Have you... driven a Forte? Or a Yarpus? Or a Rio?

They're awful. I mean, they're not awful in a "I would kick it out of the driveway" way, they're awful in a "there's no way I could look at myself in the mirror if I let someone charge me $15k for this piece of shit" way. That's why the article talks about average prices and average incomes - $29k a year is pretty much poverty and if you're comfortable asking someone to drop half their yearly income on a fuckin' Yarpus you're more cruel than I.

So of course you can buy used. At $29k a year "affordable" is enough to buy my 2009 Honda Fit off me at going rates, all 130k miles and a fender bender of it. Which is borderline Dickensian - let the proles lick up the drippings while the plebs eat the meat.

Know why I'm not driving the same damn FR-S you are? 'cuz holy shit thirty grand. I took out a loan like 14 years ago to finance all $9200 of my Stealth, and it's still a semi-decent ride. I even start looking at stuff and a pussilanimous V6 Mustang is like $28k out the door.

mk and I had a dispute about the price of cars and their affordability. The other side of the "affordability" equation is "how much money do you have."

That, as it turns out, is going down.