classic motorcycle forum
Motorcycle Discussions => British Bikes => Topic started by: johnnyboy-wonder57 on October 10, 2011, 12:18:54 PM
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Quote Bike magazine November 2011
"In 1971, a Norton Commando made 60bhp and did 116mph. It cost £595. That's the equivalent of £6771 today, when the all new Commando makes 27% more power & goes 10% faster, but costs more than twice as much!
Price £13,995!
New Norton 961 twin, 128mph, 82bhp,
£1 in 1971, is therefore equivalent in value to £11:38 pounds today!
So as you can see falling wages, increases in fuel duty, Vat & Energy costs, all add up to to a package which will obviously lead the UK, out of the mire & into a more prosperous future with a guaranteed economic recovery @ the end of it!
If a Nation does not control Energy prices, allows successive Governments to increase duty & taxes, has restrictive Commercial rates, adds stealth taxes to the mix, compulsory purchases & destroys industrial infra-structure, insists on Green taxes and astronomical insurance costs. plus ludicrous EU restrictions then.....ships out scrap metal to China buy the container load. There will come a point where it will be cheaper to build your own machine from scratch @ home them buy one mass produced!
I would like to see how a costings are worked out for the manufacture of new machine/motorcycle in the UK today, especially since so much of it is probably computerised & how come the inefficient systems of 40 years ago produced a machine, mainly by hand @ less than half the cost of today! Economic recovery my a***!
Seriously the cost of new bikes is debilitating against other forms of transport & you can pay more road tax too!
Cheers
John
JBW
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I wouldn't know, I don't think I've ever bought a bike less than ten years old, though most have been (much) older... ;)
What intrigues/worries me is that real jobs (ie jobs producing or making things) continues to dwindle, the percentage of the population working also continues to fall, and yet the UK still allows
the waifs and strays of the world to settle without a second thought.
(As if we haven't got enough scrounging chavs of our own already.... >:()
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yet the UK still allows
the waifs and strays of the world to settle without a second thought.
If that bothers you look into how much money they are sending out of this country to their relatives abroad, its bloody staggering, yet not that long ago we were restricted to how much streling currency we could take on holiday.
Thats apart from where that money actually derives from here.......................... >:(
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Quote Bike magazine November 2011
"It cost £595. ]That's the equivalent of £6771 today
Where did someone get that conversion from I wonder ?
If you look at wages then and now, and the cost of houses then and now, some would suggest that the modern equivalent is grossly inadequate.
600 quid in 1971 would be a fair bits of a years wages ?
£6771 today is not much of a years wages
??
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No, it's clearly rubbish.
£6771 is roughly 20-25% of an average wage now, so that would make the £595 about £2400-3000 quid a year.
I remember when GPs (early 70s) reached £2000 a year, and that was considered scandalously high at the time.
The conversion's gone wrong somewhere. ;D
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Guys,
I was only quoting what Bike magazine had written;
Aside from the thread hijacking views on Global population shifts & impacts, a further financial opinion states from an independent site; http://www.measuringworth.com/indicator.php
Current data is only available till 2009. In 2009, £595.00 from 1971 is worth £6,270.00 using the retail price index! This compares like for like items: The price of a motorcycle is an example of this!
£11,200.00 using average earnings! This compares how affordable the product is compared to average earnings, (not quoted in Bike magazine); Therefore you would have to be earning £22,400 net annually for the new Commando to cost half of your annual wage, this therefore illustrates affordability to the average punter!
Having said that Average earnings can be very misleading, with wages falling rapidly and more and more people falling into the less than £16,000 annually category the current £26,000 plus figure, £22,000 in real terms after tax is fairly meaningless for many people the bottom 1% is around £ 6,600, the bottom 25% in the UK earn less than £11,500, the median, (middle) is around £16,700 around & the top 1% over £155,000 plus, what makes it worse is a larger and larger % of the population are only working part-time hours!
So it still surely illustrates that the New Commando is more costly than an old commando of 40 years ago!
Cheers
John
JBW
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My wages in 1971 was £260.00 a year for working in a sheet metal shop in Plumstead. I walked into a job by knocking on doors at a factory estate and asking for work. Now all the doors have gone. The old boss retired a few years ago and couldn't even sell the buisiness so shut it down.
Did I mention I worked 27 hours a day and lived in a shoe box. Tell that to the kids of today and they won't believe you. ;)
My first Commando cost me £325.00 (ish) in 1976.
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Now corrected to the price of a new Norton;
Correction you would have to be earning £27,990 net, for a new Commando to be equal to 50% of your wages.
From a site linked to the Financial Times it lists the average salary in 1971 as £ 2,003.88, unfortunately 1971 was the year the UK became decimalised so data sources are in old & New currency, with regards to the cost of some items, are confusing, as a School kid I was told that there was a conversion of 2d to 1p, (I believe lost people monetary value as the old £ had 240d), in it, 1970 would have been a better time to use as an example!
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-1633409/Historic-inflation
1971, £595 = £6,771.10; 2011
The cost of commodities such as houses, cannot be used as a good indicator of value change, when you get widening differentials in earnings & when somebody with too much money paid £1 million for a cupboard flat in London in the 1980s, the excesses of the property boom started. My father bought a semi-detached new build house in Lancashire for £2,000 in 1960, he was an Electrician and it was 200 times his weekly salary, if you earn £500 net in 2011 and multiply it up by 200, you get £100,000, houses are now therefore likely to be 400 x the weekly salary this @ least, the more money that goes into mortgages the less is being spent elsewhere so high house prices further damage weak economies & eventually cause recession & unemployment.
John
JBW
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Statik,
Was that net? R U sure this wasn't for a month? If its true, you were earning between a seventh and an eighth of the average wage!
Cheers
John
JBW
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From a site linked to the Financial Times it lists the average salary in 1971 as £ 2,003.88,
Sorry, I don't believe that, either. I started work as an apprentice in 1972, and was given a table of the yearly pay increments up to Craftsman, and he was "only" on about thirty quid a week. The quote above would have meant he was on a tenner a week less than the average....a lot of money back then.
Then again, when I see the so-called average weekly pay now it makes me laugh wryly, as there's a Hell a lot of workers on less basic than that.
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Rex.
The average wage is always skewed above what a lot of people earn, more so today as pay differentials between the lowest earners and the highest earners have differentiated more.
£30 gross?, x 52 would be £1560; annually, but they did have Bankers & politicians in 1971 didn't they!
Cheers
John
JBW
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Hi JBW, it's right £5 a week for the first month as a 16 year old boy in a factory, and even worked a week in hand. Still have some wage packets. The metal workers earned between £28 and £35. Moved on to better things later on in that year something like £11.00 a week in another factory and got an apprenticeship.
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I started work in 1974 for a stunning £15 a week... wages were rising quickly see I can see Statik will be about right. (LMAO I'm not quite as old as you decrepit old buggers ;D )
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"Did I mention I worked 27 hours a day and lived in a shoe box. Tell that to the kids of today and they won't believe you."
Luxury!
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The songs had words too.
Do arrh diddy diddy dum diddy do......................
Don't write them like that anymore. ;D
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That's was the '60s.
1970s had "shang-a-lang....shang-a-lang..."repeat ad nauseum and sung by a bunch of Jock retards in too short trooosers.. ;D
Funny thing about prices in those days though....the average Joe could still buy a house, run a car, smoke, go down the pub (remember them?) a couple of nights a week. We're just so lucky that things have improved since then..... ::)
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Hum!
In 1973 I worked in an Seed Merchants, Gardening & Pet Supplies for the Summer, Mon to Sat 9-6pm, half day Wed 9-1pm my wage was single figures maybe £7 or £8 a week, I used to buy an LP around £3.25 or maybe a couple of singles 50-60p?, I used to put £1-2 a week away towards my first motorbike, played snooker @ the Church club. In 1975 in the Clubs a pint of mild was 11p, bitter 13p & Lager if they had it, 17p. When I got my D10 my Dad helped me restore it & my insurance was with Federated, remember when you could go into a premises & sort it out & not have to surf the Internet & do all the work yourself. A gallon of petrol was 70 odd p around this time, in fact I checked its true 73p per gallon, still working in the shop as a Saturday boy, I got £3.50, but it was packed with crumpet & well worth the experience, but I was Shy @ the time!
Fuel price hikes
OPEC 1973;
Khomeini, Iran turns Fundamental 1979; First ever Islamic Republic;
2001 International terrorism threat;
2011Competition: China's demand for oil & will pay higher prices, outbid other states price remains high;
Incidentally, fuel prices were astronomical it took me most of the 2/3rds of the morning in 1975 to earn a gallon of juice!
BBC Breakfast calculated that the price of a litre of petrol would have been 85p in 1975 - 2p more than it is was in 04/06/2004 see article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3776913.stm
But the best article I have found recently was in 1960 Motorcycle Mechanics, Scooters @ Three Wheelers is was an 11 year old 1949 Vincent Rapide with side-car in a Dealers for £100, (in an article about what you could buy for £100 quid, new, Bantam anyone)!
Hindsight eh!
Cheers
John
JBW
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It's not easy to compare prices between era's because values were so different and there are too many variables. Men had to go to the pub a couple of times a week, now there isn't many pubs and most people wouldn't go in one anyway. Kids wore whatever clothes were about, just imagine what would happen if you told a boy now to wear something his brother has grown out of. There wasn't £120.00 trainers, we had two shilling plimsoles.
By the way my first Bantam was £10 and cost £4 to insure and the gear leaver return spring was broke which meant splitting the whole engine in two halves to replace it. Like everyone else I soon got the hang of clicking it back in place myself. Did I mention road tax, never bothered.
If I remember correctly we used to fix things and they carried on working again, we called it maintenance. Not done that for a while.
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If I remember correctly we used to fix things and they carried on working again, we called it maintenance. Not done that for a while.
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please please tell me what you ride cos I want something british you dont have to maintain
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please please tell me what you ride cos I want something british you dont have to maintain
you mean you dont have to maintain Japanese or German bikes?
course not you pay someone else to do it.
I have found over the last 50 years of riding mostly old british singles and even Triumphs that the so called unreliability of them ishas always been down to inept people who fantasise they are capable mechanics.
How do you tink so many people traversed to world back then on the things if they were so in need of "maintenace" I like being able to fix a puncture by the side of the road in less time than it takes for a recovery truck to reach me thnks.
Since its all over the net everywhere else
watch this
http://www.go-faster.com/SS100.html
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The reason I like British bikes is because they can be maintained. My older Japaneese bikes can also be maintained. I think that's a good thing. If the job is done with care they stay fixed.
I am a maintenance engineer at work. The difference is that maintenance of new equipment involves throwing away parts and fitting new ones. There is no such thing as a repair anymore.
After all maintenance is just a repair before it's actually needed. You don't wait for the brake shoes to wear down to the metal, you fix the problem before it gets that far.
I travelled Europe on British and Japaneese bike for most of my holidays without much trouble.
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Statik,
Monetary values have been adjusted to take in as many variables as you can to equate amounts & 40 year time span in between;
Fantastic link cheers yebbut;
The problem with many British machines was attention to detail & this often let them down time & time again, what were essentially fairly good products in a solid type of way; my father in his apprenticeship was working on "Plant" machines bought in 1914-1918 & he served his time from1948-1953. Management often used up component parts that were available @ that time, rather than replace them with updates as and when needed to keep competitive & ahead of the game. Norton did this with frames and BSA did this over the Sunbeam S7 worm drive, where Germany & Japan scored was rebuilt plant & more modern production systems, famously JIT has gone "titsup" 'cos no one seems to carry spares any more. Some time later attention to detail began to pay off, though sometimes their products lacked in other areas than, what we had right. German bikes lacked flair & Japanese bikes alloy casting & frame strength, wasn't particularly a strong point of manufactured products with bikes, ( early on @ least)!
The folding kick-start on my 1980s Honda was immeasurably better that the folding kick-start on my 1970s BSA.
We had a head start, in the 1950s, but we as manufacturers let it slip & time & time again, returns to shareholders killed what could have been respectable industries through lack of investment, insight and the will to survive & be honourable to the workforce @ least by trying to save peoples jobs and futures.
That's why often many small specialist builders, Rickman et al, did things better & hybrid specials were born like the Triton e.t.c. Not sure what the answer was design wise for the industry, but they could have easily put in a modified \Imp engine into a featherbed frame from Rootes or the Coventry Climax group & had a four-cylinder machine until they got their act together.
Sadly with hindsight if viewed dispassionately the A75 & later T160s proposed by the BSA/Triumph group would have had a better chance of survival if Smallheath had survived, rather than the ageing Bonneville @ the Co-operative @ Meriden.
Both sub-companies should have been given separate chances, but then as with what happened @ Redditch with royal Enfield, speculators were baying @ the door or politicians and officials to get their hands on land for re-developments & monies from these deals found itself in the hands of the few rather than the hands of many when they were industrial premises; the same happened to Leyland Motors & the same happened @ Longbridge, because the people we vote in to protect our interests, do not do it & I am sorry to say it just the same today and it will probably be the same tomorrow ad infinitum!
On a brighter note there is a new industry, but as yet its impacts for possible employment & component manufacture within the UK are limited as time has moved on with new-production systems & much of our industrial infrastructure disappeared some years ago, but it is better then sod all suppose, if model range is limited to larger more powerful machinge, whereas the future may lie in frugal 4 strokes singles & then a frugal V- twin, if you look @ modern machines even with complex control systems their mpg is awful, also some modern 2011, 250s are less powerful than the old Starfire!
Enough for now, I have gone & depressed myself! Better go & do the shopping & get a lottery ticket.
Cheers
JBW
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I agree with most of what you say John, however all the British bikes I have owned have passed through many hands before finding their way into my covertous grip and 99% of the problems I have had with them were the ones created by the Gonks listed on their log books. I'm affraid most working class home maintenance and repairs (including mine at the time) were bodges just to simply keep the bike on the road and get to work the rest of the week.
Now we want the bike for different reasons and our maintenance and repairs are by the book (unless you are adventurous and make improvements to the original design).
Frank
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Yes, I admit as a teenager, (its a steep learning curve), I did inflict some damage on both my BSA's & not always by falling off them, but I also improved some things too, better headlight H4, brighter "Stanley" tail bulb, uprated switchgear, re-wiring, allen bolts, milled down, (by uncle) A50 engine sprocket with more teeth to cruise easier on motorways, but there was not much you could do, reverse the cam plate for 1 up & 3 down, faster gear changes, Hammerite on cycle parts, gaskets from CCM, megaphone silencer, sounded like the "End of the World" when on full throttle! Although this improvement didn't always go down well the neighbours & local Constabulary, my Dad used to hear me on a Summers eve' coming down the box when negotiating the round-a-bout from the M61 to the A6, he was half a mile away and knew the distinctive noise of the engine!
At the time you innocently do not realise what fun you were having compared to the totalitarian conditions we ride into today, as the country descends into an abyss, full of uptight, target setting arse-holes who make policy & install CCTV everywhere, when probably the most fun they ever experienced was when the passed "wind" on their fifth birthday, the word "Free Country" seems to stick in my throat!
As the Gaul Brennus declared to the Romans "vie victus!, woe to the defeated, @ the moment the plutocrats & bureaucrats seem to have it all their way, who's defending motorcyclists rights? The BMF, MAG its a sorry state of affairs, the next step will be it will be illegal to do your home maintenance, you'll see, but on this I hope I am not right.
Cheers
JBW
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They can't wait for us to all die off.Next generation couldn't care less!
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the next step will be it will be illegal to do your home maintenance, you'll see, but on this I hope I am not right JBW
..I wish it was then the missus would have to phone someone up and I could spend more time in the workshop..
I don't remember Commando prices in the early seventies but by the end they were pretty cheap for a big bike, about twice the price of a new 250cc learner bike. They never became really cheap after that, maybe £500 for a runner but they were soon up to £1000 or so for a decent one and have never come down since although they remain moderately priced for their capabilities (still a money pit though).
One of the things that attracted me to British motorcycles in the 1970s was that you had to be self reliant and prepared to fix them. I still rather despise motorcyclists who have never had their engines apart and, by extension, the Japanese factories for making the hobby so damned accessible.
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At the time you innocently do not realise what fun you were having compared to the totalitarian conditions we ride into today, as the country descends into an abyss, full of uptight, target setting arse-holes who make policy & install CCTV everywhere,
So JBW, Mail or Express reader?
"Totalitarian conditions" indeed. Many in the World would happily swap to be in conditions as totalitarian as ours, (unless the dictionary definition has altered in some way?)
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So JBW, Mail or Express reader?
Such a statement negates any argument you are about to make in the same way as accusing you of being a Guardian reader does.
If you are implying that readers of those organs are right ring then I suggest you have a look at
Stormfront UK
Jew watch.
Now thats right wing, and for what its worth rather more informative than the Dail Mail.
Anyway isn't this this is a bike site
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<snip> I still rather despise motorcyclists who have never had their engines apart and, by extension, the Japanese factories for making the hobby so damned accessible.
That is actually a very interesting comment ? Once-upon-a-time, almost every enthusiast, by the very definition of the word, knew exactly what was in his/her engine.
OK, so not everyone even then was an 'enthusiast' then. Or Dealers workshops would have been out of business....
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<snip>
Anyway isn't this this is a bike site
Indeed. But owning an old bike is becoming a luxury, and it seems lawmakers are determined to make it more difficult. Worth keeping an eye on, and we'd be remiss in not informing / commenting on developments on this front ?
Even that bastion of something, the BBC, is today reporting that 75% of wealth is in the hands of 25% of the population (not sure where those numbers apply to) as though that was something that needs changing...
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mechanic goes to the doctors for a blood test , talking to him he states that there jobs are very similar .
“I rebuild engine from the heart up and you also look after the heart”
The doctor agrees but adds
"Try doing it with the engine still running"
now back to bikes , Nortons are expensive toys
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the BBC, is today reporting that 75% of wealth is in the hands of 25% of the population
That puts me in the bottom range of the 25% then.
As for the BBC (Buggers Broadcasting Communism) it has long lost credibility. Personally I would have the lot on trial for treason.
And to keep it on topic being skint is why I can't afford to buy anymore of those fantastically priced bikes these days
Stuff that as a youngster I refused as give aways, I remember refusing a pile of about six M20/M21 in the early 1960's..... what lad would have been seen dead on one back then, now they are restored to betetr than new or worse turned into that obscene abortion of a bike a bobber-chopper
Now where did THAT crap idea come from?
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I do not read any National newspaper, you just have to ride or drive across the Country to see & experience the stupid traffic policies & speed limitations in place where inappropriate, many countries may be more totalitarian than ours, but once we had a higher degree of freedom here than what we have now & & I would challenge anyone who lived here in the second half of the 20th century to dispute that!
Just wait till we get snow & ice again!
Cheers
JBW
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We'll get snow and ice regardless of the shade of government currently in power. Of course, local authorities could invest millions in gritters and snow ploughs, but then there wouldn't be any substantial snowfalls to justify it, and so there'd be calls to explain the waste of rate-payers' money.
The Mail and Express go for the apocalyptic "woe is us" style of journalism, and I thought you were indulging in a bit of that too.
Don't know about you, but I MoT the old bikes yearly, the tax is free and the insurance is dirt-cheap on a classics policy. I can then ride when where and with whoever I like, no restrictions, and I don't see how any of that is different from at any time in the past.
Thanks to the 'Net, spares and info is more readily available now than probably ever it was, so I really can't see how have reached your particular view-point JBW.
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So Rex, you would be happy to ride about in a high viz tabard and you dont mind what they put in your fuel... devils advocate you understand...
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Rex,
Just a bit of realistic debate that's all, motorists & motorcyclist are being bashed constantly with rules and regulations e.t.c, look @ the new Driving Licences & the young road user, how you have to be retested for every different category. The insurance rip-off generally across the board to do with motorised traffic, albeit excepting Classic motorcycles @ present. What about the under-cover police teams joining Club runs and filming people riding, the Daylight headlight proposals, Police & Council over interference over events such as Appleby Fair , trying to stop events across the Country which have happened in our Sceptred isles for millennia, trying to organise something, AKA an event, now is a nightmare, with overburdening health & safety, insurances, District Council rules, personal indemnity insurance, Equality Laws & access all have to be considered, plus what you are trying to achieve.
Winter & Traffic calming:
As for snow & ice look @ the lay-out of many roads in the country, they are now designed so that its almost impossible on a single-carriageway to overtake safely, there are a million more objects of substantial structure in the middle of our carriageways, than there used to be & I consider them downright dangerous to motorcyclists & that the authorities have forgotten what British winters can be like in designing modern roads, with slaloms through deliberately built traffic control structures, speed humps, all of which you cannot see if a substantial amount of snow falls & Ice forms and with all these additional objects to hit the more likely the occurrence of an accident is likely to take place.
Then if there is no difference in road conditions, why then does it take me longer to ride or drive across Kent than it used to, if you disregard congestion then nearly every road speed limit is 10 mph down on what it was 30 years ago, has anyone noticed how Dual-carriageways are now often 50mph in many places rather than the 60mph, that they used to be!
What speeds are you travelling @ Rex? Some A & B roads are becoming unusable through lack of maintenance & over zealous & restrictive speed controls, I like seeing the scenery but I also like to travel @ a reasonable pace!
Go on line & research the cost of becoming a new motorcycle rider imagine yourself as a 17 year old, its horrendous the amount of money you need these days.
I think I am an optimist with a realistic slightly pessimistic point of view, leading to an awareness brought about by past experience, because it certainly is less fun to live in Britain than it used to be through needless restrictions and poorly thought out legislation and policy implementation! The treating us like we are idiotic children, surekllt on reflection this cannot be a true reflection of what this great Nation has become?
Incidentally, why is the new Norton so expensive
Cheers
John
JBW
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A general rant against life in the 21st century, then?
My long-gone dad used to say much the same about conditions and rules and regs when he started out (pre-war) compared to how things were in the 50s-60s when he finished with bikes.
That golden glow which always seems to emanate from "the past". ;)
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Things were so much better in the past, if only I was back there I could buy all those bikes no one wanted.
Norton Prices?
I put the first Commandos together at Plumstead, for a lot less than 20 quid a week before tax,
before that, just out my gas fitter apprenticeship the wage was around £12 a week.
So that's the difference.
Incidentally I didn't like Commandos back then and I still wouldn't have one now.
As for the rant, well generally I agree, I seemed to have had a lot better time in the 60's than kids do now, but then I could go where I liked without fear of "disrespecting" someone and getting done over or stabbed.
I could also buy a wreck of a bike for 10 bob and either push it home without getting stopped and harassed by a jobsworth copper, or bring it home on a train in the guards van, remember those?
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"surekllt on reflection this cannot be a true reflection of what this great Nation has become?" Is this a new word no!
Degenerating into an idiot I profess most of us are not! Meant to say surely!
Looking back is always dangerous, so I try & look forward, then end up looking back again?
Yes, Rex, what would you get know for scrambling a Honda 50 round a field now, or running your Bantam with no baffles and filling the monobloc carb' with Redex & leaving a trail of pure white smoke down the A6, an ASBO?
@18 I got 3 points on my licence and a £5 fine & Court appearance, for 1 of my "L" plates being missing, I was made to feel by the Judge as an enemy of the State, of course they hadn't heard of Al-Qaeda then!
Theory on price of a Norton:
Component parts: High metal, alloys, copper, steel & carbon fibre prices;
Tyre prices astronomical;
Labour costs- neutral;
Fuel injection system, ECU, electronic ignition substantially expensive;
Paint & finishing astronomical;
Plant equipment, Foundry casting, tooling costs power & water supply, insurances, H&S, expensive;
Commercial rates;
Construction Type Approval & Manufacturing fee;
Management Expertise Expensive;
Road Logistic costs to Dealer, fuel costs;
Dealer's cut;
Priced not on costs but maybe what the market can be seen to afford!
Profit margin producer;
Higher VAT;
Green Stealth Taxes;
Some ridiculous prices of Classic & Vintage bikes further push up the price
How the hell do they make them for less than £14,000!
Cheers
John
JBW