Distribution of Car Sales by Income Groups, 1954. Notes: New cars were concentrated among the richest thirty-eight percent of the population; families in the top and middle income groups accounted for most used car sales; and families in the bottom twenty percent of the population bought few cars. My pyramid is based on a revised model of a price pyramid created by James M. Rubenstein in Making and Selling Cars: Innovation and Change in the U.S. Automotive Industry (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 206.

From Trust and power : consumers, the modern corporation, and the making of the United States automobile market by Sally H. Clarke