[inglor_cz]

Cars were already mass-produced 60 years ago and, compared to contemporary cars, rather simple. (No electronics, no airbags etc.) So they couldn't have been that expensive.

Also, parking was mostly free, no congestion duties when driving into London... IDK if there were taxes on gasoline and how high.

[Tade0]

Depends on the country. In Italy there's still to this day a tax on gasoline originally imposed to finance the Italo-Ethiopian war in 1935.

Naturally that wasn't even the last tax of this sort, the latest addition being from 2012.

[ljlolel]

And before the ‘70’s oil embargo