I'm old enough to remember .64 cent 98oct leaded gas at the Gulf. My 1973 Postal Jeep loved the stuff! Ran it in my 1984 Honda Spree too. Until I discovered Cox model airplane fuel really made her fly!
Old Enough To Remember?
- Thread starter Shuey
- Start date
many, if not most of us on this thread remember $0.19 regular and 98 octane was barely mid-grade for a few cents more. I think the high octane offerings were something like 106-ish, and it was all leaded. Unleaded didn't show up until around '72-'73 sometime, I don't recall the exact year but Google can probably pin it down. I think '75 was the first year all the cars had to run on unleaded, except I remember a Chrysler lean-burn that could still run on leaded IIRC. Taxing my old-man memory here.
... as happened to so many things...
... I'd agree...
That's amazing. Only time I ever saw more than 100oct at the pump was when Sunoco offered 105oct unleaded as race gas at a few stations for 2.89gal. Later skyrocketed to $7gal. I guess that's how those old muscle cars were able to run so well with leaded 106! I didn't start driving until 1984 when I was 16. 1st car was a 1973 AMC Postal Jeep passed down from my older brother.
I'm obviously not a member of "many, if not most of us"
I was curious, because it has been a long time since I first bought gas. Back then, a Texas resident could get a motorcycle license at age 15, but restricted to 100cc (or 125cc??). So that was in 1972 for me.
(and of course, when I turned 16, I wanted to bump up to the Kaw Z1 900cc).
I found a chart "average gas prices through history" for the US (link below).
In 1972, it was $0.36
1934 to 1941: $0.19
So yea, I haven't made it to the "84 to 91" year old range - and in the slim possibility I do, my memory will be horribly lacking
Avg gas price history:
Average Gas Prices in the U.S. Through History [Updated]
Gas Prices Through History [Updated] We might deny it. We might diminish its importance. We might not like it. But the fact is that gas prices are intrinsically linked with the overall economy in the U.S. and have been for decades. Oil gluts and crises consistently correlate with economic...
www.titlemax.com
Well, already in ground-school we were actually left at home, told to stay in bed, to warm some soup when hungry and take our meds...
These days:
those helicopter moms get "care days" granted over a 15(!!) year old "feeling sick", stay away from work for 3 days over that, and appear at the workplace with severe sunburn...
Methinks the concept even got reused way after that...So, a wild guess ... the Twilight Zone team stole the "ugly mask" look for the guy on the airplane wing, from the T.Z. episode with Donna Douglas, "The Eye Of The Beholder" ??
... it worked for a while...
... as happened to so many things...
Though some things have shrunk over time unfortunately I have not.
Also a 'sign of the time'...
On a more serious note:
despite the price of cacao has only risen by ~24% has Milka (taken over by Mondelez) managed an increase of their prices by 64%, by combining lower quantity with creeping price increase...
I'm obviously not a member of "many, if not most of us"
I found a chart "average gas prices through history" for the US (link below).
In 1972, it was $0.36
1934 to 1941: $0.19
So yea, I haven't made it to the "84 to 91" year old range - and in the slim possibility I do, my memory will be horribly lacking
From my memory, the $0.19 regular was common in the late '60s and very early '70s when there were periodic "price wars". It wouldn't show up in "average price" statistics because it would happen for a few weeks and then the price would go back up to $0.25 or so. It probably happened fairly often before that too, but I'm not old enough to have memories any further back in time. So, you didn't have to be alive from 1934-1941 to remember seeing that price.
The muscle cars of the late '60s were running compression ratios in the 10-11 range IIRC, which was high at the time, but pretty unimpressive by today's standards. I'm no expert, but I think the difference was the flow efficiency of their cylinder heads was pathetic compared to today's technology so they needed that kind of octane to avoid pre-detonation. And, since I never owned one of those cars, it may be that they ran OK on lower octane, but ran better on the higher octane.
As my father used to tell me back in the 1970s - "Mark my words, gasoline will someday cost $1.00 a gallon."