- Since 1953 (the first full year both series were tracked monthly), used car and truck prices have risen 6.7-fold, while new vehicle prices have risen only 3.8-fold, used vehicles rose at almost twice the rate of new ones over 73 years.
- Used vehicle prices spiked 42.8% from 2020 to 2022 during the pandemic-era shortage, then fell 12.7% from 2022 to 2024, a sharp, mostly-reversed swing that new vehicle prices never showed.
- New vehicle prices rose more steadily through the same period (+16.9% from 2020 to 2022) and have kept rising since, while used prices partly retreated.
- Despite the correction, used vehicle prices are still up 24.9% since 2020, slightly more than new vehicles' 21.4% rise over the same span.
01 Introduction
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks new vehicle and used vehicle prices as two separate components of the Consumer Price Index, going back to the late 1940s for new vehicles and the early 1950s for used ones. Both series are index numbers, not dollar prices: they measure how much prices for a comparable vehicle have changed relative to a fixed 1982–1984 reference period (confirmed directly in this data: the 1982–1984 average for the new-vehicle series comes to 99.99, essentially exactly 100). This article uses both series in full to compare how new and used vehicle prices have actually moved, separately, over more than seven decades.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U New Vehicles (CUUR0000SETA01) and Used Cars and Trucks (CUUR0000SETA02), U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted.02 New and Used Vehicle Prices Since 1953
The table below shows both index series at 5-year intervals since 1955, the first year with a complete run of monthly data for both series (1953 is the actual first full year for both, used as the base comparison point below).
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U New Vehicles and Used Cars and Trucks, annual averages calculated from monthly not-seasonally-adjusted data.| Year | New Vehicles | Used Cars/Trucks |
|---|---|---|
| 1955 | 44.9 | 21.5 |
| 1960 | 51.6 | 25.1 |
| 1965 | 49.8 | 29.8 |
| 1970 | 53.1 | 31.2 |
| 1975 | 63.0 | 43.9 |
| 1980 | 88.5 | 62.3 |
| 1985 | 106.1 | 113.7 |
| 1990 | 121.4 | 117.6 |
| 1995 | 141.0 | 156.5 |
| 2000 | 142.8 | 155.8 |
| 2005 | 137.9 | 139.4 |
| 2010 | 138.0 | 143.1 |
| 2015 | 147.1 | 147.1 |
| 2020 | 147.6 | 144.2 |
| 2025 | 178.5 | 184.9 |
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Use the Calculator03 The Pandemic-Era Divergence, 2018–2026
The most dramatic recent movement in either series is the used-vehicle price spike that began in 2021. The annual data below shows just how sharply used prices diverged from new prices, then partly reversed while new prices kept climbing.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U New Vehicles and Used Cars and Trucks, calendar-year averages of monthly not-seasonally-adjusted index values.| Year | New Vehicles | Used Cars/Trucks |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 146.3 | 138.4 |
| 2019 | 146.8 | 139.8 |
| 2020 | 147.6 | 144.2 |
| 2021 | 156.2 | 182.6 |
| 2022 | 172.5 | 205.9 |
| 2023 | 178.9 | 191.2 |
| 2024 | 177.9 | 179.8 |
| 2025 | 178.5 | 184.9 |
| 2026* | 179.2 | 180.1 |
Used vehicle prices jumped 42.8% from 2020 to their 2022 peak (144.2 to 205.9), driven by pandemic-era new-vehicle production shortages that pushed buyers into the used market. They then fell 12.7% from that 2022 peak through 2024 (205.9 to 179.8) as new-vehicle production recovered. New vehicle prices, by contrast, rose more gradually through the same window (16.9% from 2020 to 2022) and never showed a comparable reversal, they kept climbing even as used prices fell back.
Calculated: (205.9−144.2)÷144.2 = 42.8% (used, 2020-2022); (179.8−205.9)÷205.9 = −12.7% (used, 2022-2024); (172.5−147.6)÷147.6 = 16.9% (new, 2020-2022). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U New Vehicles and Used Cars and Trucks.04 Why These Numbers Look Smaller Than They Feel
A 3.8-fold rise in new vehicle prices since 1953 will feel low to anyone comparing a 1950s car to a 2026 one, and that's by design, not an error: BLS applies quality adjustments to these indexes specifically to separate genuine price inflation from the fact that vehicles have also gotten meaningfully better over time (safety equipment, emissions controls, infotainment, materials, and general reliability all improved substantially). The index tries to answer "how much more does it cost to buy a functionally comparable vehicle," not "how much more does the average new car cost today than in the past," which is a larger number since today's average vehicle is a different, more equipped product than one from decades ago. This is also part of why the used vehicle index shows a starker recent spike than the new vehicle index: the pandemic-era shortage was a genuine, temporary supply-demand imbalance rather than a quality change, so the quality adjustment doesn't dampen it the way it dampens the long-run new-vehicle trend.
05 What This Means for Buyers
The long-run convergence between new and used vehicle prices helps explain why the traditional "buy used to save money" advice has weakened over time: used vehicles have been closing the price gap with new ones for seven decades, not just since the pandemic. The 2021-2022 spike accelerated that convergence sharply, and while used prices have partly cooled since, they haven't returned to their pre-pandemic discount relative to new vehicles. See this site's vehicle lifespan and survival-rate data for how many miles a used vehicle can realistically be expected to deliver, and average car payment history for how these price trends have flowed through to actual monthly loan payments.
06 Data Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), New Vehicles (series CUUR0000SETA01) and Used Cars and Trucks (series CUUR0000SETA02), U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted. data.bls.gov
- This site's related analysis: Average Car Payment by Year, 1971-2026 and How Many Miles Does the Average Car Last?