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MG MG Y Type - sale price at time

Can anyone tell me what was the orginal sale price for the YA YB? and what was the average weekly/monthly salary of a wage earner at the time.

Rob Roberson

Your answer will vary depending on which country you are looking at, which model (Y/YT/YB) and which year (1947 - 1953).

Your best bet would be national government statistics for whichever country you want. Screen prices would be heavily influenced, certainly in the UK, by the almost punative taxes impossed on new cars by the post war governments trying to force sales effort into exports.

Good luck in your quest though.

Paul
Paul Barrow

Paul: I am trying to put the car in perspective with the other cars of its time. So if we say a 1947 YA was factory priced ( before add on's)at XXXX pounds and the average wage earner was making ZZZZ pounds per week/month we would have some insight into the place this car took with its contemporaries. Just more "stuff" to kick around.
Rob Roberson

Rob,
if you go to the 'Reprints' page on the website and select 'reprinted advertisements' you will come across a page from a book called'British Motor Cars 1950/51' by A.H. Lukins. He gives the price of a Y type in 1950 as £671.11.8. (£525 plus £146.11.8 Purchase tax) In modern money, 11 shillings and 8 pence equates to roughly 60 new pence.
Can't help with the average earnings at that time but at least you are half way there.
Jack Murray

Rob

I know this is a few years off the launch of the Y Type, but in the book I am reading on the RMS Titanic, it cites the annual pay of Captain Smith as being £1,250 per annum, and that of a Marconi operator, £48 per annum, a typical steward, £3 15 shillings (£3.75) per month and a stewardess at £3 10 shillings (£3.50) per month. Any one got more recent evidence of earings as this was clearly 1912?

Paul
Paul Barrow

I can't go back, at least in the UK, to the late 40s or early 50s but in 1960 as a wet behind the ears graduate in law from Canada I could have had an articling clerks position in a very good London firm at 7 pounds a week, or about 360 a year. That would have been somewhat below the average wage as aspiring solicitors were supposed to have other income, but I would guess that about 600 per year was about an average income and in the early 50s it would have been a 100 or so less.

That means a Y for an average person,cost about 1 1/2 years income, which means that none were sold new to the average person who had to make do with old Fords and Austin 7s if they could aford anything.

Things were then a bit better in NA, both CDN and USA,our $ were then at about par, and a YT was listed at $ 2,800(too expensive when you could buy Ford, Dodge etc. convertible for about $2500) and in the early 50s as a subaltern in the army I got about 3600 per year but my mess bills took at least 1/3 of that. Terry
Terry O'Brien

I don't know if this helps but a YB cost over £700 in the last year of manufacture. My father earned £10 per week at that time as a young carpenter. I guess the salary of a bank manager or similar would have been about £1000 per year. Needless to say, carpenters couldn't afford to buy Y types, Rover 90s or Jowett Javelins. A a child of the early fifties I used to run to the front gate just to see any motor car coming up the lane. Our family doctor had a Y type and gave me my first ever ride in the front seat of a motor car in 1953. What a treat.
My first new car was in 1973; A Ford Cortina at £830. I was earning £2500 a year as a draughtsman.
How things have changed!
Roger

Thanks to all for the input.

As a side note, I worked for an American contractor doing work for the RAF during the late 60's and early 70's. I was assigned to Uxbridge RAF station and lived at a boarding house in a nearby village. I still have the bill for 7 nights room and 6 evening meals. 17 pounds 25. The exchange rate note on the side of the bill made that appox $29.00/week.
Rob Roberson

"An' yer tell that t' the kids o' today, ... an' they don't believe yer!"

Good Thread - it has been interesting to follow!

Paul
Paul Barrow

According to a PBS broadcast this past week, the average wage earner in America in 1948 made about $500 per year, considering that a TC cost almost $1900 and I assume a Y type would be in a similar range, that MGs were well outside the grasp of the average American at the time. Think luxury car.

Frank
Frank Graham

From what I remember, reinforced by what I have since read, Ys were considerably more expensive in NA than TCs. About $ 900 more. That goes a long way to explaining why so few were sold here and in particular the failure of the YT, which if it had been priced at even $2-300 more than a TC / TD might have had some decent sales. Would be interesting to know what YTs were sold at in Australia and elsewhere.
In 1949 sales of the TC fell steeply. My TC is an example ; made in March 49, probably arrived in BC about July, it was first registered to an indivdual in Nov. 1950.In the meantime TDs which are essentially down sized Ys were selling briskly at about $18/1900. With realistic pricing Ys could also have sold well. Terry
Terry O'Brien

I think, at the end of the war, the exchange rate was about 4:1 so your figures would be about right Terry.

Paul
Paul Barrow

About 1948/49 the pound was devalued to $2.80 either US or CDN. That was just at the time that the Austin A40, new style Hillman Minx, Morris Minors,etc. appeared and they sold here by the bushel load. The Y was then considered dated and was 1/3 to 1/2 more expensive, even though in the UK the price was about the same as for Austins etc. Terry
Terry O'Brien

This thread was discussed between 24/04/2003 and 02/05/2003

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