Don't forgot to lay some of the blame on trucks, SUVs, and the chicken tax. [1] American car manufacturers aren't interested in making anything that can't be classified as a "light truck" because then they'd have to compete on a level playing field with foreign brands. So every kind of "car" has disappeared.
This. If you are completely surrounded by light trucks as you grow up, then you are much less likely to ever think of actual cars (muscle or otherwise) at all. I grew up around 2000 lbs BMW 2002's (and the like) - a kind of vehicle that simply has vanished. So I could imagine lightweight sport sedans as a thing. If all you know are SUV's your concept of vehicle is going to be very different...
Auto journalists keep repeating in the same deadpan voice as the brainwashed soldiers from The Manchurian Candidate that Americans exclusively want big vehicles. It's not that there isn't some truth in that but the real truth is that (a) the publications won't get any chance to review vehicles if they don't toe the line [1] and (b) since the 1970s if you went to an American car dealer trying to buy a size S car they would try to sell you an L, looking for a size L they would try to sell you an XXL, etc. I remember going to car dealerships with my dad, there was a brief moment after the 2008 financial crisis that this wasn't the case, but by 2015 the major Japanese brands of Honda and Toyota were doing the same.
[1] One take on the fall of Intel was that they were "high on their own supply" for the last 15 years and journalists were too intimidated to tell them they were wrong with the exception of Charlie Demerjian
My second car was a 1978 Buick Riviera. 17.5 feet in length, two doors, rear wheel drive, 403cuin 8 cylinder. It weighs in at 3500 lbs, had 15 mph rated bumpers with shocks attached to the frame. Steel roll cage, double steel doors.
The car was a beast. You could fit 7 adults in the car and two dead bodies in the trunk.
My grandmother was t-boned in it. They straightened the door and replaced the glass and it was good as new.
That was a big car!
I wish I could buy a car like that with modern antilock brakes, transmission. Instead it’s all trucks and SUVs because people like my mother feel “safer” and like seeing from up high.
Look at the specs of a modern vehicle. Any contact over 5mph and you are replacing the plastic bumper. Actually have an airbag go off and you are probably looking at a totaled vehicle.
That really took me back. In the 80s my mom drove a mid-70s, 2-door Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Itt was just under 17 feet long, also two doors, and I believe rear-wheel drive, with a fairly large engine. If memory serves (sigh, it often doesn't), my mom even called it "the beast". I laughed out loud at your "two dead bodies in the trunk" -- yup, checks out.
I'm torn, though, on your idea to have a car like that with modern (safety) features. I hate all the trucks and SUVs out on the road, and I drive a mid-sized sedan. And I agree with you on how easy it is to damage that car. But man those old cars were so heavy. I can't imagine getting decent gas mileage (or good BEV range) on one today.
Your perception about the safety of 1970s cars is off - you are massively less likely to die or be seriously injured in a car built in 2025 than any car in any car built in the 1970s.
70s and 80s cars were built for the little "whoopsie that's a mailbox", "didn't see you merging there" and "oh golly me, this snow sure is slick, and that's a ditch right there" mishaps that are the overwhelmingly dominant form of vehicle accidents. If you didn't actually care to fix things, many accidents that would be thousands of dollars today were $0 back then because required systems remained functional (that was the whole point of those mandated 10mph bumpers).
If your want to survive hitting stopped traffic at 40mph because you were too busy shitposting in traffic, modern car all the way. Depending on the details you may very well walk away without a scratch. It's really marvelous how good they are at keeping people uninjured, or at least alive.
But the overwhelming majority of people's driving experience reflects the former accident type, not the latter, hence why people have the opinions they do. And you can't really blame them. The odds of any given person being in an injurious accident in their life are low, lower still if you avoid a few key behaviors everyone agrees are bad.
In the 70s there we about 1/4 as many cars on the road in my country compared to today, but 5 times as many road deaths.
People got killed or seriously injured all the time before improvement in safety standards. As a society having to replace 50 $1000 bumpers to save 1 person being seriously injured is a great deal.
You're basically using the outlier here to mislead about the typical/median and erroneously implying that they're more linked than they are.
40-50yr ago in the era of 10mph bumpers and whatnot the typical experience was superior because the typical driver is experiencing minor no-injury mishaps. Sliding off the road in the snow at low speed was a tow truck bill and only that, not $2k just to get the car drivable again.
Buuuuuuut, the results for the minority of drivers experiencing injurious crashes was way, way worse back then, as the people who screech about stats are happy to tell you.
What makes a car cheap to repair for the average user getting in the median or average accident and survivable for the guy who gets piss drunk and drives off a cliff are mostly tangential from each other. There's no reason we can't have both and there's no reasonable and non-malicious reason to hide or downplay the regression on this axis. Modern cars would likely perform way better than old cars if shrugging off minor accidents was not a decreased design priority due to stiffer cabins and other changes in construction.
The stuff that makes modern cars get totaled in minor hits is mostly a reflection of styling and fuel economy based choices.
The typical driver was significantly more likely to die back then. Modern cars shrug off small accidents too - you just end up with dents or scratches or other ugly but cosmetic body damage.
The thing that makes modern cars so easy to total is unibody construction. We do that to save on costs, but also because it leads to better ride quality and fuel efficiency.
Bumpers from the 80s and early 90s were more substantial and outset from the vehicle. If a 5mph impact did anything to the bumper, it took the hit and the rest of the car was generally fine. The bumper was easy enough to replace because it was external to the vehicle.
Modern cars don't have external bumpers and what you see on the outside of the car is a "bumper cover". The actual bumper is under that and no longer spans the whole front/rear of the car to the sides. Many new front bumpers don't go past the headlights.
So in a 5mph crash in a modern car, the bumper cover (made of plastic and held on by plastic) takes the impact and generally gets destroyed. Replacing it costs several hundred dollars in parts before paint (because they're all painted). There's also more labor involved in replacing it because it's so integrated to the car. Bumper covers now clip into both fenders, core support, and undercladding and removal means working with all of those parts, then lining up body lines after.
I think it's less a comment about serious accidents and more a comment on getting rear ended at a stop light now costing $600+ in repairs even if your airbags didn't pop.
And cars from the 30's-50's were often tank-like by comparison. You get into a high-speed accident in one of those and they would just shovel out the raspberry jam you turned into, hose down the inside, tug on the frame a little to line everything back up and put it back out on the lot.
The zone's #1 job is to buy enough time for the airbags to inflate during a crash at speed. Occupants moving forward toward the space the airbags will occupy as the vehicle stops and then being hit by an airbag attempting to occupy that space would be bad.
The degree to which crumple zones attenuate forces felt in a crash is fairly minimal in low speed crashes because in order to have enough time for airbags to inflate in a 100+mph crash they are necessarily quite stiff.
I believe you're misunderstanding the security and safety design nature of modern cars vs. older ones from something like the 70's, 80s or earlier.
I've seen a number of crash test videos comparing modern 21st century cars in collisions with solid, unmovable obstacles at high speed, compared to those old cars, and while yes, the old cars had external features that let them more cheaply and functionally deal with minor accidents, they would be totaled by any truly heavy impact, with lethal results for their drivers.
Modern cars on the other hand may be more externally fragile even for minor hits and easily get damaged in ways that lead to thousands in repair costs for all their interconnected, electronically sensitive alarms and sensors, but for enduring high-velocity impacts, they're often fucking tanks when it comes to fundamentally protecting their occupants. Under that fragile exterior of any decent modern car is a remarkable security construct that isn't easily visible, right up until it shows its mettle after your car slams into a wall, and keeps you alive, at some speed that would have annihilated some supposedly tough muscle car from the 70s.
Go search for these on YouTube, they viscerally showcase the difference in the best (and most entertaining) possible way, by trying to catastrophically destroy both kinds of car.
There's a lot of electronic tracking, spyware, junkware, over-complication pushing that I absolutely despise about the modern auto manufacturing industry (partly because of legal mandates and partly out of general shittiness from the makers themselves) but for safety, they're impressive.
EDIT: Here's just one example. The occupants of the Malibu would have survived this crash with minor injuries. Anyone driving the 59 Bel Air would have been turned into a mangled disaster of broken bones and crushed body parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoShPiK6878
A lot of this is true, but also, look at the safety records of those modern vehicles. They protect the driver a LOT better. A totaled car is just a car. Getting paralyzed or killed is a lot harder to fix.
Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan make plenty of trucks in the USA, they get around the chicken tax directly. The move to trucks and SUVs seems to be more about consumer sentiment that I can't really understand (I'm a big fan of sedans), it isn't just some hack around the tax system.
There’s a floor on how cheap a vehicle can be made to conform to the current safety and fuel economy requirements, the margin is greater for more expensive cars. Manufacturers are incentivising bigger cars.
The fact is that modern cars have astonishingly effective safety features that are likely to get you alive out of most crashes regardless of the size of your vehicle. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety publishes data that shows that larger vehicles are safer but it is not like you die in the smaller car most of the time, but rather you are more likely to break your ankle or something.
If your vehicle goes under the tractor pulled by a semi (any size) or if it flips over the guardrail because it's too big to be held by the guardrail you do die.
My understanding is that safety ratings are relative to the class of car. So if you have a small car with excellent ratings and a large car that doesn't mean they will have the same survivability if they crash into each other.
No one forced people to buy the larger vehicles when they came on the market. People choose to buy vehicles that let them sit higher and take up more space, when smaller alternatives are readily available.
People want vehicles the size of tanks. Auto companies are spending billions of dollars to get people to buy their respective tank-sized vehicles, not to turn people onto the segment in general.
I've heard people say "people want vehicles the size of tanks" in discussions like this but I've never heard "I want a vehicle the size of a tank" although that person exists.
It seems like a different world but before the pandemic if you wanted to buy a compact car you would go to the dealer and find out they don't have any new ones, you'll have to settle for used, they say factory washed out in a flood. Well they have 100 SUVs made in the same factory lined up that nobody wants to buy that are $7000 off.
From a survey of Canadians in 2022 [1]: "We find that SUV drivers view their vehicles as functionally superior to smaller cars in terms of safety, space for lifestyle, handling, and fun. Symbolically, SUVs are seen as a “status symbol” that can communicate a number of images, such as being “successful”. SUV drivers are more likely to see these vehicles as common and “approved” in their social networks, and tend to downplay any negative societal impacts such as increased GHG emissions. Across respondents intending to buy an SUV, willingness-to-downsize to a smaller vehicle was highest under financial incentives (for buying or using a car) or disincentives (for buying or using an SUV)."
I personally don't understand how you could consider an SUV better for handling or fun, but denying people's views doesn't make them not hold them.
> I personally don't understand how you could consider an SUV better for handling or fun
This is an imagination problem. There are certain categories of automotive use cases which SUVs are designed to be superior. In those, being in a vehicle designed to handle better at the task is better fun!
I drove some gravel Forest Service roads in the past in a sub-compact (who knew the only way up from Oregon to Seattle was via USF roads if you didn't want to take the express way?), and I definitely wish I had more clearance for that use case. If I lived in the woods, an SUV might make sense.
We have more sedans here in the city (Seattle) because our parking space frankly are too small, and even then I see way too many SUVs trying to cram into a parking space labelled compact.
I have a family of five and we’ve managed with a single vehicle for basically the last 20 years. So I’ve been in minivan mode a long time now. Recently I went car shopping with my son and it’s crazy to me how much more limited sight lines are in the smaller sedans. You have to be much more active leaning and looking around. I don’t know that I need a tank, but I absolutely love the minivan for driver visibility.
The data speaks for itself. Honda offers the civic and accord and the CRV outsells them both. SUVs are much higher utility than a sedan for pretty much the same price and same gas mileage.
As someone who lives in a city, I'm not sure what I'd do with a car that is smaller than a tank. If it's a small car then it's probably for local trips and super inconvenient to park / re-park / etc. I want a big car to comfortably fit my family, our outdoor toys, and maybe even tow something.
Even if I lived outside a city, what do I gain by driving a smaller car? Going from 35 to 55 mpg? Parking is plentiful and equally convenient for big cars these days.
meanwhile the entire world from japan to the uk to brazil to south africa are fine to go grocery shopping and take their family out in their normal sized car. in the city.
cities are better with fewer cars and better public transit. and you dont need a tank. i didnt know your viewpoint even existed.
Do they actually want that, or have people been influenced by incessant marketing? Car manufacturers have strong tax reasons to prefer building SUVs over sedans, and their marketing reflects that.
I go for walks in the morning and there's a road bottleneck and it's hilarious and sad to see the cars queueing up on both sides, huge ones, with a single person in them, every morning.
I do own a station wagon, and it's shorter than most SUVs, and I use it for long trips, but let's be realistic, that's not what most drives are.
> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.
I view it as much like having an appreciation of Steam Trains and older aircraft!
Still interesting and the best are machines worthy of our ongoing attention.
FWIW I own an old Porsche 911 and an alarmingly fast EV.
I love them both.
When I get back in to the old 911, I think to myself, how the bloody hell was this even legal! It feels dangerous and exciting all at the same time. It's an event every time I turn the key and it starts making noises and the gauges spring into life and lights and switches start glowing. Then you turn the key from a cold start and listen to the sound, and you get to know exactly the state of tune. You dont even need to drive it very fast or very far and it makes you feel alive in a way my EV never does!
Now when I get in and drive my EV, it works in an astonishingly safe and effective way every time. When you stamp on the accelerator it will immediately rocket forwards in a way that makes the occupants of the car feel sick LOL
The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think.
But as I say, it's like being a Steam Train enthusiast. They are what they are, from a time when they did what they did.
> The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think.
I think this might be like the yamaha v-max motorcycle. It wasn't as fast as other motorcycles, but the way the throttle opened up at a certain rpm range made the boost seem exciting.
As a former gear head there is also the perception issue.
Look, no way about it, most of the drivers of muscle cars today are grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them.
The next big demo for muscle cars is via exorbitant leases that select for idiots. Which yeah, now we're talking younger men with testosterone, at least.
Being an old man now too, I'm fairly certain that dumb testosterone laden guys with a loud and fast car are still gonna get the girls, but I can't be 100 on that anymore.
Still thats the next demo down. It's mostly old farts on Harleys and in Mustangs (unless you're near Paris Island or San Diego, of course)
Another big problem is that performance is so much better than it was in the golden age of muscle cars. Lots of BMWs and Civics today would blow off the fastest car imaginable in '68-70. Of course the latest muscle cars also improved, with engines that are like 400- 1000 hp (really just that Charger, but a teen in my neighborhood has one).
That's just really a dangerous amount of power for a daily driver. A lot of electric drivers don't realize how much the potential power is taken down in daily driving to keep it safe. But Camaro LT's have a sport mode where the backend can get loose with just a squirt of acceleration.
Cars like that are insane. It's just not safe to drive cars like that on city street anywhere near their potential.
> grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them.
Yes, the economics have changed. And so has scalability.
For today's young adults, vehicle cost and total cost of ownership have made ownership of private vehicles another "shining artifact of the past." [0]
But you know what else? Populated cities have dense traffic. Racing with full acceleration to reach the next intersection's red light is obviously futile.
People are more worried about having a roof and four walls.
>Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)
It's not freeing because it's been saddled with all sorts of financial burdens raising the cost while at the same time younger people are poorer than ever.
It's not just cars, tons of traditional "coming of age" things are going away for the same reasons.
A muscle car is as much a visceral experience as it is a means of transportation, and never under-sell the fun of driving a slow car fast. Modern cars are sensory deprivation chambers that turn the joy of driving into the tedium of transporting oneself from one place to another.
We're decades past the time when a 1960s car was remotely competitive on any measurable aspect of performance but, just as rock climbing is not a valid competitor for taking a train/ski lift/whatever to the top of a mountain, there will always be those that revel in the joy of doing something that calls to our more primitive selves.
Muscle cars are the essence of being young... they're unreasonable, loud, reckless, and beautiful.
As a former gearhead, I must say that an EV with get-up-and-go has been worth the tradeoff for me. Sure, I miss the roar of the V8, and the manual shifting. But the instant torque of an EV is so satisfying, and the low center of gravity is fun to toss around. And I don't miss all of the gas station stops, oil changes, transmission fluid changes, fouled sensors, overheating, spark plug changes, clutch replacement, brake pad changes, dripping fluids, fumes, shouted conversations with friends over the engine noise, et cetera.
I remember, years ago, reading on Slashdot about "ampheads" who seemed to have just as much fun playing with performance EVs as my dad did tuning hot rods in 1960s California. I think EVs can be enormously cool, with all the advantages you describe, but most of the commercially available ones are, again, "smartphones on wheels", built for convenience and tethered to the manufacturer. I would love to see more of an enthusiast EV scene build up, maybe involving kit cars with a fully analog drivetrain you can repair with off-the-shelf parts.
> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.
I would challenge you that it is your proclivity for logic that is causing your identity crisis. If you enjoy a certain aesthetic, the pursuit of that aesthetic is reason enough. You are already putting constraints on the concept of a car because strapping a rocket on wheels with wings is going to have much more performance than an EV. Redefine your pursuit to be the most performant muscle car and everything is squared. No identity crisis needed.
I’m morphing love of modifying cars away from performance numbers but into a way to build mechanical art and enjoy emotional moments with other humans.
I’ve realized that was the whole point all along. EV or IC it doesn’t matter. Just the statements above
I understand so completely! I am not old enough for muscle cars, but I liked cars that were big as I was growing up. Like I had an old 944 (loved that) an early WRX, a Mark Vii GTI-- all manuals. I realized my favorite cars were manuals with rear wheel drive.
During the pandemic I got a Camaro convertible with a manual. I love that car but it is hard to defend on functional grounds. A Tesla plaid will blow it off on the line. There are a lot of cars that are ten times more functional that are as good or better on the track.
I have kids who don't care about cars, took their time getting their driver license. As someone who grew up California I can't understand that. But cars allowed me to do things they can do without cars. And they live in an objectively safer and more stressful world, so I can see why they don't want to add driving to it.
Here's what I like about what I drive. It's fun, silly and orange. People look at it and know I like my car but they don't think I am rich dude with a fancy Porsche or Mercedes. All kinds of very pedestrian cars are faster, but I live in Los Angeles and I get to enjoy the weather.
I'm not a gearhead, but a car admirer. Bought my first fun car recently (a 2001 MR2 Spyder - probably my last fun car).
I think we're a long way off self-driving cars in earnest, but we're in the shorter term leaving behind the idea of cars as something where their performance in some way correlates with social status. As hard as you try, you can't deny that element is there for gearheads and tuners - it's writ large across the Fast film franchise.
I think there will always be a desire for the "vroom vroom" factor, as well as the ability to work on it without an EE degree.
I don't think it's ever been logical but it ticks important emotional boxes so that makes sense.
I'm old and I drive a refurb'd Leaf and have never ever cared that my vehicle was not sexy. I've never been "normal" so never had the appeal but I understand it.
Even outside of EVs, cars have gotten to the point where you're barely driving them anymore, anyway, you're more of a "human in the loop". You can't really see out of them anymore (other than the windshield, of course), so most people have stopped trying and just rely on the "systems".
* Don't change lanes if the blinky light on your side mirrors tells you not to
* Don't back up unless the image in the backup camera tells you it's safe
* Stop reversing when the beeping from the park distance sensors get too insistent
* AEB, lane departure warning, rear traffic assist radar, etc.
Don't get me wrong, people have used this "old man yells at cloud" point of view to call "real cars" dead for many decades; fuel injection, ABS, automatic transmissions, whatever. But we've definitely gotten to a tipping point where most of the fun is gone.
I'm not saying we should go back to x% more deaths per year by getting rid of XYZ nanny system, I'm just saying car enthusiasm is largely dead in new cars.
Stuffy middle class on up white people killed cities. Stuffy middle class on up white people killed care culture. Stuffy middle class on up white people killed... just about everything.
All those tropes, jokes, memes and other culture crapping on various slices of that broader demographic don't come from nowhere.
I don't think that the new era of 'EV appliance culture' will have any positive impact on urban planning compared to 'car culture'.
There are more vehicles on the roads than ever before, and each of those distracted travellers demands a direct route from home to destination whether they're driving or being driven by a robo-taxi.
Ok. I’m talking about the concerted effort to kill trains and public transit by the auto/oil industry.
LA was beautiful in the 20s. Could have been a world class metropolis instead of a sprawling hellscape of seven lane interstates where it takes 1.5hr to travel 15 miles, choked by pollution.
Go watch Roger Rabbit again. Pay attention to the villain instead of the foxy redhead.
If you want a "raw" driving experience, you need to go on a race track in a "proper" race car. I use the quotes because you could come up with very diffferent definitions for them depending on your particular perspective. Amateur car races are a thing, btw.
I'm glad that all these assistants exist for road vehicles. I think of myself as a fairly disciplined driver (welly who am I kidding, really?), but these systems have saved my bacon more than once over the years.
It's worse with tesla - the Plaid has removed most driver controls.
If you're a car guy and buy a 1000hp+ vehicle, I think you would want a drive select or turn signal stalk.
You can't flash your lights. wipers are not under your control. if you're sticking out into traffic, you don't know if the car will guess correctly that you want to back up... or pull out. nonsense.
My dad is a gearhead's gearhead. The sort of guy who, if there were a car from the 1930s to the 1970s visible in a movie, could identify make, model, and year at a glance.
He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue.
I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium.
A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps.
Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training).
Classic muscle cars are obsolete. Most cars today have 0-60 times a 1970s Dodge Challenger could only dream of.[1] Plus, they can now go around corners.
Here's an old movie: "Hot Rod Girl" (1956) [2] The opening scenes are of a real drag strip in Southern California. Technical advice from the San Fernando Drag Strip and the National Hot Rod Association. Accelerations are so low that those things would be obstructing traffic on a freeway onramp today.
The original hot rods were invented because young people could literally go to a junkyard and build them. They were practically free junk/trash. It was a totally different world. When built from junkyard parts became $100,000 it became a lot less popular.
Americans today are also a lot more stuck up/image conscious. Grandma thought it was cool/impressive grandpa built a car out of junk, the average date today would call that worse than a poverty wagon and make someone undateable. I have a stick shift Ford Focus ST. It's incredibly fun to drive, practical, good for the environment, but it definitely turns dates away because it's a poverty wagon.
Acceleration times say nothing about the character of a car.
Anyone can launch a Model S or Taycan at insane accelerations just by pushing a pedal and letting the computer sort things out.
Trying to do so in a 1970s Camaro or a 1980s Sierra XR4 requires skill and practice whilst listening to the howl of the engine, feeling the texture of the road through the steering and sensing the suspension loading-up. All of that has been lost.
Driving has been reduced to an ordeal to be ensured with as little interaction with the vehicle as possible.
The point of a vehicle was always to take you from point a to point b.
Perhaps a certain minority enjoys pushing buttons, pulling levers and pressing pedals to move your butt around, heck I enjoy it too.
But when I am leaving for work at 5:30AM I am much happier to be seated comfortably in a train and letting someone else move me around while I take a nap
Since I can’t respond to the dead comment that replied to me, I’ll respond to my own comment.
On the 5:59 train from Zürich to Basel, there is no chance of this happening. It’s an extremely pleasant ride on the DB ICE, up until Basel.
On the afternoon or evening trains(there’s one every 30 minutes) I have also never felt threatened. Although I typically get a 1st class ticket on my way back home because it gets kind of crowded with all the families and retired folks in 2nd. class, and I prefer to nap in peace.
If my company weren’t paying for my tickets, I’d probably go in the 2nd class as well.
Perhaps your society has some issues if you feel threatened in public spaces.
>The point of a vehicle was always to take you from point a to point b.
Yeah, and once society progressed beyond the bare minimum to accomplish that goal a whole host of ancillary nice to have bonus goals (style, comfort, etc) opened up.
Driving has been reduced to an ordeal to be ensured with as little interaction with the vehicle as possible.
Let's hope that trend continues, ideally to the point that humans need to do nothing besides specify where they want to go. We're too careless to be trusted with the responsibility.
An opinion that basically distills to "everyone who likes a thing that I disagree with has been indoctrinated by bad forces" doesn't exactly make whoever peddles it look intelligent regardless of what context it arises in.
> doesn't exactly make whoever peddles it look intelligent regardless of what context it arises in.
Contrary to people praising the transcendental spiritual experience of burning gas and shifting gear, who obviously are the creme de la creme of what an independent and strong human intellect is capable of.
I also liked cars as a kid, because of all the money funnelled in toy cars, car movies, car games, car magazines, at some point I realised it was just a gigantic multi generational ad campaign from the beginning, I started questioning my belief, and has it turns out I didn't really know why I dreamed of owning these expensive metal boxes, it felt like a very artificial goal, almost as if it was pushed on my from the outside...
Let me be clearer. I don't care whether you're saying that people who like cars have been brainwashed by big oil or the people who buy highly processed manufactured food have been brainwashed by the food industry, it's a stupid baseline belief to have.
Most people who like their cars and their Oreos or whatever else do so genuinely.
Food is a good example actually, for example nestle spent decades making coffee "cool" in japan even though it was never a cultural hit there, and Japanese people do "genuinely" love their sweet caffeinated drinks, because both are a drug so why wouldn't they love it! I'm still not going to defend nestle
How many people finally buy their 911 thinking they'll have "made it" just to realise it's yet another trinket trophy of the never ending rat race? If my comment made even a single person question their opinions I'll be content, as for the others I don't really care, it's not my time nor money, do what you please
Imagine you're getting smoked by a 7 year old dad-mobile with paddle shifters. And I'm not even running a Cobb tune. That isn't a muscle car. That's a synthol car.
The Charger GT is essentially the rental-spec charger. Not a great comparison.
Besides, Muscle cars are often more about torque and the front-engine rwd layout. In the 70s they were all slow as shit but could still peel tires and do burnouts.
Also, for those in-the-know, the mid 2000s Honda Accord v6 was about as fast as the mustang of that time, but obviously drove very different.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but this comparison is odd. You’re comparing the fastest Forester (XT turbocharged) to the slowest V6 Charger. The slowest V8 Charger does 0-60 in 5.1 seconds. The fastest one does 0-60 in 3.6 seconds.
You're right next to the point yet you've missed it. The Rivian has a wide range of performance _options_. With only the "2025 Rivian R1T Ascend Quad Max" having the performance you've quoted. How is the "ascend quad max" segment ideologically different from the "srt hellcat" segment?
Likewise the _standard_ Tesla 3 has quite a bit different 0 to 60 times than what you've quoted here.
Do you really think your soccer mom is buying the "performance" edition of the vehicle and not the "long range?" Which proves the point, performance options are not dead, and EVs only continue the trend, they don't obviate it.
The crazy thing is there's nothing stopping manufacturers from making electric muscle cars. Instead, we get boring aerodynamic cloned appliances sold as "SUVs".
As I've grown older though, I noticed that the less I need to drive, the happier I am. So I don't really need more than an appliance, I suppose.
Nissan, Chevrolet, Fiat, and Hyundai/Kia all make small, lightweight, low range, low power EVs.
With a 0-60 of 9 seconds, the Fiat 500e may be too low power. A 1993 Honda Civic is quicker than that and if you optioned a Civic coupe up to what comes standard (AC, power doors and windows, cruise) on the 500e, it was $14,700 in 1993[1], which is ~$32k today, which almost the same exact price of a 500e.
I honestly thought both the Leaf and 500e were no longer on sale in the US, since I don't see new ones in the Bay Area, and they used to be everywhere. That's my bad.
The Bolt is also a great example, although it's pretty quick. In fact, a quick chatgpt search says both the Bolt and Leaf SV are over 200hp, so not a lot less than my 258hp Model 3 that's undoubtedly heavier.
The Kona EV completely slipped my mind; my sister has the hybrid version though. Although, the EV is a >$30k crossover but they _do_ sell a 138hp version so it's hardly a muscle car. There are no small cheap Hyundai EVs in the US.
Something like the Honda E is something I'd love to see in the US, although it's definitely a premium-priced product for a small car.
I’ve been driving a Nissan LEAF for the last decade. It’s exactly what you describe (and has been great as a city car for a two-car, two-driver household).
> Nobody's making small, lightweight, low range, low power EVs.
Small low power EVs are everywhere.
Unless you’re setting the bar so low that you expect a tiny 50-100 mile range car. That’s not going to happen because everyone would pass right over it and get an affordable EV with multiple times the range for only marginally more cost.
What would an EV muscle car look like? Tesla Model 3 seems to check a lot of boxes. Definitely not noise or muscle car power delivery, but those seems like unrealistic goals for an EV
IMO what made American muscle cars special was their combination of power + unique styling + price. Yeah they were noisy (Which some really liked) and sometimes impractical, but that was okay because of they weren't trying to be everything to everyone.
A Model 3 might check a lot of boxes, but its styling is definitely not unique, and the rest of car itself is tying to appeal to as many as possible.
Insecure dudes seem to derive insouciant-to-proud self-satisfaction from inflicting noise, visual, and actual pollution on the rest of us which partially explains coal rollers and gaudy, loud motorcycles.
A couple of thousand acres, big sheds, a couple of silos, a few trucks and combine harvesters and a go hard or go home frequently sideways attitude 'll do that, it seems.
To each, their own, I guess. Yeah, I get needing 4WD for snow and mountains and reasonable capabilities suitable for farm and work, but excess is excess. I also don't understand why people put up with highway princess trucks that cost $60k+. My dad's shop '78 Chevy C-10 Scottsdale lacked headrests, cupholders, and a radio only the latter of which was added. You used to be able able to buy cheap-ish fleet trims of trucks if you didn't want a bunch of plastic and extra nonsense, I don't know if that's still the case; I wonder if Toyota makes fleet versions of Tundras (made near where I live) or Tacomas (if they're not discontinuing tacos) given it doesn't sell Hi-Lux here.
It's not for me but I'm adjacent to rural and mining industries and understand the joy of making an OTT desktop computing rig or near industrial home-lab.
In a similar manner a mechanic that works on aircraft engines for crop dusters capable of short take off and landing with heavy loads and drafting over fields with low clearance can also enjoy tuning the heck out of a V-8 and taking it to the limit.
It's not insecurity driving that behavior, it's confidence veering into over confidence.
You can see that same let's have a go and push it mentality in building MudCrab underwater EV cars
Same here. Although I own a nice car I much prefer my ebike which is not affected by London's 1000+ fine issuing cameras, 20 mph limits, jams, congestion charges, ULEZ charges, parking fees, road closed signs, construction works etc.
There's a similar issue to muscle cars in that although in theory my thing can do 155 mph down some autobahn, in practice it's way slower than the 15 mph ebike in town.
I disagree with the article substantially; the truth is that Dodge is a dying brand, and the charger and challenger were never practical muscle cars - mostly because Dodge is less part of any racing series. The Ford Mustang is having a resurgence in actually being a sports car, because Ford is investing in Lemans and Imsa.
Honda, Toyota, Cadillac, Ford are the major performance cars these days... And Hyundai has a much bigger investment than Dodge. The consolidation of Mercedes, VW, Porsche, and Audi is an interesting challenge to the segment; Bmw and Mazda are also in the game.
I can't remember where I heard this but it stuck with me: Teslas are the new American muscle car - fast in a straight line, but otherwise poor build quality and lacking the attention to drivers' experience you get from European brands.
As a person who owned multiple Teslas I really don’t understand the “poor build quality” sentiment. What other car at the same price point has better build quality? And if one or two do, does that make the Teslas build quality “poor”?
I had a MINI. That was a build quality disaster. Major engine issues after only three years. I now have a Silverado 1500 LTZ. It has obvious build quality issues. Interior isn’t as good as it used to be. Gearbox has a banging sound. My Teslas seem so much better than either of those or most other cars I interact with really. I sat in my friends Toyota Camry the other day. The interior seemed so much cheaper, the sound quality so much worse, the cabin was so much more loud than my humble Model 3. What about my car has poor build quality that I am oblivious to?
Build quality is less about how the interior seems cheap or not but about tolerances. A Camry can have cheap plastic everywhere, but if the connection points don't rattle, it's a "better" build quality. But the truth of it is that the majority of people don't notice the build quality. A cup holder is a cup holder, even if it slightly rattles or is slightly off center.
The main example is the panel gaps on Tesla body. They can be offset by a "large" amount compared to other car brands, but it doesn't harm anything and you have to look for it to be noticeable.
So do Tesla's have a bad build quality? Yes, if you define it by tolerances, but no if you define it by "Does it feel low quality". And the debate online is largely with people talking past each other with differing definitions of what build quality actually means.
Some examples of build quality issues are the metal sheets that are glued on and coming off during driving. As well as accelerator pedals that get stuck.
The funny thing is that whenever I get into a Tesla, the interior just feels kinda cheap and of low-quality/low-effort design. That's not saying anything about their build quality, though.
It’s one of those things where you can claim Teslas have poor build quality and you get a free pass, but you will be “source?”d to death if you contradict it.
I’ve had several Teslas and even currently have their supposed disaster of a truck and have not encountered this alleged build quality issue. My car before that, a Honda Civic, spent much more time in the shop purely on account that it needed oil changes and expensive scheduled maintenances once or twice a year.
I have two teslas and the build quality is amazing. I never do anything to them other than change the tires. Haven’t even touched the breaks. It’s the ultimate daily driver and I’ll never buy another type of car.
I have a Lexus LX, one of the most expensive Lexus vehicles ever made. I love it. It was made in Japan.
Tesla panel gaps and quality are fine. They had some early issues, but the damn things are basically body panels hung off of almost entirely cast chunks of metal. There is not a lot of room for wiggle. If anything, they're so we'll integrated that they're hard to repair after a crash.
Maybe. But crucially Teslas, and EVs in general, don't look like muscle cars and they're not marketed that way. Yeah they can be insanely fast in a straight line, but the appeal of muscle cars was about a lot more than straight line performance.
I'm not actually sure any EV could capture what people like about muscle cars, but you're definitely not going to get it from some futuristic transport blob that just happens to have a low 0-60 time. The Tesla roadster might have captured some of the sports car magic, but it's telling they don't make that any more (for now). I don't know if they could do the same thing for muscle cars at all.
Many 60s/70s American muscle cars had racing pedigrees. It was a coupe with a V8, one could argue they were replaced by the JDM market with turbo 4s/I6s in the 90s early 2000s.
Maybe more importantly, either of the above had an appealing visual style (to some!) and had their own community around them. Teslas are pretty visually boring, you can't really modify them, but I suppose they have a community of their own who debates which version of software drives the car for you better.
At the time that the muscle car came into existence, there was nothing wrong with the build quality of American cars compared to European cars. It wasn't until the mid-70s that this changed.
Given the advancements of EVs, the death of the muscle car was inevitable. They are almost universally faster, more performant, more efficient, and more "cool" in their designs. Do gear heads dislike them? Sure, but they aren't going to be the market forever. As energy costs rise, natural market forces will shift the demands of the buyer.
That's a big if. And even more so if everyone moves to EVs, then gas demand goes down and it ICEs become even cheaper to run. Ultimately, we need a carbon tax and no more EV credits. What did EV credits do for us? It created Elon.
There was probably a time when vacuum tubes were extremely cheap for audio enthusiasts that kept their tube amps as the world was transitioning into solid state electronics.
That did not last, and I'm talking about before trade with Russia was basically halted.
It doesn't help that we have a bunch of people who drive crossovers with zero character, can't point to a spark plug on their engine, but are also somehow so upset about the internal combustion engine being replaced that they fighting EV adoption with everything they have. It's almost like they're told what to think.
The sound a crossplane V8 makes is especially delightful due to the [necessarily] asymmetric firing order. Crossplanes fire every 90 degrees, flatplanes every 180. Flatplanes produce a metallic yowl, crossplanes a fruity burble. Beats and timing are hardwired into human psychoacoustics somehow. Beats are counts without explicit numerals. The idea of mathematical aesthetic standards are appealing cf golden ratio. Crossplane firing asymmetry tickles my aesthetic fancy somehow via the Beats. So my overpowered Merc V8 is music to my ears!
Here in Australia, Mustang V8s hold their value pretty well. When I was looking for a sports car (which I've now learnt is very different to a muscle car), the Mustang was top of the list because there was nothing else out there with:
- manual
- V8
- 2 doors
- under <$100k
I spent a week with one, and while I quite enjoyed it, it required you to really rev out the engine to feel anything (which is nice!). Except that would push you into 130km/h+ which means instant loss of license for 6 months and a forever tarnished record meaning insurance is much more expensive for the rest of your life.
Settled for an ND2 MX-5 that I throw around corners now. It means I have to have a "normal" car as a daily (as the MX-5 isn't that practical) but it also means I can have fun without getting pulled up by the gestapo
I'm not the person you replied to, but in a 110 km/h (70 mph) zone you'd get away with just a fine in Australia if caught/pulled over. To lose your license for six months, you'd need to be doing 130+ km/h in an 80 km/h (50 mph) zone.
Yep, I was referring to the license suspension for 6 months though, which is what the earlier post was talking about. What you’re referring to is a license suspension for 3 months.
Australia's road laws tend to be strictly applied. Large fines and demerit points that can lead to loss of licence. We also have random breath tests.
We have much lower road fatalities than the USA per 100,000 people and per billion km traveled though the rates in remote areas are considerably higher.
Yeah, we also have many highways with a speed limit of 80 and one with speed limit up to 85mph (~137kmh), so you wouldn't necessarily even be speeding.
I really want to ditch the 1.9L H4 Digijet in my '85 Westfalia. It's a total PITA (direct fuel injection and a distributor) but I'm not keen on dropping in a GoWesty or "Subagon" ICE motor when EV is the way to go.
> Brooke Rennert, a 21-year-old from Rochester Hills putting herself through welding school by working as the only woman at her oil-change job, isn’t having any of it. “I don’t like electric cars. I like the sound of a heavy engine. I like the power,” she said. “An electric vehicle has power, but in a different way. It’s not like a big V8, big-block sound.”
This, IMO, is exactly why they are dying. They are more expensive than regular cars and the only reason anyone likes them is because they are loud and obnoxious.
There's just fewer and fewer people that need a loud noise maker to be happy, certainly not when that noise maker will cost you $60k you likely don't have since inflation has gone crazy while salaries have stagnated.
The people that do end up gravitating to the noise makers will choose a loud motorcycle instead.
I spent years driving, modifying, and racing V-8 Fords from the mid sixties to the early seventies. I've replaced the 2.3 TurboCoupe with a 351W I built myself. I'm very familiar with muscle cars, both carbureted and FE, with points and with electronic injection, smog-legal and without carbs.
My electric family sedan (Tesla model 3 long range) has everything I've ever liked about muscle cars - in abundance. 498 horsepower, a "first gear" that will wind up past 200 kph, instant throttle response. The only thing missing are the impracticalities - the noise, the small back seat, the smell of tires and soot and oil leaking from somewhere. Oh, and the oil changes, and the plug changes, and the stolen catalytic converters, and the coils that go bad, and the fan clutch, and the PCV system, and the fuel/oil/air filter maintenance, and the drive belt, and the injectors, and the exhaust manifold gaskets, and the muffler, and the yearly smog checks.
There are lots of reasons to like combustion vehicles outside of noise. The varying way they deliver power across the rev range is different in every vehicle, for one. One of my cars is a small displacement turbo motor and I love pinning it low in the rev range and feeling the power surge as the boost ramps up, and this is different under all kinds of conditions; different engine speeds, air temperatures, altitude...
A nice, tactile gear change is particularly pleasurable as well. And sounds do go along with all this, but they don't necessarily need to be loud.
I can imagine a bizarro version of this comment where a future person in a world where all of your caloric needs are met by a pill you take daily, ranting about how food enthusiasts insist on shoving their smelly food up your nostrils as you walk by an unnecessary-in-this-day-and-age restaurant, and how they only do it to annoy other people.
You can imagine a time when humans will no longer enjoy eating food. Ummm... Ok. I can imagine a time when we will all be brains in jars, but it's never gonna happen.
I didn't say it was going to happen. I was trying to come up with an equally silly comparison where someone argues that a person couldn't possibly enjoy sensory experience, and therefore the _only_ reason anybody could enjoy an ICE vehicle is to make loud noises in order to annoy a HN commenter.
Most of the people I know (including myself) that are into these kinds of cars buy used instead. Or they bought their car 50 years ago and still maintain it.
The noise aspect is actually one of the things that’s keeping me away from cheap used ICE and hybrid cars right now. Some amount of premium for full electric is worth not having to listen to an engine, particularly on models that aren’t expensive enough to come with good sound isolation.
The sound profile of a V8 is very different from the 4-cylinder and similar I’m shopping for of course, but the principle still applies. I also just don’t want to be my neighbor who finds it necessary to come and go at odd hours in the most abrasive manner possible.
I don't see loud cars dying off with muscle cars because I see more obnoxious BMW's along with a few Honda and Infinity with pop and gurgle tunes and open exhaust than Chargers, Mustangs, etc.
> There's just fewer and fewer people that need a loud noise maker to be happy,
Come to south Queens NYC and you'll find plenty of these people. There's a shop around the block from me that builds these noise makers and I get to hear them test drive them up and down the block.
They don't need to be that expensive. Allow people to opt into lower safety standards (you are comparing with a motorcycle after all) and add a carbon tax with a threshold so I can pay for less complicated emissions equipment.
Also, the loud sound != big. V8 != Loud, esp when many v6 motors are close in displacement to Ford's 5 liter V8.
Muscle cars are cool in the same way that smoking is cool. Impractical, dangerous, and expensive, but has strong associations with "cool" people: noir detectives, rebellious teenagers, action movie heroes, etc.
There are much cheaper and louder competitors to Harleys. It doesn't help that harleys are pretty strongly associated with Gen X and Boomers now. You don't usually see millennials or Gen z riding a harley.
Don’t even bother coming here with facts. Inflation is just a vibe, dude. Never mind that real median personal incomes are up 10 percent in the last decade.
New cars are being made. Sure this might kinda suck. But most of the enthusiast are driving and loving cars from the 1970's that have been out of production for decades right?
Saying EV's kill muscle cars is like saying Cars killed of horse riding.
Sure, there are less breeders for day-to-day travelling requirement style stuff, but the hobbyists keep everything going, and in some ways I would imagine it will bring round a golden era where these things aren't required to be useful as day-to-day options and can just be for fun
I got upgraded once to a yellow mustang in San Francisco. I admit, I wasn't unhappy about that. I reserved the economy car, I ended up driving around the valley in a yellow mustang. With a big smile on my face.
But it wasn't necessarily a great car. It had a lot of condensation on the inside of the car in the morning. I've never seen that in any other car. My suitcase barely fit in the back. Etc. A lot of form over function in that car.
I don't own a car. In fact, I've never owned one. I just rent cars when I need them, which isn't all that often these days. I live in Berlin which is a big city that wile car friendly (by European standards) is a bit of a PITA to get around in by car. And there's public transport. And it takes about fifty minutes to even leave the city in a car because you are stuck in stop start traffic. But if I ever move out, I might need a car.
If I ever buy a car, it will be electric. ICE cars are relics of the past. That mustang makes pleasing vroom vroom noises (and they are very pleasing) but that's about it. That's what they are optimized for. Even a modest EV has more torque (the whole point of a muscle car), better handling, etc. And they are just a lot more practical. EV performance breaks the illusion that a muscle car is, well, a muscle car.
As for EVs being boring. Many of them are. Especially those in the US because it's currently cut off from the rest of the world and not exactly state of the art at this point. If you want exciting EVs to lust after, go to China. They have them in every shape and size. The new xpeng looks great, there's the huawei car, the BYD u7 and u9. And some of those are quite affordable (in China). They are unobtainium elsewhere of course, which adds to their desirability.
I don't speak from experience of course, but I do watch a lot of EV reviews. There's this myth that EVs can't be fun. They can be. It's not about the noise but it is about the highly tunable driving experience, ridiculous torque, etc. What works for muscle cars (big engine, light weight car) also works for EVs. Some of the more affordable fun options are smaller, lighter cars. Even retro conversions of classic sports cars can be a lot of fun apparently. And some of those end up being lighter after their conversion and handle better than the original.
And I bet there are a few classic muscle car conversions. Are they still fun if you take away the vroom vroom noise but otherwise increase all the performance metrics? I don't know. It probably still is quite a lot of fun to drive one.
I agree with almost everything you said, except for the idea that ICE are a relic of the past.
I think they will be one soon, say, 25 years from now, but I don't think we're quite there yet, at least not in America where a family fun trip can be 5 days of driving thousands of miles for camping or tourism purposes.
Fast charging needs to be ubiquitous, and charging needs to be faster, batteries need to get better, ranges need to get longer, and EVs need to get cheaper, and you need to give the whole system time to transition once those do become available.
All of that has to happen in order to relicize the ice vehicle.
Just fyi, the Mustang was originally marketed as more of a young woman's car, and only certain models are considered to be "musclemen" cars. Rental agencies stock these because they are fun for tourists, so glad you enjoyed it. (SF Bay has a greenbelt, so recommend to all driving the 1 or 35 Skyline to Santa Cruz.)
I think a Mustang would be a great car to own, especially with a V-8 and manual transmission, but social media has ruined it for me. There are non stop videos of Mustangs crashing when leaving meets such as Cars With Coffee. Now, the Mustang brand is synonymous with this type of driving. If you bought one you would immediately be looked down upon.
Ford uses large empty volumes in or around their air cleaner boxes in their "beefy" vehicles, it gives them a distinct sound. For instance, my lexus has the same size engine as a Mustang GT, but it does not sound like a mustang GT at all, because the dual air cleaner boxes are maybe 3% larger than the filter that goes in them. On my ford turbocharged f-150 the air cleaner was like one of those 3 gallon shop vacuums in volume, with a 1.5" thick air filter. Smaller engine (by a whole liter!), but much growlier and beefier.
Mercedes did a neat thing with the exhaust on the C63, where you could flip a switch and switch between "neighborhood" and "open road" exhaust profiles. I think it's one of the best sounding cars ever made.
As a die hard car enthusiast. This makes perfect sense.
We are going through a culture change in society.
Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)
Combined with the brutal performance of modern EV cars. Muscle cars seem like a waste of time/energy/money/complexity. Logically it makes no sense.
I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.
Don't forgot to lay some of the blame on trucks, SUVs, and the chicken tax. [1] American car manufacturers aren't interested in making anything that can't be classified as a "light truck" because then they'd have to compete on a level playing field with foreign brands. So every kind of "car" has disappeared.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
This. If you are completely surrounded by light trucks as you grow up, then you are much less likely to ever think of actual cars (muscle or otherwise) at all. I grew up around 2000 lbs BMW 2002's (and the like) - a kind of vehicle that simply has vanished. So I could imagine lightweight sport sedans as a thing. If all you know are SUV's your concept of vehicle is going to be very different...
Auto journalists keep repeating in the same deadpan voice as the brainwashed soldiers from The Manchurian Candidate that Americans exclusively want big vehicles. It's not that there isn't some truth in that but the real truth is that (a) the publications won't get any chance to review vehicles if they don't toe the line [1] and (b) since the 1970s if you went to an American car dealer trying to buy a size S car they would try to sell you an L, looking for a size L they would try to sell you an XXL, etc. I remember going to car dealerships with my dad, there was a brief moment after the 2008 financial crisis that this wasn't the case, but by 2015 the major Japanese brands of Honda and Toyota were doing the same.
[1] One take on the fall of Intel was that they were "high on their own supply" for the last 15 years and journalists were too intimidated to tell them they were wrong with the exception of Charlie Demerjian
But the vehicles today are dumb big.
My second car was a 1978 Buick Riviera. 17.5 feet in length, two doors, rear wheel drive, 403cuin 8 cylinder. It weighs in at 3500 lbs, had 15 mph rated bumpers with shocks attached to the frame. Steel roll cage, double steel doors.
The car was a beast. You could fit 7 adults in the car and two dead bodies in the trunk.
My grandmother was t-boned in it. They straightened the door and replaced the glass and it was good as new.
That was a big car!
I wish I could buy a car like that with modern antilock brakes, transmission. Instead it’s all trucks and SUVs because people like my mother feel “safer” and like seeing from up high.
Look at the specs of a modern vehicle. Any contact over 5mph and you are replacing the plastic bumper. Actually have an airbag go off and you are probably looking at a totaled vehicle.
That really took me back. In the 80s my mom drove a mid-70s, 2-door Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. Itt was just under 17 feet long, also two doors, and I believe rear-wheel drive, with a fairly large engine. If memory serves (sigh, it often doesn't), my mom even called it "the beast". I laughed out loud at your "two dead bodies in the trunk" -- yup, checks out.
I'm torn, though, on your idea to have a car like that with modern (safety) features. I hate all the trucks and SUVs out on the road, and I drive a mid-sized sedan. And I agree with you on how easy it is to damage that car. But man those old cars were so heavy. I can't imagine getting decent gas mileage (or good BEV range) on one today.
Your perception about the safety of 1970s cars is off - you are massively less likely to die or be seriously injured in a car built in 2025 than any car in any car built in the 1970s.
70s and 80s cars were built for the little "whoopsie that's a mailbox", "didn't see you merging there" and "oh golly me, this snow sure is slick, and that's a ditch right there" mishaps that are the overwhelmingly dominant form of vehicle accidents. If you didn't actually care to fix things, many accidents that would be thousands of dollars today were $0 back then because required systems remained functional (that was the whole point of those mandated 10mph bumpers).
If your want to survive hitting stopped traffic at 40mph because you were too busy shitposting in traffic, modern car all the way. Depending on the details you may very well walk away without a scratch. It's really marvelous how good they are at keeping people uninjured, or at least alive.
But the overwhelming majority of people's driving experience reflects the former accident type, not the latter, hence why people have the opinions they do. And you can't really blame them. The odds of any given person being in an injurious accident in their life are low, lower still if you avoid a few key behaviors everyone agrees are bad.
In the 70s there we about 1/4 as many cars on the road in my country compared to today, but 5 times as many road deaths. People got killed or seriously injured all the time before improvement in safety standards. As a society having to replace 50 $1000 bumpers to save 1 person being seriously injured is a great deal.
You're basically using the outlier here to mislead about the typical/median and erroneously implying that they're more linked than they are.
40-50yr ago in the era of 10mph bumpers and whatnot the typical experience was superior because the typical driver is experiencing minor no-injury mishaps. Sliding off the road in the snow at low speed was a tow truck bill and only that, not $2k just to get the car drivable again.
Buuuuuuut, the results for the minority of drivers experiencing injurious crashes was way, way worse back then, as the people who screech about stats are happy to tell you.
What makes a car cheap to repair for the average user getting in the median or average accident and survivable for the guy who gets piss drunk and drives off a cliff are mostly tangential from each other. There's no reason we can't have both and there's no reasonable and non-malicious reason to hide or downplay the regression on this axis. Modern cars would likely perform way better than old cars if shrugging off minor accidents was not a decreased design priority due to stiffer cabins and other changes in construction.
The stuff that makes modern cars get totaled in minor hits is mostly a reflection of styling and fuel economy based choices.
The typical driver was significantly more likely to die back then. Modern cars shrug off small accidents too - you just end up with dents or scratches or other ugly but cosmetic body damage.
The thing that makes modern cars so easy to total is unibody construction. We do that to save on costs, but also because it leads to better ride quality and fuel efficiency.
Just search for crash tests of modern vs older cars to see which one is safer.
> Any contact over 5mph and you are replacing the plastic bumper. Actually have an airbag go off and you are probably looking at a totaled vehicle.
Admitedly I'm not a car guy, but isn't this by design? Crumple zones and all.
Bumpers from the 80s and early 90s were more substantial and outset from the vehicle. If a 5mph impact did anything to the bumper, it took the hit and the rest of the car was generally fine. The bumper was easy enough to replace because it was external to the vehicle.
Modern cars don't have external bumpers and what you see on the outside of the car is a "bumper cover". The actual bumper is under that and no longer spans the whole front/rear of the car to the sides. Many new front bumpers don't go past the headlights.
So in a 5mph crash in a modern car, the bumper cover (made of plastic and held on by plastic) takes the impact and generally gets destroyed. Replacing it costs several hundred dollars in parts before paint (because they're all painted). There's also more labor involved in replacing it because it's so integrated to the car. Bumper covers now clip into both fenders, core support, and undercladding and removal means working with all of those parts, then lining up body lines after.
I think it's less a comment about serious accidents and more a comment on getting rear ended at a stop light now costing $600+ in repairs even if your airbags didn't pop.
And cars from the 30's-50's were often tank-like by comparison. You get into a high-speed accident in one of those and they would just shovel out the raspberry jam you turned into, hose down the inside, tug on the frame a little to line everything back up and put it back out on the lot.
Those cars did have seatbelts as standard equipment. Most people didn’t wear them because it wasn’t the law.
The zone's #1 job is to buy enough time for the airbags to inflate during a crash at speed. Occupants moving forward toward the space the airbags will occupy as the vehicle stops and then being hit by an airbag attempting to occupy that space would be bad.
The degree to which crumple zones attenuate forces felt in a crash is fairly minimal in low speed crashes because in order to have enough time for airbags to inflate in a 100+mph crash they are necessarily quite stiff.
I believe you're misunderstanding the security and safety design nature of modern cars vs. older ones from something like the 70's, 80s or earlier.
I've seen a number of crash test videos comparing modern 21st century cars in collisions with solid, unmovable obstacles at high speed, compared to those old cars, and while yes, the old cars had external features that let them more cheaply and functionally deal with minor accidents, they would be totaled by any truly heavy impact, with lethal results for their drivers.
Modern cars on the other hand may be more externally fragile even for minor hits and easily get damaged in ways that lead to thousands in repair costs for all their interconnected, electronically sensitive alarms and sensors, but for enduring high-velocity impacts, they're often fucking tanks when it comes to fundamentally protecting their occupants. Under that fragile exterior of any decent modern car is a remarkable security construct that isn't easily visible, right up until it shows its mettle after your car slams into a wall, and keeps you alive, at some speed that would have annihilated some supposedly tough muscle car from the 70s.
Go search for these on YouTube, they viscerally showcase the difference in the best (and most entertaining) possible way, by trying to catastrophically destroy both kinds of car.
There's a lot of electronic tracking, spyware, junkware, over-complication pushing that I absolutely despise about the modern auto manufacturing industry (partly because of legal mandates and partly out of general shittiness from the makers themselves) but for safety, they're impressive.
EDIT: Here's just one example. The occupants of the Malibu would have survived this crash with minor injuries. Anyone driving the 59 Bel Air would have been turned into a mangled disaster of broken bones and crushed body parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoShPiK6878
A lot of this is true, but also, look at the safety records of those modern vehicles. They protect the driver a LOT better. A totaled car is just a car. Getting paralyzed or killed is a lot harder to fix.
Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan make plenty of trucks in the USA, they get around the chicken tax directly. The move to trucks and SUVs seems to be more about consumer sentiment that I can't really understand (I'm a big fan of sedans), it isn't just some hack around the tax system.
There’s a floor on how cheap a vehicle can be made to conform to the current safety and fuel economy requirements, the margin is greater for more expensive cars. Manufacturers are incentivising bigger cars.
it is profit for auto makers, not consumer sentiment. larger vehicles have larger price tags and larger profit margins.
Remember that the US auto companies spent billions of dollars in marketing and lying to people that they "need" vehicles the size of tanks.
Isn't some of it an arms race? I partially have a large vehicle because it's unsafe to be in a small vehicle if I get in a crash with a truck or EV.
They make people think that.
The fact is that modern cars have astonishingly effective safety features that are likely to get you alive out of most crashes regardless of the size of your vehicle. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety publishes data that shows that larger vehicles are safer but it is not like you die in the smaller car most of the time, but rather you are more likely to break your ankle or something.
If your vehicle goes under the tractor pulled by a semi (any size) or if it flips over the guardrail because it's too big to be held by the guardrail you do die.
If larger vehicles were safer then you'd expect the deaths per unit distance driven for the US to be good - when it's actually quite bad?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
See also: the excellent safety ratings of the Miata, even though it's the smallest car you can get short of Smart or imported kei trucks.
My understanding is that safety ratings are relative to the class of car. So if you have a small car with excellent ratings and a large car that doesn't mean they will have the same survivability if they crash into each other.
but larger vehicles also flip easier, so i'm not sure until we have some scientific paper about this.
No one forced people to buy the larger vehicles when they came on the market. People choose to buy vehicles that let them sit higher and take up more space, when smaller alternatives are readily available.
People want vehicles the size of tanks. Auto companies are spending billions of dollars to get people to buy their respective tank-sized vehicles, not to turn people onto the segment in general.
I've heard people say "people want vehicles the size of tanks" in discussions like this but I've never heard "I want a vehicle the size of a tank" although that person exists.
It seems like a different world but before the pandemic if you wanted to buy a compact car you would go to the dealer and find out they don't have any new ones, you'll have to settle for used, they say factory washed out in a flood. Well they have 100 SUVs made in the same factory lined up that nobody wants to buy that are $7000 off.
From a survey of Canadians in 2022 [1]: "We find that SUV drivers view their vehicles as functionally superior to smaller cars in terms of safety, space for lifestyle, handling, and fun. Symbolically, SUVs are seen as a “status symbol” that can communicate a number of images, such as being “successful”. SUV drivers are more likely to see these vehicles as common and “approved” in their social networks, and tend to downplay any negative societal impacts such as increased GHG emissions. Across respondents intending to buy an SUV, willingness-to-downsize to a smaller vehicle was highest under financial incentives (for buying or using a car) or disincentives (for buying or using an SUV)."
I personally don't understand how you could consider an SUV better for handling or fun, but denying people's views doesn't make them not hold them.
1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22146...
> I personally don't understand how you could consider an SUV better for handling or fun
This is an imagination problem. There are certain categories of automotive use cases which SUVs are designed to be superior. In those, being in a vehicle designed to handle better at the task is better fun!
For example, taking an SUV off road.
>For example, taking an SUV off road.
Not even. Buying thrift store furniture is a wildly different experience in a modern crossover than it is a sedan or even an old station wagon.
I drove some gravel Forest Service roads in the past in a sub-compact (who knew the only way up from Oregon to Seattle was via USF roads if you didn't want to take the express way?), and I definitely wish I had more clearance for that use case. If I lived in the woods, an SUV might make sense.
We have more sedans here in the city (Seattle) because our parking space frankly are too small, and even then I see way too many SUVs trying to cram into a parking space labelled compact.
I want a vehicle the size of a tank.
Or at least, a vehicle the size of a Hummer H1. But, would be willing to try out a Marauder, because they look like they’re a blast.
I had tiny sports cars growing from 16-30 years old. They were fun in a different way.
1. https://www.topgear.com/car-news/modified/behold-500bhp-295k...
2. https://www.motor1.com/news/27190/marauder-armored-vehicle-f...
I have a family of five and we’ve managed with a single vehicle for basically the last 20 years. So I’ve been in minivan mode a long time now. Recently I went car shopping with my son and it’s crazy to me how much more limited sight lines are in the smaller sedans. You have to be much more active leaning and looking around. I don’t know that I need a tank, but I absolutely love the minivan for driver visibility.
The data speaks for itself. Honda offers the civic and accord and the CRV outsells them both. SUVs are much higher utility than a sedan for pretty much the same price and same gas mileage.
the data does indeed speak for itself. Honda's Civic and Accord are among the top four selling models for Honda in the USA.
As someone who lives in a city, I'm not sure what I'd do with a car that is smaller than a tank. If it's a small car then it's probably for local trips and super inconvenient to park / re-park / etc. I want a big car to comfortably fit my family, our outdoor toys, and maybe even tow something.
Even if I lived outside a city, what do I gain by driving a smaller car? Going from 35 to 55 mpg? Parking is plentiful and equally convenient for big cars these days.
most people want all those things but reality they tow something maybe once a year, that's marketing working.
Pareto principle is strong when it comes to towing.
meanwhile the entire world from japan to the uk to brazil to south africa are fine to go grocery shopping and take their family out in their normal sized car. in the city.
cities are better with fewer cars and better public transit. and you dont need a tank. i didnt know your viewpoint even existed.
Do they actually want that, or have people been influenced by incessant marketing? Car manufacturers have strong tax reasons to prefer building SUVs over sedans, and their marketing reflects that.
People with families have been fooling around with larger vehicles for some time: station wagons -> minivans -> SUVs -> CUVs. It's not new.
Most of the time people drive SUVs alone.
I go for walks in the morning and there's a road bottleneck and it's hilarious and sad to see the cars queueing up on both sides, huge ones, with a single person in them, every morning.
I do own a station wagon, and it's shorter than most SUVs, and I use it for long trips, but let's be realistic, that's not what most drives are.
>Most of the time people drive SUVs alone.
Most of the time people drive sedans alone.
If people bought based purely on passenger need 99% of vehicles on the road should be 2-seat coupes, pickups and vans.
I agree, I was just answering to the "people with families drive large cars" in general, and wrote SUV accidentally.
I think people want tanks because all their neighbours are driving tanks.
> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.
I view it as much like having an appreciation of Steam Trains and older aircraft!
Still interesting and the best are machines worthy of our ongoing attention.
FWIW I own an old Porsche 911 and an alarmingly fast EV.
I love them both.
When I get back in to the old 911, I think to myself, how the bloody hell was this even legal! It feels dangerous and exciting all at the same time. It's an event every time I turn the key and it starts making noises and the gauges spring into life and lights and switches start glowing. Then you turn the key from a cold start and listen to the sound, and you get to know exactly the state of tune. You dont even need to drive it very fast or very far and it makes you feel alive in a way my EV never does!
Now when I get in and drive my EV, it works in an astonishingly safe and effective way every time. When you stamp on the accelerator it will immediately rocket forwards in a way that makes the occupants of the car feel sick LOL
The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think.
But as I say, it's like being a Steam Train enthusiast. They are what they are, from a time when they did what they did.
> The acceleration in an EV tapers off, whereas in an older performance cat the performance builds in a more exciting way I think.
I think this might be like the yamaha v-max motorcycle. It wasn't as fast as other motorcycles, but the way the throttle opened up at a certain rpm range made the boost seem exciting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_VMAX#V-Boost
Ferraris are the same way. They've got an incredible top end that no EV will ever match.
I’ve come to similar conclusions in vehicle choices.
Current daily is a fast EV. The next project car I build will be some flavor of an outlaw SWB 911
There is something about it being analog that feels great. I have the same feeling for older Ducatis
As a former gear head there is also the perception issue.
Look, no way about it, most of the drivers of muscle cars today are grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them.
The next big demo for muscle cars is via exorbitant leases that select for idiots. Which yeah, now we're talking younger men with testosterone, at least.
Being an old man now too, I'm fairly certain that dumb testosterone laden guys with a loud and fast car are still gonna get the girls, but I can't be 100 on that anymore.
Still thats the next demo down. It's mostly old farts on Harleys and in Mustangs (unless you're near Paris Island or San Diego, of course)
Another big problem is that performance is so much better than it was in the golden age of muscle cars. Lots of BMWs and Civics today would blow off the fastest car imaginable in '68-70. Of course the latest muscle cars also improved, with engines that are like 400- 1000 hp (really just that Charger, but a teen in my neighborhood has one).
That's just really a dangerous amount of power for a daily driver. A lot of electric drivers don't realize how much the potential power is taken down in daily driving to keep it safe. But Camaro LT's have a sport mode where the backend can get loose with just a squirt of acceleration.
Cars like that are insane. It's just not safe to drive cars like that on city street anywhere near their potential.
> grey headed old men. They're the only ones that can afford them.
Yes, the economics have changed. And so has scalability.
For today's young adults, vehicle cost and total cost of ownership have made ownership of private vehicles another "shining artifact of the past." [0]
But you know what else? Populated cities have dense traffic. Racing with full acceleration to reach the next intersection's red light is obviously futile.
People are more worried about having a roof and four walls.
[0] to quote L. Cohen
>Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)
It's not freeing because it's been saddled with all sorts of financial burdens raising the cost while at the same time younger people are poorer than ever.
It's not just cars, tons of traditional "coming of age" things are going away for the same reasons.
A muscle car is as much a visceral experience as it is a means of transportation, and never under-sell the fun of driving a slow car fast. Modern cars are sensory deprivation chambers that turn the joy of driving into the tedium of transporting oneself from one place to another.
We're decades past the time when a 1960s car was remotely competitive on any measurable aspect of performance but, just as rock climbing is not a valid competitor for taking a train/ski lift/whatever to the top of a mountain, there will always be those that revel in the joy of doing something that calls to our more primitive selves.
Muscle cars are the essence of being young... they're unreasonable, loud, reckless, and beautiful.
As a former gearhead, I must say that an EV with get-up-and-go has been worth the tradeoff for me. Sure, I miss the roar of the V8, and the manual shifting. But the instant torque of an EV is so satisfying, and the low center of gravity is fun to toss around. And I don't miss all of the gas station stops, oil changes, transmission fluid changes, fouled sensors, overheating, spark plug changes, clutch replacement, brake pad changes, dripping fluids, fumes, shouted conversations with friends over the engine noise, et cetera.
I remember, years ago, reading on Slashdot about "ampheads" who seemed to have just as much fun playing with performance EVs as my dad did tuning hot rods in 1960s California. I think EVs can be enormously cool, with all the advantages you describe, but most of the commercially available ones are, again, "smartphones on wheels", built for convenience and tethered to the manufacturer. I would love to see more of an enthusiast EV scene build up, maybe involving kit cars with a fully analog drivetrain you can repair with off-the-shelf parts.
There are still suspension tuning parts for major ev brands like Tesla.
I was at a track day last year in my bmw 3 series and there was a Tesla 3 in my run group in front of me, "lowered" slightly with Eibach springs.
How many sessions did it last without access to a supercharger?
> I’m currently going through an identity crisis (as a gearhead) as a result of this.
I would challenge you that it is your proclivity for logic that is causing your identity crisis. If you enjoy a certain aesthetic, the pursuit of that aesthetic is reason enough. You are already putting constraints on the concept of a car because strapping a rocket on wheels with wings is going to have much more performance than an EV. Redefine your pursuit to be the most performant muscle car and everything is squared. No identity crisis needed.
You are perfectly correct.
I’m morphing love of modifying cars away from performance numbers but into a way to build mechanical art and enjoy emotional moments with other humans.
I’ve realized that was the whole point all along. EV or IC it doesn’t matter. Just the statements above
The kids yearn for JDMs
Do they? It seems like its the 30/40 somethings that yearned for the JDMs back when we were young, who are the ones still yearning for the JDMs.
I understand so completely! I am not old enough for muscle cars, but I liked cars that were big as I was growing up. Like I had an old 944 (loved that) an early WRX, a Mark Vii GTI-- all manuals. I realized my favorite cars were manuals with rear wheel drive.
During the pandemic I got a Camaro convertible with a manual. I love that car but it is hard to defend on functional grounds. A Tesla plaid will blow it off on the line. There are a lot of cars that are ten times more functional that are as good or better on the track.
I have kids who don't care about cars, took their time getting their driver license. As someone who grew up California I can't understand that. But cars allowed me to do things they can do without cars. And they live in an objectively safer and more stressful world, so I can see why they don't want to add driving to it.
Here's what I like about what I drive. It's fun, silly and orange. People look at it and know I like my car but they don't think I am rich dude with a fancy Porsche or Mercedes. All kinds of very pedestrian cars are faster, but I live in Los Angeles and I get to enjoy the weather.
I'm not a gearhead, but a car admirer. Bought my first fun car recently (a 2001 MR2 Spyder - probably my last fun car).
I think we're a long way off self-driving cars in earnest, but we're in the shorter term leaving behind the idea of cars as something where their performance in some way correlates with social status. As hard as you try, you can't deny that element is there for gearheads and tuners - it's writ large across the Fast film franchise.
I think there will always be a desire for the "vroom vroom" factor, as well as the ability to work on it without an EE degree.
I don't think it's ever been logical but it ticks important emotional boxes so that makes sense.
I'm old and I drive a refurb'd Leaf and have never ever cared that my vehicle was not sexy. I've never been "normal" so never had the appeal but I understand it.
I agree, like there's always been a desire for a well-groomed horse.
Even outside of EVs, cars have gotten to the point where you're barely driving them anymore, anyway, you're more of a "human in the loop". You can't really see out of them anymore (other than the windshield, of course), so most people have stopped trying and just rely on the "systems".
* Don't change lanes if the blinky light on your side mirrors tells you not to
* Don't back up unless the image in the backup camera tells you it's safe
* Stop reversing when the beeping from the park distance sensors get too insistent
* AEB, lane departure warning, rear traffic assist radar, etc.
Don't get me wrong, people have used this "old man yells at cloud" point of view to call "real cars" dead for many decades; fuel injection, ABS, automatic transmissions, whatever. But we've definitely gotten to a tipping point where most of the fun is gone.
I'm not saying we should go back to x% more deaths per year by getting rid of XYZ nanny system, I'm just saying car enthusiasm is largely dead in new cars.
And good riddance?
Car culture has killed livable cities and I am not going to miss loud and obnoxious cruisers playing games on public roads
Stuffy middle class on up white people killed cities. Stuffy middle class on up white people killed care culture. Stuffy middle class on up white people killed... just about everything.
All those tropes, jokes, memes and other culture crapping on various slices of that broader demographic don't come from nowhere.
Seriously. I've had more fun on my bicycle than I ever did during my car phase.
Agreed. And e-bikes are not just practical now, they are actually a thrill when climbing hills.
Doesn't have to be just a phase, I love both!
I spent most of my working life doing body work, and then I was a mechanic. Kind of ruined the magic for me.
Bike rack on my Camaro! But I am fine with car culture passing, it makes sense.
I'm more mixed. I love that I live in a very walkable area, and our next move (but not for ~10 years) is hopefully to live carless in a European city.
And yet, I mourn the loss of what we once had, and I'm trying to scoop up fun cars while I still can.
Yeah, I like cars too, but I also find myself wishing they would remove more than just the 1 lane from Grand Ave in Oakland.
I don't think that the new era of 'EV appliance culture' will have any positive impact on urban planning compared to 'car culture'.
There are more vehicles on the roads than ever before, and each of those distracted travellers demands a direct route from home to destination whether they're driving or being driven by a robo-taxi.
I assure you there would be a lot less life in the city if you lived and died in the same village you were born in, like most people through history.
Ok. I’m talking about the concerted effort to kill trains and public transit by the auto/oil industry.
LA was beautiful in the 20s. Could have been a world class metropolis instead of a sprawling hellscape of seven lane interstates where it takes 1.5hr to travel 15 miles, choked by pollution.
Go watch Roger Rabbit again. Pay attention to the villain instead of the foxy redhead.
If you want a "raw" driving experience, you need to go on a race track in a "proper" race car. I use the quotes because you could come up with very diffferent definitions for them depending on your particular perspective. Amateur car races are a thing, btw.
I'm glad that all these assistants exist for road vehicles. I think of myself as a fairly disciplined driver (welly who am I kidding, really?), but these systems have saved my bacon more than once over the years.
> you're barely driving them anymore
It's worse with tesla - the Plaid has removed most driver controls.
If you're a car guy and buy a 1000hp+ vehicle, I think you would want a drive select or turn signal stalk.
You can't flash your lights. wipers are not under your control. if you're sticking out into traffic, you don't know if the car will guess correctly that you want to back up... or pull out. nonsense.
Then you can be an old man gently oiling the steam engine at the museum you volunteer for.
> Many younger kids don’t view cars as the gateway to freedom and coming of age experiences. (Which is fine)
No shit...
> The average monthly car loan payment in the U.S. is $745 for new vehicles and $521 for used ones
> In the first quarter of 2025, the overall average auto loan interest rate was 6.73% for new cars and 11.87% for used cars.
My dad is a gearhead's gearhead. The sort of guy who, if there were a car from the 1930s to the 1970s visible in a movie, could identify make, model, and year at a glance.
He had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado he was very fond of. Drove that thing everywhere. He had to junk it -- the whole thing -- because some rain got into the sun roof and messed up one of the computers -- and aftermarket motherboards were not available. If he were willing to entertain computers in cars before, he wasn't afterward. Purely mechanical is where it's at. Me, I'm concerned that encroaching electronics means turning cars into smartphones on wheels. Things that want to shut down and do software updates when you want to go for a drive. And heaven help you if the update has bugs in it, or if the manufacturer decides to try out innovative new UI paradigms! (Patch 4.3.21: You can now use the gearshift to select songs in the media player! Great!) And that's before we get into the "features that are in the car, but disabled and paywalled with nothing but a software flag" issue.
I have a feeling that the enshittification of vehicles means there will be a small but vocal community of young people who rediscover the joys of purely mechanical vehicles from the 1960s and 1970s, the same way young people have discovered and appreciated 80s music, or video games from around the turn of the millennium.
A related issue: Analog radio is going away. It used to be that you could put together a crude but serviceable AM radio using a handful of spare parts. Kids would build them with components bought for a few bucks at Radio Shack. This could let you receive, for example emergency broadcasts in a pinch. If everything is converted to packetized digital radio, or worse, TCP/IP "radio", suddenly the complexity threshold you need to pick up a broadcast jumps.
Some of the most fascinating technologies to me are ones that are relatively simple, but which get you far. The Polynesians were able to explore much of the vast Pacific Ocean using sturdy canoes and navigation techniques that required no special equipment, just observation and a body of knowledge passed down through the generations. Our complex culture seems to be losing the ability to build and make use of simpler technology (though as concerns marine navigation, the US Navy has reintroduced navigation by LORAN and astronavigation as a part of cadet training).
Classic muscle cars are obsolete. Most cars today have 0-60 times a 1970s Dodge Challenger could only dream of.[1] Plus, they can now go around corners.
Here's an old movie: "Hot Rod Girl" (1956) [2] The opening scenes are of a real drag strip in Southern California. Technical advice from the San Fernando Drag Strip and the National Hot Rod Association. Accelerations are so low that those things would be obstructing traffic on a freeway onramp today.
[1] https://www.0-60specs.com/dodge/challenger-0-60-times
[2] https://archive.org/details/hot_rod_girl_1956
The original hot rods were invented because young people could literally go to a junkyard and build them. They were practically free junk/trash. It was a totally different world. When built from junkyard parts became $100,000 it became a lot less popular.
Americans today are also a lot more stuck up/image conscious. Grandma thought it was cool/impressive grandpa built a car out of junk, the average date today would call that worse than a poverty wagon and make someone undateable. I have a stick shift Ford Focus ST. It's incredibly fun to drive, practical, good for the environment, but it definitely turns dates away because it's a poverty wagon.
Acceleration times say nothing about the character of a car.
Anyone can launch a Model S or Taycan at insane accelerations just by pushing a pedal and letting the computer sort things out.
Trying to do so in a 1970s Camaro or a 1980s Sierra XR4 requires skill and practice whilst listening to the howl of the engine, feeling the texture of the road through the steering and sensing the suspension loading-up. All of that has been lost.
Driving has been reduced to an ordeal to be ensured with as little interaction with the vehicle as possible.
The point of a vehicle was always to take you from point a to point b.
Perhaps a certain minority enjoys pushing buttons, pulling levers and pressing pedals to move your butt around, heck I enjoy it too.
But when I am leaving for work at 5:30AM I am much happier to be seated comfortably in a train and letting someone else move me around while I take a nap
Since I can’t respond to the dead comment that replied to me, I’ll respond to my own comment.
On the 5:59 train from Zürich to Basel, there is no chance of this happening. It’s an extremely pleasant ride on the DB ICE, up until Basel.
On the afternoon or evening trains(there’s one every 30 minutes) I have also never felt threatened. Although I typically get a 1st class ticket on my way back home because it gets kind of crowded with all the families and retired folks in 2nd. class, and I prefer to nap in peace.
If my company weren’t paying for my tickets, I’d probably go in the 2nd class as well.
Perhaps your society has some issues if you feel threatened in public spaces.
Yeah same here, public transport in Spain is clean and nice :3
I'm so happy not having to own a car anymore and I hope I never have to drive again. Also, €22 for all my travel needs for a month is amazing
>The point of a vehicle was always to take you from point a to point b.
Yeah, and once society progressed beyond the bare minimum to accomplish that goal a whole host of ancillary nice to have bonus goals (style, comfort, etc) opened up.
[dead]
Driving has been reduced to an ordeal to be ensured with as little interaction with the vehicle as possible.
Let's hope that trend continues, ideally to the point that humans need to do nothing besides specify where they want to go. We're too careless to be trusted with the responsibility.
There's just something spiritual about the rumble and cadence of a cammed muscle car..
Yeah that's called 100 years of automobile lobby propaganda through Hollywood &co that somehow convinced people car is freedom and gas is health.
An opinion that basically distills to "everyone who likes a thing that I disagree with has been indoctrinated by bad forces" doesn't exactly make whoever peddles it look intelligent regardless of what context it arises in.
> doesn't exactly make whoever peddles it look intelligent regardless of what context it arises in.
Contrary to people praising the transcendental spiritual experience of burning gas and shifting gear, who obviously are the creme de la creme of what an independent and strong human intellect is capable of.
I also liked cars as a kid, because of all the money funnelled in toy cars, car movies, car games, car magazines, at some point I realised it was just a gigantic multi generational ad campaign from the beginning, I started questioning my belief, and has it turns out I didn't really know why I dreamed of owning these expensive metal boxes, it felt like a very artificial goal, almost as if it was pushed on my from the outside...
Let me be clearer. I don't care whether you're saying that people who like cars have been brainwashed by big oil or the people who buy highly processed manufactured food have been brainwashed by the food industry, it's a stupid baseline belief to have.
Most people who like their cars and their Oreos or whatever else do so genuinely.
Food is a good example actually, for example nestle spent decades making coffee "cool" in japan even though it was never a cultural hit there, and Japanese people do "genuinely" love their sweet caffeinated drinks, because both are a drug so why wouldn't they love it! I'm still not going to defend nestle
https://medium.com/better-marketing/nestle-japan-coffee-4640...
How many people finally buy their 911 thinking they'll have "made it" just to realise it's yet another trinket trophy of the never ending rat race? If my comment made even a single person question their opinions I'll be content, as for the others I don't really care, it's not my time nor money, do what you please
I think you underestimate the power of marketing and propaganda.
I think you underestimate the influences on your own thinking. #renégirard
There is something "spiritual" about a dial up modem handshake as well...
Huh? That's like comparing the purr of a lion to the screeching of a stray cat.
Was dem einen sin Uhl, ist dem andern sin Nachtigall.
But which is which?
You can still do all the things you bemoan in your post. On a race track. Away from me and others just trying to get from A to B.
You can still have one today, but its a Sunday driver for sure
Dig those Dekatrons!
A 2023 Dodge Charger GT V6 does 0-60 in 6.4 s
My 2018 Subaru Forester does 0-60 in 6.3 s
Imagine you're getting smoked by a 7 year old dad-mobile with paddle shifters. And I'm not even running a Cobb tune. That isn't a muscle car. That's a synthol car.
https://www.burnsmotors.com/cdjr-research/dodge-charger-0-60...
The Charger GT is essentially the rental-spec charger. Not a great comparison.
Besides, Muscle cars are often more about torque and the front-engine rwd layout. In the 70s they were all slow as shit but could still peel tires and do burnouts.
Also, for those in-the-know, the mid 2000s Honda Accord v6 was about as fast as the mustang of that time, but obviously drove very different.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, but this comparison is odd. You’re comparing the fastest Forester (XT turbocharged) to the slowest V6 Charger. The slowest V8 Charger does 0-60 in 5.1 seconds. The fastest one does 0-60 in 3.6 seconds.
6.3 is not fast these days.
I don't worry about being smoked by any Subaru (loved my WRX in the day) but dual motor Teslas? I ease off.
Now compare your Forester to the V8 Charger with the base Hemi. Who would win?
A Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat does 0-60 in 3.6s.
A Suzuki GSX-1000 can do it in 2.5s.
Rivian R1T 2.5 seconds
https://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/rivian-0-60-mph-t...
2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance - 2.8 seconds
Getting smoked by a soccer mom
You're right next to the point yet you've missed it. The Rivian has a wide range of performance _options_. With only the "2025 Rivian R1T Ascend Quad Max" having the performance you've quoted. How is the "ascend quad max" segment ideologically different from the "srt hellcat" segment?
Likewise the _standard_ Tesla 3 has quite a bit different 0 to 60 times than what you've quoted here.
Do you really think your soccer mom is buying the "performance" edition of the vehicle and not the "long range?" Which proves the point, performance options are not dead, and EVs only continue the trend, they don't obviate it.
Ooh this is fun. The $72K Xiaomi SU7 Ultra does 0-62mph in 1.98s. Do I win the teddy bear? :)
https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1145870_2025-xiaomi-su7-...
Yes, yes you do.
Husband of a hockey mom here. Yes, they do get the performance model. And even the long range dual motor models are silly quick.
How is that any different from the charger base model versus the hellcat?
Crotch Rocket vs Muscle Car?
Hopefully not head-on.
The crazy thing is there's nothing stopping manufacturers from making electric muscle cars. Instead, we get boring aerodynamic cloned appliances sold as "SUVs".
As I've grown older though, I noticed that the less I need to drive, the happier I am. So I don't really need more than an appliance, I suppose.
Arguably they're ALL muscle cars, at least in the US. Nobody's making small, lightweight, low range, low power EVs.
Nissan, Chevrolet, Fiat, and Hyundai/Kia all make small, lightweight, low range, low power EVs.
With a 0-60 of 9 seconds, the Fiat 500e may be too low power. A 1993 Honda Civic is quicker than that and if you optioned a Civic coupe up to what comes standard (AC, power doors and windows, cruise) on the 500e, it was $14,700 in 1993[1], which is ~$32k today, which almost the same exact price of a 500e.
And you even get more than one airbag now!
[1]https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1993-honda-civic-2/
I honestly thought both the Leaf and 500e were no longer on sale in the US, since I don't see new ones in the Bay Area, and they used to be everywhere. That's my bad.
The Bolt is also a great example, although it's pretty quick. In fact, a quick chatgpt search says both the Bolt and Leaf SV are over 200hp, so not a lot less than my 258hp Model 3 that's undoubtedly heavier.
The Kona EV completely slipped my mind; my sister has the hybrid version though. Although, the EV is a >$30k crossover but they _do_ sell a 138hp version so it's hardly a muscle car. There are no small cheap Hyundai EVs in the US.
Something like the Honda E is something I'd love to see in the US, although it's definitely a premium-priced product for a small car.
I’ve been driving a Nissan LEAF for the last decade. It’s exactly what you describe (and has been great as a city car for a two-car, two-driver household).
> Nobody's making small, lightweight, low range, low power EVs.
Small low power EVs are everywhere.
Unless you’re setting the bar so low that you expect a tiny 50-100 mile range car. That’s not going to happen because everyone would pass right over it and get an affordable EV with multiple times the range for only marginally more cost.
What would an EV muscle car look like? Tesla Model 3 seems to check a lot of boxes. Definitely not noise or muscle car power delivery, but those seems like unrealistic goals for an EV
IMO what made American muscle cars special was their combination of power + unique styling + price. Yeah they were noisy (Which some really liked) and sometimes impractical, but that was okay because of they weren't trying to be everything to everyone.
A Model 3 might check a lot of boxes, but its styling is definitely not unique, and the rest of car itself is tying to appeal to as many as possible.
Insecure dudes seem to derive insouciant-to-proud self-satisfaction from inflicting noise, visual, and actual pollution on the rest of us which partially explains coal rollers and gaudy, loud motorcycles.
FWiW there's not a lot of insecurity in the B&S boys that hit the Ute Musters for the circle work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mtFYUOvYs8
A couple of thousand acres, big sheds, a couple of silos, a few trucks and combine harvesters and a go hard or go home frequently sideways attitude 'll do that, it seems.
To each, their own, I guess. Yeah, I get needing 4WD for snow and mountains and reasonable capabilities suitable for farm and work, but excess is excess. I also don't understand why people put up with highway princess trucks that cost $60k+. My dad's shop '78 Chevy C-10 Scottsdale lacked headrests, cupholders, and a radio only the latter of which was added. You used to be able able to buy cheap-ish fleet trims of trucks if you didn't want a bunch of plastic and extra nonsense, I don't know if that's still the case; I wonder if Toyota makes fleet versions of Tundras (made near where I live) or Tacomas (if they're not discontinuing tacos) given it doesn't sell Hi-Lux here.
It's not for me but I'm adjacent to rural and mining industries and understand the joy of making an OTT desktop computing rig or near industrial home-lab.
In a similar manner a mechanic that works on aircraft engines for crop dusters capable of short take off and landing with heavy loads and drafting over fields with low clearance can also enjoy tuning the heck out of a V-8 and taking it to the limit.
It's not insecurity driving that behavior, it's confidence veering into over confidence.
You can see that same let's have a go and push it mentality in building MudCrab underwater EV cars
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-30/nt-world-record-darwi...
and MudSkipper not boat not aircraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ILbQHnHPnY
The vaporware Telser Roadster 2.0 with CATs. I don't think it will ever be released at this point.
https://techstory.in/teslas-roadster-2-0-still-coming-still-...
See the 2024+ Dodge Charger Daytona.
Same here. Although I own a nice car I much prefer my ebike which is not affected by London's 1000+ fine issuing cameras, 20 mph limits, jams, congestion charges, ULEZ charges, parking fees, road closed signs, construction works etc.
There's a similar issue to muscle cars in that although in theory my thing can do 155 mph down some autobahn, in practice it's way slower than the 15 mph ebike in town.
I disagree with the article substantially; the truth is that Dodge is a dying brand, and the charger and challenger were never practical muscle cars - mostly because Dodge is less part of any racing series. The Ford Mustang is having a resurgence in actually being a sports car, because Ford is investing in Lemans and Imsa.
Honda, Toyota, Cadillac, Ford are the major performance cars these days... And Hyundai has a much bigger investment than Dodge. The consolidation of Mercedes, VW, Porsche, and Audi is an interesting challenge to the segment; Bmw and Mazda are also in the game.
I can't remember where I heard this but it stuck with me: Teslas are the new American muscle car - fast in a straight line, but otherwise poor build quality and lacking the attention to drivers' experience you get from European brands.
As a person who owned multiple Teslas I really don’t understand the “poor build quality” sentiment. What other car at the same price point has better build quality? And if one or two do, does that make the Teslas build quality “poor”?
I had a MINI. That was a build quality disaster. Major engine issues after only three years. I now have a Silverado 1500 LTZ. It has obvious build quality issues. Interior isn’t as good as it used to be. Gearbox has a banging sound. My Teslas seem so much better than either of those or most other cars I interact with really. I sat in my friends Toyota Camry the other day. The interior seemed so much cheaper, the sound quality so much worse, the cabin was so much more loud than my humble Model 3. What about my car has poor build quality that I am oblivious to?
Build quality is less about how the interior seems cheap or not but about tolerances. A Camry can have cheap plastic everywhere, but if the connection points don't rattle, it's a "better" build quality. But the truth of it is that the majority of people don't notice the build quality. A cup holder is a cup holder, even if it slightly rattles or is slightly off center.
The main example is the panel gaps on Tesla body. They can be offset by a "large" amount compared to other car brands, but it doesn't harm anything and you have to look for it to be noticeable.
So do Tesla's have a bad build quality? Yes, if you define it by tolerances, but no if you define it by "Does it feel low quality". And the debate online is largely with people talking past each other with differing definitions of what build quality actually means.
Some examples of build quality issues are the metal sheets that are glued on and coming off during driving. As well as accelerator pedals that get stuck.
I think the parent covered this,
> They can be offset by a "large" amount compared to other car brands
> if you define it by "Does it feel low quality"
The funny thing is that whenever I get into a Tesla, the interior just feels kinda cheap and of low-quality/low-effort design. That's not saying anything about their build quality, though.
> What other car at the same price point has better build quality?
Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, Audi, Honda, Toyota, Accura, Lexus....
It’s one of those things where you can claim Teslas have poor build quality and you get a free pass, but you will be “source?”d to death if you contradict it.
I’ve had several Teslas and even currently have their supposed disaster of a truck and have not encountered this alleged build quality issue. My car before that, a Honda Civic, spent much more time in the shop purely on account that it needed oil changes and expensive scheduled maintenances once or twice a year.
[flagged]
Yeah yeah, Elon bad, etc
I have two teslas and the build quality is amazing. I never do anything to them other than change the tires. Haven’t even touched the breaks. It’s the ultimate daily driver and I’ll never buy another type of car.
Build quality is attention to detail, not reliability.
Your hydraulic brake systems need to be flushed every couple years to prevent corrosion, even if you don’t use them.
Lexus.
I have a Lexus LX, one of the most expensive Lexus vehicles ever made. I love it. It was made in Japan.
Tesla panel gaps and quality are fine. They had some early issues, but the damn things are basically body panels hung off of almost entirely cast chunks of metal. There is not a lot of room for wiggle. If anything, they're so we'll integrated that they're hard to repair after a crash.
Maybe. But crucially Teslas, and EVs in general, don't look like muscle cars and they're not marketed that way. Yeah they can be insanely fast in a straight line, but the appeal of muscle cars was about a lot more than straight line performance.
I'm not actually sure any EV could capture what people like about muscle cars, but you're definitely not going to get it from some futuristic transport blob that just happens to have a low 0-60 time. The Tesla roadster might have captured some of the sports car magic, but it's telling they don't make that any more (for now). I don't know if they could do the same thing for muscle cars at all.
I have a Polestar, its great. It's the closet EV that I've driven that's similar to my Corvette in terms of speed, handling etc.
Many 60s/70s American muscle cars had racing pedigrees. It was a coupe with a V8, one could argue they were replaced by the JDM market with turbo 4s/I6s in the 90s early 2000s.
Maybe more importantly, either of the above had an appealing visual style (to some!) and had their own community around them. Teslas are pretty visually boring, you can't really modify them, but I suppose they have a community of their own who debates which version of software drives the car for you better.
At the time that the muscle car came into existence, there was nothing wrong with the build quality of American cars compared to European cars. It wasn't until the mid-70s that this changed.
https://archive.ph/2025.08.28-152642/https://thedispatch.com...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250828210304/https://thedispat...
Given the advancements of EVs, the death of the muscle car was inevitable. They are almost universally faster, more performant, more efficient, and more "cool" in their designs. Do gear heads dislike them? Sure, but they aren't going to be the market forever. As energy costs rise, natural market forces will shift the demands of the buyer.
> As energy costs rise,
That's a big if. And even more so if everyone moves to EVs, then gas demand goes down and it ICEs become even cheaper to run. Ultimately, we need a carbon tax and no more EV credits. What did EV credits do for us? It created Elon.
There was probably a time when vacuum tubes were extremely cheap for audio enthusiasts that kept their tube amps as the world was transitioning into solid state electronics.
That did not last, and I'm talking about before trade with Russia was basically halted.
It doesn't help that we have a bunch of people who drive crossovers with zero character, can't point to a spark plug on their engine, but are also somehow so upset about the internal combustion engine being replaced that they fighting EV adoption with everything they have. It's almost like they're told what to think.
The sound a crossplane V8 makes is especially delightful due to the [necessarily] asymmetric firing order. Crossplanes fire every 90 degrees, flatplanes every 180. Flatplanes produce a metallic yowl, crossplanes a fruity burble. Beats and timing are hardwired into human psychoacoustics somehow. Beats are counts without explicit numerals. The idea of mathematical aesthetic standards are appealing cf golden ratio. Crossplane firing asymmetry tickles my aesthetic fancy somehow via the Beats. So my overpowered Merc V8 is music to my ears!
Here in Australia, Mustang V8s hold their value pretty well. When I was looking for a sports car (which I've now learnt is very different to a muscle car), the Mustang was top of the list because there was nothing else out there with:
- manual - V8 - 2 doors - under <$100k
I spent a week with one, and while I quite enjoyed it, it required you to really rev out the engine to feel anything (which is nice!). Except that would push you into 130km/h+ which means instant loss of license for 6 months and a forever tarnished record meaning insurance is much more expensive for the rest of your life.
Settled for an ND2 MX-5 that I throw around corners now. It means I have to have a "normal" car as a daily (as the MX-5 isn't that practical) but it also means I can have fun without getting pulled up by the gestapo
Am I reading this right? 130 km/h is ~ 80 mph. In the US, doing 80 in a 70-zone doesn't upset most police officers.
I'm not the person you replied to, but in a 110 km/h (70 mph) zone you'd get away with just a fine in Australia if caught/pulled over. To lose your license for six months, you'd need to be doing 130+ km/h in an 80 km/h (50 mph) zone.
No, loss of license is 20-24km/h over the speed limit in a 110km/h zone (our fastest roads iirc). So 130 is sayonara license.
For every other road, 25km/h+ is instant loss of license. This is for Vic btw
https://online.fines.vic.gov.au/Your-options/Fine-amounts-an...
Yep, I was referring to the license suspension for 6 months though, which is what the earlier post was talking about. What you’re referring to is a license suspension for 3 months.
Australia's road laws tend to be strictly applied. Large fines and demerit points that can lead to loss of licence. We also have random breath tests.
We have much lower road fatalities than the USA per 100,000 people and per billion km traveled though the rates in remote areas are considerably higher.
Yeah, we also have many highways with a speed limit of 80 and one with speed limit up to 85mph (~137kmh), so you wouldn't necessarily even be speeding.
You can't buy cool new off a parking lot, but marketing has convinced masses as such.
I'd rather have an EV conversion vintage VW Westy, Defender 110, Citroën DS, or Ferrari 250 GT California, or a fuggly Thing, Edsel, or Lada.
> Ferrari 250 GT California
doing an EV conversion on a body kit is my dream car.
Although I like your style of doing a Thing or an Edsel!
You'd miss out on the unique gear pattern on the Thing haha.
I want to do an EV conversion to my 86 Mercedes once that becomes something affordable to pull off.
It's affordable now using reclaimed Tesla parts.
Here's one vendor: https://www.evwest.com/
I really want to ditch the 1.9L H4 Digijet in my '85 Westfalia. It's a total PITA (direct fuel injection and a distributor) but I'm not keen on dropping in a GoWesty or "Subagon" ICE motor when EV is the way to go.
I have considered doing a swap on my Jeep CJ7, but the costs are just a touch out of reach still.
I have a friend who does the copart thing, maybe I'll have him keep an eye out for a cheap wrecked Tesla
oh god is that one of those "wasserboxers". I hear those are troublesome to say the least which is why they often get replaced with Subaru Engines.
I'd trust my weak ass diesel engine to drive me to hell and back, but I know that won't last.
Giving me dreams of a conversion on an old Volvo 240 station wagon :)
> Brooke Rennert, a 21-year-old from Rochester Hills putting herself through welding school by working as the only woman at her oil-change job, isn’t having any of it. “I don’t like electric cars. I like the sound of a heavy engine. I like the power,” she said. “An electric vehicle has power, but in a different way. It’s not like a big V8, big-block sound.”
This, IMO, is exactly why they are dying. They are more expensive than regular cars and the only reason anyone likes them is because they are loud and obnoxious.
There's just fewer and fewer people that need a loud noise maker to be happy, certainly not when that noise maker will cost you $60k you likely don't have since inflation has gone crazy while salaries have stagnated.
The people that do end up gravitating to the noise makers will choose a loud motorcycle instead.
I spent years driving, modifying, and racing V-8 Fords from the mid sixties to the early seventies. I've replaced the 2.3 TurboCoupe with a 351W I built myself. I'm very familiar with muscle cars, both carbureted and FE, with points and with electronic injection, smog-legal and without carbs.
My electric family sedan (Tesla model 3 long range) has everything I've ever liked about muscle cars - in abundance. 498 horsepower, a "first gear" that will wind up past 200 kph, instant throttle response. The only thing missing are the impracticalities - the noise, the small back seat, the smell of tires and soot and oil leaking from somewhere. Oh, and the oil changes, and the plug changes, and the stolen catalytic converters, and the coils that go bad, and the fan clutch, and the PCV system, and the fuel/oil/air filter maintenance, and the drive belt, and the injectors, and the exhaust manifold gaskets, and the muffler, and the yearly smog checks.
There are lots of reasons to like combustion vehicles outside of noise. The varying way they deliver power across the rev range is different in every vehicle, for one. One of my cars is a small displacement turbo motor and I love pinning it low in the rev range and feeling the power surge as the boost ramps up, and this is different under all kinds of conditions; different engine speeds, air temperatures, altitude...
A nice, tactile gear change is particularly pleasurable as well. And sounds do go along with all this, but they don't necessarily need to be loud.
I can imagine a bizarro version of this comment where a future person in a world where all of your caloric needs are met by a pill you take daily, ranting about how food enthusiasts insist on shoving their smelly food up your nostrils as you walk by an unnecessary-in-this-day-and-age restaurant, and how they only do it to annoy other people.
You can imagine a time when humans will no longer enjoy eating food. Ummm... Ok. I can imagine a time when we will all be brains in jars, but it's never gonna happen.
I didn't say it was going to happen. I was trying to come up with an equally silly comparison where someone argues that a person couldn't possibly enjoy sensory experience, and therefore the _only_ reason anybody could enjoy an ICE vehicle is to make loud noises in order to annoy a HN commenter.
Well sure. Plenty of people enjoy activities that are antisocial. I quite like it when they are called out on it though.
Most of the people I know (including myself) that are into these kinds of cars buy used instead. Or they bought their car 50 years ago and still maintain it.
The noise aspect is actually one of the things that’s keeping me away from cheap used ICE and hybrid cars right now. Some amount of premium for full electric is worth not having to listen to an engine, particularly on models that aren’t expensive enough to come with good sound isolation.
The sound profile of a V8 is very different from the 4-cylinder and similar I’m shopping for of course, but the principle still applies. I also just don’t want to be my neighbor who finds it necessary to come and go at odd hours in the most abrasive manner possible.
I don't see loud cars dying off with muscle cars because I see more obnoxious BMW's along with a few Honda and Infinity with pop and gurgle tunes and open exhaust than Chargers, Mustangs, etc.
> There's just fewer and fewer people that need a loud noise maker to be happy,
Come to south Queens NYC and you'll find plenty of these people. There's a shop around the block from me that builds these noise makers and I get to hear them test drive them up and down the block.
They don't need to be that expensive. Allow people to opt into lower safety standards (you are comparing with a motorcycle after all) and add a carbon tax with a threshold so I can pay for less complicated emissions equipment.
Also, the loud sound != big. V8 != Loud, esp when many v6 motors are close in displacement to Ford's 5 liter V8.
Muscle cars are cool in the same way that smoking is cool. Impractical, dangerous, and expensive, but has strong associations with "cool" people: noir detectives, rebellious teenagers, action movie heroes, etc.
Isn't Harley Davidson dying too though?
There are much cheaper and louder competitors to Harleys. It doesn't help that harleys are pretty strongly associated with Gen X and Boomers now. You don't usually see millennials or Gen z riding a harley.
They'll probably become popular with the Alphas or Betas again.
>certainly not when that noise maker will cost you $60k
As opposed to the 60k for a nice Tesla??
Salaries have outpaced inflation until recently.
Don’t even bother coming here with facts. Inflation is just a vibe, dude. Never mind that real median personal incomes are up 10 percent in the last decade.
> Salaries have outpaced inflation until recently.
This is just not true.
Take a look at a chart of real median income. Which while it is admittedly somewhat different from salary, is a hell of lot more than “nuh-uh”
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
"household income". Not individual. It used to only take one person working to support a family.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=MEPAINUSA672N
also supports the upthread claim.
Not sure I agree with the premise.
New cars are being made. Sure this might kinda suck. But most of the enthusiast are driving and loving cars from the 1970's that have been out of production for decades right?
Saying EV's kill muscle cars is like saying Cars killed of horse riding.
Sure, there are less breeders for day-to-day travelling requirement style stuff, but the hobbyists keep everything going, and in some ways I would imagine it will bring round a golden era where these things aren't required to be useful as day-to-day options and can just be for fun
I got upgraded once to a yellow mustang in San Francisco. I admit, I wasn't unhappy about that. I reserved the economy car, I ended up driving around the valley in a yellow mustang. With a big smile on my face.
But it wasn't necessarily a great car. It had a lot of condensation on the inside of the car in the morning. I've never seen that in any other car. My suitcase barely fit in the back. Etc. A lot of form over function in that car.
I don't own a car. In fact, I've never owned one. I just rent cars when I need them, which isn't all that often these days. I live in Berlin which is a big city that wile car friendly (by European standards) is a bit of a PITA to get around in by car. And there's public transport. And it takes about fifty minutes to even leave the city in a car because you are stuck in stop start traffic. But if I ever move out, I might need a car.
If I ever buy a car, it will be electric. ICE cars are relics of the past. That mustang makes pleasing vroom vroom noises (and they are very pleasing) but that's about it. That's what they are optimized for. Even a modest EV has more torque (the whole point of a muscle car), better handling, etc. And they are just a lot more practical. EV performance breaks the illusion that a muscle car is, well, a muscle car.
As for EVs being boring. Many of them are. Especially those in the US because it's currently cut off from the rest of the world and not exactly state of the art at this point. If you want exciting EVs to lust after, go to China. They have them in every shape and size. The new xpeng looks great, there's the huawei car, the BYD u7 and u9. And some of those are quite affordable (in China). They are unobtainium elsewhere of course, which adds to their desirability.
I don't speak from experience of course, but I do watch a lot of EV reviews. There's this myth that EVs can't be fun. They can be. It's not about the noise but it is about the highly tunable driving experience, ridiculous torque, etc. What works for muscle cars (big engine, light weight car) also works for EVs. Some of the more affordable fun options are smaller, lighter cars. Even retro conversions of classic sports cars can be a lot of fun apparently. And some of those end up being lighter after their conversion and handle better than the original.
And I bet there are a few classic muscle car conversions. Are they still fun if you take away the vroom vroom noise but otherwise increase all the performance metrics? I don't know. It probably still is quite a lot of fun to drive one.
I agree with almost everything you said, except for the idea that ICE are a relic of the past.
I think they will be one soon, say, 25 years from now, but I don't think we're quite there yet, at least not in America where a family fun trip can be 5 days of driving thousands of miles for camping or tourism purposes.
Fast charging needs to be ubiquitous, and charging needs to be faster, batteries need to get better, ranges need to get longer, and EVs need to get cheaper, and you need to give the whole system time to transition once those do become available.
All of that has to happen in order to relicize the ice vehicle.
Just fyi, the Mustang was originally marketed as more of a young woman's car, and only certain models are considered to be "musclemen" cars. Rental agencies stock these because they are fun for tourists, so glad you enjoyed it. (SF Bay has a greenbelt, so recommend to all driving the 1 or 35 Skyline to Santa Cruz.)
Get rid of CARB and CAFE, then see if that still holds.
http://archive.today/sDCzk
https://archive.is/sDCzk
I think a Mustang would be a great car to own, especially with a V-8 and manual transmission, but social media has ruined it for me. There are non stop videos of Mustangs crashing when leaving meets such as Cars With Coffee. Now, the Mustang brand is synonymous with this type of driving. If you bought one you would immediately be looked down upon.
Who cares what the social media jabronis drive? If you want a manual V8 Mustang and can afford it, get it and have some fun.
It genuinely is just people joking. I've never met a mustang owner that got upset by the crowd jokes, and they often tell them themselves.
Mustangs got the reputation because they were cheap power with a solid rear end which made peeling out into a turn incredibly unstable.
"Mustangs are all exhaust until they hit the wall" - my ex
i owned one. it was quite loud. Not as loud as the 240SX i took the muffler off to have a shop look at it up the road, but still, pretty loud.
I still drive a 4.6L V8, though. Just not american.
I mean they're only as loud as the person with the saw is determined.
Ford uses large empty volumes in or around their air cleaner boxes in their "beefy" vehicles, it gives them a distinct sound. For instance, my lexus has the same size engine as a Mustang GT, but it does not sound like a mustang GT at all, because the dual air cleaner boxes are maybe 3% larger than the filter that goes in them. On my ford turbocharged f-150 the air cleaner was like one of those 3 gallon shop vacuums in volume, with a 1.5" thick air filter. Smaller engine (by a whole liter!), but much growlier and beefier.
Mercedes did a neat thing with the exhaust on the C63, where you could flip a switch and switch between "neighborhood" and "open road" exhaust profiles. I think it's one of the best sounding cars ever made.
You know I was curious about your statement so I looked it up and Mustangs have had independent rear suspension since 2015
Yeah, basically 1/6th their existence.
I've seen plenty of similar videos of Corvettes, Porsches, Challengers, etc. and it has no impact on my view of the brand or model.
I assume anyone driving a Challenger or Charger is someone I need to stay away from.
You’re a better man than I, because the clientele has definitely ruined some brands for me.
Every time I see a car zipping in and out of lanes at 90 mph with no turn signal, it’s a BMW.
And similarly for the boomers with goatees and USA tees with Corvettes.
And similarly for Camaros with aftermarket exhausts that seem to exist for no reason other than irritating your neighbors.
I don’t want to be associated with that.
I know it’s shallow, but then again, so am I…
Congratulations you discovered confirmation bias. Now consider where else in your life you have incorrectly validated your own prejudices.
Lemme guess… BMW?
Or you could grab a Dodge Viper before they're all crashed by their owners.
I put a supercharger on mine :D
I made my 90 horsepower Mercedes run on veggie oil. wanna race?
People don't look down on Mustangs, they look down on people with more horsepower than brains.