“It takes 30 man-hours to build a car.”
...the the rest of the cost is materials? Somehow I doubt they pay $10/lb. for steel, glass, aluminum, copper and plastic.
The retail price of a car(or any durable good) includes: Engineering, management,profit,taxes, materials,overhead transportation,energy,marketing and labor. All of that is folded into the sticker price. On average the labor bill is 8% for US made cars. That figure can be used for a lion share of US made durable goods. The labor to make a UNION made $30,000 passenger car is around $2,400 USD per car. Think of a car factory as a huge scale garage.