The last golden-ish age of car choice?

bell boy    on 9 June 2009

Quote:....""Not of course forgetting the VW411
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> ah yes the most common car to catch fire in that decade

doctorchris    on 9 June 2009

Most of the cars on your list, Tunacat, could regularly be seen by the side of the road, broken down, with the exception of the Fords (totally conventional) and, surprisingly, the Wartburg.

bell boy    on 10 June 2009

i think you are thinking consul cortina with no airflow
saw a mint one in a garage for sale at rhyl must be 25 years ago still remember it

Old Navy    on 10 June 2009

>>miraculous airflow stuff which was genuine progress.
>>
"Airflow" was the name I could not remember.

Edited by Old Navy on 10/06/2009 at 12:00

Pugugly    on 9 June 2009

Not saying they were all crap - most were decent drives in their times, just that times have changed and in my opinion there is less grey porridge on the roads these days - Never drove a K70 but I've always wanted an NSU Ro80 though.....

Andrew-T    on 9 June 2009

Less grey porridge on the roads these days ..

Grey porridge, you call it. The obsession for the last few years with tin-coloured cars (rather than distinct colours) has led to quite a porridge-like fleet on the roads. IMHO they look as though the topcoat was forgotten at the factory.

datostar    on 9 June 2009

I do wonder if, say, the US Navy suddenly found itself with a massive oversupply of grey ship paint and flogged it all off cheaply to car manufacturers. Not since the 1940's when virtually every car was black has there been such sameness of colour. I wouldn't have one on principle.

Alby Back    on 9 June 2009

Guy I was at uni with had a Wartburg Knight. He reckoned it earned him a better degree. No chance of sexual distraction y'see....

Pugugly    on 9 June 2009

Irrevocably linked to a Knicker thief I represented in the 80s sadly.

Alby Back    on 9 June 2009

Why ? Because they were pants ?

perro    on 9 June 2009

If I had to pick the best of the bunch from this list it would obviously have to be the NSU Ro 80 although the engine was a bit of a wankel :)
The worst, well - no contest really is it - The daft Daf, fore'runner of the Volvo 340 especially with that awful continuously variable rubber band!

Lud    on 9 June 2009

The first post-war Moskvitches were clones of pre-war small Opels, made presumably in a factory and on machinery inherited by the Soviet Union after the war. Perhaps that was at Eisenach.

tunacat    on 9 June 2009

[I think I didn?t mention the Skoda cos I?d already listed the R10 and Simca 1000 ;-)
BTW, do you think Skoda borrowed anything from the design of the Dauphine or R8?]

I guess we managed without MPVs when every occupant didn?t have to have their own seatbelt and sized-seat, and no town-dweller particularly felt in ?need? of a 4x4, despite there being a lot more winter snow in those times!

I suppose the equivalent GS / Minor choice today might be a Prius vs some double-cab pickup with a solid rear axle!

We know many of those cars were less-than-reliable, underdeveloped, rusted badly? but my point really was just what an astonishing range of configurations there were available just for yer standard family saloon.

No doubt evolutionary convergence is inevitable, but being an incurable car enthusiast, it does just sadden me a bit when, when considering a Focus/Golf/Ceed/Astra, any one of them would pretty much be perfectly acceptable, and one is down to debating the feel of the dash plastics and the length and breadth of the warranty.

There just aren?t enough ?bad? cars any more, to feel smug about having avoided!
(perhaps Peugeot should have been thanked for having managed to keep the 307 near the bottom of the user-ratings charts for so long!)

Harleyman    on 11 June 2009

Well ya'll just have to fork out for a metallic purple street cruiser :)

I'll stick to the 46 year old rust-and-faded-blue pick-up for cruising, thank you; it offends enough environmentalists and tree-huggers to justify its prodiguous thirst! ;-)

What puts me off modern cars is the sense that underneath, they ARE all the same; for instance, I liked the FIAT 500 a little less when I found out that it would essentially be the same as a Ford Ka.

There used to be a concept in biking during the late 70's and early 80's, called the UJM; the Universal Japanese Motorcycle. It came about because all four of the big manufacturers offered an inline four-cylinder engined bike as their top bike, and they all started to look and behave alike. Cars are going the same way; or is it just that I'm getting older? ;-)

captain chaos    on 12 June 2009

I'll stick to the 46 year old rust-and-faded-blue pick-up for cruising thank you; it offends

enough environmentalists and tree-huggers to justify its prodiguous thirst! ;-)

>>
Good man!
Always get a couple turning up at the local cruise. Original paint and that well worn look. SWMBO absolutely loves 'em. You just know that they'll run for ever. Must get one...

perro    on 12 June 2009

>What puts me off modern cars is the sense that underneath, they ARE all the same<

Yep! always have been really = A series + Fiords crossflow went on and on and on etc., etc., etc. - its all about con-sumer-ism really comrade Harley.

Harleyman    on 12 June 2009

its all about con-sumer-ism really

I'd suspect it's more about globalism. It wasn't that many years ago that you didn't need a badge on the bonnet to be able to tell virtually at a glance what country, or at least continent, a car hailed from. Now it's just a blur, and I suspect that this is what car enthusiasts miss most; the individual identities.

It's nothing to do with the cars themselves; you cannot reasonably argue that a Ford Anglia is a better car than a modern Fiesta for example, even though they occupy the same target sector of motorists. The fact is though that the aforementioned Anglia was a considerably different car to, say, a Vauxhall Viva; whether the Fiesta differs markedly from an Astra today is very much open to debate.

tunacat    on 12 June 2009

>>>"It's worth considering that most of the cars on the OP's list would be on their third or fourth major engine rebuild (assuming they hadn't rotted away in the meantime) long before they reached the six-figure mileages which we take for granted from most cars today."


Harleyman,
(though you've just brought things back on-topic, I'm just going to veer off slightly again here!)
Were they really as bad as that? As well as more modern lubricants, do you think it's at all possible that the engine longevity of more recent cars owes a lot to 5 speed gearboxes?

FWIW though, I had a 1098 Morris Minor which had 73k miles on it when I got it. To the best of my knowledge, it still had its original engine. And, astonishing when I think back now, a few years later I thought nothing at that time of embarking on a regime where I worked 130 miles away Mon-Fri, totalling 330-500 miles a week in it for 12 months, when it was 20 years old and already well into the 90k's (the 5-digit mileometer rolled-over to zero during the second month).
Near the end of that year, some seal went somewhere and it started spraying a pint of oil onto the floorpan every 20 miles, but in fairness it HAD been caned flat out at an indicated 80+ mph in the outside lane of the motorway for the final 35 miles of my journey every Friday teatime!

(I reckon the majority of the British population even today consider 100,000 miles to be pretty-much a 'life' for a car: There's only a minority of people who will enter into the purchase of a car with 90,000 miles on it confidently thinking "Great, that engine'll need nothing but routine servicing for the next 100k!
Most of those 70's cars would indeed have rotted away before their engines reached 100k, so I wonder how many of those engines WOULD actually have made it?")

Avant    on 12 June 2009

"As well as more modern lubricants, do you think it's at all possible that the engine longevity of more recent cars owes a lot to 5 speed gearboxes?"

Yes - I think it does. The opening of more motorways meant much more high-speed cruising, and if this was done in 4th at 4.000+ rpm it must have taken its toll.

That said, Tunacat's Minor 1000 doesn't surprise me: the A- and B-series engines were good and long-lasting, and coupled with SU carburettors would start first time hot or cold as well as getting you there. What a pity Leyland threw all the advantages away.

Edited by Avant on 12/06/2009 at 20:10

LikedDrivingOnce    on 13 June 2009

As stated by others, this IS the golden age in some ways. (Reliability, safety, kit levels etc)

However......there is one thing that I regret that you can't seem to find any more....and that is the practical sporty hatchback. Time was when you could get a four seater coupe with a hatch instead of a boot. For some reason manufacturers have gone off them.

Sure you can get a Scirocco. Great car, but only really a 2+2.

Not so long back you could get a Celica, 200 SX, Cougar, Corrado, Audi Quattro, Calibra. Both good looking AND practical.

Pugugly    on 13 June 2009

Audi A5 - BMW 3 Series Coupe - very pretty cars as are all Astra Sports. Plenty of swoopy Italian stuff.

LikedDrivingOnce    on 13 June 2009

Audi A5 - BMW 3 Series Coupe - very pretty cars as are all Astra

Sports. Plenty of swoopy Italian stuff.

Agreed. They are all handsome cars - but not very practical.
Take the BMW 3 Series Coupe. I wanted a BMW, and I wanted the Coupe, but could not live with the the fact that it only has a boot. (I need to carry stuff around). If it had been a hatchback, then it would have been ideal. A nice wide open space at the back with the seats folded down - perfect for my needs.
So I had to go for the Touring instead. What an ugly beast that is!
It is overkill. I don't need an Estate. A car with just a boot is too small. I need a hatchback, really.

But finding a hatchback that is good looking as well is like trying to find rocking horse droppings! :-(