[RedDevil]

If you want to build an inexpensive car profitably you need to address the complexity of putting it together and make sure you can sell it in large numbers.

Take the Citroën 2CV for example.
A very basic, yet cleverly designed car with all kinds of smart ways to save material and parts, which made it very light yet reasonably reliable.

And quite labor intensive to build.

It did not matter in the first years after the war, with the economy in shambles and limited availability of materials.
It became a disaster in later years, when material prices dropped and labor cost soared.

Nowadays not many hands touch a car on the production line, everything is robotized.
The parts that go into the car are also built in robotized factories, making them dirt cheap as long as the numbers are high enough.

Manufacturing costs are a lesser part of the sales price of a car than it used to be.