A 1974 Porsche would cost $22,580 today!

[DarrylD]

I found this old Porsche advertisement from 1974 and wondered what those prices would be in 2004 dollars.



Based on the US Gov't Consumer Price Index stats here's the prices today:

917: $533,710

911: $37,136

914: $22,580

My job pumping gas for $2.00 / hour in 1974 would pay a breathtaking $7.46 today!

In case you're curious, here's the US Gov't website used to generate such trivia: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

Obviously the work of a man with too much time on his hands...

[Alfred1]

Yup, I did that same calculation a couple of years ago - $22,580 seems like a real bargain. What's a Miata go for nowadays? Actually, when new, a '73 2.0 sold for as much as a new Corvette of the day.

[sean_V8_914]

have you ever heard that analogy of car technology VS computers? cars would get 5000 miles to the galon and cost $1. something amazing like that but with real math applied to come up with real numerical stats.

[DarrylD]

Hey Alfred! A new 2003 mid-engine Toyota MR2 Spyder at CarsDirect.com shows an MSRP of $24,645, it's very similar to a 914.

Hey Sean! Have you heard the analogy "if Microsoft designed cars" according to GM:

For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five percent of the roads.

The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

Every time a new car was introduced, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again, because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

Oh yeah, and last but not least . . . you'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off!

(a little Seattle humor...)

[sean_V8_914]

no, thats new to me . I shojld stop over-clocking this thing

[Biggy72]

ya, I've heard it. Have you ever wondered why suvs got so big in the mid to late 90's? look at the emissions standards that the auto manufacturers were forced to meet, and the lack of them on small trucks and suvs. It became more profitable to make an suv than a car, and so that's where the marketing went and look what sold. It'll be fun watchin american auto manufacturers try to catch up with what japan is doing voluntarily.

[Will98D]

With repect to the price of a modern 914, let's start with the fact that you could not legally sell a 914 today. It (in relative terms) pollutes like a pig, has just about zero for safety devices, has rather crude systems with few amenities, and rusts just by looking at it. If Porsche built a similar vehicle today with the things that are required by its customers and the government(including more than a paltry amount of horsepower), it would probably cost about double the $22k noted here... much closer to the base price of **surprise!** the cheapest Boxster. The Miata and the MR2 are nice cars but they are not a Porsche, and as soon as it says Porsche the price is going up.

Further on the subject of the cost of cars relative to the CPI, I remember my friend's dad bought a 1974 Corolla 1200 for $1,700. That would put the price of the cheapest Corolla today at $6,341, when in reality they are also about double that.

I've seen Biggy voice what seems like an anti-US manufacturer bias before, so I'll have to chime in, especially because I work in the industry. First off, the US did not pump out a lot of SUVs because they had less restrictive emissions that they had no idea how to meet, but because they made a lot of money on each one because that's what a lot of people wanted to buy. Again; that's what a lot of people wanted to buy. Do an archive search, it seems we re-hash this subject every 4 months or so, but we went well down the road of "I'll drive what I want, everthing and everyone else be damned" from the conservatives on the board, versus the "I know what's best for you and you should drive what I say" from the liberals. Further, the emissions standards of most vehicles under 8600# GVW are not so dissimilar to cars, the bigger issue with larger engined SUVs would be the additional CO2... that's yet another thread that has been beat to death, but suffice to say that very few SUVs are over that GVW.

"It'll be fun watchin american auto manufacturers try to catch up with what japan is doing voluntarily". Have you check the fuel mileage of a Toyota 4-Runner, Tundra or Land Cruiser/Lexus GX470 or LX470? They are at least as bad as the US makers vehicles of similar size and in some cases worse. The Nissan Titan pickup or the new Nissan full-size SUV (name escapes me)? The mileage of the VW Toureag? Same thing, but I don't hear a loud chorus of boos for them for bringing out these big vehicles, people would rather see what they want, they just want to go set fire to Hummer H2s because they're at a GM dealership (which is so ironic... do you know how many toxic chemicals are created in the fire consuming a vehicle??). Only Honda really gets a pass for now, but they also are looking at making a pickup soon.

American manufacturers are doing pretty well in terms of the newer vehicles coming out, but I won't gloss over the fact that they lost an additional 40% of the car market by pumping out two decades of boring, less reliable vehicles than their Japanese counterparts. VW, on the other hand, tends to have less reliable (on average) vehicles than many US makers, but they are a lot more fun to drive so people put up with it. Besides, the "less reliable" part may be more statistically significant than apparent to the owner, because when you talk about (for example only, I didn't look up the exact numbers) 131 defects per hundred cars versus 149, how many people would really tune into that?

I can't stand by watching the Americans try to improve, I'm in the middle of it. It's a tough job, especially with the fickle investors that we have in this country who all (me too) expect exceptional returns on their investments, not a smaller but steady return over time. Add to that the big push to make everything you can in China and India. And while I do not advocate to only buy American, we should not underestimate the importance of manufacturing in this country, so the US-based people need to do well enough to compete on the merits of their products. To that end, hopefully people over time will re-open their minds to new products that come out.

[Biggy72]

would you care if I emailed you and asked some questions then? I hadn't seen anywhere else where we had talked much about many of these things on this board. I've written a couple research papers and come to some conclusions, but an inside voice to give me some first hand info would be cool. I'd like to be working in the field in a few years, so I've been trying to learn what I can about all of the tendencies. Thanks

[norustscott]

You have to factor the value of the brand. Porsche's brand equity has ncreased significantly since 197?. Enough to probably double that calculation...

[Will98D]

Biggy... sure, I think you can just follow the link next to my screen name. I won't be releasing inside info, but maybe some discussions will be interesting.

BTW: I should have been more reserved than to say "anti-US...", more that I perceive a certain prevalence of view. WD

[Biggy72]

ok, I'll sit down when I've got time later tonight and email ya. I've got some friends who's club is sponsoring Dennis Kucinich to come to their college on february 4th. My friend said that we would probably get some time to ask him one on one questions. He's got some interesting plans with emissions regulations and stuff that I'm going to go talk to him about too. Although I highly doubt he'll win, it's still a pretty high profile guy. Should be an interesting couple of weeks.

[Alfred1]

It seems clear by using the CPI that today's cars are more expensive than their counterparts of 30 years ago and I'm sure there are many reasons for that but it is kind of puzzling considering how productivity has improved and how the relative prices of other items have plummeted. Sometimes, when I watch those musclecar shows on the Speed channel they'll mention that back in the late sixties a high-school kid who bagged groceries part-time could afford to buy an entry level musclecar. That's not going to happen today.

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

Cars today are an awful lot more than they were 40 years ago. (That's the mid-60s, near the beginning of the whole "muscle car" era.) Compare the features you find on a bottom-of-the-line Kia or Hyundai or Toyota Scion to those you find on even a top-of-the-line 60's muscle car.

We take things like airbags, seat belts, four-speaker stereo systems, power rack-and-pinion steering, fully independant suspensions, disk brakes, and so on all for granted nowadays. It's tough to find a car--even an econobox--without all of those features. Most of them were options, or simply unavailable, in the 60s. Cars in general are much safer nowadays than they were "back in the day", not to mention far more comfortable and convenient to use.

I must speak up for the 914, though. The front and rear of the 914 are giant crumple zones. If you can avoid getting hit from the side, you have a much better chance in a 914 than in most cars (not just sports cars, most cars period!) of that era. Evidently there was quite a bit of thought that went into safety in the 914's design--though the lack of side-impact protection is a little scary at times.

--DD

[Will98D]

Dennis who? ...just kidding.

Dave, I'm sure they did some safety work, and if I thought it was a total death trap I wouldn't drive it, but I figured the goal was to compare it to today. You rattled off a pretty good list of commonplace items today that make a car more expensive and safer, plus you could add (with varying degrees of availability) side and head-curtain airbags to go with the standard front bags, ABS, traction control, automatic stability control, a collapsable energy absorbing steering column, etc. Of course, even in 1974 #'s 1 and 2 were already on the safety list: driving school and a seat belt!

[Biggy72]

hey, there's a reason we'll get to talk to him one on one.....hahaha

[AJS]

A lot has changed in terms of manufacturing techniques, metallurgy, and various technologies since the '70's. Generally, cars can be manufactured at lower cost which is to some degree offset by the addition of safety features, emmissions requirements, and various now standard extras like CD players, variable delay wipers, cup holders, 2nd cig lighter recepticle for your cell phone/lap top, and so on. Anyway, point being that you can compare car #1 to car #2, but you must recognize the then and now component. Dollar wise, it's fun to compare.

Andy