My father bought a pickup truck in 1972 for around $2,800. In today's money, that's roughly $21,000. He bought a Ford Country Squire wagon somewhere in that same decade, same price range, same math. He was not wealthy. He was a working man who bought new vehicles because new vehicles cost what a working man could manage.
The 2026 Ford F-150 starts at $36,000 and averages north of $52,000 once you add a second key fob and the trailer brake controller. The Country Squire's contemporary equivalent, the Audi RS6 Avant, starts at $118,000. My father, were he still buying cars, would look at both of those numbers and go find a used Tacoma.
Three things happened this year that people are treating as separate stories. They are not.
Full-size pickup truck sales contracted 4% in Q1 2026. Ford, GM, and Toyota were all down. The headline from Motor1 was blunt: "America Is Falling Out of Love With Huge Trucks." The framing is wrong. F-150 sales aren't falling because buyers went soft on trucks. They're falling because trucks got expensive enough to price out the people who used to drive them.
Porsche discontinued the Taycan Sport Turismo and Cross Turismo. The Drive ran the requiem with an unsettling headline: "Porsche Killed Its Best Cars Because You Didn't Buy Them." Taycan sales peaked at 7,570 US units in 2023 and ran 607 through Q1 2026. Base price for a Sport Turismo: $130,000. Official reason for the axing: low sales. Which is accurate, in the same way you can describe the Titanic as a water intrusion problem.
The Audi RS6 Avant is heading into its next generation as a plug-in hybrid, arriving in US dealerships late 2026 or early 2027. Audi moves roughly 1,500 to 2,000 of them annually in the US. A PHEV powertrain on a car that already starts at $118,000 is unlikely to make that number bigger. Whether the next generation finds enough buyers to justify its US allocation is an open question and not a comfortable one.
Three vehicles. Three manufacturers. Three segments. One explanation.
The average new car cost $4,800 in 1975, which is roughly $28,000 in today's dollars. The average transaction price on a new vehicle today is $49,500. My father's F-100, purchased new in real dollars, cost less than a used RAV4 with 40,000 miles on it today. The pickup truck did not change its relationship with the American buyer. The price did.
The market that used to exist for all three of these vehicles was the middle buyer: the person who stretched for capability or performance or practicality, who paid a premium because the thing was worth it. That buyer has been priced out methodically over thirty years. Nobody in an OEM or an agency really wants to say so, because naming it means describing who actually buys these vehicles now and how few of them there are.
The buyer who can write a check for a $130,000 Taycan Sport Turismo exists. There were not enough of them to keep the production line running. The buyer who used to pick up a loaded F-150 at $55,000 is now buying a lightly used one at $38,000, or a Maverick, or waiting. The persona document that says "truck enthusiast, $90K household income, values capability" is describing someone who can no longer afford the product that persona was built to reach.
What This Means for Content and Campaign Planning
Anyone writing automotive content or planning automotive campaigns should sit with that for a moment.
OEM content strategy is still largely organized around a market structure that predates interest rates doubling and average transaction prices clearing $50,000. The content asks whether the buyer wants capability, heritage, technology, efficiency. Those are reasonable questions for a buyer who is in the market. A lot of people who were in the market three years ago have left it, not because they changed their minds about trucks or wagons or performance cars.
Porsche did not kill the Taycan Sport Turismo because buyers decided practical performance wagons were a bad idea. They killed it because at $130,000, the population of willing and financially capable buyers was too small for the platform economics to hold. No content program fixes that. But content teams could at least stop building campaigns as if the addressable buyer pool is the same size it was in 2019, or the same person. The hybrid buyer who is currently the highest-volume segment is one version of that shift. The priced-out former truck buyer is another.
The truck is not getting heavy because Americans prefer crossovers. The wagon is not dying because station wagons fell out of fashion. The price got far enough ahead of the incomes of the people who used to buy these things, and the market responded the way markets always do.
My father understood this without a research brief. He looked at the sticker.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why are full-size pickup truck sales declining in 2026?
Full-size pickup truck sales contracted 4% in Q1 2026, with Ford, GM, and Toyota all posting declines. The decline is concentrated at the higher end of the segment, where transaction prices on a loaded F-150 now routinely clear $52,000. The average new F-100 in 1975 cost roughly $21,000 in today's dollars. The category hasn't lost cultural relevance — it has outpriced the buyer who used to define it.
Why did Porsche discontinue the Taycan Sport Turismo and Cross Turismo?
Porsche officially cited low sales. Taycan sales peaked at 7,570 US units in 2023 and fell to 607 through Q1 2026. The Sport Turismo and Cross Turismo started at around $130,000. At that price point, the population of willing and financially capable buyers was too small for the production economics to hold. The vehicles weren't wrong. The price cleared out the addressable market.
Is the Audi RS6 Avant being discontinued in the US?
The RS6 Avant is not being discontinued. The next generation is coming to the US as a plug-in hybrid, likely arriving in late 2026 or early 2027. The concern is different: Audi ships roughly 1,500 to 2,000 RS6 Avants to the US annually under the current generation. A PHEV powertrain on a car that already starts at $118,000 puts additional pressure on an already narrow buyer pool. Whether the allocation makes economic sense for the next generation is an open question.
How much more expensive are new vehicles today compared to the 1970s?
The average new car cost $4,800 in 1975, which equals roughly $28,000 in today's dollars. The average transaction price on a new vehicle in 2025 was $49,500 — approximately 75 to 80 percent higher in real terms. Trucks are an even sharper example: a base 1975 Ford F-100 cost the equivalent of around $21,000 in today's money. A 2026 Ford F-150 starts at $36,000 and averages over $52,000.
What does vehicle price inflation mean for automotive content strategy?
Most automotive content programs are built around buyer personas that assumed a middle buyer — someone who would stretch for capability or performance. That buyer has been systematically priced out of the segments they used to define. Content and campaign strategies calibrated for 2019 buyer pools are reaching a smaller audience than they were designed for, and the gap is growing. The work is to update the assumption about who is actually in the market and what questions they are asking.
