Quote:
Originally Posted by 10"
It's a really bad time to be a motoring enthusiast, IMO.
Cars these days are made for people impressed by numbers and statistics. The amount of real drivers who actually want to improve and learn the fine skills of motoring have dwindled along with engineers making challenging cars for people to drive.
It's a sad day when everything is electronically controlled, numb, and dull.
You get people buying silly 600hp SUVs and mega fast electric cars and bragging about how "fast" they are; yet they are literally doing 0 work to make it happen. The driver is NOT a part of the equation.
The best days of cars and motoring are behind us, sadly.
I have no desire for any cars on sale at the moment; instead I find myself looking at older cars from the 70s and 80s as aspirational.
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Immediacy bias is a real thing and breeds comments like this. There is only a very small handful of Japanese and German cars that stand out mountains of pure trash of 70's and 80's automobiles. The late 70's through mid-80's in particular is probably the all time low point of the history of the automobile. I owned cars from that era and I'm simply being objective rather than overly emotional as I do not fondly remember any of the jerky 3-4 speed automatics, rowing through a bucket of bolts manual transmissions, erratic idling, stalling throttle body fuel injection, V8 engines that had the fuel economy of high powered engine with none of the power, turbocharged engines that had such bad turbo lag that a cyclist could take you off the line, K-cars, etc. Don't even get me started about how unreliable vehicles were over this time period. Cars are so much better today it's laughable to suggest anything otherwise. There was a brief point late 80's early 90's where technology exploded into great advancements in engine and chassis dynamics without the burden of safety regulations forcing increased weight. That made for a very good period (maybe the best) for pure automobiles but once driver and passenger airbags were mandated the industry went conservative and safety focussed which has led us to where we are today. Yes cars are heavy but thanks to advancements in suspension and engine technology most don't feel that heavy on the road in normal conditions. Cars today get us all from A to B faster, safer, more reliably than ever before. Sure the 1% of drivers that lived for track days and weekends may not appreciate the added weight and electronics doing some of the work for them but as a person that's old enough to have driven cars going back to the 70's I can say with confidence that save for some great cars in the late 80's/early 90's in particular you have missed absolutely nothing by not driving cars from previous decades.