1958?

[RockJustRock]

Somebody just claimed the average American car is 12 years old right now. Can you imagine what it would have been like in 1970 if the average car was a 1958? We are in such a cultural and technological gridlock. The biggest change recently is phones with Android you don't need to unflip.

[Beagle]

I can hear my Dad's response (born 1930) to "they don't build them like the used to"

Thank God.

He didn't like spinning wrenches when he got older.

/edit - you didn't see many 200,000 plus mile cars in 1970's that were still good enough to go wherever you wanted either.

[squirrel]

There are a lot of old cars in the background, driving around, on shows like Adam-12. But that's in LA....up in the rust belt, those cars would all have disintegrated by then!

Car quality has definitely improved in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, styling has not.

[silver_bullet]

Newest vehicle in my stable at this point is the 2003 ZR2 with 263000 miles on it... as Squirrel stated, corrosion is taking it's toll... Wife drives a 2002 Avalanche, and then there's the 2001 GTP the "Bullet" and the 1932 chevy.... so we are contributing to the stats...

[Beagle]

There are a lot of old cars in the background, driving around, on shows like Adam-12. But that's in LA....up in the rust belt, those cars would all have disintegrated by then!

Car quality has definitely improved in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, styling has not.

Style is such a personal thing, but I don think it took 50 years for that to happen. I remember seeing prototype and experimental pictures in Popular Science in the mid -late 70's and thinking wow, they're not really going to try to sell that are they? (Taurus shapes) I felt like style had already died by the time I was a license aged teenager and into my young buyer days. The Fox cars, I couldn't stand then, save for maybe the '83-'86 t-birds. The Camaro-birds were a little too parachute pants disco for me. All of them looked like a block of cheese that had been whittled down for 20 minutes and submitted to a valium'd out committee of double knit polyester leisure suit wearing zombies for rubber stamp approval.

Nostalgia plays funny games on me, but most of the late 70's style era and beyond is still a blur of 'blaisssez-faire' with a few rays of meh. I wonder what the coach builders at the turn of the last century thought about Henry's, et al's, mass produced cars?

[Beagle]

Somebody just claimed the average American car is 12 years old right now. Can you imagine what it would have been like in 1970 if the average car was a 1958? We are in such a cultural and technological gridlock. The biggest change recently is phones with Android you don't need to unflip.

ironically, the biggest phone change in the pipeline is a phone you *do* flip.