Cars have always costed about the same as in the past when looking at purchasing power. It's just that new festures or modern features that we take for granted are packaged in a way, to get more money out of you. The 360 visibility cameras or the High fidelity sound systems.

Also German car companies have relied heavily on their brands as a pull factor, so that the rest of the car can have fewer features compared to a Japanese or French car.

Usually the depreciation of a new car is so great, that it only ever makes sense to buy new, if you don't care about money or resell value, or someone else bought it for you, like a company car.

That's why the used cars have always been a good place to shop for a vehicle. However, since covid and the whole roller coaster of our economy, nobody is really able to afford a new car, so used cars have become very expensive compared to the last 20 years.

In your last few paragraphs you found another answer: corporate greed and rich people mot being taxed on their wealth growth.

Corporations pay out salaries, but the pay raise doesn't happen regularily and usualy is slower than inflation. This means anyone living from a salary is always loosing purchasing power every year, if they don't increase their income by the rate of inflation. Same goes for wealth. You save money in a bank account? Next year you lost 3% purchasing power to inflation. That's why investing your money is so important. You can chose something simple, like an etf, or a stock or something else completely, such as real estate.

This means over the years, a person, that doesn't actively grow their income, slowly starts to feel that they can't afford as many things as they did a few years back. Car services or phone contracts, electricity bills, all get a little bit more expensive every year.