As the recent pandemic reminded us, there are events that shake daily life’s foundations. And while life always returns to ‘normal,’ on certain occasions, one can be certain that things will never be quite the same.
The energy crisis of 1973 was such an event, and there were aftershocks in the automotive world still felt to this day. Fifty years later. Those who lived those days won’t ever forget them. Those who didn’t, can’t quite imagine the ordeal that period images clearly show.
Today’s images come from the National Archives and have been slightly color-corrected for this post. As for commentary, I’ll limit myself to quoting the text that accompanied each photo in their original Flickr page.
Average gas station in Portland, Dec. 1973. “Early morning hour of pumping when gas was limited on a first-come, first-serve basis to five gallons per auto.” December, 1973.
“Solid lines of cars such as this scene in Portland resulted in a first-come, first-served limit of five gallons. Shortly thereafter, Oregon went to a system dispensing gas according to license numbers.” December, 1973.
“Gasoline shortage hit the state of Oregon in the fall of 1973, by midday gasoline was becoming unavailable along interstate highways.” October, 1973.
“Prior to regulation of fuel sales in Oregon, some dealers attempted to sell only to their regular customers.” January, 1974.
“A dealer in Tigard (Oregon) pumped gas only to regular customers. The driver in this picture was refused service.” January, 1974.
“Lone car on a street usually filled with Sunday drivers.” December, 1973.
“Manis stations, such as this one in Portland, began using a ‘Sorry’ sign on the last car to get gas.” December, 1973.
“Imported gasoline was sold during the fuel crisis in the fall and winter of 1972-74. It was as much as twice the price of domestic gas.” February, 1974.
“Imported gasoline was available in Oregon during the fuel crisis at double the cost of the domestic fuel. Only when things began to get desperate did customers pay the price.” March, 1974.
“Traffic on I-5 was less than normal on the first Sunday afternoon on the nationwide ban on gasoline sales.” December, 1973.
“‘No Gas’ signs were a common sight in Oregon during the fall of 1973. This station was open for any business other than selling gasoline.” October, 1973.
We all have stories too numerous to write here. It was a difficult and I believe, orchestrated event.
I remember the night Carson came out for his monologue carrying one of the little red flags gas stations were supposed to show when out of gas. He announced “sorry, I have already used my allocation of jokes for the day”
One of the beer distributors in Kalamazoo was using a horse drawn wagon to make deliveries. I passed that rig on Stadium Drive, as I headed home from class, one day. It was not nearly as glamorous as the Bud wagon, and only had two horses pulling it.
Amtrack saw a huge surge in passengers. They were pulling coaches out of storage yards that had not been used in years. I remember seeing one in Great Northern livery, so it had been in a storage yard at least since before GN merged with Burlington in 1970.
If I remember correctly, California had a program where you would buy gas on an odd numbered day of the calendar based the last digit of your license plate and so forth.
The joke was “Are you odd or even?”
Yes, Carson was the King of Late Night.
Far superior to what you get today!!
Yes, California used odd and even based on your plate. While at SDSU I worked all over San Diego County for a company out of Los Angeles calling on a couple of major supermarket chains. The state had exemptions for cars that were needed for everyday work such as me whose job was to travel from site to site. I carried a letter in my glove box that said so from either the state or the company. Surprisingly, I was never asked for it when I pulled in for gas and frankly don’t recall it being all that difficult.
The first picture above just shows people panicking to the point of when the tank was 1/4 empty it was time to better get some gas just to be sure. No more getting gas when the tank was empty instead make sure the tank never got below half.
We were “ok” with the arrangement. (relative speaking) One car was “odd”/the other “even”.
In both “73” and “78/9”.
The “energy crisis” of 1973-1974 was 100% fake. After the guppies that ran the Big Oil companies crammed their bank accounts full-to-busting, there was suddenly a glut of petroleum products.
A canard that I just can’t let pass. And exactly how were the “big oil” companies making a fortune when they had no product to sell? This energy crisis was a result of OPEC, which controlled the bulk of the world’s oil supply, refusing to sell oil to the U.S. (and others) in retaliation for its support of Israel in the Yom Kippur war. The embargo ended in March, 1974, when the U.S. agreed to sell missles and fighters to Saudi Arabia, pacifying OPEC. “Big oil” had little to do with it.
Not everything that happens in the world that one dislikes is an evil conspiracy.
+1, CPJ. Thanks for citing the historical facts.
I wonder if Jasmine was even alive during that period? Most likely not.
She probably read about it on the ‘net (so it must be true!).
Another +1 CPJ.
In response to the Energy Crisis, the federal government printed up a series of gasoline rationing coupons. Come to find out, the engraving was done by the Treasury Dept and the coupons were good enough to fool change machines.
Fortunately, the program was never implemented.
The first gas crisis was just before my time, but I remember the sequel in ’79. Maybe siphoning gas out of cars had always been a problem, but it became so common in the trailer park where we lived that we had to get locking a locking gas cap.
Maybe siphoning gas out of cars had always been a problem, but it became so common in the trailer park where we lived that we had to get locking a locking gas cap.
Motor Trend was full of adverts for really sketchy fuel consumption improvers and siphoning preventers. One of the things, for people who didn’t want to spend the money on a locking gas cap, was a tapered spring to put in your filler neck to prevent insertion of a siphoning hose. Totally useless, as one guy who wrote in to MT attested. He had dual tanks on his pickup, so bought two of those spring things. Turns out, all you need to do is push harder on the siphoning hose to push the springs all the way down to the end of the filler and into the tank. He not only lost about 40 gallons of gas, he could hear the springs rolling around in the tanks, to remind him of his mistake.
I remember these too, though don’t know if any of my family’s cars had them. I do think we got a locking gas cap, easily visible in that era when many cars had exposed gas caps painted to match the car (or one one of our cars, chromed), rather than behind a flap. By the early ’80s, locking gas caps of some sort were commonly fitted from the factory.
By the early ’80s, locking gas caps of some sort were commonly fitted from the factory.
The factory “locking gas filler” was fake, at least on the early 80s Mazda GLCs. There was a door over the filler, with a keyhole in it, so it looked like it locked. The lock was fake. There was no lock cylinder inside. You could open that “lock” as easily with a screwdriver or fingernail file, as with the key. If you were lucky, the gas thief would use a nail file. If you were unlucky, the thief would pry the door open with a crowbar, leaving you with a several hundred dollar body shop bill to install and paint a new door, along with replacing the latch parts, and probably repairing a dent in the quarter panel.
The actual locking gas caps, the one my mom had on her 72 Torino, the one I had on my Renault, and the two my aunt had on her dual tank 79 Ford van, had a real lock cylinder inside and were made with heavy, cast metal, parts. It would take some determination to get them off, unless you had a key.
Steve
Same with the “lock” on my 1977 Honda Civic CVCC hatchback. It was easily opened with a pen knife.
I wondered why the Transit Connect at work didn’t have any way to secure the filler lid, until I showed up one day to find a piece of hose sticking out. Turns out there’s some sort of barrier/trap down there because they didn’t get any gas and the piece of hose could not be removed no matter what we tried. In the end they didn’t want to pay to have a shop take it apart so they just cut it off as far in as they could. Now the tank can only be filled really slowly or the pump stops like it’s full. Our full size van had a locking cap, so the thieves removed a piece of the filler pipe which I discovered when the gas I was pumping went straight through to the ground. Not hard to replace and at least they didn’t use a drill on the tank.
I was born in ’74 and can remember the ’79 “NO GAS” signs because it was while I was just learning to read.
Likewise, I remember learning odds and evens when Pennsylvania restricted gas sales to cars license plates ending in either odd or even numbers during the second gas crisis.
We did that as well.
I was a student at OSU in Corvallis at the time. During a break, I recall filling up at around 30 cents/gal. before the 600 mile drive back home in California in my ’55 Ford Crown Victoria. The price per gallon pretty much had doubled by the time I rolled into my hometown.
That gas crisis was a definite turning point in America. The scramble towards fuel efficient product jolted the domestic auto industry into changes they were not prepared for.
Still have my Crown Victoria alongside a few other relics, but since 2012 when I leased a Volt, I’ve gone electric with my daily drivers.
So true that big events can easily shake our normal lives. We tend not to think about how fragile our comfortable lifestyles are until something happens. With natural disasters, things almost always return to normal after a time. It’s the man-made disasters that have a tendency to change paradigms and create new normals.
The 73 gas crisis changed many people’s outlook on fuel efficiency, and when it happened again in 79, the widespread desire for fuel efficiency took even deeper root (I was alive during those events, but too young to use gasoline or be very aware). The correlation with increasing import sales from 73 to the early 80’s was surely no accident. There was also a bipartisan desire to be energy independent in the U.S. until recently.
Gas stations only selling to regular customers is sure a sign of how much society has changed, in that gas stations and their employees had enough of a relationship with their customers to know who was regular. Buying gas is so anonymous now.
I’m not sure how I feel about the “regular customer” policy. On the one hand, if one had a regular gas station, it would be nice to be rewarded for having that kind of consistency in your life. On the other hand, if you ran out of your 5 gallons outside of your home area, you’d be in a jam if no one would sell to you. One thing’s for sure, 5 gallons would not last very long with some of those [beautiful] behemoths in the photos.
The Regular Customer policy was challenged in several states. I’m not sure whether any states found the practice illegal – I have a feeling the crisis abated before much could be done. I think gas stations were at their discretion as to who they defined as a regular customer – for many, it boiled down to who had used that station for service before the Arab oil embargo.
The article below notes that Oregon’s governor was denied gas at a station on the Oregon coast because he wasn’t a regular customer. The gas station owner (and undoubtedly many others) were peeved that a recent “Western Governors Conference” arranged for all of the visiting politicians and their staffs get unlimited gas at a local station – so he wasn’t inclined to extend some generosity to the governor as he was driving back from his vacation home.
I was wondering the same thing – how would gas stations even know who was or wasn’t a regular customer? Unless you used an oil-company charge card (common back then, before universally-accepted credit cards were, well, universal). Also, full-service pumps were still the most common; still, if you filled up at a different time than usual they may not recognise you.
I saw a station open with no lines. The old VW don’t have a fuel gauge so I pulled in and put in 3 gallons and that pissed off the attendant. That’s half a tank! The whole thing was just a giant pain the in the butt.
The sales manager at our dealership tried to stock up on Pintos & Mavericks. I still recall his frustration after returning from one unsuccessful auction trip hunting such cars. He said that the auction price difference between a full size Mercury and a Maverick coming off lease at that particular FoMoCo auction was only about $100. He was really worried that a few Mercurys he had bought right before the gas crisis were unsellable at any profitable price. We mechanics weren’t privy to the P&L of any particular car, but those Mercurys saw some serious markdowns and still sat on the lot far longer than normal.
Indeed the ‘gas shortage’ was a stunt by the gop and petroleum companies to weed out the millions of independent gas stations that were _everywhere_ back then .
It worked very well, we have ten times the vehicles now and maybe 1/4 the number of filling stations .
I those days I mostly rode my Motocycle, my old VW got 30 + MPG, I’d drive to San Pedro and park on the hill, you could see fully laden oil tankers lived up out past the horizon but somehow that never made the news .
I was working for Atlantic Richfield and our tanks were always full .
-Nate
Indeed the ‘gas shortage’ was a stunt by the gop and petroleum companies to weed out the millions of independent gas stations that were _everywhere_ back then .
Maybe we need to have a no conspiracy theory commenting policy at CC.
The trend to fewer and larger gas stations was a trend that had started years before the energy crisis, as this NYT article from 1973 makes clear:
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/27/archives/-gas-stations-a-way-of-life-is-changing-nations-shortage-of-fuel-is.html
The trend was pure economics; larger and self-serve gas stations were more efficient. The corner gas station went away for the same reason the corner grocery store went away.
That same trend applies to just about every other business I can think of. Retailing for example – I look at malls and shopping centers from the 1960s and ’70s and most of the stores are independent or small local chains. There wasn’t a Big Retail conspiracy to drive everyone to Target, Walmart, and Amazon; simple economics and good business strategies (and sometimes good luck) made it happen. Are downtown shopping districts with big department stores even still a thing? (at least in the US, I know it is elsewhere).
Was there self-service before ’73 anywhere in the US? I don’t remember any, but I was a mere child.
You’d think shortages and doubling the price would have made its spread less likely outside big cities, but everyone wanted to save money. I can’t remember now how many years there was overlap of credit/cash price differentials and full/self ones. The Exxon a hundred yards from me still offers full service (and service bays), but it’s the only place I’ve seen outside NJ in decades. I still have 6 juice glasses left that my grandmother would get with fill-ups from them before the crisis.
Was there self-service before ’73 anywhere in the US?
Very few. I didn’t say there were. I said the trend to larger and (eventually) self serve stations had been underway for some time and that trend kept going. I just came back from a road trip, and the trend is still going; I saw lots of very new and very large gas stations/travel centers, and many once quite large gas stations from the ’70s or ’80s that were now shuttered.
Self serve took off in the ’80s.
Another contributing factor to self serve was the ability to swipe your debit/credit card at the pump. No need for an attendant to make change, less cash held in the store, less hassle to true up at the end of the day, etc.
I don’t like “no conspiracy”, I think everyone should express their view, and others can refute it, in a civil, polite fashion.
Conspiracies can and do happen–but that does not mean every trend or change is the result of a conspiracy.
I was nine when this happened and didn’t live in the US. I didn’t experience gas lines. I did learn a new term “energy crisis” in school.
As I recall in Greece, they went to “odd/even”–so people tried to get plates ending in an odd number so they would have an extra day of driving.
Of course, Greeks in 1973 were not car dependent like Americans. But they did depend on buses.
Personally, I don’t agree with the statement “..it was a stunt by GOP and oil companies to weed out independent service stations”. It’s a very hard statement to prove–or to disprove.
I agree with Paul on this–I think the greater trends gravitated against independent “service stations”, as cars became more complicated and, yet paradoxically were more reliable and needed a lot less “routine service” like chassis lube, tune-ups, and new points and plugs. People just wanted fuel (and later, “convenience”) and that’s why they went self-service, to save money.
But my two cents is not to restrict comments because the moderator doesn’t like them or agree with them.
How was it to their benefit to get rid of mom and pop shops as they buy gas from the petro companies, too?
Jon ;
You’re asking the right question .
Once they eliminated the competition the [prices took off and have never come back down again .
All thanks to the alt-right & gop’ s ‘free market’ mantra/B.S. .
-Nate
Adjusted for inflation, the price of a gallon of gasoline often declined during the 1980s and 1990s. I remember the mantra in some quarters was that gasoline was “too cheap” during those years.
Also note that the free market doesn’t necessarily guarantee LOW prices.
Ay ay ay…
You had to be there to fully grasp what a cluster fork it all was .
There was a Cheech & Chong movie that began with the two hauling a trash can past all the lined up cars to siphon the gas out of the station’s tow truck .
-Nate
Having gotten my license in 1972 I have strong memories of 1973, and its sequel in 1979.
Connecticut had odd/even days, and I think 5 gallons was the limit. As my Mom’s Country Squire had an odd plate and my Dad’s big Pontiac had an even, I had the “privilege” of gassing a car every day.
This and the ’79 shortage led me to always look for cars with decent fuel economy. Sadly, as a result I’m that rare “car guy” who had never owned a V8.
I never have either.
That was the time to buy what are now dream cars – like a W-30 442, Copo Camaro, or Chevelle SS – for peanuts. No one wanted hipo gas guzzlers. Put them in a plastic bag in a time capsule garage somewhere and cash in on the Muscle Car boom a few years later. If I only knew.
It was also the time to buy Big Three auto stock for a song and a dance.
Just a year later, the stock value had bounced back and gained in value by 1975.
The same thing happened in 1979.
Interesting situation we did not experience in western Canada.
I can’t speak for the eastern half of the country at the time, but I know imported oil from the middle east was common as refineries in eastern Canada were few. Sadly, they are still importing oil when a pipeline from the west would provide a steady supply of oil. Politics.
I live in Minnesota. During the gas crisis’ of ’73 and ’79 I never couldn’t get fuel and was never limited to 5 gallons. I don’t even remember there being much if any lines. It was fifty years ago so that could be a factor.
The biggest effect it had for me was the stations were no longer open 24 hrs a day. I was working 2nd shift back then, getting off at midnight to 1 am, so I had always fueled up after work, no lines.
That’s how I’ve been told it was for much of the interior of the US – and such has been mentioned in other comments here in the past. While I was quite young during the first crisis, my father (who was commuting 100 miles round trip daily in his ’73 Torino that got 12 mpg regardless) said supply was never an issue where we were. Cost, however, was a distinct factor. He said a $20 fill-up every other to every third day was a new fact of life.
At least here in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of DC, most gas stations are still open 24 hours; a small percentage aren’t but it’s always easy to find one that is. On the other hand, grocery stores and retailers curtailed their hours at the start of the pandemic, and most still haven’t gone back to their pre-pandemic hours. My local 24 hour grocery store now closes at midnight; malls that used to close at 9:30pm close at 8pm now, except some on Friday and Saturday nights.
I was living in Kansas at the time and it was business as usual at our local stations despite what I was seeing on the national news.
In the pic with the Camaro and the “sorry” sign, I spot a blue 69 Charger with what looks to be a R/T badge on the side. Could be a 68 with the gleam off its side marker light but I’m pretty sure that’s a 69 taillight panel.
I don’t know what everyone’s bad memory was, looks like a pretty great impromptu car show to me!
I think you are correct about the year. That 440 mag wouldn’t get far on 5 gallons!
I’m taken by how downright dreary everything looks in these photos – the cars, the roads, the people, the gas stations. No wonder people were filled with malaise. Gas stations, these days, are pretty pleasant places to stop by.
Now that you mention it, you’re right. Here in NJ, the commuter railroad was still using train cars from Thomas Edison’s day–drab olive green, worn out, no A/C, cane seats replaced with vinyl; RR stations still using town name signs from the 1920s; stations sooty, dirty, smelled of urine. Cities (Newark, Manhattan, Bronx) looked like bombed-out war zones. Highways out of cities (like Rt. 22) cluttered with tacky signage, unsightly industrial uses, insane traffic congestion and bad drivers. Rivers so polluted they were consistently brown (or oil “rainbow”) and stunk.
Most of this has been modernized or “cleaned-up” now, but the “Old World” of the 1970s did have CHARACTER in spades!
It’s also December/January in all these photos, everything looks depressing in the winter in the eastern half of the country without fresh snow (yes, I’m susceptible to S.A.D.)
Modernization seemed to eliminate the practice of abandonment that seemed rampant back then. A building in a bad area burns, or a industrial plant is closed down they’re razed almost immediately these days, leaving empty lots and brownfields for the foreseeable future. The result is rather seeing the blight and decay right in front of your eyes, it’s all just neatly swept away and hidden from plain sight. I don’t know if modern aesthetic deficiencies is its lack of character or a lack of honesty.
Likewise the railroads were in trouble in the 70s and Amtrack was a ramshackle operation using cast-off rolling stock from all the various companies that shifted their interests exclusively to freight, so you got to see that eclectic mix of ancient rolling stock. Is it really much better today for railroading? There are a teeny tiny fraction of railroad companies after decades of mergers, trackage has been significantly been reduced and I’m constantly hearing about derailments on the news – but it all sure does look neater and more tidy!
Is it really much better today for railroading? There are a teeny tiny fraction of railroad companies after decades of mergers, trackage has been significantly been reduced and I’m constantly hearing about derailments on the news
Matt, making assumptions about a few incidents you hear in the news leads to what we have way too much of in the world: bad assumptions and fake news.
It takes 60 seconds to Google “railroad derailments historical trends”. The reality is that derailments are about one tenth of what they were in the ’70s.
Yes and no Paul ;
The Eastern commuter rail corridors have had very little new trackage and the speeds commuter trans want (? need ?) to travel have caused many derailments .
There used to be standards for maintenance, those were gutted some years back .
The truth is never a ‘conspiracy theory’ no matted how much it upsets some .
-Nate
There used to be standards for maintenance, those were gutted some years back .
Nate, the drastic reduction in derailments didn’t come by accident or reduced standards; quite contrary. The railroads have vastly increased their spending on track and maintenance, as the chart below shows. There’s no way they could haul the huge increase in loads at higher average speeds without massive investments in trackage and related aspects.
The railroads have become very profitable and can afford it; to not invest in better tracks and equipment would leave them behind. In the ’70s they were mostly hurting and couldn’t afford such huge investments.
As a Pennsylvania resident, I can assure you that there has been considerable investment – both state and federal – in the passenger rail line from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. This includes revamped stations, with improved parking, along the route.
Speeds are limited by at-grade crossings, as well as the need to stop regularly along the route, particularly along the Main Line in suburban Philadelphia.
Let me clarify; I didn’t mention derailments to say “derailments are on the rise” but that when you look at the railroad as a whole it’s a fraction of what it used to be from when it was ailing in the 70s, and the way they got out of that funk was through the deregulation allowing for track abandonment and mergers. That allowed them to become efficient and profitable, but by way of the physical railroad shrinking, and continuing to do so
The result is they’re now utilizing less than half the tracks there were in the 70s and to make up for it train length is getting longer and longer ,so when there is a derailment it’s not just a handful of boxcars coming off of an old urban spur that went to a factory, it’s a mile or two of hazardous material coming off a mainline set off by just one bad axle in just one of the hundreds of cars. Derailments on the whole are way way down from the 70s, but how many derailments from the 70s were “newsworthy”?
” how many derailments from the 70s were “newsworthy”?
Funny thing, I vividly remember the one in Kingman, Az. where the tracks were below street level and two freight trains collided head on .
I was doing a long distance tow job and we stopped to look at the carnage . it was pretty bad .
In 1976 0r 1977 IIRC .
-Nate
If you think these are “dreary pics”, you’d be horrified at some of the places where I grew up..lol
You’re dead right Tom ;
Being there was an exercise in drab .
“the good old days” they weren’t by a long shot .
Here and there one can still find pockets of this wretched misery .
Outside of Bakersfield, Ca. and many places in the great state of TEXAS and many others I’m sure .
-Nate
Automaker advertising was borderline fraudulent in the magnitude of their gas mileage claims. I remember an ad with an LTD, with the base V8, going from Phoenix to LA, at 50mph, using every hypermiling trick in the book, to squeeze something in the 20s out of the car. 74 was the last year the big three tried to meet emissions standards without a catalyst, The cars were noted for both horrible driveability, and horrendous appetite for fuel.
It was the fraud being perpetrated by the automakers that forced the government to require the EPA estimates be the only fuel mileage claims they could tout.
VW decided to poke some fun at the other automakers. The music is Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer”, which was popular at the time, due to it’s use in “The Sting”.
….and whatever happened to the clever VW commercials? Their ads now are terrible.
Here in Western Canada we were spared this, although we were not spared the skyrocketing price increases. Looking at these pictures today I can’t help but wonder what the results would be if this should happen in today’s society. I recently witnessed a fist fight at a McDonalds drive through over line position….
I do remember as the 70s wore on that seemingly everyone got a small import for their second car, “just in case”.
The federal government of the day attempted to essentially nationalize the petroleum industry for the benefit of one segment of the country (where the votes are) at the grievous expense of another segment (where the oil is). The enmity, mistrust and division this created haunts our country to this day.
I certainly don’t believe any of this was a conspiracy but there was no shortage of political opportunism from all quarters that resulted!
Appropriate post in light of world events today, especially the Israel-Hamas War.
I was a senior in college in the fall of ’73. Someone in our dorm started regularly turning off the hall lights late at night, so the only illumination was from the exit signs.
I didn’t have a car, but everyone who did seemed to be running theirs on empty. When I went home for Thanksgiving break, even my mother, who generally never let her car’s gas tank go below the halfway mark, was driving with a quarter tank or so.
It was a very uncertain time, and in hindsight, marked an important inflection point in our history.
I’ve been surprised (pleasantly) that the current middle east crisis hasn’t caused gas prices to spike. Not even in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7 when it was unclear how wide the conflict would spread. Usually any hint of mid east trouble, gas prices immediately shoot up a noticeable amount.
I remember well the 73 and 79 gas crises. In the St Louis, Missouri, metro area, I never saw huge lines for gas…. Admittedly I had filled the tank on my 68 Cougar the day before Gas crisis I hit, so I avoided the lines until all had settled, but the price increase was unavoidable. I remember stating, half jokingly, that if gas rose over a dollar a gallon, I would give up driving. what I did do, being a recent University grad and neophyte architect was trade in my Cougar in the early Spring of 74 on a new Audi Fox Saloon. A ludicrous thing to do in the perspective of today’s old car market, but then it was a sound decision. The Fox got twice the mileage per gallon., and handled better. Kept that Audi trough the 79 Gas Crisis II, then traded on a new 1980 Audi 4000.
As if the embargo wasn’t bad enough, it coincided with the 1974 seatbelt interlock mandate. The political avalanche unfolding at the time didn’t brighten the mood any either, and then there was disco. Thankfully good weed was plentiful.
it coincided with the 1974 seatbelt interlock mandate.
iirc, the interlock mandate was repealed by spring 74. I remember Motor Trend running an article with instructions for defeating the system in big three models.
Of course, in a few years, a new mandate will kick in requiring cars to have systems installed that will prevent an impaired person driving them. I remember a satirical piece about the numerical keypad proposal of the 70s, where Gene Hackman’s character from “The French Connection” looses the perp, because he is in such a rush to get the car going he keeps messing up the passcode entry, and the car won’t start.
Like Kennedy said, things do not happen, things are made to happen.
And a few tears later a downsized Chevrolet could cost 8000 dollars.
The shortage and lines were werepretty bad in California. I got my license in December 1972, no car of my own and our one family car had an odd plate though I seem to remember the old/even policy more in the 1979 shortage – when I had two cars of my own, both odd. I didn’t mind the 1972-73 situation too much as I was the one who got sent to get gas and wait in line, and behind-the-wheel time was always good when you’re 16 and you’re competing with a parent and an older sibling.
The Gas Crisis of 1973 was caused due to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. There was a well coordinated attack against the nation of Israel, and when the US and other nations stepped in to keep Israel from being exterminated – OPEC cut off the oil. It was the first time we realized that something as vital as our energy needs was in the hands of other people.
The impact was incredible. Western Europe switched to North Sea oil fields, the US began developing Mexican oil fields, Alaskan oil fields, and oil in other parts of the world besides the Middle East were developed or expanded.
I read that from Wikipedia the other week. I wasn’t old enough to drive and my knowledge of foreign affairs was primitive, but it seems that this was another time when neighboring countries attacked Israel during a holy day in order to exterminate them. I wish those neighboring countries would stop trying to do that fifty years later.
Britain didn’t “switch” to North Sea oil. The North Sea fields didn’t come on-line until the 1980s. Which is also when Alaska oil came on-line. Those two big finds helped bring down the price of oil in the mid 1980s.
The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, and subsequent quadrupling in the price of oil, from $2.60 or so to about $11 a barrel change the economics of oil drlling and made drilling in hostile environments like the stormy North Sea or frozen Alaska economically viable.
Also, “…US stepped in to keep Israel from being exterminated” is quite an exaggeration. The Arabs were not strong enough to “exterminate” Israel–but US aid certainly helped Israel’s efforts to not only repulse the attack, but win that war.
And as a result, the Saudis (and maybe other Arab oil exporters?) stopped selling oil to the US, at a time when imported oil account for 15% of US oil consumption, leading to the gas lines that were the starting subject of this thread
In 1973, Egypt and Syria did launch a surprise attack on Israel, yes. But was their objective to “exterminate” Israel? Or was it to take back the Golan Heights (Syria) and Sinai Peninsula (Egypt)?
Israel launched its own surprise attack on these countries in June 1967, capturing the above areas from Egypt and Syria.
Please feel free to look up anything I just wrote.
Also, “the neighboring countries” did not attack Israel 7 weeks ago.
“It was the first time we realized that something as vital as our energy needs was in the hands of other people.”
I would dispute this contention as well. 20 years earlier US support (through the activities of the CIA) for the overthrow of the Mosaddegh government in Iran, which had nationalized British oil interests, was clearly tied to the importance of maintaining Western control of Mideast oil. The installation of the Shah’s government and restoration of British and American sovereignty over that resource was deemed vital by Foster Dulles and Eisenhower, the former of whom later admitted that concern about a “Communist” takeover of Iran was just a smokescreen for the real motive.
I remember those days well-I was studying at Arizona State University and when the oil embargo began I think the limit was 15 gallons and then 10 gallons. After a couple of months if you needed gas for your car you had to get up early to buy your 10 gallons before the gas stations sold their quota for the day.
I remember almost as soon as the embargo began, GM started airing a commercial on the wonders of GM’s full size cars; they were really buying a lot of airtime, you couldn’t hardly turn on the tv without viewing this commercial. I think around december of 1973, I stopped seeing those silly commercials, apparently they were not having the desired results.
And let’s not forget the wonderful 55 mph speed limit.
GM jacked up the production of Vegas and Novas to compensate, but these did not have the fat margin of an Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Buick.
To compensate, GM introduced the X-Body NOVA platform (Nova, Omega, Ventura & Apollo) to the other brands to pull in traditional Olds, Cadillac & Buick customers to the showroom.
The Buick, Oldsmobile and Pontiac versions of the X-body were all in production by the 1973 model year – or well before the oil embargo (which hit in late 1973, after the 1974 models had been introduced).
For Oldsmobile, at least, the rationale was not because customers were clamoring for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Dealers were upset that Oldsmobile had phased out F-85 version of the A-body during the 1972 model year, and then offered only V-8 engines for the 1973 Cutlass line. They wanted a low-price model to lure people to the showrooms (where the sales reps would most likely then “upsell” them to a more profitable Cutlass).
I can’t forget some of the INSTANT U-turns I made on L.A. streets when I saw a ga$ $tation $elling gas! My ’56 Chevy with its ’66 327 sucked up lots of premium gas while our VW Super Bug was quite frugal for the time.
However, after graduating from ACCD in Jan., ’74 my first job was back home in Wisconsin. It was a “exciting” cro$$ country trip with my ’56 pulling the then largest U-Haul trailer with everything we owned stuffed into it. My ’56 averaged 8-9 mpg! It really was some fun crossing Arizona and New Mexico.
We made it back to Wisconsin, but there were some areas that got rather nerve racking hoping to find enough fuel. Not a great period; I wonder what will hit us in the not so distant future?? Maybe I’ll need my 2007 Suzuki DR-650?? DFO
IIRC and I’m fairly sure I remember reports on it correctly, but it may or may not be accurate, California got 70% of it’s normal gas and the rest of the country got 90%. Not sure why, I don’t think we had the special juice different than the rest of the country yet, or maybe we did. Finding gas was a problem, a big one. I may have been more challenged than most as I was working 6 days a week, with Sunday off and Tricky Dickie did his best to have stations closed on Sundays, my only day off. With most stations only open 9-5 during the week, my work hours.
I didn’t need much driving a VW bug at the time, but needed some. Only ran out once. I do recall being incredulous at having to pay something like 65 cents a gallon one time, more than double what I normally paid. And there was a long line for it.
No fun, but not as bad as the lockdown year of Covid.
My favorite image of the gas crisis of 1979 is this one (from Wikipedia) because I swear that it’s nearly identical to the one I took for my high school senior year yearbook’s story on the subject. This photo was taken just off of Rockville Pike, near the Korvettes, Shakey’s Pizza, and Hamburger Hamlet. Features of day-to-day life for a high school senior in lower Monkey County in 1979.
Which is a way of saying that this gas crisis was certainly a thing. We talked a lot about it at the time. It had some impact on my plans to drive cross country (and back) in the summer of 1979. Still, I did manage to drive a good part of the time that summer. I learned what days of the week I could buy gas. The crisis passed…even though it left the understanding that there was a bigger picture to ones ability to buy gas, and that maybe…just maybe…one needed not to assume that the future would always be like the past.
All things considered, I feel that is a good thing.
I shopped at that Radio Shack several times (obviously it’s gone now, and was well before RS folded). Don’t remember a Shakeys there although I ate at another one sometimes – all I remember is that they kept it really dark inside. That and the “see what’s shaking at Shakey’s” jingle. I also have no recollection of a Hamburger Hamlet there, although I was a frequent customer of the one next to the Giant Food on Old Georgetown Rd. until they closed a few years back.
Yes, my sister worked at the one at Old Georgetown and Democracy. 🙂
I may be wrong about the Shakey’s. It was definitely on Rockville Pike, but it’s hard to find the exact address 4 decades after it closed. I could, on the other hand, drive you there for sure from muscle memory.
(Only probably not, given that area’s penchant for completely reforming the local road patterns. Don’t even get me started about downtown Bethesda…)
That location is a Not Your Average Joe’s now, which is nowhere near as good as Hamburger Hamlet was. They were always busy when I ate there, so not sure what happened.
Was 101 octane gasoline common then, or was something other than the current Anti-Knock Index used?
Seems odd now that each grade of gasoline had its own pump. Now even diesel is sold from the same pumps as gasoline, though with a different nozzle.
101 wasn’t uncommon but what was advertised was RON not the AKI posted on pumps today. A 101 RON would be ~96 AKI.
It wasn’t a big deal in Oklahoma. I was doing a lot of driving at that time, trucks at work and VWs for fun, and never ran into a line or a shortage.
@ la673
Now you’re asking the right question .
Yes, it was a huge thing back then but no normal vehicles required it due to low compression ratios .
Some here don’t grasp that filling stations outside of major cities tended to be small with only two pumps or so .
Even in the suburbs there were thousands of tiny little mom & pop gas stations, often in the middle of a residential block .
That’s why the oil companies colluded to squeeze them out .
-Nate
In ’72 I was in the service, stationed in Heidelberg. When the gas crisis hit, Germany banned the use of private cars on Sunday. Taxi’s and busses OK but ho PKV’s. Fortunately with the system of public transportation back then, if you couldn’t get there on a train or bus, it didn’t exist.
A number of us went for walks on the Autobahn, that was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done.
I vividly remember a GM new car TV advert that said ‘and with the new 24 gallon fuel tank you’ve got something _better_ than fuel economy ~ you’re got _RANGE_! ” .
-Nate
Sort of like how EVs are advertised nowadays. An electric Hummer SUV might have 300+ miles of range but it still gulps electricity at a much faster rate than, say, a Nissan Leaf.
I remember the summer of 1979, when gasoline prices crossed $0.999 per gallon.
My dad used to fill up at a self-service Amoco. The mechanical pumps there were not capable of prices higher than $0.999, so the sign at the station said $1.298, the pump price was HALF, or $0.649, and if the pump showed $5.00 when you finished, you paid $10.
Apparently, even some “digital” pumps had the same issue, as you can see from this googled photo
Yeah ;
The old (even then) Wayne pumps at the station I worked at were like this, some folks had a hissy fit when they saw 1/2 the price on the pump…….
-Nate
One of the big oil companies, I think Shell, handled this problem by switching to price per liter rather than gallon. That proved unpopular and they soon moved away from it one way or another.
Funny you mention that – I have a very specific memory from sometime around 1976-80 of helping my mom fill up her Pinto wagon at a Shell station and trying to calculate liters to gallons.
I always attributed it to the temporary switch of the US to the Metric system (Metric Conversion Act of 1975) but maybe it was actually due to the second gas crisis.
Or (after a little research) a hybrid of both – https://usma.org/laws-and-bills/history-of-the-united-states-metric-board#activities.gas
The gas station down the road from me had a kerosene pump forever—the numbers didnt go up past 5.00/gallon and even with a sign saying to double the price people pitched a fit. Eventually they replaced it, but only a few years ago.
My first summer job after freshman year was with the part of DoEnergy that was making the ’79 crisis worse with price controls and emergency allocation rules. The guy who designed the allocation forms for diesel wholesalers went on vacation for 2 weeks in June, so we clerks would transfer their anxious calls around the building until they gave up.
Later, I was chosen as a temp clerk for the Administrator when he arbitrarily set a maximum 15.4 cent (not percent) markup for gas retailers. Stopping price gouging meant no rationing by price, so everyone suffered.
How many do you remember? J.C. Whitney had a ton of offerings.
Wow, all of the “gas saving devices” that magically appeared! A vacuum gauge that would actually help save on gas if the driver paid any attention to it after owning it for a day. Another one I remember is a set of magnets attached to the metal fuel line in front of the carburetor. It was supposed to “polarize” the gas molecules giving better mileage. I’ll stop here.
Wow, all of the “gas saving devices” that magically appeared!
Motor Trend established a 73 mile (or thereabouts) test loop around LA, that they ran each of their test cars over, to get a real world mpg number, vs the nonsense the automakers were advertising.
Then MT set out to try and get a Vega to crack 50mpg on that loop. They put a modified head on it, that increased swirl, and probably raised compression a good deal. This was before catalytic converters, so leaded premium gas was readily available. They put a very early synthetic oil in it, I think the brand was “Key”. They did their “dyno tune” process to optimize ignition and carb settings. And their entry in the “miracle mileage improver” device category was a “foam injector”.
iirc, they did crack 50, just barely, as in less than 51. They had the car tuned to a fine edge that couldn’t hold up under use. They ran the car around their loop again a few months later and it was a shambles. way short of 50.
Vacuum gauges, often labelled “fuel economy” gauges, were also a popular new car option for awhile, at least on American cars. Lots of Caprices had them. It told you what you could easily figure out – that you’re getting great fuel economy when coasting downhill and poor fuel economy when accelerating, especially fast and/or uphill.
The odd and even day rationing left an impression on my parents because they wanted their two cars to have one odd an done even plate from the 70s all the way to the early 90s. I also remember them complaining $0.69.9 /gallon was really expensive. Other than the occasional gas line this wasn’t as bad as 1979 where gas shortages made our summer camp drastically cut back on water skiing.
I never cared about odd/even plates since I haven’t seen 1973 style gas lines and one of our cars has a letter only plate.
The cost to fill my car went to $1 gallon that I remember there wasnt any problems buying the stuff here, $10 to fill my 61 Velox from empty, now $10 buys 3 litres not even a gallon, I can fit $130 of gas in my old Superminx these days.
I remember having one car with an even license plate and me car with an odd license plate. We would fill up which ever car qualified. Then siphon gas out of one car and put it in the other, as needed. This was when people started stealing gas by siphoning it out at night, or in parking lots. People started buying locking gas caps. Then car manufacturers started making inside gas tank releases. Now they are back to the gas tank doors like the 60’s and new cars don’t even have a gas cap anymore.
The Crisis of ’73 helped push the Alaska Pipeline to completion in the mid 70’s. IIRC, so many lawsuits were filed again the pipeline, that Congress has to impose a law to give the pipeline protection.
The Crisis of ’79 was far less of an impact because of the pipeline and extensive drilling in Texas, Louisiana, and the Gulf of Mexico.
That photo strikes home for me. I was a freshman commuting to a junior college across town driving a ’64 Rambler that got a whopping 9 miles per gallon (at best). Due to my work schedule I couldn’t find anyone with whom I could carpool. I was ready to drop my classes when my dad found a almost new ’74 Toyota Corolla that was repo-ed. The summer of ’74 he offered to buy a 2-seater sports car to keep me at home but I was Austin-bound! Hook ‘Em!
My stepdad remembers it, but when i asked he didn’t seem phased. He said as farmers, they had priority on fuel and so never really felt it like others. But he saw the lines. We are in nc.