add to the complexity of modern vehicles, which in turn increases their costs. Nobody asked us whether we wanted all this, but since we continued to buy them, the manufacturers simply assumed.
And it worked - at least so far. We even managed to go through a financial crisis without too many casualties in the automotive department, and now the market is on a high. And yet a new study by Bankrate (via AutoGuide) discovered that a U.S. median-income household can only afford the average-priced new car in one of the 25 largest metropolitan areas.
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