Please note that Howard did not cluster the prices. All he did was to rank-order them, line them up from lowest to highest; then, he found that at some points the prices jumped; from that, he inferred that there were a number of clusters.

Ironically, this clustering is much better seen in the log scale than in the reciprocal scale, the latter essentially having linearized everything. What Howard successfully did was to provide insight by comparing the "ladder of transformations". However, if we had started out with the reciprocal chart, then it would have been tough to determine the clustering. I have a few other related comments on transformations at my blog.

I do not agree that the reciprocal chart is "easier to communicate to others". It is just not a natural way for us to think about the quantity "how many cars can $1 million buy?"

I agree that the data is presented well but like the first commenter, it is fitting the straight line which irks me. Again more on my blog but the gist is that there is an implied linear regression between price and rank-order which is of limited use.