Ranking up there with news that the ‘sky is blue’ and ‘water is wet’, it should not surprise our informed readers to learn the so-called Average Marketed Price of a new vehicle in this country has once again crested the $50,000 mark.
This is a measure tracked by the good folks at Automotive News, using data compiled by an outfit called Cloud Theory. The data company looks at promoted prices on dealers websites, including any listed discounts or incentives. This is different from average transaction prices (ATP) and the like – and even the final price on which someone makes a deal after negotiating – but is a decent barometer of the market.
The figure bottomed out this calendar year about a month after Trump took office, settling at $48,544 in the latter part of February. It started to rise with the talk of tariff taxes, roaring back over the fifty grand line approximately two weeks after the president stood in front of cameras with that complicated poster board describing the tariff taxes on each country, including the one inhabited by penguins. The last time Cloud Theory pegged the Average Marketed Price at 50K was back in December.
According to the statistic keepers at Kelley Blue Book, the average transaction price of a new vehicle in the United States increased in April to $48,699. Data from the same source indicates ATP broke the $40k barrier in mid-2020 and spiked to roughly where it sits now about a year later. Make no wonder more and more Americans are keeping their vehicles for upwards of ten or twelve years.
[Image: Gretchen Gunda Enger/Shutterstock]
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