Relevant to this discussion and other performance testing -
Tires are disposable wear items. You are supposed to replace them multiple times through the life of the car.
A car model is not faster or better because the OEMs picked a certain tire at a certain trim or offered a different tire at a different trim. This is all equalized when you choose a tire to replace on your car either at end of life or ealier to suit your climate or driving style or whatever.
And tires have a huge impact on performance in every dimension. One of the most dominant aspects of performance is the tire.
This is almost never accounted for in performance testing because volume testing cars while equalizing tires costs a bunch of money, but is expected from owners.
Putting value into ranking cars by some time metric is nonsensical without much better quality testing than you get in car rags and channels.
This is a bad metric. Inflation calculators use a standard set of goods some, like the current housing bubble, severely ballooned and affected the index a lot vs others, and doesn’t account for income.
That was a bad value then. In 2003 I bought a brand new, totally optioned out (leather, mach 1000 subwoofers in the trunk, factory racing stripes and painted wheels 40th anniversary) V6 mustang for $15k.