Vehicles under $15k are 1.6% of the market, and their share of the market has dropped over 90% since 2019. The old advice that you can get a beater and drive it in to the ground for $5k hasn’t been true for years but it still seems pervasive in personal finance spaces.
Those PF posts drove me nuts too. And if you pointed out that you got a new car for a little more than a used one, someone would immediately post up how they found a shitty used Civic 3,500 miles away from where I live for slightly cheaper, therefore I was a dumbass for buying a new car.