usatoday24
It is no secret. Cars have risen in the last years. Cars, in fact, have risen a lot of price in recent years. It is an issue that we analyze in Xataka Two years ago and although the semiconductor crisis passed, the cost of getting a car has not lowered much.
The problem even hit second -hand cars that too They shot their prices. It is a problem that was generalized internationally since the lack of components led companies such as Ford to have tens of thousands of vehicles due to the lack of some small component.
Today the situation has been normalized. No longer is needed wait for more than a year To receive a car or there are people paying overpreds for Skip the waiting list of a Tesla. In fact, to the company It is costing to place according to what cars.
But there is something that has not changed so much. The price of cars is still high. Very high. How high? Let’s compare it with a few years ago.
A salary year
Do we take a look at what the situation was half a century ago?
Our partners L’Automobile They have echoed a study in which it was claimed that buying a Citroën 2CV in 1975 was much more complicated than getting a Citroën C3 in 2025. The French media, however, stated that the study presented them with any doubt because it was not taken into account, for example, the average cost of the house, one of the problems that, as in Spainhit France.
Are we in Spain in the same situation?
In our case, we are going to take official minimum salary data and vehicle prices as a departure. Thus, consulting the data reflected by the BOE of 1975, the minimum wage was at 8,400 pesetas. Monthly that, after the year, added 117,600 pesetas at the end of the year with 14 payments.
That year, according to data collected in Bull skinspecialized in the Spanish classics, a Citroën 2CV-6 cost 123,088 pesetas. In January 1974, in Highway They explained The idiosyncrasy of this version in the following terms:
“Without entering the discussion about whether the 2 hp must be considered as a car or simply as a distant cousin, the truth is that we find an inescapable reality: it is the cheapest vehicle on the market, and according to legend, also the cheapest consumption,”
With the data in his hand, a Spaniard who charged the minimum wage needed to work 14.65 payments to pay the car. That is, just over the salary won in a whole year to acquire “the cheapest vehicle on the market.”
Today, Citroën’s cheapest car is C3. Its price is 15,740 euros, According to the vehicle configurator. In 2025, the minimum interprofessional salary is 16,576 euros with the last climb of the SMI. Taking this into account, to pay a Citroën C3, a worker needs 13.29 payments. That is to say, Less days worked than 50 years ago For a vehicle of similar characteristics.
And if we go to the cheapest car on the market, as collected in the search engine of Km77which have a huge database with the current prices of market cars, the most basic dacia A price of 13,940 euros It is the cheapest car on the market. In this case, a worker needs to dedicate 11.77 payments. That is, almost twelve payments, less than a year.
They are data that compare prices “to the gross” since the cost of the purchase or housing car is not taken into account. Yes we know that in 1975, The best -selling car in Spain was the Seat 127. A car that at that time cost 166,290 pesetas. Or, what is the same, 19.79 payments of a Spaniard with minimum wage.
The data is not less since it means that the Spanish buyer acquired A car 135% more expensive than the cheapest model on the market. In 2024, however, The most purchased car was … Dacia Sandero with 32,994 units. A car that put more than 10,000 units to Toyota Corolla, second classified. This gives us an idea of the type of car to which a Spanish buyer aspires in 2025.
To all of the above we must add, as we said, factors such as the price of housing. In this case, we have not found studies that aim at the cost of acquiring it in 1975 but in Xataka Yes we have studied evolution and the cost of the same over the years. For sample, housing prices are already still expensive as in the bubble years. Even if it is a fact deformed by inflation, The study which we echoed does show that an apartment is now 3.5 times more expensive than in 1980, when the study began.
Another sample, in Bankinter They point out that a family needed the total income of 2.9 years to pay an apartment in 1987, while in 2023 this figure was between 7.3 and 7.5 years. Data that explain why if a car demands more or less the same amount of effort, now the most purchased car in Spain is a cheaper than 50 years ago.
Photo | Citroën and Dacia
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings