I bought my first car in 1969. It was a 1958 Volkswagen bug. Extremely basic. No radio. Slow heater. And no gas gauge (you kicked in a reserve tank with a lever on the floor!).

As I recall, the normal gas price back then hovered around 33 cents/gallon. Using an online inflation calculator, nowadays that would be $2.06/gallon — just about where we are now.

During the oil embargo of 1973 the price jumped to 50 cents/gallon, or around $2.20 for today.

And around 1980 the price hit a dollar per gallon, or about $2.80 per gallon in today’s money.

So, gas is back to the price from 45 years ago. Fill ‘er up!