If you haven’t been car shopping in a while, brace yourself

New York (CNN) —& It’s called sticker shock. And if you haven’t been to a dealer’s showroom since before the pandemic, you might want to prepare yourself.Americans paid a whopping $47,612 on average for a new car in October, according to data from Edmunds. That’s a jump of almost $10,000 from October 2019, ahead of the pandemic. That means new car prices have risen much faster than most goods and services.The price jump has multiple origin stories: The pandemic snarled supply chains and limited essential car parts. Buyers increasingly prefer larger cars with more features, continuing the decades-long shift to bigger, more expensive SUVs and trucks.But much of the reason Americans are paying nearly $50k for a car is that automakers decided to go all-in on expensive cars. The more they charge for a car, the more money they make off it.“You’d be hard pressed to find anything under $30,000 from an American automaker,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds. “They’re hacking away at models altogether, and basic trim levels, which are no longer the bulk of the business. They’re raising the floor prices.”You want features, you got ‘emToday’s cars come with all manner of driver assist features,...