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"The fee was $25.00 to register it in 51. Not bad for a new car."

At first glance this appears to have been a good deal - until one takes into account that it takes approximately $223.95 in 2009 dollars to buy what 25 U.S. dollars bought in 1951.

Quote:

Based on your calculations and a base price of $ 3034.00 that the car would sell today for $27,154.00. $223.95 to register it still looks like a pretty good price. I think the licence fee would be much higher at least in California.

What do you think?

I do not know what California's licensing fees are. Here in Florida the license (tag) fee for my Mercury Grand Marguis was $97 for two years when last I had to renew the plate on it. It is my understanding that the fee is to go up by about half this year.

I was using figures from one of the commonly available inflation calculator sites on the 'net. They all seem to be pretty much comparable to each other in calculated inflation figures (I've tried five or six of them to compare the results).

The most expensive place that I have ever had to tag an auto was Oklahoma in about 1977. The plate for my personal car (active duty military) only cost 19 dollars and some odd cents. I discovered the disparity betwixt this (reasonable) fee and "regular" license tag fees when I bought my wife an El Dorado and found that, alas, military dependants did not qualify for the same consideration. By the time the lady at the tag agents office got through punching numbers into her calculator, I was tired. Almost had a coronary arrest when she read me the figure. Of course it included the 7% state sales tax as well as the licensing fee but, even so, was a shock to someone who'd been licensing cars in Texas and Arkansas where the "normal" yearly cost was between about $18 and $25. If memory serves, the tag fee alone was about three times what I expected without the sales tax (which I did expect).

It was, in fact, about this time that there was a major scandal in the state regarding county tag agencies and more than a couple of county commissioners wound up being sent to the penitentiary for, in effect, selling tag agencies to the highest bidder. I remember thinking to myself, at the time, "Well, I can certainly understand that."

California is probably the highest when it comes to licence fees. I think I paid $129.00 for my 1974 van and that was for one year. Swarts-n-Kennedy is tripling the fees so they can keep up their out of control spending. He must be Obama's brother.

Georgia's probably the cheapest I've seen. Anything over 20 years old costs about $1.25
Pennsylvania's $36 per year for cars.

In the northern portion of Ontario until quite recently the licence fee was $0 while southerns paid about $30. Now it is $37 per year for a regular vehicle in the north and $74 in the south and $18 for a Historic Vehicle tag everywhere.

My best recollection about the story (probably gotten from Bob Turnquist's The Packard Story) is that J.W. Packard was contacted about sending out literature about the car early in the car's history and he had not yet gotten any literature printed, so rather than send out the requested literature, he told the inquirer that he did not have any literature presently but that they should "ask the man who owns one."
Ken Dunning
kens53clip

Whatever the truth of the origin of the phrase, it apparently wasn't the product of some advertising copy-writer and remained in use for far longer than a lot of other formerly well-known auto company advertising slogans (for instance: "When better cars are built, Buick will build them.")

If a trifle sexist by today's "politically correct" standards, it accurately reflected the confidence the company had in its product and, for many years, when someone thought of Packard the phrase immediately came to mind.