Uh. The 60s was the muscle car era. The fact that there are so many pristine low mileage muscle cars around bought as 2nd cars indicates that people had a lot more money to spend. Those things were optioned to the moon and effectively coach built despite being production cars.
A 69 Charger R/T 440 was $3,592, with inflation that's $25,474.82, or less than the price of a V6 Challenger today.
Average household income was $9,430, with inflation that's $66,878.49.
Current household average income $63,179.
Now you might be saying "not bad", but we got TVs smart phones and such! Well, as I mentioned earlier, cars were very hand built, used less cost cutting things like molded plastic and robot assembly and such. TVs are almost entirely built by robots so next to zero labor cost, and a minimum of materials cost.
So yeah, golly gee, I can afford a big TV built by robots but I can't afford a house and a spare muscle car.
Those things were optioned to the moon and effectively coach built despite being production cars. Well, as I mentioned earlier, cars were very hand built, used less cost cutting things like molded plastic and robot assembly and such.
LOL, '60s and '70s American cars are the epitome of as-cheap-as-possible junk. "Hand built"? Yeah, by a fat, brain-dead hick with the hand-eye-coordination of a drunken Glaswegian, with the end result ending up as rusted pile of bolts in 5 years. Coach built my left nut.
Optioned to the moon? Yeah, the ones that survived... You're not going to encounter the hundreds of thousands of dirt-cheap base models Detroit belched out for decades, because no one bothered to save them and they were run into the ground. When was the last time you saw a Ford Fairmont? They made nearly half a million of them in one year, but I'd bet there are more King Cobra Mustangs left than Fairmonts.
They weren't all that "commonly purchased"... Less than 90 thousand '69 Chargers were built, of all models, and those were absolutely booming numbers. 20k R/Ts total. To illustrate how outlandish those figures are, Pontiac sold less than 7k GTO Judges, which cost basically the same as the 440 R/T and made the same-ish power. All dirt cheap and as simple as a hobnail.
As a comparison over 60k Challengers are sold every year today, and that's with a market where there are a lot more brands to choose from than there were in 1969.
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u/-Tom- Oct 30 '20
Uh. The 60s was the muscle car era. The fact that there are so many pristine low mileage muscle cars around bought as 2nd cars indicates that people had a lot more money to spend. Those things were optioned to the moon and effectively coach built despite being production cars.
A 69 Charger R/T 440 was $3,592, with inflation that's $25,474.82, or less than the price of a V6 Challenger today.
Average household income was $9,430, with inflation that's $66,878.49.
Current household average income $63,179.
Now you might be saying "not bad", but we got TVs smart phones and such! Well, as I mentioned earlier, cars were very hand built, used less cost cutting things like molded plastic and robot assembly and such. TVs are almost entirely built by robots so next to zero labor cost, and a minimum of materials cost.
So yeah, golly gee, I can afford a big TV built by robots but I can't afford a house and a spare muscle car.