This Is the Cheapest New Car in America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 13, 8:20AM EDT

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This Is the Cheapest New Car in America — © Courtesy of General Motors

Car prices have risen fairly steadily over the past several decades. The average car price in the United States has been boosted by the trend to buy large sport utility vehicles, crossovers and pickups. Small sedans, which once sold extremely well, have had sales that have tapered off. However, there is still a market for very low-priced, high gas mileage, small-engine cars.

Motor Trend looked at the least expensive cars available with 2021 models. Note that the average price of a new car sold in America has risen to just above $40,000.

The Chevrolet Spark, made by General Motors, has a base price of $14,395, which makes it the cheapest car sold in America. The Spark is made by GM Korea. It was first built as the Daewoo Matiz. Versions of the car have been sold by GM divisions Pontiac and Chevy. The Spark is made in several plants around the world and sold in several markets. GM figures show that 33,478 units were sold in the United States last year.

Chevy shows the base price of the Spark at $13,400. However, this does not include destination freight charge, tax, title, license, dealer fees or optional equipment. Like most inexpensive cars, it gets high gas mileage: 38 miles per gallon for highway driving and 30 mpg in the city. Chevy describes Spark as “America’s fastest-growing full-line brand,” although it does not offer specific proof for the claim.
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As with almost every vehicle for sale in America, a buyer can push the price of a model higher with accessories. In the case of the Spark, the figure tops out at $20,000. While more expensive than the base model, it is still half the average price of cars sold in the United States.

Click here to read about America’s slowest-selling car.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.