WERE THEY REALLY THE GOOD OLD DAYS?

Classic car prices and running costs are going through the roof. 1972 might seem a different world, but was motoring really cheaper? Time to take out our old Parkers Guide and find out…

Cast your mind back to 1972. The Swinging Sixties were hanging on as best they could, with the ‘Barber Boom’ pushing the economy forwards, and a sense that times really were good. The bestselling car was the Ford Cortina, and the biggest motor company in the UK – British Leyland – held on to more than 35 per cent of the market with a model range that encompassed the Mini and the Daimler DS420 Limousine, and quite a lot between.

If you weren’t there, it might be difficult to comprehend the prices of things in this pre-inflationary era. Yes, there had been a gentle upwards movement of the prices of most things in the decades that followed the war – especially following decimalisation in 1971 – but on the whole, people had a sunny outlook on life and the cars they were buying cost largely the same as what their parents would have paid a generation before.

Take the good old Mini 850. It cost £496 at launch in 1959 and that had swelled to £739 in 1972. Okay, that’s more than a 50 per cent rise in 13 years but that level of inflation was chickenfeed compared with what was to come in the 1970s. When you consider that you can spend more than £15,000 on a nice 1972 Mini 850 today, you’ll appreciate that we’ve lived through inflationary times.

An entry-level Cortina would cost you £963 in March 1972 with the most expensive version reaching £1210. Adjust the Cortina’s prices for inflation between 1972 and 2022 and it would sell for between £13,520 and £16,988 today. To put that into perspective, today’s equivalent – the Ford Kuga crossover (as the

Mondeo is being phased out) – starts at £27,895, while a good example of a classic Cortina MKIII will set you back more than £30,000. Ouch.

The same holds true with the used car market in 1972. A new Ford Escort 1300 GT might have cost you a cool £1083 (or almost a year’s salary), but a smart used buyer could pick up a one-year-old example for between £740-900, a drop in value of a quarter. Depreciation was rife. At the other end of the scale, a Bentley Corniche weighed in at £13,585 new, and such was the waiting list for one that a year-old example was still valued at £12,800-14,345. Adjusted for inflation, used cars were cheaper in 1972.

Buying a new car was more difficult in 1972, though – the average car buyer would have either saved up for the car and paid for it outright in cash or taken out a loan based on a Bank of England base interest rate of 7.3 per cent. Credit was also tightly regulated, although things were easier in 1972 than they had been in previous years.

Fuel was much cheaper in 1972 – 8p per litre (or 35p per gallon) – even when adjusted for inflation to 112p per litre in today’s money. Other running costs were more expensive, though. Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) was £25 for all cars, which equates to £351 in today’s money. Compare that with the £145-155 you’ll pay to tax a new Ford Kuga, and it doesn’t look quite so appealing. The cost of car insurance has changed beyond all recognition, with an average policy coming in at £460 now compared with £40 in 1972 (equating to an inflation-adjusted £561). Healthy competition and digital innovation are driving down many running costs today.

Finally, consider traffic density. Britain’s roads were a whole lot emptier half a century ago. There were 12.5 million cars on UK roads in 1972 compared with 32.6 million cars registered today. There are around 2300 miles of motorways in 2022 compared with about 1000 in 1972 – and not a single speed camera. So, provision of new roads has not kept pace with the number of cars registered.

In that respect, 1972 really was a golden era for drivers.