Car prices soaring: the silent expense nobody talks about

Car prices soaring: the silent expense nobody talks about

While housing prices dominate the headlines, the cost of cars has spiralled out of control without anyone putting it on the agenda. A basic Sandero today costs more than a mid-range compact did five years ago, and the second-hand market is trinc the same inflationary spiral. The consequence is direct: more and more workers depend on their car to reach industrial estates with no public transport, yet at the same time they have to take on leasing payments that never actually turn the vehicle into their property.

Car leasing: rip-off or necessity?

Personal car leasing has become the only way to access a new car, but its terms hide a total cost that far exceeds that of a traditional purchase. Leasing advocates argue that it avoids unexpected mechanical bills and allows you to change cars every few years, but critics point out that the user pays a monthly fee that does not even give them the right to own the vehicle. It is perpetual renting which, combined with mandatory comprehensive insurance and rising premiums, turns the car into a fixed expense that can never be paid off. Meanwhile, new car prices are rising above general inflation, weighed down by the costs of electronic components and regulatory requirements (environmental labels, mandatory safety systems).

Public transport does not reach everywhere

Some analysts argue that the expensive car problem only affects a minority, because most workers live in large metropolitan areas with metro and bus networks. However, this view clashes with the reality of mid-sized towns and industrial estates. In towns of 30,000 inhabitants, the connection to nearby towns may be limited to three buses a day. For someone working in an industrial estate 20 kilometres away, public transport means a two-hour journey versus 20 minutes by car. In those cases, the car is not a luxury: it is a tool for keeping a job. The impossibility of doing without it means its high cost hits middle and low incomes hardest.

Two parallel crises: housing and cars

Rising housing prices are pushing workers out of city centres towards the outskirts, lengthening commutes and multiplying dependence on the car. Thus, the housing crisis and the car crisis feed each other: those who cannot buy or rent near their workplace need a car to get there, but cars have become just as unaffordable. The result is a trap of fixed costs that are increasingly hard to sustain on wages that fail to keep up. The question hanging in the air is whether, in this scenario, the car has become the new middle-class luxury, or whether we are simply facing another phase of the general rise in the cost of living that nobody wants to label a mobility crisis.

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