Surprisingly, It’s Never Cost Less to Drive Your Car

How much did you pay for gas the last time you filled up? I’m old enough to remember when I could fuel up my first car, a ’46 Plymouth, for 25 cents a gallon. Ah, those were the good old days!

Or were they? The trouble is, that ’46 Plymouth, with its underpowered straight-six engine and 3200 pound curb weight, only got 15 miles per gallon, and my summer job driving a farm truck only paid $1 an hour. Do the math, and you’ll see that means I had to work exactly 100 minutes — the better part of two hours — to buy enough gas to drive 100 miles.

Surprisingly, if you figure it you look at the real cost of gasoline — the number of minutes you have to work to drive your car 100 miles — it’s never been cheaper to drive your car.

Let’s take a closer look at the good old days. A hundred years ago, your great-grandpa probably drove a Model T Ford. If he was an average factory worker, he would have earned 47 cents an hour. His Model T would have gotten something like17 miles a gallon and a gallon of gas would have cost 25 cents —about the same as a pound of steak at the butcher’s. Do the numbers, and you will see that your great-grandpa had to work 187 minutes — more than 3 hours — to drive 100 miles.

By 1930, cars were faster and safer. You didn’t have to hand crank them to start the…