VIEW: It’s the Oil, Stupid

In the early eighties, at $36 per bbl, about 750 bbls of crude would buy you a top of the range Mercedes (about $27,000). When the price of oil hit $10, the same car cost $55,000 (some 5,500 bbls of oil). That translates to an effective drop of some 85 percent in purchasing power!

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_15-9-2004_pg3_2