I think you’re not thinking that a typical american consumer. For a typical american consumer, the actual MSRP of the car does not nearly matter as much as “what are the payments I need to make to be able to drive that car?”

Most people do not buy a new car outright. Most people, if they want to obtain a new car, they either

1) Lease
or
2) Take out a loan to buy

where #1 is more popular these days….And for a lot of people, who insist on always have the latest and greatest, it makes sense…Especially when it comes to the more luxury brands, most of these cars depreciate like crazy, are a PITA to maintain…So for many many people, it’s not about an entry level BMW 3 series starts at $40k these days. It’s about “what is my monthly payment going to be?”

As long as people can make the monthly payment and as long as they still have their job, and as long as gas prices stay cheap, people won’t care about MSRP.

What’s going to hurt automakers, are the ones that make sketchy leases/loans to subprime borrowers who then can’t make the payments. A lot of times, automakers get greedy and do just that to prop up sales numbers. Mitsubishi did just that and got into a lot of trouble. Some of the big 3 US companies are probably doing that right now. Ford got into a world of hurt doing that before Mullaly took over and cleaned it up, and sold of Mazda, Jaguar, etc,etc,etc.

I think it will be interesting to see what happens when all these US car companies who are focusing on building trucks/suvs see demand fall off the cliff due to fuel costs…And this time, they won’t have a small car/sedan portfolio left.

Me? I would never take out a loan to buy a car or even lease unless a company was paying for it. If I can’t buy a car with cash, I won’t buy.