Vehicles under $15k are 1.6% of the market, and their share of the market has dropped over 90% since 2019. The old advice that you can get a beater and drive it in to the ground for $5k hasn’t been true for years but it still seems pervasive in personal finance spaces.
Yup. My wife and I both own Subarus, we get “please let us buy your car!” letters from local dealerships on a monthly basis and have been since we bought hers in 2018.