Look at this picture, even though a brand-new car in the 1970s cost between ₦1,500 and ₦4,200, very few people could actually afford one, the roads were relatively empty. In 1974, a brand-new Ford Escort sold for ₦2,290. By the mid-to-late 1970s, Peugeot 504 was sold ₦4,200 brand new. After the currency transition in 1973, the Naira was stronger than both the US Dollar and the British Pound [My dad said they sent money for living expenses from Nigeria to siblings studying abroad]. Back then, a junior government worker might earn less than ₦1,000 a year. Saving up ₦3,000 required immense wealth or senior-level government work. A car was an exclusive status symbol reserved for upper-middle-class professionals like doctors, professors, and high-ranking civil servants. Again, in the 1960s and 1970s, the masses did not feel the desperate need to own a personal car because public transportation and urban order actually worked. Commuting with bicycle or public buses was highly organized, safe, and respectable. [My grand father kept a brand new Raleigh "White Horse" bicycle unused until my teens]. It wasn't until the late 1980s and the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that the Naira dramatically devalued, local assembly plants collapsed, and brand-new cars vanished out of reach for ordinary citizens which gave rise to the era of imported used vehicles.