For the reason that gasoline was relatively cheap and twenty-five cent

A. Wrongly indicates that "relatively cheap" and "twenty-five cents per gallon" are two different things.
B. Same issue as A.
C. "Due" should be used with a noun - here "due" wrongly refers to the verb "was". [The game stopped because of rain... correct The stoppage was due to rain.. correct. The game game stopped due to rain... wrong]
D. "In that" does not go with the verb "came" to express a reason. (Verbs such as "differ","agree" etc. take "in that" to express a reason.)

Option E: Because gasoline was a relatively cheap twenty-five cents per gallon in the 1960s, the average American came to view unfettered, inexpensive driving as a right rather than a lucky privilege.

I think this is a poor quality question. The above sentence doesn't sound right.

Well, I think what you may see here is the danger of relying on your ear to sort out what is right and what is wrong. While I'm not saying that this question is necessarily good, in the sense that it is predictive of your first-year success in an MBA program, I have definitely heard phrases such as the above in my time. You could easily search for the phrase "a relatively cheap $10 per" and find reputable websites with this phrase. For example https://www.builderonline.com/products/t ... g-market_o contains the phrase "[Company X] recently introduced a line of recycled glass mosaics that starts at a relatively cheap $10 per square foot."

The point is this: If you're going to use your ear to distinguish between "good" and "bad" GMAT sentences, then first you have to educate your ear. Train it to know what good GMAT sentences sound like. Once you have read hundreds of GMAT best answers, a good GMAT sentence will start to sound right to you.

Otherwise, just stick to looking for the specific errors that we know GMAT test writers like to include in their tests.

You seem to have missed the point here. There's nothing wrong with the phrase 'a relatively cheap twenty-five cents per gallon'. Even I have heard/read such phrases. However, in this particular case, the statement seems to draw an equivalence between gasoline and twenty-five cents (gasoline = twenty-five cents), which is illogical. IMO a better construction would have been: 'Because gasoline was relatively cheap at twenty-five cents per gallon' or 'Because gasoline was relatively cheap, twenty-five cents per gallon, ....'.

Even in the example you cited, "[Company X] recently introduced a line of recycled glass mosaics that starts at a relatively cheap $10 per square foot", if we remove the word 'at', the phrase becomes '[Company X] recently introduced a line of recycled glass mosaics that starts a relatively cheap $10 per square foot', and the meaning gets changed; the glass doesn't start anything.

Hence, my concern is not the phrase itself, but the way it has been used. Hope my point is clear. Correct me if I am wrong. I would appreciate any correction in my understanding.

No, I understand. The thing is that we get used to hearing one specific way of speaking, and we start thinking that other ways are wrong. This tendency becomes magnified on such tests as the GMAT.

Yes, the link I put up does say at a relatively cheap $10 per square foot, but it could just as easily have said "Glass mosaics are a relatively cheap $10 per square foot at store X."

Or Tickets are a relatively cheap $100. When we say "Tickets are $100" we don't mean that tickets and money are identical. We mean that tickets cost $100. Similarly, if I said "gasoline is $0.25 a gallon" I just mean that's what gas costs.

However, my point is broader than that. Unless you're aiming for a 51 in sentence correction, focus on the things that are high frequency and don't use your ear. Don't eliminate any choice by itself. Only eliminate a choice when you see that another choice offers a better option. I can remember times when I read the first sentence and thought "That pronoun 'it' is clearly wrong" only to later see that all choices contained the same word 'it.' Back to the drawing board.

That's one of the problems with the explanations offered here. No one picks choices the way they are outlined in the forums. We pick the right choice, and then later we think back on why it was justified. We go looking for extra flaws in answer choice (B) even though they weren't the reasons that dissuaded us.

At the end of the day, you may be right--this may be a bad question. The point is not this question. The point is what can we learn from this question that may make us better prepared to face the questions that we will get on test day.

Got your point. Thanks.

"was a relatively cheap" seemed kind of awkward to me. Can somebody explain?

I really don’t understand why E is correct. I strongly believe it should be B

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