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
Globalization happened around the late 80s. That gave us a homogenization of products, and more importantly, it crushed the marketing strategy which had been followed by the “big 3” from the 50s to the late 70s, which focused on stylistic change instead of technical innovation. That had given us the large change in styles over that period, but the cars were easily out-competed by the foreign manufacturers to which globalization exposed north american consumers. So the big 3 culled their lines, dropping things like pontiac and oldsmobile which were essentially just separate style lines, as styles converged on more functional and aerodynamic designs.
This isn’t from an expert, by any means, but I started driving in 1990, if that helps. I’m going to say “Japanese Cars.”
When people think about classic cars from the 50’s-70’s, at least in North America, they’re all American-made cars. In 1980, my mom got a Mazda RX-7, and the sporty, affordable cars tended to be Japanese. American cars were boxy and clunky (do a Google Images search on 80s K Car). As the 80’s went on, foreign cars had new and interesting designs, and it took awhile for the US automakers to catch up. In fact one of my early cars was a Saturn SL1. If you see what early 90’s Saturns looked like, they were 4-door versions of previous 2-door Japanese cars (very much like Mazda RX-7’s but with 4 doors).
tl;dr – sporty design and lower prices from foreign cars.
Late 80s still looks pretty dated, the styling shift you’re talking mostly happened in the mid 90s.
What happened is three things converged: fuel economy, unibody construction, and company consolidation.
Post the fuel crisis of the 70s (and the rise of the must more economical Japanese models in the 80s), a number of jurisdictions put in fuel economy requirements and consumer sentiment shifted much more towards fuel economy. Among other things, that drives you to going to lower drag bodies, and since everyone is working with the same physics that tends to drive body styles together.
Up through the 70s, a lot of cars were build like trucks…ladder frame with a non-structural body riding on top. Among other things, that means your body styling could really be done independently of what the car had to to structurally. Unibody is when the car is basically a shell, the body is part of the structures. This means, especially as you have to meet more and more stringent crashworthiness standards, shapes start to converge too.
And, more into the 2000s, auto makers started to consolidate. This is when you got the giant groups (VW Group, Fiat/Chrysler, the rebooted GM), who mostly went to “platform designs”…the same underlying architecture is usually behind a *really* wide range of cars across brands. That tends to drive a lot of their major look together.
TLDR: The 70s Gas crisis and Climate Change
In 1973 the OPEC nations started an oil embargo on the US and other nations that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur war.
This caused fuel prices to skyrocket, and there were shortages throughout the US for a time.
The embargo lasted till March 1974 when it was negotiated away, but had long lasting economic effects. Americans no longer had *Cheap gas*.
Gas guzzling Detroit made *classic* cars were suddenly out of fashion and demand for fuel efficient European style small cars suddenly increased in the US market.
Japanese manufacturers like Toyota, Honda, and Datsun (Nissan) benefited greatly from this and their increased market share started to eat away at domestic manufacturers (GM, Ford, Chrysler).
Throughout the 80s environmental concerns rose and laws were passed to force manufacturers to make more efficient cars which essentially forced manufacturers to adopt smaller engines, lighter bodies, catalytic converters, and electronic engine management.
Manufacturers also switched to unibody construction for cars, where as previous cars were built like truck with a body ontop of a chassis, modern cars don’t have a frame anymore with the strength coming from the body panels themselves.
Aerodynamics became more and more important and the body shapes of cars all started to look similar because it became about aero efficiency, not style.
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.
Improvements in reliability is probably the major factor. In USA in 1990, the average age of cars on the road was 7.6 years. Today is 12.3 years.
In 1990, nobody wanted to drive a 1970s car. They were slow, unreliable, inefficient, and had probably rusted away. It just wasn’t worth the effort keeping them on the road unless it was something really special.
Now, a 20 year old is probably just fine. It’ll probably be on it’s 4th or 5th owner. But for somebody without a lot of money, it’ll get them around.
Japan learned how to build cars from Americans, and then greatly improved on the production process. They not only ushered in a new era of cars but also a new era of production management practices and theories as a whole. They found ways to make the cars more practical, cheaper, and safer. People really wanted vehicles to get from point A to point B, even if they were “boring.” The things that people were paying American companies for like design and style and muscle, were not needed by the average American or global consumer. Toyota et all saw this and moved in. New materials could be safer and also lighter which added to the lower price. Flexible production methodologies meant that new innovations could be added easier, to include new changes to fuel efficiency crucial with the 1970s oil shock. American car buyers, many of them suburban or urban baby boomers looking for something new and practical, not needed for the country roads, flocked to them. This greatly disrupted American corporations’ grip on the car market. For competition, instead of looking for newer design styles, a lot of things converged on a sedan or new egg shaped style for their smaller engines and curved surfaces. Some have said it’s boring and all that. Many say this is what got millions of people around safely and economically and it’s nothing to complain about.
In the early 90s throughout the developed world, car safety standards evolved rapidly. Airbags, anti-lock brakes, extra crumple zones all became mandatory standard features.
To fit all this extra gear, and because safety features vary little between makes and models, cars generally became more bulbous and generic.
In the 90s, there were still 70s cars beating around fairly commonly. The ones that were classics, were looked after and usually higher trim/gt models.
The same is happening now. There’s still commonly 90s cars on the road (more so due to better reliability and rust protection), but the higher performance cars or luxury cars that have been looked after really stick out and can turn heads.
In Australia, a 95, clapped out V6 Holden Commodore is just a beater, but a V8/GTS version is a classic and in another decade or two, the beater will be scrap and the GTS will be in a garage becoming a true classic.
Haven’t seen it yet here, but two major things that changed how cars look are modern metal and plastic forming that changed exteriors/interiors and ergonomics studies going into interiors.
If you look at old cars, many things were done by hand in many cases, they look great. Flowing lines, interesting shapes, lots of details. Then come early robots and casting, and suddenly all cars are boxy dreadful (mostly, some became classic) and extremely oversimplified designs to fit into this automated production. Similarly interiors were created to fit early robot and plastic molds. Noone cared if this looked cheap and boxy…
Modern cars look modern mostly because even cheap brands can afford lots of details on the outside with modern metal and plastic methods and good, well thought out interiors (at least sometimes) made around ergonomics of using everything inside.
So old old cars look great because they were made by hand, and cars from turn of the century, at least some, look modern because they used modern production means. The early automation period mixed with global economy driving the sells of cheap cars gave us dreadful ’80s and ’90s shoeboxes…
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