New cars are like houses,far too expensive for what they are,but all the time people must have a car the prices wont drop which IMO they should do,there is hardly any human work involved in a car now so although R&D is costly the amount of motors knocked off the production line should make them cheaper.

All manufacturers cut corners where they can to get the best possible profit,they call it making a car more efficient, but where they can save money and get away with it,ie it doesnt cause problems they will do it.

Problem comes when not enough goes into researching what can go wrong for any cost cutting they do,like parts failure,or more likely a fault is built in to make money on IMO only that is

Yes all manufacturers cut corners, I agree.

Lets take a golf for example. In 5 years the prices have stayed pretty much the same.

So if the manufacturing price stayed the same; they are absorbing the cost. In order for their profit margins to stay the same - the price of manufacturing has to come down - so they cut more corners

Not necessarily. Manufacturers are consolidating, with for example Volkswagen Group (VAG) consisting of many brands. So you now get essentially the same car sold under multiple brand names with minor changes, reducing development costs. Also VAG, and I assume others, are sharing as many components across cars as possible. They talk about a common floor pan, with changes made to suit each model, further reducing costs. And it is not uncommon for separate companies to collaborate on a car, such as Fiat (500) and Ford (Ka).

As far as I can tell the VW Up spanks the old style Ford Ka in all aspects, except for resemblance to a teapot, and yet the new non discounted Up price is the same as the heavily discounted Ford Ka price from 10 years ago, assuming ~3% inflation.