Another thing to factor in with the price of new cars is that I very much doubt a Ford Pinto came from the factory with A/C, power mirrors, power windows, fancy electronic stereo, plus all the safety features cars currently have to have, and all the other crap that goes into "basic" cars these days. If you built a car that aside from the required safety and emissions features, had the same exact options a car from 1970 had, it'd be easy to build it and sell it for super cheap. No A/C, manual windows and mirrors, spartan interior, etc.
But no, everyone has to have all the doodad's you get in a Mercedes S-Series, so the cost of cars is grossly inflated these days compared to what they cost 40 years ago, or even 20 years ago. It's not just the EPA stuff, or even the safety stuff that is driving up costs. Realistically those bits don't really cost that much, and with safety a lot of it is just designing the structure to not suck at getting hit and crumpling weird. Airbags are cheap these days, as is most of the electronic management of the engines and chassis. Just because it costs $1000 for a new ECU for your car doesn't mean that is even remotely what it cost the manufacturer. Replacement parts on new cars are comparatively expensive, it's just another way to make money for the manufacturers and parts suppliers.
So blaming it all on EPA and the gubment is misplaced. Yes, it has caused some price increases. But people also want fancy looking cars and will pay the premium for them. Add onto that the constant battle the factory workers have with getting higher pay and benefits (which is why a good chunk of the work is now done by robots, in addition to the increased efficiency), plus increased cost for raw materials (if you shoot guns you know how insane copper prices have become in the last 10 years) and a multitude of other factors, and you begin to see why cars have outpaced inflation.
There's also a lot of products that have stayed below the rate of inflation. Lego's for example.
Lego set's have always cost around the same amount in actual dollars (not adjusting for inflation). So technically they've become cheaper! And they keep their value better than my H3 ever will. Forget stocks, invest in Lego sets. Keep them unopened and sell them 20 years later for ten times or more what you paid for it.
But I digress.
BTW, I need $220,000 to buy a Mercedes Maybach S600. Anyone got that laying around they can give me?
