Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Blur
In 1969, you could buy a Camaro SS/RS for way under $4k. Even at $15k/year, you could possibly save for 2 years and buy a car without any financing and still live comfortably. Today, a Camaro 1SS/RS costs under $35k, but the average person out of college can't get a job that makes $35k/year. They can, however, afford a used compact sport trim—Cobalt SS, SRT4, Civic Si—and play with that. For that reason, FWD "performance" has replaced traditional RWD performance vehicles for young buyers.
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Agree there, 100%. Inflation is over 500% compared to 1969
If you bought a car for 4500 dollars in 1969, that is the equivalent of just over 30 grand today. Looking at it in terms of buying power, you'd think "Well that's about average for a new car today". True. But 4500 wasn't the average back then. Just under 3300 was the average. That $1300 difference would mean almost 8500 bucks today. Gasoline was the equivalent of 2.30/gallon or so in today's money: 35 cents back then.
6500 bucks would have bought an L88 Corvette in '69. In 2014 dollars that's about 42 grand- that's Camaro 2SS territory today. The L88 was quite near the pinnacle of bad-assery, second only to the ZL-1s. The top Corvettes today? 65 grand! That's
11 grand or so in 1969 dollars. You could have bought one '69 L88 outright and had a low note on a second one for that price.