Cheapest Fuel seen

[VS 5.0]

Some people say they were born ahead of their time.....I sometimes feel I was born after my time, i.e. I should have been born earlier.

Hertz, does my sig line below reflect your sentiments ?

 

[XUV]

lol, this thread went down nostalgia road .....

Actually, accounting for inflation and average wage levels, fuel prices are a lot cheaper today. Food is the thing that's become ridiculously expensive compared to the old days.

very cheap, I remember in the late 70's fuel hitting 33.3 cents, which was a tipping point and that was when everybody sold their V8's ....

 

[Calaber]

We've digressed a long way from the original theme of this thread and to the OP, I apologise for partly hijacking the thread.

To elaborate a bit on why we early baby-boomers are full of so much "old fashioned" memories, you need to consider the rapid development in technology that occurred from about 1980 onwards, and more particularly, from the early 90's.

I mentioned a few things about our early years previously, but being born in the early 1950's, so much of what is taken for granted today by Gen X, Gen Y and later generations simply didn't exist.

There was no television - that didn't arrive until I was four. Calculators didn't exist when I was undertaking the HSC at the age of 17 in 1969. Colour TV arrived when I was 22. Personal computers arrived when I was around 30. Mobile Phones? Hmm, I think I'd nearly reached 40. The internet? A bit later, I think - I might have been 43 or so. And all these technological developments only relate to communications and entertainment. Scientific and medical developments in our time would fill an encyclopaedia.

Despite not having all those electronic goodies to entertain and educate us, we were educated in a manner to think for ourselves and work things out mentally or use Logarithmic Tables in maths (bastards of things - I NEVER understood them and failed at maths badly.) And we entertained ourselves in more conventional "old fashioned" ways that we look back at fondly. Drive-in movies, the local bowling centre, the local Hoyts or, as my mates and I did, wandering through local bushland looking for dumped cars so that we could strip out parts of value and flog them at the local scrap metal yard. My main hobby was those Airfix model kits. I had so many the old man reckoned I had become a "raving ratbag" with my interest in them and I had to hide the new ones under our house!

And, for shits and giggles, some of those old dumped cars found themselves being rolled down the track and over a cliff, or being ignited. Seriously antisocial hoodlum stuff today, but immature and stupid boyhood pranks in the 60's.

So, why wouldn't I look back fondly at those years?

 

[RazzleDazzle]

10.04.16 - Last week in Mackay Qld a $1.02 sure beats the $1.30 where I live.

 

[WazzaVN]

We had black and white tv, no mobiles, no computers, no calculators. Fuel injection was only found on exotic Euro cars, synchro first was still optional on Holdens (until mid 1969, anyway), my mate's HR wagon was just the best thing to get around in and life was incredibly simple and relaxed.

Calaber I had to laugh at this. My old man was very stuck in the 70's and that's a perfect description of our house in the early 90's haha. Except for the calculator of course.

In relation to buying houses my parents used to live off next to nothing. The black and white TV mum and dad had in their first house way before I was born still worked so "why get a new one" they would say.

It worked though. It might have been embarrassing having a phone that you still have to turn the dial thing on but We were in a bigger house by the late 90's and they had saved up allot of the difference.

I think a massive problem now days is how little us young blokes plan for the future. But it's just so easy now to borrow money you don't have to stop and think. I am still paying off debts from my early 20's. All the stuff I wanted then I could have saved up for by now and I wouldn't have the debt. Shoulda listened to my parents (shh don't tell them that)

Oh well you live and you learn.

 

[Hertz Donut]

Hertz, does my sig line below reflect your sentiments ?

Pretty much, yep.

 

[Wozza]

 

[mpower]

lol, this thread went down nostalgia road .....

very cheap, I remember in the late 70's fuel hitting 33.3 cents, which was a tipping point and that was when everybody sold their V8's ....

People who sell their V8's when there is a small fluctuation in fuel prices are idiots, or should never have owned one in the first place.

 

[Calaber]

People who sell their V8's when there is a small fluctuation in fuel prices are idiots, or should never have owned one in the first place.

That's easy to say if you are thinking about the sort of variations in fuel costs we see today, and modern V8's are very economical compared to the old pre-EFI engines.

Were you driving a V8 in the late 70's, when fuel went from around 16 cents per litre to just over 20 cents per litre in a matter of weeks, then just kept on climbing because of Malcolm Fraser's Petrol Parity Pricing Policy? That sub-$10 tank of fuel in my HT went up to nearly $14 in six weeks. 40% increase is no "small fluctuation" and by the time I sold the car in mid 1979, because the other half couldn't drive it (changing gears in a Saginaw was described as like stirring concrete with a crowbar), heavy clutch and manual steering), the price was almost $17. Fuel had almost doubled in just under a year, but my salary sure hadn't. V8's were poison back then - especially used ones. These prices relate to Sydney - other cities and states would have been different and probably dearer. XUV quotes 33.3 cpl by the late 70's, but I think it was a bit later in Sydney before fuel was that price.

By your assessment, there must have been a lot of idiots around at that time. I don't think so. You had to be there to experience it. It was a very rude shock for motorists across the nation and didn't win Fraser any friends. That was the beginning of spiralling fuel costs that continued throughout the 80's and 90's. In 1982, it was cheap if you could get it at 33 cents per litre in Newcastle. By the mid 90's, it was in the high 60's per litre and I can recall it hitting a dollar a litre briefly in 2000 before dropping back slightly. Very few people's wages were accelerating at that rate.

 

[mpower]

Were you driving a V8 in the late 70's, when fuel went from around 16 cents per litre to just over 20 cents per litre in a matter of weeks, then just kept on climbing because of Malcolm Fraser's Petrol Parity Pricing Policy? That sub-$10 tank of fuel in my HT went up to nearly $14 in six weeks. 40% increase is no "small fluctuation" and by the time I sold the car in mid 1979, because the other half couldn't drive it (changing gears in a Saginaw was described as like stirring concrete with a crowbar), heavy clutch and manual steering), the price was almost $17. Fuel had almost doubled in just under a year, but my salary sure hadn't. V8's were poison back then - especially used ones.

people cry a river right now when it bumps around a bit, they freaked out when they thought it was going to jump to $2 from $1.20 - honestly, you should factor that in when you own a vehicle.

Fuel doubling in price isn't the end of the world unless you are living on the edge of your budget, week to week so to speak.

Right now I could easily go up to $2 a litre (I already buy 98 @ $1.60+ or whatever it is on the down cycle). I'm not rich, just realistic.