We all know that "creature comfort" for vehicles has increased drastically over the last few years. However along with those comforts has came a huge price hike. It is common to now see full size trucks, SUV's and luxury vehicles topping the 80K price range. So would you rather have vehicles with less "creature comforts" like there used to be and pay 1/2 the price or are you okay with paying the exorbitant prices for new cars to get the bells and whistles?
Haven't looked at current prices since I'm not shopping, but I got a brand new Honda Fit like 4 or 5 years ago for under $20K before trade-in was subtracted. It was cheaper than all the used cars I was looking at, so seemed like a no-brainer to me.