Or the manufacturers dampen production to keep demand high, full retail at high price = big profit over the old stack em high, sell em cheap model of yesteryear. Not helped by the EU insistence on all sorts of mandatory “safety” aids like speed limiters & ever crazy emission targets. These push production costs up & mean a lot of base model cars just don’t become viable anymore, Look at the demise of city cars, just too expensive to make with the required kit & they hammer their emission targets, better to sell less for more and meet the emission caps than pay fines/buy in credits from Tesla etc.
In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out.