Should I buy a new car?

I’m 35 yo. Never had a car. My wife and I have a 2007 ford escape with 130k miles on it that is starting to show some external rust around the door area, and a while back had to have a massive patch due to structural rusting as well, which seems to be a common issue with old ford escapes (car was gifted from her dad, which took a very good care of the car over all these years, and we are very grateful for the gift).

I feel like it’s time to finally get a new car, even if used, as neither my wife (30yo) or myself have never treated us to something like this. Hybrid given fuel economy.

We moved from Academia to industry about a year ago, and that allowed us to finally be on a quite comfortable financial situation, which reads as follow:

Expenses for living in a major city:
– $3,300 for rent
– $+- 2K monthly credit card payment for each of us (neither of us has credit card debt)

Overall financial situation:
– Neither of us have school debt

– combined gross household income is $252k/year plus bonus.

– I have 20k on my 401K, that I started building since 2019 when I moved to the US. My American wife has 26K since she started contributing in 2017.

– I have what now is equivalent to $20k invested in my home country that I don’t want to move to the US yet, since it would be obliterated by this high exchange rate.

– We have a combined 94K on our preffered deposit account, which we are working on having $45k for emergency fund, and remaining to be divided between CDs, HYSA, index fund investment and Roth.

We think about having a kid in the next 1-2 years. We don’t own a house. Is buying a car at this point and with these prospects, too superfluous? I want to say we are both quite financially conscious when it comes to spending, and high interests rates on cars rn are just insane to me…