Quote:
Originally Posted by lynx42
Notice the cost of petrol! .52.8 cents per gallon. That equates to 0.117 cents per litre. Today I paid $1.46 c/l on special which is $6.57 per gallon.
Regards Rick.
|
Yes I thought that sign might bring tears to a few eyes here Rick! Oh for the good old days, when you didn't need a bank overdraft to fill your tank.
Believe it or not though, that price was outrageously expensive for the time. It was a few months after the 1973 oil crisis which sent petrol prices soaring. I worked in a servo back then and I remember the outrage at the pump when customers saw the price go up almost daily during that period. As I recall it went from around from around 35 cents per gallon to around 50 cents in a matter of weeks. People started panicking and selling their V8 cars dirt cheap or trading them in on minis and VWs etc., anything with 4 cylinders! That was when we really started to see Jap cars in this country in numbers. This photo shows how things looked before in Australia - nothing but 6's and V8's.
Of course, as you'd expect, the price never came back down after the crisis was over. Your calcs tie in with my recollection Rick. Metrication was underway when this photo was taken, and when I got my licence about 6 months later I recall paying 12 cents a litre. I could top up the 9 gal tank in my Wolseley 1500 with a 2 dollar note, or fill it up from dry and get change from a fiver!
I remember too when Fraser got in and introduced "world parity pricing" for petrol in 1978. It went up overnight from 12 to 16 cents a litre, and hasn't stopped going up since!
When you consider we're virtually self-sufficient in oil and yet pay double US petrol price and 50% more than Canada, you'd have to conclude we're getting ripped off somewhere along the line. Not that we can expect any sympathy from our UK/EU friends!