In the 90s, cars from the 70s and 60s were seen as classic, but in 2022 cars from the 90s or 2000s can still be seen in daily use, and in terms of body design, many don’t even look that far off modern cars. What happened around the late 80s?

Question

Edit: great responses, Reddit. People have largely addressed the form factor aspect of my question. But am I wrong in sensing that cars from the late 90s seem to be more reliable and functionally acceptable in 2022, than most cars from the 70s were in the 90s? Was there some engineering breakthrough that made them more long lived?

In: 91

Answer 1

Not all cars from 20-30 years ago are classics. Most are considered scrap but a few are classics that is worth preserving. That is how it was in the 80s as well. Lots of cars from the 60s and 70s were in daily use in the 80s and ended up as scrap when they were no longer economical to repair. You do not see many 70s Oldsmobile station wagons being preserved for example.

But there have been changes. Firstly the early 70s saw an oil crisis where the price of fuel increased a lot. That meant that fuel mileage became a major selling point and everyone made the cars streamlined and small. Most of the cool looking designs sticking out of the car and sharp lines would be killed in the wind tunnel testing before the car was released. If you put two very different car designs in the wind tunnel to make them as aerodynamic as possible they will end up looking the same by the end of it. The second change was safety standards. That ruined any remaining sharp lines as they were not safe for pedestrians. And a lot of the space for cool looking design like the front of the grille ended up being needed for crumple zones. So again the cars ended up looking more and more alike.

There are still some classics remaining. But a lot of them are not classics due to their looks but rather their mechanical design or pedigree.