How come previous generations had cooler cars? Cars are no longer cool thread got me thinking (2010, convertible)

[texdav]

I don't think memory as far as styling being much more important in the 50's and early 60;s is in doubt.Just the fact that style was completely changed every year and that you could not mistake one makers car ;even model from a mile away says it all. Style was heavily influenced by so many customs then by alot of custom shops. The most successful actually were hired to style by makers.Style was the factor that drove sales along with large powerful engines.No five year style changes ;so conservtive you have to look to see the differences often or follow the leader on style like now.When style is such a important part of sales and it had to be different and more stylish than the competition drove style as almost a art form.Easy to work on;efficent has nothng to do with style or being cool that the Op is talking about :IMO.

[SpeedyAZ]

As we age, we tend to get more nostalgic about the past and more pessimistic about the future. My dad is 70 years old and he talks about the "good ol' days" incessantly; how he used to buy a NEW car for a few thousand dollars, go to the movie for a quarter, have an entire night on the town for a few dollars. He has more spending power being retired than he ever did while working but he still sees the 50's, 60's, and 70's as a time when we were at our best.

The funny thing with nostalgia is that we tend to forget the bad or less interesting parts of the past and focus only on the greatest achievements. There are only a few dozen vehicles of the 50's and 60's that I'd care to own, the rest were pretty run-of-the-mill family sedans and wagons- not exactly the most powerful or interesting of vehicles. Today there are only a few dozen vehicles I'd care to own as well- the rest are bland/boring sedans or crossover SUV's.

I generally find my generation (early 30's) to be quite lazy, unambitious, and greedy. Some people simply don't WANT to work, they're making their own destiny. I still firmly believe that if you want a good life, a high-paying job, and a decent house/car/etc...you can work for it and attain it- I am. I worked at the bottom for a few years but slowly have risen through the corporate structure and now make a low six figure salary, good benefits, and have a nice house and vehicles along with it. It just takes some time, ambition, and dedication.

[Checkered24]

Am I the only one who doesn't think modern cars are as hard to work on as some claim? Sure, there is a lot of electronic controls and such, and a Check Engine Light might not be easy to diagnose and require shop time. However, overall, I have encountered very few things in my modern cars which I have not been able to handle. Also along those lines, I have encountered far fewer problems than there were with cars a couple generations ago.

[Huckleberry3911948]

what was cool yesterday may not be cool today. like that tattoo on your neck.

[duster1979]

Originally Posted by hoffdano

Cars were easier to work on then - but they also needed it.

Today's cars don't even need tuneups. Spark plugs last 100K miles. Many cars today can reach 100K with just oil changes, transmission fluid changes, tires, filters, a battery, and wiper blades.

This is exactly what I was going to say. There was always something that needed "tweaking": timing, dwell, air/fuel mixture, plug gap, float level, tappet clearance, etc, etc, etc.

I've got a timing light, tach/dwell meter, vacuum/fuel pressure gauge, and a half-dozen other diagnostic devices gathering dust that I used to have to pull out on a semi-regular basis in the pre-computer EFI days. Today when the "check engine" light comes on on one of the Caravans I just switch the key on and off a few times and it tells me what the problem is on my odometer; I then look up the code on the internet and head off the the parts store to buy whatever sensor has gone bad.

Back in the day if my car stalled out along the side of the road I had a fighting chance of getting it going again with some baling wire, duct tape, and a crescent wrench. I probably wouldn't be able to do that today, but it really doesn't matter because it's been years since I've had a car stall out along the side of the road for any reason besides an empty gas tank. And it's not like I'm driving low-mileage, late-model vehicles, either.

Don't get me wrong, I love old cars. If I had a choice between a '69 Boss Mustang and a '12 Boss Mustang as a weekend cruiser I'd take the '69 without a second thought. And I do enjoy tinkering around with the old technology as a hobby. But having lived in both eras and driven cars dating from 1966 to 2004, on a day-to-day basis I'll take my current boring 1996 computer-controlled fuel-injected Caravan over the boring carbureted Slant 6 Dart Swinger I learned to drive in every time.

Not that the Dart wasn't a lot of fun, it's just not the kind of fun I want to have these days.

[Chango]

Originally Posted by jamaicabound60565

Somene posted a thread cars are no longer cool. I agree with what most people sais in that thread. One thing I always notice is talking to my dad, older neighbors, dads friends, etc all of them had really cool cars growing up even when they were younger.

I suppose looking back those cars are cooler to us today maybe then they were to them back then since designs have gotten less unique and less cool and also because those cars fixed up now cost 30k if not more but even back then i imagnie those were cool cars.

How did people back then afford cool cars? When my dad was in his late teens had a bright orange corvette with ttops and I think he was working nights stocking in a grocery store.

In my late teens early 20s i was driving like chevy celebrities i bought for $100 bucks and when i got a nice car it was like a used galant with 100k on it.

Were cars more affordable back then or how come older generations every guy you talk to had some cool muscle car and today all the teens, young 20s etc are driving hyundai accents and stuff.

Why? In a nutshell.: SAFETY

When I was a kid, our local park had a retired tank and fighter jet in the playground, plus a huge metal slide at least as tall as a house and metal toy animals welded to large springs, among other very unsafe and TOTALLY AWESOME things to climb all over.

Today, the average park has a 5-foot high plastic slide and platform, some padded bars and squishy rubber ground cover... not even swings, for fear of liability lawsuits. Not surprisingly, it sits empty and unused most of the time because it's SO safe that it tends to cause kids to fall asleep while playing on it.

The same thing happened to cars.

[rbohm]

Originally Posted by Merc63

Modern cars have style, too. It's just not necessarily the style YOU like. I happen to like them, as well.

I like old cars. AND new cars. For example, I find cars like the '13 Fusion to be stylish. Same with cars like the Passat CC and Caddy ATS. My BMW is newer, can be worked on myself and is stylish. So is my Mustang.

ok, i can agree that things are changing again, and cars are starting to become better styled.

[quote=hoffdano;25368666]

Originally Posted by rbohm

I think your standards are very low. I have experience with many of these cars. I see nothing "neat" and certainly not "cool" in any of these cars. The Gremlin was unique in the same way that a Nissan Cube is unique. At least the Cube is mechanically a good car. We owned a Sunbird. Except for the Monza V8 (which was a fast piece of crap), there is nothing neat about these cars.

Of the cars you listed, the Mercury Capri was a special car. My college roommate had one and I loved that car. But it was German. We also had a Vista Cruiser. Kinda cool. I took it to the prom. We also had a Montego. What on earth do you think is cool about it? It wasn't fast. It didn't handle well. It had sloppy steering. I liked the deep set speedometer and gauges. Otherwise it was an OK car.

My other college roommate had a Caprice. Its lug nuts clicked and clacked all the time. It almost never started on the first three attempts. It was roomy. But neat or cool? Absolutely not.

The Galaxie was a good taxi.

I'll concede the GNX is interesting although I never saw the fascination with it.

Otherwise, most of these vehicles were mechanically average or below average, poor handling, and in most cases not even interesting looking.

i guess i just see the potential in these cars better than you do. for instance take a 70-71 torino/montego, lower it an inch and a half, put some decent looking wheels on, tune the suspension a bit, and paint it in a color like ford grabber blue, and you have a nice looking car. if you want good performance from it, build a nice 351c with australian 302c heads for the street, even a mild build will get you about 375hp these days. back that with a good AOD with a full pressure valve body, and 3.25 or 3.55 gears and you have a reasonably quick yet comfortable car that looks cool.

or take a faitmont futura, toss in some mustang suspension bits, and power it with a healthy injected 5.0 also backed with an AOD and full pressure valve body, toss in an 8.8 rear end with disc brakes, and later model mustang front disc brakes, and again you can a decent looking car that is fast, actually handles better than a mustang due to the longer wheelbase, and is still comfortable to drive daily.

or take the maverick, power it with a 250/T5 or AOD, top the engine with an aluminum head from classicinlines.com, add fuel injection, and 3.73 gears, and you have an economical daily driver that will surprise many imports built today. with some suspension tuning you can even blow off BMWs if you want. want more? then turbo the 250, add 4.11 gears, and if you get the tune right your maverick will run high TENS in the 1/4 mile, and STILL be docile enough to drive daily.

[duster1979]

Originally Posted by rbohm

i guess i just see the potential in these cars better than you do. for instance take a 70-71 torino/montego, lower it an inch and a half, put some decent looking wheels on, tune the suspension a bit, and paint it in a color like ford grabber blue, and you have a nice looking car. if you want good performance from it, build a nice 351c with australian 302c heads for the street, even a mild build will get you about 375hp these days. back that with a good AOD with a full pressure valve body, and 3.25 or 3.55 gears and you have a reasonably quick yet comfortable car that looks cool.

or take a faitmont futura, toss in some mustang suspension bits, and power it with a healthy injected 5.0 also backed with an AOD and full pressure valve body, toss in an 8.8 rear end with disc brakes, and later model mustang front disc brakes, and again you can a decent looking car that is fast, actually handles better than a mustang due to the longer wheelbase, and is still comfortable to drive daily.

or take the maverick, power it with a 250/T5 or AOD, top the engine with an aluminum head from classicinlines.com, add fuel injection, and 3.73 gears, and you have an economical daily driver that will surprise many imports built today. with some suspension tuning you can even blow off BMWs if you want. want more? then turbo the 250, add 4.11 gears, and if you get the tune right your maverick will run high TENS in the 1/4 mile, and STILL be docile enough to drive daily.

Or you could buy a stock 10-year-old Bonneville SSEi and run circles around all of those cars while still looking great, getting 30 MPG, and starting on the first try on sub-zero mornings without getting your hands dirty.

[CALGUY]

The problem with different points of view expressed in this thread, boils down to what the definition of "cool" is.
What is cool too one may not be cool too another, so how could there be a general definition of what cool is?
For instance,four months after graduating from high school in 1956, I bought my first car.
It was a brand new 57 Ford convertible.
I worked at an early age, and saved every penny I made, because at thirteen, I was smart enough to know that when I turned sixteen, I would want a car.
I paid cash for the car, and to say this car was "cool" would be an understatement.
There wasn't another teenage kid in the entire town that had a brand new convertible.
By today's generation, my Ford wouldn't come close to being cool.
So, I think cool is in the eye of the beholder.

And by the way,I still think it is a cool car.
Wish I still had it.
Bob.

[High_Plains_Retired]

It takes a 3-foot alien with back-bending knees, elbows and 10-inch fingers to work on a simple modern 4-cylinder. Ever try to change the no # 6 spark plug or the knock sensor in a Gen. I Nissan Frontier 3.3 L V6?

But back to the subject of the thread, in the 1960s I could afford to pay cash for a 10-year old top of the line car working at a gas station at $75 a week. In recent years however, it took two degrees, a professional job and a bank loan to purchase a new/used 4-door frump-mobile. This would be a car that looks like it was designed in a rock-tumbler and engineered by someone who thought that having a sensor that could tell an onboard computer where the crankshaft was located in any given moment was more important than knowing what a crankshaft was. There is much lost in that sort of design and engineering.

The word cool does not apply to most modern vehicles because cars do not occupy the same status in American society that they enjoyed in the previous decades. Just as many Americans still have a warm spot in their hearts for the horses that won the West, they will also have a warm spot for American Grafitti cars. If someone nowadays wants to spend over $70,000 for a modern car with some vestige of the coolness of real cars, they simply have a vehicle with more sensors under its dashboard than they have in their head.

JMO