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Auto & Travel
AutoMotives: A Short History on Gas Prices When I started driving, my car was a 2-tone, Yellow & Black '53 Mercury, a 272 flathead 8 with a push-button starter on the dash that a high school friend actually gave to me. {He kept a '52 Baby Blue & Navy two-tone for himself.} My Merc was what most cars were back then, a glorious boat, with the near equivalent of living room couches front and back, and a heavy metal body that could give a brick wall a run for its money. I was only about 3 years older than it was at the time. But I could pull into a Hess station and, at about 27.9¢ per gallon, could crank about 10 gallons into that tank for under $3 and cruise around all weekend long. Things have changed. ... The Oil Embargo of '73: Those old enough will hardly forget the oil embargo of '73, when production was curtailed and OPEC became a household word. {We won't go into the fact that most Middle Eastern oil was still largely owned & operated under long-standing lease agreements by American & European oil interests.} After the oil embargo of '73, the price for a gallon jumped from about 36¢/gallon to 53¢, an increase of nearly 50%. I remember the lines at the stations, the fights that broke out here and there, not to mention the truckers who, furious at the way the increases were cutting into their ability to make a living, looked, for a moment, like they were going to bring the government down in a way that the protests of the '60's never would. The changes at the pump also resulted in changes at auto dealerships around the country. What had started as a mild interest in inexpensive, fuel-economizing imports, mostly from Japan, suddenly burgeoned into a national obsession as more and more people began to try to offset the higher pump prices with the promise of 30mpg from the imports. Cars became smaller and lighter, and fuel economy, along with catalytic converters and PCV's, became a federal mandate.
Fuel Efficiency: The trend continued for several years when, with the election of Jimmy Carter, the situation of our national energy resources was declared a crisis -- "the moral equivalent of war." As a result, speed limits on the interstates were reduced and the Carter administration began to channel funds, including tax credits, into fuel efficiency and alternative sources of energy. As you can see from the chart to the right, in the immediate after-wake of the embargo, both fuel consumption and the number of miles put on each vehicle began to dip. But not for long. Soon after, the number of miles per vehicle once again began to climb, then dipped again in the late '70's before starting another climb that's continued to this day. Yet, through most of those years, until the early '90's, fuel consumption per vehicle actually decreased as both Detroit and foreign auto manufacturers continued to improve upon fuel efficiency.
The Actual Price of Gasoline: All of these events have had their impact upon gas prices. The table on the left shows the 'nominal' price [i.e., the price you actually see at the pump] and the 'real' price [i.e., the price adjusted for inflation] for both leaded and unleaded regular gasoline from 1949 up to last year. If you look at the table, you can see the oil embargo jump between 1973-74, as well as the continuing price pressure right on through the Iran crisis of 1979-81, when the adjusted real price of gas peaked at $2.10 a gallon. You'll also notice the consistently higher real price for unleaded fuel -- from 9-12¢/gal. -- up until 1989-90, when unleaded took over at the pumps and the difference was 2¢. You can also see that, once you adjust for inflation and consider the 'real' price of gasoline, that 27.9¢ I was paying back in '66 was equal to just over $1.14/gallon. That figure is slightly lower than the real price of gas in 1973, just before the embargo, which was $1.16. What's more interesting, however, is that it is also more than the un-adjusted price which gas fell to in 1998, and which it stayed below until early 1999. The adjusted 'real' price of gas began to fall in 1992, and continued a downward trend until last year, when prices again began to rise. ... The chart on the following page shows the average national price at the pump from January 1998 to the present ******* ******* If you would like to submit something for our AutoMotives feature, or if you simply would like to suggest something you think we ought to cover, e-mail us at ... autotravel@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* If you would like to advertise in this section, or throughout the magazine, please visit our Advertising Info Pages ... or call, write, or e-mail ads@downstreetmagazine.com. ******* ******* | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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