You're not considering that today's $23,000 car might not be the same car as the one from 20 years ago, or that the costs of its manufacture might not be the same.
While the "basket of goods" another answerer referred to has simple items in it like rice, soap, tee-shirts and hammers, a car is a very poor item to measure inflation with, because of its complexity. Hundreds of parts and indeed hundreds of different types of materials go into it. Many dozens of different raw commodities are involved. Scores of different kinds of worker inputs are involved, with probably thousands of different individual contributors adding value along the way before you get your car.
Today's \$23,000 car is probably made with cheaper materials. A 20-year-old Camry today probably feels cheap-o compared to a brand-new one, but, at the time, a brand-new Camry at that price point 20 years ago probably felt reasonably decent compared to other Camrys at lower trim levels and other cars at lower price points. Today's $23K Camry on the other hand feels cheap-o compared to the premium trim Camry and compared to other cars at higher price points with more premium materials.
That's one factor. Another is, today's cars are produced with 20 years' worth of production efficiency improvements. So even with the 20 years worth of technology improvements which make today's Camry a more advanced car than the 20-year-old one, it's still cheaper because cheaper ways to automate production have been found.
Products like this are really really bad things to use to judge inflation. Today's iphones cost about the same as those from 10 years ago too (in nominal dollars), but they're clearly way way more phone for your money. Something today with five million times the computing power of something which took a Congressional appropriation 60 years ago costs a five-millionth as much as that dinosaurian system.
Certain things work against the inflationary trend, on the surface, but really tell you nothing whatsoever about inflation.