Is it normal that i hate cars from the 80s?

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24 Comments

80s Cars are nothing but junk, especially american cars from the decade. There was not a single car model that didn't look inferior to versions from previous decades and after. Somehow, they all looked like cheap hunks of plastic, both from the inside and outside. ( Allthough, could be argued the interiors were a bit cheaper in the 90s ) The cars were also notorious for being unreliable and breaking down easily, which is something that a 65 year old cab driver even confirmed to me.

Voting Results
81% Normal
Based on 16 votes (13 yes)
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Comments ( 24 )
  • Boojum
    4 years ago

    It's not a coincidence that it was in the 1980s that US car manufacturers started to get seriously hammered by the increasing number of Americans deciding to buy better quality imported cars.

    Trump and predecessors of his ilk can call that sort of thing exploitation of the USA as much as they want, but the fact is that if you believe capitalism is a holy doctrine, then consumers should be free to buy whatever they like. If American companies produce expensive, inefficient, poorly designed, badly engineered and generally unreliable crap - as American car manufacturers largely did in the eighties and even earlier - then by the tenets of capitalism they deserve to fail.

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    • leggs91200
      4 years ago

      Plus when people are all about "buy american, be american" or whatever that campaign was, it probably didn't work that well when their American cars were constantly breaking down and leaving them stranded.

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      4 years ago

      Today's American cars aren't that great either. Allthough, the 80s, and also the late 70s to an extent, were definitely a low point. ( Allthough, late 70s cars weren't nearly as ugly as the 80s was ). The decline, I'd say, coincided with the oil crisis of 1973, and they haven't really ever been able to recover from that after all these years.

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  • [Old Memory]
    4 years ago

    Everything from the 70s-90s period was hideous, not just cars.

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      4 years ago

      Okay, could you name some stuff that you think was hideous from these decades?

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      • [Old Memory]
        4 years ago

        I could, but I won’t.

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        • Anonymous Post Author
          4 years ago

          :/

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          • [Old Memory]
            4 years ago

            :)

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            • Anonymous Post Author
              4 years ago

              :D

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  • cupcake_wants
    4 years ago

    The only exception would be the BMW. I do agree that after the 60's, cars got junkier and crappier. That is why you never see any cars from the 80's still around but you still see an old volkswagen bug or an old mustang from the 60's that is still around. How many mustangs from the 80's do you still see around, and they're 20 years younger!

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      4 years ago

      Yeah. Allthough, the only exception would be Japanese cars. They got supposedly better after the 60s. One of my former teachers who is like, almost 70 years old, claims that back in the 60s, people used to joke over how crappy Japanese cars are. Then their reputation improved drastically after the oil crisis of 1973.

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      • Boojum
        4 years ago

        I remember the sixties, and that attitude was very common; a Made in Japan label on anything was viewed in much the same way as Made in China is now. In fact, the view of Japanese products back then was even more negative than how people see Chinese products today. Part of that was WWII: "We beat them in the War, and they're all just a bunch of silly little guys who copy stuff. Yeah, they can make cheap toys and gimmicks and some of their cameras are okay, but the idea that they might actually come up with something original or challenge the industrial might of the USA is just absurd."

        That blinkered prejudice against Japan was a large part of the reason the US car companies that were riding high in the post-war years took such a hammering in the eighties and later years. Their executives were too short sighted, set in their ways and arrogant to take a serious look at what was happening with companies like Honda and change the sort of cars they produced in Detroit and how they made them.

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        • Anonymous Post Author
          4 years ago

          Was it ever the same thing with South Korean products? Another one of my former teachers, who is like 40 now, claims that a " made in South Korea " label was frowned upon as recent as the 80s, but is now considered to be a
          " seal of quality. "

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          • Boojum
            4 years ago

            I'm sure that's right. I was a kid in the sixties, and my dim recollection is that Korean tat was even cheaper and tattier than Japanese tat. Of course, in the 1960s, South Korea was undeveloped and mainly an agriculture-based economy, so Japan was well ahead of it in industrial terms.

            I've never really been interested in cars, but I vaguely remember the appearance of Hyundai cars in the States in the mid-seventies, and I'm pretty sure they were considered not all that great.

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            • donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
              4 years ago

              hyundai didnt start imports to the usa until the late 80s and they were dirt cheap for the one model they had available

              5 grand for the excel

              theyre now decent car makers but also more notably somea the best heavy equipment industrial equipment and shipbuilders in the world

              hyundai is a humungous corporation in sk

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  • BlondeRedhead
    4 years ago

    Everything about the 1980s was just ugly. You are pardoned for not liking it.

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  • bbrown95
    4 years ago

    I can't speak for reliability or quality, but I actually prefer the look of those to the vast majority of today's cars. To me, cars have only gotten uglier and I am sick of seeing SUVs that look like minivans (seriously, what's with the round trend? Go back to the boxy look, it's much more attractive; if I wanted to drive something that looked like a minivan, I'd just get a minivan instead of an SUV in the first place, but I don't), hatchbacks that look like space shuttles, and everything having a huge grille, a weird rounded shape kind of reminiscent of a turd, and ugly headlights and taillights. A lot of modern cars look like bugs.

    I also think some of the new features are stupid, such as WiFi in a freaking car. Way to promote distracted driving as well as the abhorrent addiction to devices that many children (and even adults) these days have. Can anyone go anywhere anymore without a device connected to the Internet? However, I will say that the Bluetooth feature that handles phone calls and even texts hands-free in cars is a great idea that can really help with the distracted driving issue. I have a car with Bluetooth (though mine is 10 years old, so not really new, but still the best car ever!) and love having the ability to handle important calls hands-free, or at the very most the push of a button on the steering wheel that I don't even have to look down for.

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  • megadriver
    4 years ago

    I don't know about US-cars, the ones that were drained from power and were designed only using a pencil and a ruler (I assume you are from the US), but in Europe we had stuff like this:

    https://ibb.co/g6bbvp3

    Sure, I had to swap out a bunch of parts to get her to run right, but that 635CSI is an amazing 80s car!

    One thing I will agree is that quality has dropped even more nowadays. Modern cars are full of cheaply made plastics, even really expensive ones like an S-class, or an A8...

    A 200 grand car and it has plastics on the door panel similar to the ones on a USB stick packaging...

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      4 years ago

      That BMW looks pretty fine tbh. Allthough, to be fair, aesthetically speaking, it's not even close to being on par with this classic american one , which has to be one of my personal favorites. Simply staring at it gives me an orgasm, especially the rear.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts3M4epNh6k

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      • megadriver
        4 years ago

        Thanks, I've been working on that car for 2 years now XD
        But I think you're a bit wrong with your comparison...

        While I will agree it's an iconic classic, the '59 Impala, I prefer the '55 Bel Air, or a good 'ol Plymouth Fury Christine style, but still... None of those cars are 80s cars...

        80s US cars were way too square for my taste, way too similar and most of them in the 90s were featureless blobs...

        The best American 80s cars I can remember are the Pontiac Trans Am, the Corvette and the Chevelle.

        The E24 BMW, along with a bunch of other BMWs is an iconic 80s luxury autobahn slayer, along with the Mercedes 560SEC, SL, every 80s Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Lambo. The 80s, 90s and up to mid 2000s were the golden age of European luxury car opulence and quality.

        Superb quality, overengineering at it's finest.

        Just check out the hood release and close on an E24. So smooth, elegant and classy. No slamming the hood. Gently close it shut with the release lever.

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  • donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
    4 years ago

    buick grand national begs to differ

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    • Anonymous Post Author
      4 years ago

      Well, that is one of the better cars from that era, IMO. But still lame compared to the muscle cars of the late 60s.

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      • donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
        4 years ago

        theyre both still lame compared to whats available today

        carbs are for chumps

        although i do appreciate a good restomod

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        • Anonymous Post Author
          4 years ago

          In terms of performance, absolutely. Today, we have SUVs that would be able to match 80s sports cars in terms of performance, which is absolutely insane when you think about it.

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