So, Bugs Bunny will overhaul a starter motor for just under fifty bucks. I wonder what that would be, in today's money
BZZZT Wrong! That $50 overhaul is for an entire engine! Five or six hours labor @ $5/hour, plus parts, is about how much that was back then.
The reporter writing that article sounds like someone who thinks they're a cop. He probably dressed up like one, secretly at home, and had a former cop car as a daily driver, from the way he describes those dealership employees. Could it be that he started his career writing wanted posters?:
If anyone surviving on welfare and foodstamps happens to get access to a time machine, he or she could go shopping there and live like a millionaire, spending today's currencey which he or she carried along