In 1912 an advert appeared in The Times from the London General Omnibus Co Ltd:
The PEOPLE’S CAR – At the Motor Show there are cars at all prices from £150 to £1,500. But there is no car that will carry you for a modest penny. That is what the motor-bus does all over London. It is the people’s motor-car – the car not to be looked at but used.For what could be more appropriate than to travel by the then still quite new-fangled motor bus? Extra omnibuses were working between Piccadilly Circus & Hammersmith for the week of the event on the three services which passed Olympia – the 9 & 33 from Liverpool Street & 27 from Highbury station, which still cover similar routes today.
Despite the claim in the ad, the cheapest cars on show at Olympia (ready for the road) seem to have been priced at about £300 – more than many people earned in a year & enough to buy you a modest house in the expanding suburbs, & equivalent to the maximum advance you could get as a mortgage under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act.
The £2,000 you could spend on an E-type Jaguar when that came on the market priced at £2000 in 1961, would still get a modest semi in a modest suburb (outside the London area).
Today even a Lamborghini costs less than most family-sized homes.
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