U.S. economic divide reflected in car sales

Headline:  New York Times, 1/5/2026

Neal E. Boudette reports:

The auto industry has evaded a slump largely because affluent Americans with well-paying jobs and robust savings have continued to buy new cars at a decent clip. And they are more than making up for the cars that lower-income Americans are no longer buying. 

Families with a household income of $150,000 a year or more now buy 43 percent of the new cars sold in the country, up from one-third of all cars sold in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Cox Automotive, a research firm. By comparison, households with incomes less than $75,000 are buying about a quarter of vehicles sold, down from more than a third in 2019.