As I’ve been expecting a glut of car inventory due to inflation, rising interest rates, and all the demand destruction of the Biden Recession, I’ve been paying more attention to the car market just in case dealers had to liquidate new cars at absolute fire sale prices and I could swoop in and take advantage. So far that hasn’t happened, and prices haven’t behaved the way I’ve expected. (Used care prices are rising because inventory is tight despite dealers overpaying in 2022?)
But one thing I have noticed: Pickup truck prices have gotten absolutely insane.
Pickups used to be the steady, dependable, unglamorous vehicles of ordinary blue collar Americans. Lately, car makers seem to have turned them into cash cows by pricing them like luxury goods for rich people.
As the Ford F-series is the most popular pickup truck, I though I would look at the prices there. The average selling price for a 2023 Ford F-150 is an eye-watering $82,395. Given the rule of thumb that you should never pay more than a maximum of 35% of your yearly income for a new car, which means that buyers should be making $235,000 a year to afford a new F-150. That’s not “HVAC Repairman” money. Hell, it’s barely “guy who owns his own HVAC shop” money. And this despite Ford having such quality control problems that they’ve issued a slew of recalls.
Assuming I was insane enough to buy a new Ford F-150 at the average selling price, and no down payment, I would be looking at $1,521 in monthly payments, or more than I was paying for my home mortgage until a few years ago. (Thanks to rising tax valuations and insurance, now it’s just a little more than that. My car has long been paid off.)
Ford and other auto makers are pricing their traditional customers out of the market by making pickup trucks luxury goods. Just as in the 1970s, American car manufacturers are pricing themselves out of the market and are inviting foreign manufacturers to swoop in and snatch market share from them.
Here Zach and Ray of Car Edge on how insane Ford’s pricing has gotten (and the F-150 is far from the only Ford vehicle that prices have soared on).
“What the hell is wrong with you people?”
“That’s not an average price for an average person!”
“That’s just crazy! Those are crazy numbers.”
Indeed.
Tags: Biden Recession, cars, Ford, inflation, Pickup Truck, video
Concrete cowboys having a mid-life crisis have replaced the urge to buy a Harley-Davidson with the urge to buy a truck, which is jacking up the prices.
Just remember ‘pardner’…
No matter how many mountains you climb
Motorcycles you buy
Monster trucks you purchase
Or other erstwhile earthiness you try to project
You were an asshole before you bought that F-150
And you’re still an asshole
I suspect many pickup truck owners are like me. I have a 2015 GMC Canyon extended cab long bed with not quite 100K on it and another 2016 same with less than 30K miles. Both have the 305 HP V-6 and the trailering package. Other than that, pretty standard.
I’m never selling either one. Period. The 2016 is now worth, used, more than I paid for it new, and the 2015 is valued at nearly what I paid for it.
Not quite 2 years ago, when I bought my wife a new 33K GMC SUV the dealer offered me to trade it straight up for my 2016.
Sheesh.
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Let’s be brutally honest: Most of the truck market is what it is not because people want trucks, but because they zeroed out all the big cars with CAFE. If not for CAFE, I’m reasonably sure that the SUV and truck markets wouldn’t be what they are. At. All.
The idiots in government did this to us, and they’ll keep doing it so long as we let them distort the market with their “for your own good” regulations like the whole CAFE thing. Had they not done that BS, we’d have a very different market that wouldn’t include SUVs and trucks to the extent that they do. The SUVs and trucks are merely filling in for the sort of cars we’d be buying if we still could–Big and beefy land yachts, because most Americans who buy cars don’t live in a damn city in the first place. Trying to mandate that we buy the same cars that boutique countries like Japan and Belgium drive? Ludicrously stupid.
If they’d have let the market do its thing, we’d have a much different set of cars on the road today. Thank Nixon for the SUV and the insane truck market.
[…] OR LUXURY VEHICLE? Truckpocalypse Now. “Assuming I was insane enough to buy a new Ford F-150 at the average selling price, and no […]
$66,4k avg all Ford vehicles in 2022.
WTFF?
“Just as in the 1970s, American car manufacturers are pricing themselves out of the market and are inviting foreign manufacturers to swoop in and snatch market share from them.”
Show me you don’t understand the history of the automobile industry without telling me you don’t understand the history of the automobile industry.
Pardon me if I throw down the ACK-SHOO-AL-LY card but American car companies lost market share in the 1970s, 80s, and 1990s from making crappy small cars that fell apart (Vega, Pinto, Chevette, X-Cars [Chevrolet Citation and their ilk], J-Cars [Chevrolet Cavalier and their ilk], Escorts, Aspen/Volare, K-Cars, ad infinitum). Sadly the quality woes traveled up the ladder to mid-size and full size cars. People (especially Boomers) got tired of it and went to foreign makes. Frankly having ridden in and owned some American made lemons of that era, I don’t blame them. I know plenty of X’ers and others that have NEVER owned an American nameplated car.
American made small cars were actually very competitively priced compared to their Japanese and German (and later South Korean) competitors. (Remember the Chrysler America packages from the late 1980s/90s which were bare bones basic cars with a minimum of frills?) The problem was the money you saved at purchase time was offset by repair bills. And as Japanese quality and reputation grew, Toyota, Honda, and Nissan dealers could charge a premium because what are ya gonna do, buy a CAVALIER?!?
The American Auto Industry got hit by multiple body blows in the 1970s that it struggled (and still struggles) to recover from. The EPA and the Clean Air Act, two oil embargoes (1973 and 1979), arbitrary CAFE rules on mileage that affected cars and not trucks, and a forced switchover to smaller, unit body front wheel drive cars from the older full sized body on frame or full sized unit body, rear wheel drive cars they traditionally built really did a number on them. It’s only gotten worse as Uncle Sam imposes diametrically opposed requirements on emissions, safety, (airbags, airbags EVERYWHERE!) and fuel economy (500 miles on a Dixie Cup of gasoline).
Thing is, this is America and we want big, comfortable cars that carry people and our luggage or shopping. We can’t have them (CAFE neutered the family sedan), and we move up to big, comfortable SUVs and trucks. SUVs are the linear evolution of the big old Country Squire and Vista Cruiser station wagons sans fake wood side panels, and Pickups have evolved from a working man’s ride for work to a plush replacement for the LTD, Caprice/Impala, and, well, whatever Mopar full-size you remember (Fury, Monaco, New Yorker) with an open trunk.
Automakers respond to the market. People would and will buy big SUVs and Trucks tricked out like a Lincoln Continental or Cadillac de Ville of old as long as the monthly payments are low, even if it takes 96 months to pay.
Face it, your el-strippo pickup truck with a rubber floor mat, black bumpers, steel wheels, and manual windows and locks is gone.
Unless you want to talk to Joe in Fleet Sales and he’ll be lookin’ for you to buy a dozen.
The average price is so high because that’s what customers want. When I talked to my dealer, I asked him about all these expensive new trucks. He told me that the base price wasn’t so bad, but customers *want* all the addons that drive up the price. You show a customer a truck without all the addons, and then show him one with the seat warmers and tire sensors and satellite radio and proximity sensors and on and on, and the customer will want the fancy truck. And they want those things bad enough that they’d rather buy a used truck with the gewgaws than a new truck without them. Plus, the margin for the company and the dealer is better with all the addons. The base F-150 has an MSRP of $34,000 but you will likely have to order it.
People who believe in a market economy should not complain when the market delivers.
Recall the alternative, a Marxist economy based on equality: no one would have an F-150 except the Dear Leader.
It’s because people want the luxury stuff. I just built an F150 on the Ford site. Base model + largest engine + 4 WD + hitch (which is what I figure an HVAC guy needs) came to $44K. It’s not cheap but it’s not $80Gs either.
I agree in part with the commenter who noted that government regulation CAFE, etc.) has distorted the market. But we cannot forget about the UAW’s vital contribution to this mess: it has done such an excellent job of making Detroit inefficient that the “Big 3”—or is that the “small 2”—simply cannot turn anything even close to a profit on a standard passenger car, and are constantly retreating into smaller markets with more “selective appeal”.
But there’s also a cultural change afoot where the “blue collar” ethos has evolved to consider super-luxe appointments on pickup trucks as desirable. These trucks are now luxury vehicles for the guy who wants to keep up his blue collar cred. At least from my vantage, it’s all faintly ridiculous. Just think what guys from 30 or even 20 years ago would have said about accessorizing your pickup truck like it was a Mercedes.
Just as pro sports is soap opera for men so has the pickup truck replaced the sports car as the status symbol for the man who wants to give off the blue collar vibe.
(Anecdote(s) alert)
I have a well-developed antipathy for this evolutionary ghetto in the truck market because 2 years ago I was looking to buy a small pickup truck with no frills. Something I could bang around town in and transport large items (such as building materials, firewood, furniture—normal use) when needed. But there is no such truck being produced in the US market any longer. For example, the Chevy S-10 production was stopped long ago; the Ford Ranger has been reborn as a mid-size, aspirationally luxe truck. Apparently the market/labor unions have spoken and no one wants a small truck any more except me. I ended up buying a gently used pickup from 2009, back when they were still making small pickups.
In my neck of the woods, it’s the government workers who are just about the only ones who buy/can afford the brand new, tricked out, custom-rimmed F150s. Think police officers and firefighters with lots of built-in overtime.
Which Model F-150 is averaging $ 82,395?
I only see The Ford Raptor 4-Dr is in that Range.
I just Checked a Ford Dealer’s website here in CT, and a 4Dr V-6 F-150 XLT Sticker is $57,125.00(incl. Delivery Charge)
You’ll have to ask Car Gurus how they compile the data. I assume that figure also includes more expensive EV models.
One thing Zach and Ray of Car Edge have noted is that many entry model vehicles that show up as available on car dealer websites actually aren’t. If you go there in person, they have no base models available despite them actually being listed on the website.
Steve White says:
People who believe in a market economy should not complain when the market delivers.
And now for another round of “delusional or dishonest?”
Yeah, it’s all “the market”. It’s not gov’t, it’s not left wing politics pushing things that the rest of us don’t want (ESG anyone?), it’s all just random actions of the “free market”
That was a really lame try
The thing I find really shocking / amazing is the number of “pickup trucks” on the market in which you can’t fit a 8×4 sheet of plywood.
I’ve got to believe that anyone buying a “pickup truck” with a 4′ long bed is doing the midlife crisis purchase.
I’m not sure I believe that number either. I went to Kelly Blue Book (kbb.com) and found the following:
“2023 Ford F150 Pricing
The base XL trim starts at $33,695, and the XLT model begins at $41,800. The Lariat trim starts at $57,480, and the King Ranch model starts at $63,005. The upscale Platinum model starts at $64,695, and the luxurious Limited model begins at $84,910.
As for the off-road-ready models, the Tremor starts at $60,970, and the Raptor starts at $76,775.
A destination fee of $1,795 applies to all F-150 models.”
Even if almost everyone is buying the top-of-the-line models from each variant, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to come out to a (mean) average of 82 grand. I hit the Car Gurus web site and found the same number that you did, but I also have no idea how it was generated.
My old 2010 Tundra was totalled by a drunk while parked in my own yard, and I replaced it with a 2020 that ran about $36,000 right off the lot. It’s as close to a fleet model as you’ll find, but it’s still got all the electronic giz-widgets that I hate. But the 5.7L V8 is good, and it’s got much better brakes than the old one. So you can find the occasional decent buy in a pickup truck if you look around.
To Greg the Class Traitor: what part of ‘market economy’ do you not understand?
I might suggest your response: most of it.
Ford builds F-150s that are $55-80K out the door for a simple reason — they sell. They’ve been selling. When they stop selling, Ford will do something else.
Ford COULD sell cheap, no-frills Rangers, but right now they can sell bling’d up Rangers at a higher price (and profit). If you were a shareholder, you’d want them to do the latter.
That’s how markets work.
Sure, government, unions, left-wing loonies, and other work to distort the market. But in the end, you are the buyer with the money — if you don’t buy, Ford can’t sell.
Ford is selling high end trucks because people want high end trucks. Don’t believe me? See the other commenters here.
Car prices in general have become ridiculous. Due to natural disasters I had to buy a number of replacement cars 2015-17; Sticker price for the cars I was buying from 2016 to 2022 has gone up 50%. Of course, Ford and and GM stopped making most of their 4 door sedans now. I will be buying a foreign car next time, probably assembled closer to home as well.
Anecdote alert:
I decided in Feb of 2019 that I needed a new truck. My previous one was a Ranger that was one of last of the new 2011’s before they disappeared. Gave $15.6k for it. Started with the Ford website, and was shocked. My bare minimums (V8, X cab, towing, etc) Would have run $44k. So I guess used it would be.
Started out with CarMax. They had a 2018 F150 for $30k that said “1K miles”. This I gotta see. Turned out to be a dealer demo. They wholesale out from dealerships at years end, and they arrive at used stores in January.
Turned out to have an actual 874 mi on it when I went out on test drive. Every geegaw in the books, including the computer assist trailer backup, which I’ve never used. Things like remote start (everything XLT &up has it), heated seats and such. Still had factory warranty, the engine wasn’t fully broke in yet. Coyote V8, 10 sp trans, locking rear end.
Bought it that evening, 10% down, and got 4% financing. Came to $570/mo, almost done with it. Found a website that sells pdf’s of new car window stickers (I helps to know which factory packages are installed when you work on them). Original MSRP was $46k.
I like to think I did OK.
The last pickup truck I bought was in 1983. it is the last one I bought because I still have it, 40 years later. It cost $9800, which was high but not excessively so. My F100 was well equipped for its day, with an air conditioner that sill works great. To show how much things have changed, air conditioning was quite rare back then in trucks. That is the only vehicle I’ve owned which I can say I truly got my money’s worth from I certainly wouldn’t get my money’s worth from a new $80,000 truck.
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[…] Speaking of EV layoffs, Ford is cutting down the staff of their F-150 Lightning plant to one third of what it was. The Lightning is enjoying a double whammy, in that people don’t want EVs, and Ford’s core customers can no longer afford trucks with an average selling price north of $80,000. […]