there was a prediction of a used car market "squeeze" over a decade ago. new cars are a shit deal and basically always have been, so the only people buying brand new cars are people who make shit financial decisions or are so loaded they don't have to care about depreciation. the used car market is a gradient ranging from people buying 3-5 year old cars after the big initial drop, when the value has stabilized and the car is still useful... to the people out there buying the ultra low price, salvage titles, clunkers, etc, and getting whatever use they can until it shits the bed. (waves at myself).

the knowledge that EVs were eventually coming started a squeeze, where more people simply held onto the car they had, waiting for the promise of a new technology to deliver so they could adopt it next time they bought a car. nobody wants to be the last asshole to buy a combustion engine because that will be a truly shit deal, and the pool of people concerned about that only grows over time.

so rather than trading up, more people started hanging on to their slightly older car, and the people who would have bought that hung onto theirs, and so on down the chain. but some cars do die, and those who had no choice but to buy up something to have a vehicle bought another combustion engine. so the demand for anything economical went up, making the very-used car market shoot up, and that pushed up on the whole gradient. car dependency pushed people to accept those high prices and shit-deal financial products (like 84 month loans) that helped put the keys in their hands.

by blocking EVs from coming to market, the powers have accelerated the squeeze and unless the pressure is reduced, the subprime car loan market is likely to burst into flames at some point. probably next time interest rates go up, would be my guess.

Used diesel trucks are insane. Even if youre buying from owner a good half ton/3/4 ton diesel truck goes for 18k+. And in talking late 90's early 2000's.

And trust me you are going to want a used car. anything older than anything 2012 is malware spy device, and they all have shitty computers in then and start locking down parts of it you can actually repair. You'll start having to bring the car in so you can pay 2 grand for something that uses to be a 50 dollar fix and a trip to pick and pull.