Sticker prices are a reliable way to see how much the car market has changed, and the numbers here run across more than four decades. The group mixes a wartime Army contract price, a motorcycle, family cars and a famous sports coupe, each with a documented price. Here are ten famous vehicles and what each one cost new.
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1. Jeep CJ-2A: Farm-Ready Civilian Jeep
Jeep’s own history of the 1940s lists the 1945 CJ-2A MSRP as $1,090, the figure that opens this gallery’s headline. The CJ-2A carried the wartime Jeep formula into peacetime showrooms, and its price tag was a fraction of what later vehicles on this list would command.
That $1,090 is the entry point for the whole list and frames everything that follows. Later entries cost several times as much, so the CJ-2A works as the baseline against which each subsequent sticker, from economy cars to sports coupes, can be measured.
2. Willys MB: Wartime Contract Price
The Army awarded a July 1941 contract for 16,000 revised MB models at a unit price of $738.74, according to Jeep’s history page. That number is a government contract figure rather than a retail window sticker, a distinction worth keeping in mind when reading the rest of the list.
Even so, the contract price sits roughly $351 below the 1945 CJ-2A retail MSRP of $1,090. The comparison is loose, since a bulk military order and a showroom sale follow different terms, but it shows how little the basic machine cost in the early 1940s.
3. Honda CB750: The Affordable Superbike
The one motorcycle in the group is the July 1969 CB750, which SlashGear says carried an MSRP of $1,495 and calls eminently affordable. It earns a place because a price comparison works across vehicle types, and a two-wheeler makes the spread more interesting.
At $1,495, the CB750 cost only $405 more than the CJ-2A and $215 more than the 1950 Beetle listing. The figures come from separate sources and years, but they show how modest the sticker was for a bike that Honda sold to the general public.
4. Volkswagen Beetle: Peoples Car Pricing
Hagerty’s buyer’s guide to the 1949 to 1979 Beetle lists a 1950 price of $1,280 for the car. That places the early Beetle between the CJ-2A at $1,090 and the CB750 at $1,495 on the sticker scale, firmly in the bargain tier of this list.
The Beetle appears here with a single data point, and the guide’s figure applies to the 1950 model year only. Readers comparing it with later cars should keep that in mind, since prices across the following decades moved a long way from this level.
5. Chevrolet Corvair: Compact at a Low Entry Fee
Wikipedia’s entry on the Chevrolet Corvair gives a 1960 Corvair 500 sedan a price of $2,038. The 500 sedan designation marks the model quoted in the source, so the figure speaks to that specific version of the car and no other.
The $2,038 sticker is about $758 above the 1950 Beetle at $1,280, though the two numbers come from different sources and model years. It still places the Corvair in the same low-price territory as the other everyday cars covered earlier in the gallery.
6. Chevrolet Camaro (1967): Pony Car, Base Price
Motor Authority’s rundown of the greatest Camaros says the 1967 Camaro base price was $2,466, and Chevrolet sold 220,917 of them. The first-year Camaro therefore paired a modest entry price with a very large sales total.
At $2,466, the car cost just $428 more than the 1960 Corvair 500 sedan. The sales figure suggests buyers accepted that gap readily, though a base price says nothing about what individual buyers added in options, so the real transaction totals for many cars likely ran higher than this starting figure.
7. Honda Accord: Japanese Newcomer
Honda’s history of the Accord from 1976 through 2008 lists the 1976 Accord price at $3,995, with 18,333 sold in that first year. The newcomer arrived well above the 1967 Camaro base price of $2,466, yet it still found more than 18,000 buyers right away.
The $3,995 figure comes straight from Honda, which makes it one of the more direct primary-source numbers in the gallery. It also marks the point where sticker prices on this list move out of the low thousands and begin climbing.
8. Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe: Turbocharged Personal Coupe
Hagerty gives the 1987 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe a base price of $16,805. That is more than four times the 1976 Accord sticker of $3,995 and marks the first move into five-figure territory on this list.
A base price is only the starting point, so a Turbo Coupe fitted with extras would have cost more than the number shown here. The $16,805 figure still captures how far typical sticker prices had risen by the late 1980s compared with the sub-$2,500 cars from the 1960s covered earlier in this list.
9. Chevrolet Corvette (1984): Fourth-Generation Debut
Wikipedia’s article on the fourth-generation Corvette lists the 1984 Corvette at $21,800 with 51,547 built. The result is a sports car that cost more than ten times as much as the 1960 Corvair 500 sedan at $2,038.
Production of 51,547 shows that the $21,800 sticker did not scare off buyers in the car’s first model year. The price also sat $4,995 above the 1987 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe base figure, even though that Ford came three model years later and sold in a different segment, which makes the Corvette’s price especially notable.
10. DeLorean DMC-12: Rising Sticker Price
Wikipedia’s page on the DMC DeLorean records an MSRP of $25,000 for 1981, $29,825 for 1982 and $34,000 for 1983. The DMC-12 therefore closes the list as the most expensive entry, matching the figure in this gallery’s headline.
The 1983 figure was $9,000 higher than the 1981 launch price, a rise of 36 percent across three model years that no other car here matched. Even the 1981 price of $25,000 topped the 1984 Corvette at $21,800, which makes the DeLorean the priciest car in the gallery whichever model year is used.
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