Will you ever be able to afford a Range Rover Sport?
Stereotypically associated with wealthy housewives, the Range Rover Sport has somehow set itself apart from all the competition as the must have soccer mum vehicle that many a middle class mother has dreamed of owning. If you’re currently kicking up a stink at that sentence you are either on the outskirts of the bell curve or living in denial. The reality is that while a Range Rover Sport is possibly not your dream car there is always another high end car that’s more than likely on your wish list. If you’ve come to the dismal conclusion that you will never be able to afford your dream Range Rover or equivalent, don’t be disheartened this is proving to be a misconception.
Using our own in-depth highly acute research skills we’ve looked up the prices of some the most common desirable vehicles and their high-end cousins, from 2015 and back in 1990. We’ve taken data from the website redbook.com.au and data from the Australian Bureau of statistics and applied some basic math to compare the cost of a car to the average income in 1990 and 2015.
Here is what we found; In the same year Wilson Phillips made us all feel good about ourselves with their hit “Hold On”, Holden VN Commodore V6 vacationer was released and would cost you $25,352 brand new off the showroom floor. The year was 1990, the same year the freedom of Nelson Mandela covered the headlines and back then (according to the Bureau of statistics) the average adult full time employee income in Australia was $562 a week. The result is that in the era that saw teenagers attempt to bring back the overalls, the Macarena became popular and Push Pop candy took over the nation, you could land yourself a boring box of a commodore for roughly forty five working weeks worth of wages. Compared to today, adolescents are drinking home made grog from jam jars, bringing facial hair back in and knitting jumpers for council owned street lamps and traffic light control boxes. Dopey trends aside, the latest Holden Commodore is the VF Commodore SV6 and according to Red Book you can take one home in one of seven colour options for around $37,290. An apparent big leap from the cost of a VN Commodore twenty five years prior.
However before we all nod our head and complain to our friends about how hard life is while we sit a round a cheese platter and sip red wine, you need to compare this to the average income of the day. Once again referencing the Australian Bureau of Statistics; in 2014 the average adult full time income had increased to $1,439.50. (A number we raised our eyebrows at but it’s the government, they can’t be wrong). So assuming this information is accurate lets work out how many average Australian pay packages it would take to be able to afford the new VF Commodore. The maths works out at twenty five working weeks.
Compared to the VN Commodore back in 1990 at forty five working weeks the cost of a new car has acutely decreased in the past twenty five years by almost fifty percent. Granted its only a Commodore and no one wants to drive one of them anymore (unless you’re an overweight, pie eating bogan and love doing burnouts).
We applied the same maths to Range Rovers of the same eras. In 1990 the Range Rover Vogue was a fairly fancy pants car, but now is more identified with wanna-be hipsters and surf bums looking for a vehicle they can sleep in. In 1990 the Vogue would set high incomer earners back $80,770 according to Redbook. On the same average income back then of $562 the Range Rover would cost you one hundred and forty three weeks of all your hard earned cash. In comparison today the 2015 Range Rover HSE supercharged V6 will cost you $122,700 which at the 2014 average income is eighty five working weeks of income.
Again, with the upper-class of vehicles we see almost a 50% reduction cost comparison when compared to the average income. Obviously this has many variables that can change but we trust you get the general idea of what we’re saying. While this is probably fairly accurate, it in no way makes you feel any better about your life, your income or your inability to buy a Range Rover. You have now gained a chunk of knowledge that is quite possibly totally useless to you, but hopefully interesting.
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