Do you remember...

[Bellow]

An older fella, in his 70s, maintains that a gallon of petrol has always cost about the same as an hour of a mans labour.

 

[renault12ts]

£5.50 per hour is below minimum wage.

 

[Bellow]

Raise the price of petrol then...

 

[kikkthecat]

Just out of interest does anyone know when was the last time you could buy an actual gallon of petrol ?

It's priced and measured in litres but we all talk about £XX per gallon, MPG etc.

 

[MOCAŠ]

Just out of interest does anyone know when was the last time you could buy an actual gallon of petrol ?

You still can. Just stop when the display shows 4.55 litres...

 

[renault12ts]

Just out of interest does anyone know when was the last time you could buy an actual gallon of petrol ?

It's priced and measured in litres but we all talk about £XX per gallon, MPG etc.

That's right. I find it strange that a lot of people buy their home heating oil 900 litres at a time. The reason being it's close to 200 gallons. Yet few of us ever bought in gallons. I always buy 1000 litres because it's an easier unit to work with.

 

[The mallard]

Two shillings and sixpence a gallon, and shots were 2d.

To explain to the younger readers shots were upper cylinder lubricants added to the petrol, a bit like reddex. 1 shot per gallon, and the shot was a squirt from the dispenser.

Cross ply tyres, drum brakes, heaters were optional extras, washers were a press button pump, etc etc

the 'good' old days???

 

[iscaboy]

Vacuum operated wipers on the small Ford, so the wipers go like the clappers at the lights, and stop going uphill with the pedal to the metal.

Still, we used to know what half a spud was for.

 

[MD5]

For the smokers in the club, do you remember..Players No6 & No10, Players Weights, Embassy Regal, Dunhill Kingsize, More, John Players Special, Peter Styvecent, Consulate, Passing Cloud, Benson and Hedges and many others I have forgotten I am a reformed smoker

That makes two of us! I remember in my student days, which co-incided with going decimal, you could buy 5 Park Drive, and I think 20 Sovereign cost 20p, but you could smoke a whole one in about 2 puffs! We used to share a ciggie by passing it around between lectures, and the whole length of the ciggie would be a glowing ember!!

 

[Frank O' Phile]

For the smokers in the club, do you remember..Players No6 & No10, Players Weights, Embassy Regal, Dunhill Kingsize, More, John Players Special, Peter Styvecent, Consulate, Passing Cloud, Benson and Hedges and many others I have forgotten I am a reformed smoker

Gold Leaf.

 

[renault12ts]

Stuyvesant.

 

[Toodeep]

Two shillings and sixpence a gallon, and shots were 2d.

To explain to the younger readers shots were upper cylinder lubricants added to the petrol, a bit like reddex. 1 shot per gallon, and the shot was a squirt from the dispenser.

Cross ply tyres, drum brakes, heaters were optional extras, washers were a press button pump, etc etc

the 'good' old days???

My kids have never believed me about optional heaters. I try to tell them that people drove with car blankets over their laps or car coats.

Remember when heated rear windows first hit the scene and places like Halfords used to sell those Smiths ones to stick on and wire yourself (or fail to in most cases)? And those electric window kits that had insufficient torque to open anything but a Hillman Imp window. Car fires were quite common. Oh, and why was the front corner of a car ever considered the best place for a wing mirror? At least the indicator stalk used to be on the correct side

My first car was a 1969(G) 3 litre Mk 4 Ford Zodiac Executive; ambitious for a 17 year-old but I bought it with some criminal injuries compensation around 1974 for £695. Top of Ford's range when new, it nevertheless had manual windows and only a MW/LW radio (albeit push button - wow!). No A/C, no HRW, no inertia reel seat belts and as for crumple zones . . . . . it had a spare wheel under the bonnet ahead of the engine so battering ram is closer to the truth. From memory it put out about 140 bhp, did maybe 15 mpg and no-one cared!

I fitted an 8-track "quadraphonic??!!" stereo but got fed up listening to the same 3 pre-recorded tapes (you couldn't record your own). Next came a radio-cassette but that was less than ideal as it only had play and fast-forward. Only later did they come with rewind and auto-reverse. In a good month I would only have to fish out 5 or 6 chewed up tapes!

A school friend's dad had a record player in his car. It took normal 7" singles in a CD-like slot but to eliminate jumping the stylus had to be so heavy that it would wear a disc out in a few months.

Going back to the OP, I remember my dad getting petrol in shillings and pence and almost never buying more than £2 worth for his Consul Cortina at any one time. I also remember the Esso "Tiger In Your Tank" promotions, the free bullet hole transfers (whatever that was about), "Keep going well; keep going Shell" and Green Shield and Pink stamps. And I'd often have to share the back seat with my sister and a gallon or three of paraffin on the way home.

I read somewhere that Lexus' LFA supercar had to have a video representation of a tachometer because an analog one couldn't keep up with how fast it can go from low to high revs. Well, when they have completed their production run they will have a ready market making meters for filling station pumps. Am I the only one who can no longer seem to stop the pump without going 2p over?

 

[BAD300]

remember when you got value for money fullstop

 

[LESTAYLOR]

Raise the price of petrol then...

 

[LESTAYLOR]

Bullet hole stickers... I saw some of those in Tesco's yesterday. I thought of doing both sides of my E320 CDI. they are dark grey, they would look go...... Sorry! I was having a bad dream. anyway. I used to have an old valve radio in my Austin J2 'people carrier' well minibus then... I used to turn the radio on when I left my house and pick my mates up, we used to all jump out of our skins when it suddenly came on 15 miles into our journey. ok slight exaggeration it took about five minutes to warm up and come on. Aw! the good old days

Check out some of the old carry on films 'Carry on Cabby, Carry on Constable' and see how many cars were parked on the roads then...

 

[Ted]

Ok then my memories
Petrol at 6/8 per gallon (I must recall cheaper but this is the cheapest I actually recall)
Pint of bitter in a town centre pub at 2/6 - I can remember other beers for under 2/-
pack of five woodbine and a penny box of matches for a shilling
Valve car radios (Philips made them)
Digital rev counters? Pah! Who remembers chronometric rev counters and speedos? much more accurate than these modern continuous sweep jobbies.
Magnetos. I had a Lucas K2FC on my Triumph Thunderbird, but I always wanted a BTH with their fancy auto advance.
Dash board skeleton anyone?
And the plastic black girl doll that winked at you? (How PC!) hanging from the choke button.
And Morris Minors and Marinas with their suspension collapsed at the side of the road. (Worn trunnions would just pop out as you went over a bump)
Coloured chrome bumpers (I think it was a protector to stop them rusting in the winter)
Comments on Toodeeps post
Quadraphonic 8 track? that would be the Radiomobile 108SR - I fitted loads of them. I still remember the test tape that came with them.
FF & play on a cassette player - that is because the motor ran at FF all the time, but the pinch wheels regulated the actual play speed. As you say, to facility for reverse.
The Esso tiger in your tank stickers - you could also get the tiger tail that stuck out of the filler cap

 

[MD5]

"Boom boom boom............"

Anyone?

 

[stevieb15]

I remember being able to go out with a pound and have a great night including Courage OB at 10p a pint, 10 No6 again 10p and a Cornish pasty for the same!
In those days we also had the dimmer switch on the floor adjacent to the clutch pedal, an arrangement that I think was infinitely superior to the column stalk control today

 

[ajs37]

I'm not quite old enough to remember using the pre decimal currency

some of us still think in pre-decimal currency - I still can't visualise how long a metres is, without thinking 'it's just over a yard' - I measure in feet and inches, weigh stuff in pounds and ounces etc - one of my older cousins resolutely refused to use decimal currency (I think his wife used to do all the shopping!) - bah humbug!

Andy
(58 - going on 30)

 

[rossyl]

You think fuel prices are bad? Historically, they're not - and we've graphed it | Technology | guardian.co.uk

If you look at the bar graph, 2008 shows a spike in prices. Prices have risen since then.

R