It's 1992. Your mom just took you through the Dairy Queen drive in after supper. It was 30C today, and it's going to be 35C tomorrow. You're going to go swimming at the local outdoor pool with your mom, little brother, auntie and favourite cousin, tomorrow though. Mom will probably put on that Blue Rodeo tape on the way back. It's not your favorite, but you find yourself waiting for the song hooks.
I'd like to take a moment to dispel some of the claims being made in this comment thread.
Modern cars are significantly more reliable than older cars by virtually every measurable metric. They are unquestionably more difficult to work on, but they also break down far less often.
The safety features on modern vehicles are light-years ahead of anything available in the '80s or '90s. Emissions are also dramatically lower than they were back then.
A lot of people in the comments have already pointed this out.
That said, older cars were undeniably easier to work on in many respects.
It's a real Facebook Boomer meme to show a picture of a fifty year old car that's been in a crash with a modern car with the caption "see what we lost they dont make them like they used to?" but totally ignoring that the people in the BeigeWagon were turned into lasagna while the passengers of the Wokemobile will complete their journey with bruises and a taxi.
IDK why (I mean I guess cause he was a good teacher) but our drivers ed teacher taught us about crumple zones and all other sorts of things, there were 8 weeks of classroom instruction in high school whether you were planning on driving or not.
Older cars also looked nicer. Yes our cars are better, and I will probably never own a classic car. The Chevrolet Bel Air looks way better than any car built in the last 10 years, and it's a metal death trap.
My Olds 98 had bench seats and separate lap and shoulder belts. The steel bumpers extended 3 feet under the car. It was 2 1/2 tons of steel. The steering wheel would not collapse under an impact. The car could survive Armageddon. It could plow through lesser cars (because the brakes were bad). But I would end up impaled on the steering column.
How else are you expected to ash your cigarette without causing a fire hazard? Crank the window down?? And exactly how am I supposed to accomplish that when I have my hands juggling 4 tasks already, genius?
My smoking hand is holding my cig and shifting gears, and my driving hand is steering the car and holding my beer upright without spilling. There's kids in the car, so I need to focus on the task of driving for their safety!
It's 1992. Your mom just took you through the Dairy Queen drive in after supper. It was 30C today, and it's going to be 35C tomorrow, but you're an American child in 1992 and have no idea what that means in Freedom Units.
This is super convoluted to some people, but its the easiest way for my weird American brain to convert it on the fly:
2*°C=ans1
ans1—(0.1*ans1)=ans2
ans2—32=°F
The conversion most sources give you is:
(9/5)*°C—32=°F
But I find it easier to break it down into those 3 simple steps. If you're the kind of person who calculates 20% of X in two steps
[20%*X=(0.1X)*2],
you might also like my weird method of converting °C to °F.
This is a mild tangent but I learned how to convert celsius to fahrenheit because of a Codename: Kids Next Store episode that I watched once wherein a character says "30c, 30 celsius that's like 80 degrees fahrenheit". Which is honestly not the weirdest thing to learn from but it is my number one.
I had an old Malibu, and I was backing into an alley and a telephone pole was somehow out of my vision. I hit it full force with the rear bumper. Got out and the chrome was still perfect, and no dent in the bumper...but wow what a jolt.
The emissions acts really forced a lot of painful innovation. Engines like the Cadillac HT 4000 went to aluminum blocks, or we utterly throttled by shitty computers and carbourator tuning.
Except for EVs (which are heavy af because of the batteries) curb weight is down significantly from the 70s to today. It has been steadily trending upwards, but slowly, since around 2012. It’s hard to make a car as heavy as they used to be back when everything was steel and weld joints. Engines were bigger back then too — because they were less efficient.
Here’s an article about it. Thanks for making me look it up, it has an important little fact at the top, which is the pickups have trended steadily upward over that same period which I didn’t know. However, other vehicle types have trended steadily downwards, and are still below their previous figures.
It's mostly that the old American land yachts are no longer as big. Look at the fifth generation Lincoln Continental vs any after it. Or the 1960s Cadillac Eldorado, a 2.2 ton 2 door car
European and Asian cars have been trending up in size meanwhile but there have been instances where a new generation model is lighter than the old one due to the materials used.
Seriously. This is a 10th generation Oldsmobile 98, with a 4,000 pounds curb weight. That puts it in the same range as smaller crossover SUVs these days.
It's 1992. Your mom takes you to Dairy Queen in her oldsmobile. She lights up a cigarette. She asks if you want one. You say no. She says stop acting like such a pussy. You take the cigarette. She lights it for you.
You walk into the Dairy Queen. A group of teenagers are smoking in a booth. One of them ashes their cigarette into a Dairy Queen-branded ashtray on the table.
1984 LTD Crown Victoria, White with red velour interior. I closed that door (which looks a lot like this door) on my hand and it locked. Mom had already gone inside and there i was screaming bloody murder in the front yard. She eventually came out and unlocked the door and got me out. Somehow it didn't break my hand, probly because children are made of rubber or something. Theres no point to this other than sharing my unlocked PTSD that this image unlocked.
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