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We are talking classic American car not bets performing transport. I don't consider very many cars now worth keep as a classic really. The Gremlin was better than model T but never a classic.
for myself, i stopped seeing cars as being "exciting to look at" post 1974 or so. the intro of rectangular headlamps, downsizing, the slapping of fancy nameplates on smaller models just made everything more and more faceless so that by 1978 or so I gave up my fixation with cars. I did like the new downsized GM biggies for 77 but some lasted over a decade which was just too much. I also oddly liked the Dodge St Regis and Chrysler Newport for 1979 tho i didn't consider them to be "big and beautiful" but still, the thrill was gone...
I think the quality of cars today is much better than they are given credit for. Now if you mean style then that's a different story. Today's cars aren't sexy. They mostly are cookie cutter in design. Some of the designs from the 50's and 60's are timeless. How many cars today can you say that about? I'd say the worst decades for automobiles were the 70's and 80's. Horrible quality, boxy, underpowered and gas guzzlers.
Pretty much cat convertors, switch to unleaded gass and emmissions controls and high oil prices killed cars.
Pretty much around 1970 cars started going downhill quickly
I owned 15 cars. My favorite was my 1969 2 door black Plymouth Belvedere two door hardtop, Sister of Dukes of Hazzard car.
Bought if off an estate of a man who was a retired aerospace engineer. Car was special as he knew weight was key. He got the pop out rear window option instead of roll down front manual windows which saved like 100 pounds, bench in front instead of bucks another 100 pound savings, no AC more weight saved and no carpets, just vinyl floors more weight saved.
He did get V8 option, power steering, I bought car with only 39K miles on it in the 1980s.
No emmissions controls, I could beat a brand new corvette in a straight line. Car fit 6 people got 18mpg and when I sold it in 1992 with 70K miles ran like a dream. Only sold it cause moved to manhattan and after one winter in a driveway with no garage I could see it would rust away over time
Sandy was the 69 Belvedere you speak of harsh riding and noisy for a 60's mid sizer or was it OK? I ask because Consumer Reports tests of the late 60's mid sized Mopars found them to be harsher and noisier than their competitors tho they always scored well for their seating comfort and room
Can we knock of the stupidity of "all cars now look the same?" Cars of every era have tended to look similar to other cars of their era.
Some possible exceptions to the rule, that I can remember just from memory...AFAIK, these cars were vastly different-looking visually than any of their contemporaries and rivals of their respective eras:
--1985 Pontiac Firebird / TransAm (sadly, even today you hardly find a car as nice-looking aesthetically as that one )
--1996 Mercury Sable / Ford Taurus (radical more rounded, "curvy" and oval redesign of the automobile chassis, received with mixed results)
--2006 Dodge Charger (at the time in question when everything else was more or less "boxy" again, helped revive some interest in classic muscle car design with real curves, and became the same, shared chassis for the later contemporary Dodge Challenger released a few years later)
Detroit quality went away totally in 1970. I don't consider anything after 1970 a classic. My favorite recent "classic" American car is the 1962-64 Studebaker Grand Turismo Hawks. They were the best renditions of the Loewy coupes started in 1953.
I thought 1971-72 had some great moments although I agree they weren't the same as the vehicles built in 1970 and earlier.
Depends on the vehicle and sometimes even the emgine options. for Muscle cars and the like I would say
1967 for the Corvette
1972 for the Chevelle(Even though 1970 is the best)
1974 for the Challenger(Exept for the giant bumperettes-Had one)
1970 for the Mustang (Fastback and Convert only)
1970 for the Road Runner (If the later Sebring style body had a perf motor I would include those too)
1969 for the Camaro (Maybe 73)
I have owned most of the above and none were well built, comfortable or reliable by todays standard. They were great cool cars non the less.
for myself, i stopped seeing cars as being "exciting to look at" post 1974 or so. the intro of rectangular headlamps, downsizing, the slapping of fancy nameplates on smaller models just made everything more and more faceless so that by 1978 or so I gave up my fixation with cars. I did like the new downsized GM biggies for 77 but some lasted over a decade which was just too much. I also oddly liked the Dodge St Regis and Chrysler Newport for 1979 tho i didn't consider them to be "big and beautiful" but still, the thrill was gone...
I agree the rectangular headlamps were a major downgrade to the rounded headlamps in some of the vehicles built in the 1970's, I did like the downsized GM biggies of the late 70's and thought they were a big improvement over the mid 70's GM biggies, of the R-body cars I didn't like the Chrysler New Yorker's but did like the Chrysler Newport's and Dodge St. Regis's, also is it just me or did they look a lot like the Buick's of the same era, I wish the R-bodies would have been bigger sellers because I thought they were better looking than the early Fox body biggies (Ford, Mercury).
The last year of the classics was 1969. After that the car makers used the same body for years with only slight changes from year to year. Like the 1973 Dodge pickup that didn't change for almost 20 years. Prior to that it was always exciting to see what Detroit came up with for the new models. After 69 it was the same ol' crap every year with maybe a taillight change or the insert in the grille changed.
Not sure what you mean by decline of quality. Todays cars are the best ever built. Back in the 60's a cars life was pretty much anything under 100,000 miles. A car today can run 100,000 miles and not break a sweat. I can assure you back then there was never going to be vehicles, even single ones, that would ever see 1 million miles..... and you can even add the diesel trucks from back then to that list. Today they are getting more common and tons of cars and trucks on the road today with 300,000 miles on the clock and running strong.
I did thought the American automobiles did see a major decline in quality sometime around the early 70's which lasted well into the 1980's, I agree today's American automobiles are at its best since the early 70's and that the vehicles got less exciting sometime around the early 70's.
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