Incredible how the article and I are both talking about the rise in prices since 2020 and you two are being intentionally obtuse talking about the 60s and the 70s.

It doesn't matter at all how things were in the 70s. What matters is that car ownership is much harder than it should be, NOW. It was cheaper, so it could be practically as cheap as it was a few years ago, but it's not.

Nobody that wants to drive / needs to drive needs to buy a brand new car per-se. For 5K and up you can get a perfectly serviceable car that has more life left in it than a brand new car from the past and that will pass emissions tests for various environmental zones. My daily driver is 25 years old and I can drive it anywhere. I've owned quite a few vehicles, some new, some old and in spite of the cars sticker price being lower in the 70's and 80's I was very far removed from being able to buy a new vehicle when I got my license first (in '86 or so). You are constructing a whole pile of arguments that have a poor or even no foundation and I'm saying that as a EU driver who could afford a brand new car now but that's mostly because of my increase in income. New car ownership historically wasn't a thing that 'the poor' engaged in and with prices being roughly steady at 1 years worth of income it's clear that you either need to borrow money or save a lot of money to buy a brand new car, unless your boss is friendly enough to provide you with a brand new lease vehicle (which in software circles isn't rare at all).

If you evaluate the cheap cars from the past (say, 1986: Mini, 2CV to a lesser extent the 2CV and really cheap options such as Yugo, Zastava and the Fiat Panda of the day) you'll find that they were very slow and underpowered, consumed quite a bit of fuel, were super dangerous to drive (both the Mini and the 2CV were essentially driving coffins, I should know, I've had both) and were comparatively high maintenance. They were also about 10K guilders at the time, which today would be approximately 11500 euros give or take. That's order of magnitude equivalent but your 15K car today is much safer, sips fuel in comparison and will go three times as far between service intervals.

Car ownership right now is very easy, new car ownership is harder, but it always was, and if you want to compare apples-to-apples you need to compare much higher class vehicles from the 80's with the present low end because the low end from back then has simply disappeared: nobody would buy a 1 star NCAP vehicle even if it was cheap and available, the market simply isn't there anymore. Maybe you're the exception but if that's so then I'm sure you can find a nicely restored 1980's mini for that kind of money. But please don't, they're more dangerous than they even were back then because a modern 'cheap' vehicle will drive right through a 1986 Mini in an accident.