I got the earnings data from the FT.com site - had it a few years ago, and then copied into a text file that I refer to often (typically when referring to music technology cost vs average earnings, as I teach music technology, and it puts it in context). It gave 1960 average wage as £1042.
I know that cars have got a lot better (I've been a hobby mechanic for 30 years, and I've built a WRC class winning car, so I know my way around an engine bay, and spend a lot less time fixing mundane things that would regularly go wrong on cars of the 70s and 80s) - that wasn't the point that I was making, it was solely on cost for an equivalent car, and something that I was surprised by - I had expected the cost to be much less in relative terms today, not being the same or going the other way (whichever figure you believe, the point largely stands, I think). The reason I was surprised in part is because I had assumed a similar effect as in music technology, which has decreased in price immensely since the 1960s; you can own technology today for a few pounds which would have been "multi house" price in the 1960s, and of course there are lots of technologies and processes which simply didn't exist - in much the same way as today's cars are incomparably better than those of the years gone by.
Yes, a Fiesta is an equivalent in some dimensions of a Cortina, but it's not an equivalent in terms of intended market; the Cortina was the mass market family car of its era, hence the comparison with the Sierra and Mondeo.
I know that cars have got a lot better (I've been a hobby mechanic for 30 years, and I've built a WRC class winning car, so I know my way around an engine bay, and spend a lot less time fixing mundane things that would regularly go wrong on cars of the 70s and 80s) - that wasn't the point that I was making, it was solely on cost for an equivalent car, and something that I was surprised by - I had expected the cost to be much less in relative terms today, not being the same or going the other way (whichever figure you believe, the point largely stands, I think). The reason I was surprised in part is because I had assumed a similar effect as in music technology, which has decreased in price immensely since the 1960s; you can own technology today for a few pounds which would have been "multi house" price in the 1960s, and of course there are lots of technologies and processes which simply didn't exist - in much the same way as today's cars are incomparably better than those of the years gone by.
Yes, a Fiesta is an equivalent in some dimensions of a Cortina, but it's not an equivalent in terms of intended market; the Cortina was the mass market family car of its era, hence the comparison with the Sierra and Mondeo.