gallons of petrol – when did we switch to litres

at the pump? i think mid 80s, but i cannot find anything on google

Mid 80s sounds right. It was certainly litres by 1990.

When “marketing” decided the price would look better in litres and the price of a gallon would be hidden.

Probably when they realised that prices in litres made it sound a little more affordable 🙂

i think it may have been when the pumps ran out of numbers for the gallon cost. someone claimed it was ’95. i think it was earlier than that

was certainly during the 80’s
i’d have said 1981-82ish, but not exhaustively implemented until a bit later
i remember my dad having a sticker on the window with all the conversions… but we always stuck £10.00 in the tank.

edit: and 1995 was a date by which most/many things had to be sold and priced in metric. although UK cheated, and still cheats, with 454g jars of jam rather than picking a nice metric round number.

Dunno, but here’s someone with even more time on their hands…

http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/petrolprices.html

I think it was late 80s

I recall when petrol hit £20 a gallon the switch was made

I certainly remember filling up the fiesta with a tenner

when petrol hit £20 a gallon

so today’s £6 a gallon is a bargain then 😉

I passed my test in 1984 and have only ever bought in litres. I would say 1981-1982 sounds about right

i’d have said 1981-82ish, but not exhaustively implemented until a bit later

I remember 50-something p a gallon when I was 16 which was 84.

I’d guess late 80s or early 90s.

Edit: Just checked and that’s complete crap 😆 At least I didn’t remember my helicopter getting shot down.

50p/gallon was much much earlier than 84
£1 per gallon must have been 70’s

84 may have been about the time I remember that (pointless) sticker in the windscreen

I don’t think there was an absolute date, it was a gradual changeover IIRC.

I’ve half a memory of some pumps having “1” and “p/gallon” printed either side of rolling 00.0 figures, but I may have made that up. If that’s true, those pumps would all have been obsolete by the time £2/gal rolled around which was 1993 according to the chart.

I distinctly remember paying 39p/litre at the pumps when I first started driving, so some pumps at least had been changed by 1991. All? Maybe, I don’t remember ever buying my own fuel in gallons. Late 80s feels about right, that would’ve been around the time unleaded was becoming the standard over four star.

It wasn’t a enforced change to metrification – it was at behest of the industry and happened after the metrification board that had enforced other dispensing changes had been wound up (1980) so there won’t be legislation date or similar and was indeed to do with not having sufficient digits on existing pumps when prices were approaching £1/gallon. However that threshold was at almost exactly the same time as the board winding up

Average price per gallon in 1979 was 98p, in 1981 it was £1.60 so I’d guess very early 80s from that

I remember 50-something p a gallon when I was 16 which was 84.

that would have been more like 50p a litre – it was nearer to £1,90/gallon in 84

I had a friend who drove a wee 900cc fiat and only ever put £5 in at a time circa 1994/5 – she moved to the States and bought a Dodge something or other with a 2.5l V6 and again only ever put $5 in the tank. She then claimed in a very absent way that petrol was the about the same price on both sides of the Atlantic.

I had a friend who drove a wee 900cc fiat and only ever put £5 in at a time circa 1994/5

Around about the same time (96/97 I think) i had an astra and would do the same – because if i put more than £5 in it would fall out again

I can remember the furore of the 50p gallon (75?), then the fuss of what would happen when they ran out of numbers on the mechanical petrol pumps – must have been 79? I still can’t quite make the comparison between litres and gallons…. and the only thing that makes sense to me is mpg. But I don’t know how much a gallon costs now 🙄

It was a gradual thing for litres to come in. Here’s me filling someones car up…
img031 by jimmyg352[/url], on Flickr

& as you can see 4 star was £1.91 a gallon. The year was around 1985/6 I think cos we had the place modernised with new pumps & a canopy in 88 after Burmah Petroleum took over ICI’s forecourts. So our petrol station went metric in 1988.

454g of jam is not cheating anyone in any way.

But a 500ml bottle of beer is absolutely definitely cheating everyone out of the last 68ml.

We had a family run petrol station, we only started selling petrol by the litre when the fuel price reached 99.9p per gallon as this was the maximum amount the old mechanical pumps could display. Dad converted the pumps to dispense in litres instead of gallons so the litre price would have been about 22p. Could still only cope with up to 99.9p per litre though, so no good at todays prices!

But I don’t know how much a gallon costs now

X 4.54609 🙂 worked at the HO for BFL/Petrofina in the late 80’s so the formula is engrained on my brain. I started with BFL/Petrofina in May 1986 and we only ever worked in litres. Also got my first car in 87 and never recall gallons at the pump, so I’d go with early or mid 80’s, but like Essel says, a big company owned petrol station might have changed to litres long before a little privately owned village station where they knew every customer and wanted to keep them happy.

4.54609

Thats like a military service number to me! I was buying in litres & selling in gallons for a while & was always converting one to the other.

why is it sold in litres but fuel economy is in gallons.

Because people fear change.

Metric fuel economy is litres per 100km I believe (ie, a reciprocal figure to what we’re used to).

Eg,
30mpg is 9.4L/100km.
40mpg is 7.1L/100km.
50mpg is 5.6L/100km.

why is it sold in litres but fuel economy is in gallons.

its doesn’t matter what units fuel economy is stated in so long as everyone states it the same way so you can compare like for like. MPG has hung around because the range of figures from the least to most economical cars is all in double figures and can be stated in whole numbers while still seeing subtle variance between similar cars. Stating economy in single digits and fractions like in the L/100km example makes it seem like theres not much difference between very dissimilar cars

Too complicated then. 🙂

Mid 80s sounds right. It was certainly litres by 1990.

Nahh. It was displayed in both units when I learned to drive. I vividly remember filling up a 1990 G-reg car that I bought new in gallons, at about £1.64/gallon, so the switch to litres only was early 90s

I remember the Tesco filling station in the early 90’s having a per gallon price for unleaded on the bottom of the board. Pump price was still in litres though.

Never remember pump prices per gallon so that’s from say 85/86?