[aodin]

If you're looking to remove outliers, Kelley Blue Book also tracks the average (likely mean) of new non-luxury vehicle sales, which was $44,626 in September. Non-luxury is about 80% of sales.

Also, concerning the lower end of sales:

"But the news isn’t all good. Only one car sold for an average price under $20,000 last month. The Mitsubishi Mirage’s average transaction price in July was $19,205.

Every other car with a list price under $20,000 sold for over $20,000 on average. It’s not a large group. Automakers increasingly focus on building more expensive cars, trimming affordable models from their lineups. In December 2017, automakers produced 36 models priced at $25,000 or less. Five years later, they built just 10." [1]

[1] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-sees-smal...

[giantg2]

That's somewhat helpful, especially the last two quoted sentences.

But for the other part they track luxury at the model level. If you get a jeep or truck that cost $50k-80k because you wanted heated/vented seats, a panoramic sunroof, etc then it's not included in luxury.

I think part of this is also inflation (seems like some sensational journalism dor modt of the articles I found - using average instead of mean and not using inflation). Inflation from December 2017 to December 2022 would mean a $20k car in 2017 would cost $24k in 2022 adjusted for inflation. That's a huge jump.