Cheaper cars on the way?

Clark Behind the Headlines
From HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

There are changes coming to the car market that are so exciting. The cost of reliable transportation has come down and down and down. And we are now in an era where you can buy new cars for as cheap as $10,000!

Manufacturers will often release versions of their lowest price point models – some as low as $8,000 or $9,000 – and many of them come equipped with just about anything the typical buyer would want: cruise control, automatic windows, automatic transmission, etc. Wait, it gets better!

Nissan, one of the world’s largest automakers, is putting out a car in Asia in about two years that will cost around $2,000 bucks!

Now why in the world would you care about a car that’s being sold in Asia? Well, I want you to think historically. In electronics, the trends often emerge from Japan. The Japanese market is a leading indicator of what’s coming to the United States and to Western Europe.

Now we’re not going to have $2,000 or $3,000 cars in the United States anytime soon because of our safety requirements. The cars have to be designed to meet our safety and emission rules and that’ll pump up the price to around $6,000 brand new, but that’s still a heck of a deal!