[djaychela]

Ha, guess what? I just read that comment and thought "Totally wrong, what a fool!"....

And then I did some research, turns out you're right! Just checking average salary in the UK vs a comparable car (Cortina > Sierra > Mondeo) shows that a 1962 Cortina was about 50% of average UK salary, whereas a Sierra went up to about 70%, and a Mondeo today is around 85%!

[ptaipale]

That doesn't sound right. What sources did you use?

(Edit: mseebach apparently googled the same sources I did, but faster.)

From what I could find, in 1962 the Cortina was selling at £573 [0] and the average salary was £799 [1]. That's 71 %.

In 2014, the average salary of all employees was £27271 [2] and the Ford Mondeo started at £20795. That's 76 %.

So the ratio is not that much different. And the Ford Mondeo of 2014 is an incredibly much better car.

A lowly 2014 Fiesta at about £10000 would have been a completely unbelievable car in 1962. And not a smaller car. In fact, latest Fiesta has exactly the same wheelbase (2489 mm) as the 1962 large family car Cortina, the Fiesta is 140 mm wider, 300 kg heavier (and so much safer), and the start-of-list engine model in Fiesta has 59 kW which is slightly more than the 58 kW of the tuned-up top model Cortina GT.

[0] http://www.rac.co.uk/drive/car-reviews/ford/cortina/207784

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/jan/13/past.comment

[2] http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2868911/Best...

[3] http://www.carbuyer.co.uk/news/91004/new-ford-mondeo-2015-pr...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Cortina

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Fiesta

[djaychela]

I got the earnings data from the FT.com site - had it a few years ago, and then copied into a text file that I refer to often (typically when referring to music technology cost vs average earnings, as I teach music technology, and it puts it in context). It gave 1960 average wage as £1042.

I know that cars have got a lot better (I've been a hobby mechanic for 30 years, and I've built a WRC class winning car, so I know my way around an engine bay, and spend a lot less time fixing mundane things that would regularly go wrong on cars of the 70s and 80s) - that wasn't the point that I was making, it was solely on cost for an equivalent car, and something that I was surprised by - I had expected the cost to be much less in relative terms today, not being the same or going the other way (whichever figure you believe, the point largely stands, I think). The reason I was surprised in part is because I had assumed a similar effect as in music technology, which has decreased in price immensely since the 1960s; you can own technology today for a few pounds which would have been "multi house" price in the 1960s, and of course there are lots of technologies and processes which simply didn't exist - in much the same way as today's cars are incomparably better than those of the years gone by.

Yes, a Fiesta is an equivalent in some dimensions of a Cortina, but it's not an equivalent in terms of intended market; the Cortina was the mass market family car of its era, hence the comparison with the Sierra and Mondeo.

[mseebach]

I'm getting a 1962 Cortina at £573[1], with average wage £799[2] (71.5%), and a 1982 Sierra at £4515[1], with average wage (in 1980) £6000[3] (75%)?

1: http://www.rac.co.uk/drive/car-reviews/ford/cortina/207784

2: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/jan/13/past.comment

3: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/recession/4323171/UK-rece...

[Retric]

Car brands tend to go up market over time. I think the idea is people who buy an accord and like it tend to have more money in a few years. So they can up sell without making it obvious. Until they introduce a civic the new low end car. Civic has even grown to the point where Honda has toyed with a few new lower end cars. I think the Fit is their cheapest model right now.