Year/Car/Price new (2020 adjusted)

1950: Ford Anglia – £310 (£10,703)

1951: Austin A30 – £507 (£16,045)

1952: Ford Consul – £717 (£20,786)

1953: Ford Popular – £391 (£10,199)

1954: Austin A50 – £649 – £720 (£17,903 – £20,111)

1955: Humber Hawk – £985 (£26,037)

1956: Austin A35 – £541 – £638 (£13,606 – £16,046)

1957: Berkeley Sport – £574 (£13,944)

1958: Austin A40 – £676 – £698 (£15,913 – £16,430

1959: Mini – £497 – £537 (£11,651 – £12,599) MY 09 GS manual in Lago Grey, Wood Co arm rest and side bumper strips - now sold.

MY 15 SD4 SE Auto Orkney Grey with colour coded Bumper Door Mouldings

Excellent. Often wondered what prices would be equivalent to today's prices.
How about list of popular 1970's cars..........?

Very interesting..... but - for those of us now sadly old enough to have driven, sold, bought etc all those listed cars - what c**p they were. With the noble exception of the Mini (a true great, IMHO), they were awful cars - horrid to drive, unreliable and as boring as they get.
Their only real saving grace was that you could (if you knew a bit about things) 'blacksmith' them and keep them running - at least until they rotted away.
That lot were replaced by a much better generation of cars - Ford Cortina/Anglia , Austin 1300/1750/ Maxi, etc.
We may look back with nostalgia at these things, but I'd take a small/medium modern car every time.....And millions do.
Our beloved FL2's (I'm my experience, anyway) are again a huge step forward from the old horrors we used to drive. 14 years of proper LR use in 2 Fl2's and just one failed injector. Come on, modern cars great! I've decided to stop being a good example and will now just be a terrible warning.....
2008 TD4HSE - gone but much loved.
2014MY SD4 Metropolis - very much loved.

But you can't buy much for £12K these days.
Top of the range Ford Fiesta is £26K Jules

Blimey are new mini’s that much? That is crazy.

Blimey are new Fiesta’s that much? That is crazy.

In 1970 I bought a new mini for £650 and it cost about £1.10.0d (about £1.50 in this new fangled money) to fill the tank.

Jimbo

In 1970 I was earning £20 a week and my wife £11-50 basic plus tips . We had just got married and our mortgage was £ 11-60 a month. How things have changed. We could not afford a new car then even .

This is my first car Ford Popular 1961. I paid about £500 for it new, including 2 extras, a heater at about £18, and wing mirrors £?.
I bought it on 3 years hire purchase, using my Dad as guarantor as I was under 21 years old.
To give you a scale of how much money that meant to me (and my poor old Dad), my daily pay in the RAF at 19 was 17s 6d.
edit - for clarity - my Dad did not pay anything - although I can imagine that he worried that I may have overreached my finances - luckily I managed to find it all.

If you add on my ration allowance of 6s 2d per day, to make it more equivalent to civilian pay at the time, you come to the grand total of £8 5s 8d per week.

Somewhere I have the original documents, which I tried to find, that would have my monthly instalments.

At the time I choose it over the Mini as it seemed to be bigger and more grown up.

AND IT MEANT FREEDOM! FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 85k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 12th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)

Last edited by IanMetro on 27th Jul 2021 9:08 pm. Edited 1 time in total

CED wrote:

In 1970 I was earning £20 a week and my wife £11-50 basic plus tips . We had just got married and our mortgage was £ 11-60 a month. How things have changed. We could not afford a new car then even .

IanMetro wrote:

This is my first car Ford Popular 1961. I paid about £500 for it new, including 2 extras, a heater at about £18, and wing mirrors £?.
I bought it on 3 years hire purchase, using my Dad as guarantor as I was under 21 years old.
To give you a scale of how much money that meant to me (and my poor old Dad), my daily pay in the RAF at 19 was 17s 6d.

If you add on my ration allowance of 6s 2d per day, to make it more equivalent to civilian pay at the time, you come to the grand total of £8 5s 8d per week.

Somewhere I have the original documents, which I tried to find, that would have my monthly instalments.

At the time I choose it over the Mini as it seemed to be bigger and more grown up.



AND IT MEANT FREEDOM!

Love the White wall tyres  2007 TD4 XS The work horse that earns its up keep
2013 SD4 HSE The posh one for towing the caravan
1973 Triumph Stag I bought in 2009 and restored.

Thanks.

I have just looked at the amount of bling that I must have proudly stuck on the car.

The whitewalls were all the rage in the 50s and 60s and only required a tin of paint and a bit of patience to become 'an american pop idol'.

The silver tape 'go faster' stripes helped with the 0-60 in 36 secs, but the chrome headlight 'eyelids' hindered the 70 mph top speed.

The Wipac (yellow) foglight was very necessary in those coal burning days, as quite a colder few evenings/nights had 'pea souper' fog, where it was hard to find where you were walking, let alone driving.

And last, but not least, a good set of badges were important. Mine included a RAC badge (so the patrol man knew to salute), a Bristol badge (travel was less common then, so you wanted to let people know how far you had come), and ofcourse my RAF Apprentice 91st Entry badge (I had after all just spent 3 years of my life training with these people).

Fantastic car as quotes below (show?)

The Motor magazine tested a 100E in 1960 and found it to have a top speed of 69.9 mph (112.5 km/h), acceleration from 0–50 mph (80 km/h) in 19.6 seconds and a fuel consumption of 33.2 miles per imperial gallon (8.5 L/100 km; 27.6 mpg‑US). The test car cost £494 including taxes with a comment that it was the lowest-priced orthodox saloon on the British Market.[9]

In 1960, the manufacturer's recommended retail price of £494 was equivalent to 26 weeks' worth of the average UK wage. The £100 charged in 1935 and the £1,299 charged for the Ford Escort Popular in 1975 both also amounted to 26 weeks' worth of average wage for the years in question. In the 1950s, however, the country had been undergoing a period of above average austerity: in 1953 the car's £390 sticker price represented 40 weeks' worth of the average UK wage. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 85k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 12th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)