Lies, Damned Lies and Inflation?
Continuing my investigations, I tried to determine whether the cost of automobiles has gone up since 1990, adjusted for inflation.
Poll
As usual, this is impossible to determine, since makes and models change, quality changes, safety features change, mpg change, and on and on.
What I did was look at the MSRP for my make and model of car, a Honda Civic LX 4-door sedan, from 1990 until 2009. Finding this information is non-trivial, and as different years' values are from different websites, I'm not 100% sure the data for each year represents exactly the same thing. But, hey, this isn't climate science... (-:
In 1990 the MSRP for a 4-door LX sedan was about $10,500, and in 2009 the MSRP was about
$17,500. Since the model for year X comes out late in year X-1, I used the CPI's for 1989 and 2008 to calculate inflation over that period.
Inflation caused a 75% rise in costs over that time period, while the cost of the Civic rose 67%. A Civic should have cost about $18,400, given inflation, but cost $17,500, about 5% less. So even accepting some variance in MSRP data and the exact cutoffs used for the inflation calculation, we should be able to say that the cost of a Civic has not increased.
(FYI: Some intermediate years: 1997: $15,500. 2004: $16,200.)
The cost of the car itself is not the cost of owning a car, which is a far more difficult thing to estimate in terms of it increasing or decreasing.
Poll
As usual, this is impossible to determine, since makes and models change, quality changes, safety features change, mpg change, and on and on.
What I did was look at the MSRP for my make and model of car, a Honda Civic LX 4-door sedan, from 1990 until 2009. Finding this information is non-trivial, and as different years' values are from different websites, I'm not 100% sure the data for each year represents exactly the same thing. But, hey, this isn't climate science... (-:
In 1990 the MSRP for a 4-door LX sedan was about $10,500, and in 2009 the MSRP was about
$17,500. Since the model for year X comes out late in year X-1, I used the CPI's for 1989 and 2008 to calculate inflation over that period.
Inflation caused a 75% rise in costs over that time period, while the cost of the Civic rose 67%. A Civic should have cost about $18,400, given inflation, but cost $17,500, about 5% less. So even accepting some variance in MSRP data and the exact cutoffs used for the inflation calculation, we should be able to say that the cost of a Civic has not increased.
(FYI: Some intermediate years: 1997: $15,500. 2004: $16,200.)
The cost of the car itself is not the cost of owning a car, which is a far more difficult thing to estimate in terms of it increasing or decreasing.