"Spike" > wrote in message
...
>
> Don't take this as a negative directed at you, but how old are you?
>
> The following is not to say how it was so good back in the day, but as
> an illustration of how similar it was. And cars of that era were
> rusting out, had lower mileage, less safety features, etc.
>
> Being over 30+ (x2 :0) When I graduated high school in 1966, you could
> buy a brand new Mustang for under $3,000. At that time, incomes were a
> lot lower. As a Ranch Hand in Merced, CA, I made $76.10 per week
> working 5.5 days from sun up to sun down. As a Manager Trainee in a
> grocery store in 1966, I made $500 per month no matter how many hours
> I worked.

>snip gold standard era history lesson<

Preach on, Spike. I remember when the new VW Beetles jumped from $1,595 to
$1,795. When we married, my wife and I bought a brand new 1978 Mustang II (a
nice little six-cylinder hatchback model), and stretched for it - an
incredible $5,000. The monthly payments were $108, and there were many
months when we couldn't manage to pay on time.

Somewhere around here, I still have a 1972 Ford price sheet for the new
Mustangs, with a Chinese menu of available options. $3,000 would have bought
a nicely-equipped model, but who could afford $3,000 in 1972?

dwight
(damn, we're old)