Antique & Classic Cars Blog

One of the first things a box store or a stadium asserts for some financial assistance to come to your neighborhood is all the money it’s going to bring in.

Most of the time walking the fairgrounds I was thinking about horsepower and the sweet sound of 8 cylinders arrayed in a V, but it’s hard not to think of gasoline too as what brought every car to this place, as well as into the world. What would it cost to give each car a full tank of gas?

If for ease of calculation we assume roughly 10,000 cars on the grounds (there are more), that each one or its tow vehicle bought at least a tank of gas averaging 15 gallons, and that the price per gallon was $4 (might have been a little less), these drivers from many states paid $600,000 at Minnesota’s pumps.

The first gathering that became Back to the ’50s, says the MSRA website, involved about 200 friends and their cars getting together in St. Paul when American Graffiti was in the theaters. If that meant 200 cars in 1973, putting 15 gallons in each one would have cost about 15 (gal.) x .40 ($ per gal.) x 200 cars = $1200.

Let’s flip the prices. Putting 15 gallons in 10,000 cars at 1973 prices would cost $60,000 instead of $600,000 (40 cents versus $4 per gallon). If 200 cars had to buy 15 gallons at $4/gallon in 1973, it would have cost $12,000.

Maybe in 50 years, there’ll be a big gathering at the fairgrounds called Back to ‘08–ten thousand bicycles lining the streets. Many of these are pedaled there. Others come on trailers towed by other bicycles. I’d go to that too.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 7:12 am and is filed under Back to the 50s. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.