Cheap cars? (muscle car, insurance, vehicles, SUV)

[TheHurricaneKid]

Many old folks say that when they were my age, they already had a *insert cool car here* whilst attending college and paying for it all with a part time job. Cheap new cars are at least half a year's salary nowadays. And that is not counting insurance and gas. How did you old people afford such shiny vehicles at a young age?

[Merc63]

Cheap new cars were often half a year's salary back then, too. In '70 my dad was making $5k a year as a schoolteacher. A Mustang Mach 1 was $3500. So yeah, they just chose to spend that much. Also, used cars got cheaper faster, so you could have a 1 or 2 year old "cool car" for cheap.

[rbohm]

cars were cheap back then. for instance my friend and i almost bought a 59 chevy bel aire for $99. we also looked at a 61 cadillac that was priced at $150. and that was back in 1976. heck you could buy a new vette back then for about $6000.

[BostonMike7]

I didn't buy a cool shiny new car until after I graduated college. While i was in school, i drove a $1500 Lincoln Mark 8 with leaking air shocks.

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by TheHurricaneKid

Many old folks say that when they were my age, they already had a *insert cool car here* whilst attending college and paying for it all with a part time job. Cheap new cars are at least half a year's salary nowadays. And that is not counting insurance and gas. How did you old people afford such shiny vehicles at a young age?

I bought my first new car while in college, in 1973, it was $2,500 and the payment was $74/month, and I was working part time at $3/hour.

I think of a cheap new car as being about $15-17,000, such as a Corolla, Civic, or the equivalent in a Hyundai or Kia for $13k. Yes, the cost of cars has gone up too much to buy new on minimum wage but that's because of the smog, fuel economy, safety and other requirements that didn't exist back then added to the higher labor costs to manufacture them.

[marlinfshr]

I wish I had of been into cars when I first started driving in the mid 80's. 60's era muscle cars could be had for cheap but they weren't my style at the time. I was into 4 wheel drive SUV's. 4000.00 seemed to be the magic number in my area at the time for a somewhat reliable used 4X4. I needed my dad to co-sign a loan for my first "car", a 76 Cherokee. I could have had a real nice newer car for that price. For about the same monthly payments I could have even had a new car.

But in reality I guess cars, with the exception of classics, really aren't that much different in price now in comparison to wages. You may look at old ads advertising a new car for 3000 and you may wonder why they are so expensive now days but you have to realize that someone buying that car might have only been making 5-6000/year and doing OK. Change that to today's prices and what is the difference with someone buying a new 25000 car while doing OK at 40-50,000/year.