I’m not sure if this is political or not.

I was reading the latest Popular Science (my mom gets it for me. Thanks Mom). The latest issue is all about the future of cars. (Isn’t every other PopSci about cars?)

Anyway, this issue has a foldout section with all kinds of statistics related to cars and transportation — WiReD would call it infoporn — and they have a graph which shows the price per gallon of gasoline since 1920. It’s very interesting in light of how the price of gasoline is being used in the political campaigns this year and as a metric for determining the overall state of the country’s economy.

Sure, in the last couple of years, we have seen a sharp increase in gas prices, but unless there is an definitive reason behind it and not a market fluctuation, perhaps because of hostilities in the middle east, the trend over the last 80+ years has been that the price of gasoline will continue to go down.

PopSci’s graph - U.S. price of gasoline from 1920 - present

The last time there was a big spike in the price of gas — in the latest 1970s and early 1980s it took 6-8 years before the market returned to “normal.”

Now that I think of it, the drop in price around 1986 coincides with the U.S.’s big move to Japanese cars like Nissan Sentras and Honda Civics which, in the 1980s, had exemplary fuel economy compared to their U.S.-made counterparts.

Could the current spike in price be a direct result of the increased demand due to everyone and their dog buying 10 MPG SUVs in the gluttonous late 1990s?