re: New cars, once part of the American dream, now out of reach for many

The chip shortage is pushing some of this.

When I went to buy my car, the finance lady had the wrong paperwork at first and said “You’re here to buy an XXX today? Didn’t realize we even had one on the lot.”

Said model was the low end SUV from that manufacturer which didn’t get discontinued as much as severely under stocked because, if you only have the parts to make X number of cars, you are going to make the expensive luxury models which are going to bring a better profit rather than the lower margin stuff.