COULD you imagine the horror of having to fork out £1.33 per mile to run a new sub-1.0-litre car? Or how about a financially crippling £2.10 per mile for a car with an engine of 2,001cc to 2,250cc? According to Automobile Association figures from 1957, adjusted to present day prices, these were the real-world costs that motorists had to face, with the most common sub-1,500cc models costing up to £1.75 a mile.
Such enormous running costs (between 6p and 11p a mile at fifties prices) meant that most people couldn’t afford to buy and run a factory-fresh car, so a new trend developed in the post-war years: companies were buying cars for their employees to run around in, usually for work but not exclusively so. Some even paid for their employees’ private mileage to encourage the vehicle’s keeper to treat it as their own, so they’d look after it that much more. Less benevolent companies insisted that their employees pay for any
