Average Transaction Prices For Compact Cars and Compact Five-Passenger Crossover SUVs are At Three-Year Lows Down vs. 2024 and 2023 - Here’s the Good News You Won’t See Reported Anywhere Else

Despite the fact that the average transaction price of automobiles in America has barely budged since President Trump added new tariffs to those already in place under Biden and Obama’s administrations, outlet after outlet continues to peddle the fear, uncertainty, and doubt stories. The fact is, the largest vehicle segment overall, five-passenger compact SUVs, and the entry-level car segment are presently at three-year consumer cost lows. Let’s examine the average transaction price of these vehicles, as reported by Cox Automotive, an open-source and respected automotive industry data and analysis group. We’ll drop direct links to all of our data sources at the end of the story:
 

The data we have shown above are all reported by Cox Automotive. They represent the month of November ATP for the given model.

Overall, ATPs have increased. Part of the reason for that is electric vehicles. The ATP for electric vehicles in November 2025 is higher than the industry average, so EVs pull the ATP up. For example, the ATP for Tesla in November 22025 was $54,310. Tesla has a bit under 50% EV market share in America. High-end performance and luxury vehicles also pull the ATP up overall. The High Performance Car ATP is $134,538, and the Full Size Luxury Crossover ATP is $98,538. Trucks make up 14% of overall vehicle sales in America, second after five-passenger SUVs. The truck ATP in November 2025 was $66,192.

As you can see, the average transaction price of the cars that many Americans buy is not only lower than the industry average ATP, but it’s a fraction of it. Size isn’t really an issue whatsoever. Minivans are among the largest vehicles on the road in terms of passenger capacity, cargo capacity, and interior volume, but the ATP is dramatically lower than that of high-end cars.

A good example of how prices of popular compact crossovers go down, not just up, is the Kia Seltos. For 2026, Kia slashed $1,500 off its base MSRP. Nissan's Rogue and Pathfinder SUVs have also seen sticker price declines for many trims. 

The truth is, tariffs and even the devaluation of the dollar, which is occurring at roughly 2.8% annually, have had no impact on the price of a compact crossover like the Nissan Rogue. Certainly, the more popular models within each segment fetch a bit more money. The less popular models sell for a bit less, but the overall segment average ATP has declined since 2023. Many fear uncertainty, and doubt stories also mention that MSRPs have gone up for some models, and the dishonest Destination and Delivery charges have most definitely gone up. But the average of what consumers are actually paying for the vehicles in the compact car and compact crossover segments has gone down, not up.

Minivans are an interesting case. This segment’s ATP is lower now than last year and virtually identical to 2023. Look over the segment ATPs, and you will find that most are not up by any meaningful amount since President Trump was elected. There are changes of one or two percent, some up, some down. This is remarkable, given that the devaluation of the dollar should have resulted in an approximately 6% increase over the past two years. If you do adjust for the devaluation of the dollar, virtually every segment is now costing consumers less than it did in 2023.

To help illustrate the economic burden of vehicles on a household or family budget, Cox also publishes the chart above that shows how many weeks of pay vehicles are costing Americans on average. Using this metric, the burden of vehicles on a family budget is dramatically lower now than in 2022, 2023, and 2024. In fact, vehicles are costing households about the same percentage of their overall budget as they did in 2013. You won’t hear that on the nightly FUD report by mainstream media.

Tell us in the comments below if you were surprised to learn that the ATPs for compact cars and compact crossover SUVs have gone down versus 2023 and 2024.

You can find the Cox Automotive landing page here
Report containing the ATP data charts for November 2025
Report containing the ATP data charts for 2023 and 2024 is here. 
The detailed ATP information is at the very bottom of the reports. Look for “download data tables.”

John Goreham is the Vice President of the New England Motor Press Association and an expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his fourteen years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on LinkedIn and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. John employs grammar and punctuation software when proofreading, and he sometimes uses image generation tools. 

Top of page image by the author. American vehicle affordability chart courtesy of Cox Automotive. Data in the tables shown are from Cox Automotive.