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Don't know how we were able to drive in the late 50s and early 60s on those dinky side streets of Baltimore that allowed two way driving, not to mention parking on both sides of the street.
back in the old days before oil price went through the roof, the car buying attitude was bigger is better. people say i like the mustang/camaro/firebird/barracuda, but my fairlane/torino/chevelle/lemans is bigger and more comfortable to drive, and someone else comes along and says well my LTD/impala/bonneville/lincoln towncar/sedan deville is the pinnacle of luxury.
then the oil embargo hit in 1973, and the automakers started downsizing all their cars in the name of fuel economy. that went on through out the 80s, and in the 90s cars started actually getting larger again.
Interestingly, after the 73/74 oil embargo full size conversion vans and pickup trucks starting selling in bigger numbers.
Awhile back I walked past a '65 mustang parked in front of a newer one. Amazing how much bigger the new model was over the classic.
Many cars were bigger but very inefficient in space. My mother had a '74 Thunderbird it was a big floatin' boat, if stopped on a hill, couldn't see anything over the freakin' hood.
back in the old days before oil price went through the roof, the car buying attitude was bigger is better. people say i like the mustang/camaro/firebird/barracuda, but my fairlane/torino/chevelle/lemans is bigger and more comfortable to drive, and someone else comes along and says well my LTD/impala/bonneville/lincoln towncar/sedan deville is the pinnacle of luxury.
then the oil embargo hit in 1973, and the automakers started downsizing all their cars in the name of fuel economy. that went on through out the 80s, and in the 90s cars started actually getting larger again.
the complexity comes in where a combination of the government requirements for emissions, fuel economy, and safety, as well as consumer demand for those things, and better performance, meant the automakers had to go to electronic fuel injection, as well as electronic controls on just about everything. however, while the average person isnt doing much of their own work these days, that doesnt mean that only professional mechanics are doing the work. there are still a lot of do it yourselfers out there, and still a fair amount of demand for late model parts to repair late model cars by people either flipping them, or getting older late model cars and fixing them up to drive.
i doubt the do it yourselfer will ever go away.
It may also have some thing to do with the engine. The sport cars / muscle cars have big engine and thus need longer hood.
Even today sport cars / muscle cars are bigger than most mainstream cars. Now days if you want a bigger car you need a sport cars / muscle cars these cars have more powerful engine.
And where most mainstream cars have no power at all because the engine is way too small.
Some of those engines are bigger than hood of today's cars.
- Old cars had huge hoods, because they had huge engine bays. They had huge engine bays, because they had huge engines. They had huge engines, because they only managed to squeeze 150 horses from a V8 engine.
- Bigger engine bays meant more room. This made it easier to access all parts of the engine. Engines back in the day also did not last nearly as long as engines today. Modern cars can easily go 150,000 miles without any major failure, if it's taken care of and has the fluids changed regularly. Old cars managed 50,000 miles before a major failure. This meant you needed to get down in the engine bay more.
- Bigger engine bays meant more room. This, paired with a small engine, meant a lot of open space around the engine. Engines, back in the day, had hilariously small cooling systems. That extra airflow was necessary to keep the engines running cool. Modern cars are tightly packaged, but modern metals, heat shielding technology, better coolant passages, and beefier / more efficient radiators all mean cars run cooler (which means they're less likely to overheat, which means you'll spend less time underneath that massive hood, as mentioned above).
Before the early 1970s gas was plentiful and cheap. There was no EPA and CAFE regulations on fuel economy and emissions.
PEAK production hit in 1972 and dropped, which triggered an increase in imports, and all that "other stuff."
Ironically, if the government ceased subsidizing the automobile and encouraged a return to electric traction rail, we could have reduced our petroleum consumption below domestic production levels, and save a whopping 80% on fuel expenditures.
By observing past discoveries and production levels, and predicting future discovery trends, the geoscientist M. King Hubbert used statistical modelling in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1971.
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