Drivers face an eye-watering £9,000 bombshell amid a surge in car prices. The average list price of a petrol car has surged from £27,036 in 2015 to £45,218 in 2024. If it had risen at the rate of everyday inflation, it would cost just £36,225 – almost £8,993 less. “Suddenly, you couldn’t get city cars or superminis – it was SUVs or nothing,” said Phil McNamara, Editor at Large at Auto Express. McNamara said: “Everyone wants safer, greener cars, but who’s going to pay the price of progress?” Replying, a motorist fumed: "The thing is though, even basic cars have risen in price due to the amount of anti pollution measures put in place that have to be installed on these new engines and not to mention all of the gadgets people expect today like lane assist, parking sensors etc. What happened to basic car without the bells and whistles? READ MORE Exact dates next UK mini-heatwave start and end with 72-hour scorcher set to hit "This is one of the reasons car insurance has gone up, one slight bump and it costs 1000s to repair or worse, written off because of all the safety features just in a bumper alone. Years ago, if you pranged a wing or scraped a bumper, one could go to the srappy and just replace it." A second raged: "Guess what, i refuse to pay the extra costs, i instead will run the car i have for much longer. Cheaper to rebuild the engine when needed!" Auto Express crunched the numbers on a petrol-powered Ford Puma, Volkswagen Golf, Dacia Duster and diesel Mercedes E-class, taking one popular variant on consistent sale from 2014 to 2024 (sales data is every two years). MacNamara said: “Covid-19 interrupted the status quo of Europe’s car factories churning out more cars than there were customers, which had constrained transaction prices. Semiconductors became headline news, with a ‘chips crisis’ meaning manufacturers could only build a finite number of cars, so they focused on expensive, higher-margin models such as SUVs, and EVs to help meet emissions targets. “Suddenly you couldn’t get city cars or superminis. It was SUVs because that’s where the profit was: you can imagine the profit in a [£50,000-80,000] SUV is tenfold what it is in your £15-grand supermini. “With new car demand exceeding supply, the mindset of Europe’s car makers changed: to focus on delivering ‘value not volume’, in the mantra of Renault, Mercedes-Benz and Ford. Not necessarily value to the customer – but to their bottom line and to shareholders.”