Years ago, most car manufacturers had a basic and inexpensive model. The original Corolla, Fit or LeCar, for example. With so many people favouring trucks and SUVs, are there any of these left, or will we have to see if Chinese imports materialize? What is the cheapest new car for sale in America?
Sure, there absolutely are. It’s not all SUVs and trucks. When I rented a car last month when mine was in the shop, I was looking for low-cost transportation, and what I got was the Mitsubishi Mirage. In Canada they start at $17K MSRP, although the one I had I think was a higher trim level than the basic one, and it was actually a fairly nice little car with a solid well-built feel and good handling. I’m sure there are many others.
I believe the Nissan Versa is the cheapest new car you can get. Made in Mexico, a base model can be had for $16k.
From what I could find, a 2024 Nissan Versa in Ontario starts at $23K MSRP, so actually considerably more expensive than the Mitsubishi Mirage. That price will get you the highest trim level of Mirage.
The Chevy Trax is well reviewed…
That being said, my first 2 POS cars were $150 and $500 respectively in 1982 and 1983. So you can tell how well they lasted. Olds 98 and VW Fox I believe.
Nissan Versa, Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla are among the cheapest new cars. And I saw a Nissan Kicks at the auto show a few months ago with a sticker price of about $24,000; not the cheapest, but certainly more affordable than most.
I’m gonna shill for the Mitsubishi Mirage which was a very enjoyable and cheap rental when I had it for a couple of days last month. It seemed to have all the latest electronics and was fun to drive. Not bad for something that starts at CAD $17K (MSRP) in Canada. The only aesthetic drawback is that in profile, or from the rear, it looks like a nice car that someone had chopped the rear end off with a chisel. I guess that’s how they make it small – the rear end is abruptly truncated, and ends in a practical hatchback.
ETA: Edited to remove the comment that cars are “quite a bit more expensive in Canada than they are in the US”. Turns out, the US starting price for the Mirage is almost exactly the same as in Canada (a couple of hundred dollars less). When accounting for the currency exchange rate, the car is actually cheaper in Canada!
There’s really nothing from the Big Three US carmakers anymore; not only have they largely abandoned the entry-level segment, but they’ve also largely abandoned cars, in favor of trucks and SUVs.
Chevrolet used to be GM’s “everyman” brand, and was where their inexpensive cars lived. They just discontinued the Malibu (which wasn’t “entry level” anyway), leaving them with just the Corvette for cars with gas engines. They’re re-introducing the Bolt (a small EV car) later this year, but it’ll still be relatively expensive (starting at around $27K, though EV subsidies could reduce that a bit). Chevy’s least-expensive vehicle now appears to be the Trax SUV, which starts around $20K.
Ford, too, has entirely abandoned gasoline cars, except for the Mustang. Their least-expensive vehicle is now the Maverick pickup truck, which starts around $24K.
Chrysler/Dodge offer a grand total of 7 vehicles now (3 Chrysler, 4 Dodge), as Ram is now their badge for trucks. The lowest-priced of their offerings is the Dodge Hornet, a midsized SUV that starts at $31K.
Another relatively-affordable import is the Kia Soul, which starts around $20K.
And that’s a rebadged Alfa Romeo.
As noted, the Versa, and the compact Mitsubishi Mirage, start at under $17K, so those seem to be the winners.
Mitsubishi’s larger Mirage G4 (the one shown by @Wolfpup) starts just shy of $18K; Nissan’s Sentra starts around around $21K. The Civic starts around $24K, and the Corolla around $22K. From the other major Japanese brands, the Subaru Impreza (a sedan) starts at $23K, and their Crosstrek SUV at $25K; the Mazda3 sedan starts around $24K.
I didn’t realize I had posted a picture of a G4. It was kinda hard to tell from the front view. All my comments about prices and the truncated rear end were in reference to the regular Mirage. I don’t even think the G4 is available in Canada. If it is, Mitsubishi Canada is keeping it a secret!
These are the 10 cheapest cars you can buy today in the US.
The Mitsubishi Mirage is #1 in the list sorted by price, but I have a few comments. The price is about $1500 higher than Mitsubishi cites for the basic ES model. This may be mostly due to including what they describe as the “destination” charge, which I presume means the freight charge to a specific dealership location, although that doesn’t fully account for it.
Anyway, you can see in that picture what I described as the abruptly cut off rear end. I was also surprised to see that the engine, which I knew was small at 1.2L, was a three-cylinder! IIRC, the notoriously underpowered original Volkswagen Beetle at one point in its evolution had a 1.2L engine, and that thing was a pig on the highway. You could hit around 70 mph or maybe a bit more, but definitely not when going uphill! I had my rental Mirage on expressways much of the time, including a tollway where everybody speeds, and never had a problem keeping up with traffic or noting a lack of power. Modern engine and transmission design may have a lot to do with it.
Another oddity: the Cars dot com article says the CVT (continuously variable) transmission is optional. I don’t think this is right, and certainly not the case for Canadian models. All trim levels have the same 1.2L engine and the same CVT transmission standard.
As others have said, the answer is sort of yes, but there are fewer being sold in the U.S., and some of those mentioned here will probably be dropped in the next few years:
The reckless policies that helped fill our streets with ridiculously large cars
My wife and I are starting to think about a replacement for our 2020 Honda Fit (final model year imported to the U.S.), mostly because it has been requiring an above-average number of repairs. So this thread is of interest.
The Mitsubishi Mirage seems to get such negative reviews, in car magazines, that we won’t be looking at it.
We like squared off small cars/micro SUV’s like the original Scion xB (which we bought) and Nissan Cube (which we didn’t, but I really liked). The only one like this, still sold, seems to be the Kia Soul, but the gas mileage is apparently inferior. (Edit: Just remembered that the Hyundai Venue is also in that class).
Entry level is only entry level to me if the gas mileage is among the best for a non-electric/non-hybrid. And I’m seeing three sources for those numbers – Car & Driver, Consumer Reports, and EPA. And there are some significant differences. Any recommendations on which to trust? Or it is like political polls, where you have to average?
I bet you didn’t buy them new.
My early cars were used POS, too. Today’s used car market is higher priced because modern cars have much higher quality than Big Three garbage in the 1970s. I expect a car I buy to last 10 years without anything but routine maintenance. Anybody who expected that 50 years ago believed in aliens.
One way the traditional entry level cars are better is brighter colors. This will sound silly to anyone without my kind of ADD, but I have a hard time finding the car, in a parking lot, if it has a common color. Our discontinued Fit is bright orange, just like my old, old Ford Pinto. Perfect color even if not a perfect car. I see that the 2024 Mitsubishi Mirage comes in another perfect color, yellow.
The Kia Soul and Nissan Kicks commonly have a black roof even if the rest of the car is blue or red. Blue and red are both barely acceptable to me, but a black roof will make for a parking lot disaster! (Also, I believe a black roof makes the A/C work harder, probably hurting gas mileage a bit. Yuk!)
The Hyundai Venue comes in Green Apple. Probably not as good as plain old green, but that might work.
There seems to be rule that the more expensive the car, the more boring the colors. They must think it cheapens the car to be cheerful-looking.
Why are your expectations so low? 
Next year I’ll be celebrating my current car’s 20th birthday! There is nothing mechanically wrong with it. The body is still mostly gleaming except for a few emerging rust spots due to the foul winter weather and road salt around here.
It’s had a little more than routine maintenance, but literally “a little”, not a lot. I count brake pads, rotors, tires, new batteries, and alignment as “routine”. It recently got a new alternator though it wasn’t 100% obvious that it really needed it. About a year before that part of the exhaust system needed to be replaced due to corrosion. I struggle to remember any other major repairs. Like Gordon Lightfoot’s fine sailboat, she’s a good old girl and she just keeps goin’! 
I can’t really argue with that. I liked the rental I had but I had no great expectations and was just looking for basic transportation, and it exceeded my expectations, possibly because some years previous I’d had a Toyota Yaris rental and was really unimpressed with it. I do see that Consumer Reports and others seem to be fairly negative on the Mirage. There may be better small cars out there.
I’m not sure if that’s it, so much as most people don’t want the bright colors, and most people buy new cars directly off the lot, rather than custom-ordering a specific color. Among other things, there’s a belief that unusual colors (i.e., anything other than black, white, gray, and silver) will have a poorer resale value, as fewer people will want a car in that color.
Even more expensive cars are typically offered in a few brighter colors (usually a red or a blue, with orange, yellow, and green being less common), but dealers rarely order their cars in those colors, because they frequently take longer to sell – and thus, you rarely see them in those colors. When we bought my wife’s 2007 Mazda CX-7, we bought it new off the dealer’s lot, and it was in a bright metallic blue color…and it’d been sitting on the dealer’s lot for over a year. We got a great deal on it, because it was already out of date (i.e., the 2008s were on the lot), and they had a number of possible buyers who’d opted against that particular car, because of the color.
I agree with your post in terms of why it is hard to find bright primary colors even when offered by the manufacturer. But it still is the case that not-dulled-over orange, yellow, and green are most commonly offered only for cheaper models the manufacturers have been discontinuing in the North American market.
Kia has something they call Mars Orange. If mankind ever colonizes Mars, people are going to come down with major depression from constantly looking out the window and seeing that horrible color