If you go back and look at the price of cars around 20 years ago and adjust the price for inflation, chances are you're going to come up with a price to the current prices you're seeing on lots today. When I graduated from BYU 20 years ago, the price of a midsize sedan was somewhere between $14K-$18K which translates to $22K - $28K using the governments official inflation calculator.
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm