Something like 1990s Mazda with a japanese-size pickup, miata & basic sedan / hatchback.
But there is information I want, and there is entertainment I want.
I want my readily replaceable phone to be able to connect to a screen that's safe for a driver to view, to display GPS information.
I want my readily replaceable phone to be able to play music through the car's speakers, and allow me access to basic sound playback controls.
Beyond that, I don't care. So do I want no infotainment? No, I can't say that. But this was a solved problem, that is now going to go backwards or get worse depending on the people making decisions for these corporations.
https://www.automoblog.net/brief-history-high-tech-safety-fe...
I definitely do not want the car to embed any infotainment. It's the wrong place for it.
Any infotainment built into the car is going to be obsolete before you drive out the dealer lot, and laughably so ten years later. But the lifetime of the car itself is many decades. It makes zero sense to join the two.
The car should excel and being a car and I will use a phone or tablet for the infotainment part (which I do anyway, even if the car has some).
Keep the fancy airbags and traction control, adaptive cruise control etc.
Just throw out the garbage custom navigation and radio. It never works well. The display should be simply used for carplay/android auto, and be a black rectangle otherwise.
Maybe sell an addon package to just shove a preconfigured phone into the glove box for people who don't want to tether their device.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/New-cars/price-inflation
The most recent price spike is a direct result of the pandemic supply chain issues and car makers shutting down manufacturing capacity in anticipation of a consumer collapse that didn't happen (instead the opposite happened).
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-used-car-price-kelley-blue-...
A base price 1995 Ford Contour was $13805–$16190 [1]. ABS was an upgrade option on that car.
A 2023 Nissan Versa is $15730 [2]
Even the cheapest cars from 1975 cost the equivalent of $17000 in today's dollars [3]
1. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15143064/1995-10best-...
2. https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/cars-trucks/ch....
3. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-reviews/vintage-rt-c...
That today's average car might have more features is true; but for many of these features, you're not allowed to forego them in favor of a new, decontented, cheaper car.
A more relevant comparison would be the $3452 average new car price in 1970 against today, which is $27,704 in today's dollars.
> That today's average car might have more features is true; but for many of these features, you're not allowed to forego them in favor of a new, decontented, cheaper car.
But you can get a car cheaper than the average new cars. In fact, “cars” proper are often less than the inflation adjusted amount from 1970; much of the reason the average new “car” price is higher is because it is more likely now to be an medium to large SUV than a car (sedan/coupe).
Plenty of gas-powered sedans/coupes and small SUVs are less than $27.7K.
As for modern small SUVs...you're still not going to get much change back from your $27K for a VW Taos, or Mazda CX-30, or Hyundai Santa Fe...how small are you willing to go for cheap?
The cheapest car I can find from 1972 was $2131 or $15k in today's dollars [1]. That's pretty close to the cheapest car today, the Nissan Versa at $16K.
There was no time when cars were significantly cheaper (inflation adjusted) than they are today.
The Model T would have cost $27000 in today's dollars. And in almost every other year in car history, cars have on average been more expensive than that [2].
1. https://blog.consumerguide.com/6-cheapest-american-cars-1972...
I should have qualified what I said-a car the size of a Dodge Dart in 1970 is now twice as expensive.
I don't understand what information you using to draw that conclusion.
A 2023 Nissan Sentra ($20k) dimensions:
183″ L x 72″ W x 57″ H.
The 1970 Dart ($21k in today's dollars) dimensions:
196" L x 72" W x 54" H.
And a good chunk of that extra length is the huge engine in the Dart and the resulting long hood, so it actually probably had equivalent or less passenger space.
The Nissan also has the full raft of safety/convenience features that you said should make it more expensive than the 1970 Dart: ABS, airbags, TPMS, AndroidAuto/Carplay, cruise control, collision detection, auto-braking for pedestrians, driver alertness monitoring, lane departure warning, etc etc etc. Yet it's still cheaper in real dollars than the Dart was.
That's an invalid comparison, because 42k is the average new car transaction price (ATP), not the average MSRP, which is what your 1970 Dodge Dart is: an MSRP.
The ATP is heavily weighted toward the fact that most new cars purchased are larger SUVs and higher end cars, and also lately influenced by heavy dealer markups due to the pandemic supply/demand imbalance for cars in general.
That doesn't mean more economical cars the equivalent of the 1970 Dart aren't available today, and they are even cheaper than the Dart, i.e. the 2023 Nissan Versa at $17k. There are several other similarly cheap cars, just search "cheapest new cars 2023".
True; and interesting that the Contour struggled in the market due to it being noticeably more expensive than the model it replaced! The thought was that being a much better car (to the tune of $6 billion in development costs), Ford could sell it on its merits, but as it turns out, buyers of small cars in the US are really, really price-sensitive.
Unless it has a particular popular feature people (at least some segment of the population) are willing to buy for (hybrids, when they were newer, for instance), yes, because Americans mostly don’t want small cars, they settle for small cars if the price is compelling.
You could save all the great stuff and still operate the car with no software, simple firmware, and 2002-era ICs