Affordable Redefined

It’s hard to find a cheap new sedan – mainly because so few car companies are selling them.

Ford stopped selling cars altogether (excluding the Mustang, which is a specialty car) years ago. Its other models are all crossovers and SUVs. The same pretty much goes for GM, which hasn’t had an affordable car in its lineup in years. The only cars it still sells are Cadillacs and Corvettes. Mazda and Subaru are nearly car-free brands, too.

It’s nice to see Nissan bucking the trend.

Well, sort of.

On the one hand, Nissan is apparently not going to offer the Versa after the end of the current (2025) model year. That is a blow to affordability because the Versa is the last new car you can still buy that has a sticker price under $20,000.

On the other hand, it is not killing off the Sentra. But it will sticker for about $3k more than the Versa does now.

The new “affordable” is about $23,000. That’s the 2026 Sentra’s base price. It is the new floor. The least you’ll pay to get into something new. The handful of remaining other-brand small sedans – Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic and Hyundai Elantra – also sticker for about the same.  That’s as affordable as it gets – if you’re shopping new.

It was only two or three years ago that there were several small sedans available for thousands less than that, the Versa among them. The Mitsubishi Mirage sedan was  available for $16,695 as recently as 2024.

That was less than one year ago.

It brings to mind that clip in the excellently done film adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 starring John Hurt and Richard Burton. Specifically, the scene about the chocolate ration being increased by so-and-so many grams when in fact it had been decreased just a few weeks prior. You not only weren’t supposed to notice, you were supposed to be happy about the “increase.”

This is not to slam the new Sentra.

The soon-to-be-here 2026 model comes standard with a big LCD dash display that – just ten years ago – you’d have had to pay Mercedes-Benz or BMW money to sit in front of. But made-in-China plastic touchscreen are cheap things that look expensive (to some) and that is why the are standard in $23k Sentras and $100k Benzes alike. You also get an “intelligent” key – which means a transmitter that unlocks the car as you approach and locks it as you walk away. Also a nice stereo and climate control AC.

Of course, an automatic (CVT) transmission is standard.

The Versa comes standard with a manual transmission – and it’s not even available with a cheap (to make and install) but “expensive” looking LCD dash display – which partially explains why Nissan can’t get away with asking more than $17,190 for one.

That is the current base price of the last affordable new car.

It’s arguable – because it is probably true – that Nissan decided to try to make more money by not selling the Versa for less and instead, sell people Sentras for more. Seems logical. It may also be problematical.

Nissan is pulling the last affordable new car off the market at precisely the moment when affordable cars are probably going to become very popular again – because most of us have to pay attention to not spending more than we can afford when groceries and pretty much everything else (cheap-to-make LCD touchscreens excepted) is becoming less-and-less affordable on account of currency devaluation (“inflation”) and taxation (styled “tariffs”).

The Sentra is without question a nicer car than the Versa. But you pay extra for nicer. Some will argue – and they are correct, to an extent – that what you get for Sentra money is comparable to what you used to have to spend Mercedes or BMW money to get, at least in terms of such things as huge LCD dash displays and TailorFit leatherette seats – which are available in the new Sentra. Yes, it’s all very nice. But many might consider it nicer to be able to buy something new without such frou-frou that only cost them $17k or so, like the soon-to-be-gone Versa.

Nissan might make more money that way, too.

It sounds counterintuitive at first. How do you make more selling for less? The answer is as easy as it is apparently hard to see – from the vantage point of car companies hoping to cash in on what’s known in the business as the upsell. Certainly, there is more money to be made on a per-car basis for each sale of a $23k car such as the 2026 Sentra. Nissan probably stands to make something on the order of $3k on each one, give or take. Meanwhile, the margin on a $17k Versa is a lot less, probably closer to $1,500 on each transaction.

On the other hand, if you sell three times as many $17k cars as $23k cars, there’s more money to be made on volume. This was Henry Ford’s insight and he was no dope. He did not lower the price of the Model T with each new model year because he wanted to make less money. He understood he’d make more money if he sold more Model Ts – and the way to do that was to make them more affordable.

Maybe Nissan ought to keep the Versa around for awhile. For buyers who can’t afford the new “affordable.”

. . .

If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.