Is it weird that I kind of appreciate the design language of the Volkswagen in that picture? Moreso than the Audi, at least.
Yeah, that form factor is definitely old people coded at this point, and has always been for as long as I can remember, but I find something quite charming about it. I can’t quite explain it. It’s not nostalgia, because I never owned a car like that before, but I do remember seeing them on the road 30+ years ago and thinking to myself “that’s an old car!”.
I wonder if design trends ever loop back around for cars the same way that it does for fashion? Perhaps not, as I’m sure the industry has purposefully moved away from cars that look like that due to improved safety features or enhanced auto regulations, but if I were interested in buying a car for it’s unique or appealing shape alone, then I would much rather be driving around an old boxy VW Golf than ever be caught dead in a Cybertruck.
I owned an 81 VW Rabbit and I still regret selling it. Incredibly charming car.
They are but I don’t think it’s fully cyclical. Modern boxy Hyundai’s like the new Santa Fe and the ioniq 5 are kind of like that.
Honestly, not weird at all imo. 2000s cars all look like weird bubbly fish to me.
A6 C5 is a timeless design. Even Škodas used it somewhere early 2010s. Just an unbeatable form.
That is an A4
I still consider electric windows to be futuristic show-off fluffery, despite not having actually seen manual winders in a few years.
It would be interesting to see a timeline of when certain features became standard. For example, pushing a button to start a car instead of turning a key. That still seems new to me, even though I’ve driven some cars with that feature that were old enough to be falling apart.
My car is a 2023 and has a turn-key ignition, so pushbutton ignition wasn’t completely standard yet at that point.
Edit: Clarity
Yeah, it’s a gradual process. I’m a bit surprised that in 2023 it wasn’t yet universal. I’m just saying that that feature probably first appeared between 2000 and 2010, so maybe even a quarter century ago, but it still seems new.
my daily driver is a 2015 wrangler with crank windows. 158k. automatic transmission. only “big” fixes were oil cleaned housing and the latest was last month, radiator broke its seal on bottom. simple swap.
I’m reading this while sitting in a rather new electric Renault Zoë where the windows in the back are manual!
We have manual winders. (We down graded our car on purpose for cheaper repairs)
I prefer winders for the front. No need for key in accessory position, and fine control.
Back is tricky
Electric windows go really poorly with that other pair of modern features, turney-offey-when-you-stoppey-engine (that’s the technical name) and button-make-engine-go-not-turney-key.
I was in a car recently where I forgot to close the sunroof, and there didn’t seem to be a way to close the sunroof without re-starting the engine.
I used some the other day and it felt so much better.
It’s hilarious to me how many people are shitting their beds over the Slate pickup coming with crank windows.
All my homies hate repairing window regulators
Done it on a '04 Subaru, absolute pain in the ass that needs two people. Meanwhile the cranks on my '95 Mazda continue to function completely fine.
I’ve never once had to repair power windows in the 20 some years I’ve owned cars.
lucky so and so. every fuckin car, from fuckers bouncing off the car while it’s parked.
i’m a car wreck magnet. of the 20ish car “accidents” i’ve been in, i was in the passenger seat eating lunch for like 15 of them (you lose track after like number seven) i’m not the best data point
I understand now, when my dad said, “I don’t know, they all look alike to me.”
I drive a car from the early 2000’s. When I got it I was stoked to finally have a car made in this century. It turns 20 in 2 years 😬
My truck just turned old enough to drink in the states, I feel like that must be some kind of country music initiation
Ha my truck just turned 40!
Lol so did I, decent vintage at least
Don’t.
Ha exactly! Also the ps3 sure is a spankin new system huh? So cutting edge. I don’t think they can top it.
Ouch. Oof. Owie
I want that 40 year old car so bad
Same, I just recently had someone offer me a Buick Lasabre for cheap. I was very excited until they said it was a 2003 😑
Reliable sure, but man did the '00 models look gross. Go back 10-20 years from that ugly thing to these beauties and it would have been a deal.
I secretly like the fugly biodesign cars from the 1990s and 2000s. Not that many in Europe.
I daily drive one. I love it to bits but it’s been through three engines and gearboxes, four coils, two carburettors, and two distributors in the last 70,000kms and I still have a niggling ignition fault and can’t get the mixture quite perfect.
As I’ve been through all these faults I’ve slowly been doing more and more of the work myself as I don’t trust “specialist” shops to put the time and care into my job to do it right, and as a result the car is a lot better now than when I bought it. But its a lot of work.
In short, buy a 40 year old Japanese car, not a British one!
My experience with such old cars, where their age is starting to make full restoration advisable:
- mechanically reliable and simple to fix (and critical parts are usually available, quality varies)
- everything electrical is shit (and old), you need to go through everything to check the connections, completely rotten through ground wires aren’t necessarily visible and will cause endless pain until you find them
- the rust-proofing wasn’t great but it was there so usually if they’re still alive by now they just need the usual spots where those models rust checked before purchase and/or crash damage thoroughly checked
- crash safety is nonexistent, ABS and ESP aren’t that useful if you learned how to drive without, if you rely on ESP, better learn not to
- the fastest affordable cars from the 1980s are slower than family cars from the 2020s, still feels like you’re going way faster
- if you buy something predating catalytic converters in your country, be prepared for it to smell atrocious
- carburettors that haven’t been tampered with and aren’t leaking don’t need to be touched unless they malfunction, if they malfunction they usually only need a good scrubbing with diesel then a wash in petrol, replacement of extremely dead gaskets, and the jets usually need a clean, the tiny drill bits for carburettor jets can be used for cleaning if you use the size just below the marked size. Ultrasonic cleaners aren’t necessary, replacing all gaskets usually means it’s going to leak more than before.
- EFI was shit until the 1990s, avoid it if you can
I can’t imagine how awful the electronics / digital stuff on modern cars will be in 20ish years. It’s a lot more finicky to begin with and electronics even under the best conditions age poorly; on a vehicle exposed to the elements it’s going to be a nightmare.
Luxury cars from 2006 can be a nightmare (Mercedes brake-by-wire systems) or just fine (Lexus).
Get one while you still can, they haven’t been going down in price for a long time and may in fact already be going up in price. They’re pretty iconic, but not as many on the roads these days.
Boxy cars looked the best.
Lancia Delta
Citroën AX
Honda CRX
Ford Escort
Postman Pat’s Van
I learned to drive stick in an e30 BMW. I have a real soft spot for boxy 80s cars.
80s cavalier z24?
Third-gen Camaro while we’re at it. And the equivalent Firebird.
VW Golf gen 1-3
cars lool all the same now
20 year old video game in my head:
20 year old video game in reality:
Been playing Twilight Princess on Dusklight android and it’s amazing. Can’t believe it’s 20 years old.
I submit as the most wince-worthy example of 20 year old console game graphics:
Though retro is so popular that lots of modern games still look like the 90s…
My nephew was telling me about how he dusted off his old console and laughed at how bad the games looked. He was of course talking about his PS3.
One of these days I need to sit him down and subject him to some early 3d games like Battle Arena Toshinden or FFVIII to give him some real pizza-face perspective.
I will say that with a handful of exceptions the PS3 generally looks worse than the 360, for example Infamous and MGS4 still hold up well enough but Red Dead Redemption does look a good bit rougher on the PS3.
early 3d
Show him Jumping Flash! and see if he can even make sense of it.
The first 3D game I ever played looked like this:
3d monster maze calling in.
Such a good game and in 16k of RAM
I vote you include sonic 3-d. That game makes me throw up with how they made the 3d effect.
The PS3 is of that era where there was huge hype at the time about how realistic the graphics were (deservedly, to be fair) but when you look at it historically the shortcomings are all too clear, and it’s almost comical.
Games on older consoles couldn’t gun for realism the same way, and so they ironically look better now in retrospect because they just come across as having a particular style of their own.
Even on consoles like the ps1 the games that chased “cutting edge” graphics look so much worse than games that had distinct art styles.
True. There’s always that subset and it kinda looks good, but only for a moment in time.
Some of them did go for realism.
Persian Gulf Inferno was almost banned for being too realistic…
This shit was on the index in Germany for “inciting violence in players” 😅
I expected to see Zelda Ocarina of Time in the second picture 💀
Mass effect is 19 years old.
No it isn’t. Can’t be more than 5 years old.
That audi design aged like wine
I love my manual 2015 Fit. Over 212k miles and still going strong. I bought it a few months ago. 1 owner before me. Had to put a little work into it but it was all general maintenance stuff (brakes and a bad fuel injector). Not quite 20 years old but still.
Yellow hatchback club 💛
I bought a 2014 Swift Sport but the CVT had too much distance and was clearly a time bomb. Moved it on but loved driving a non-monochrome car so much, I ended up with a slightly newer model with a normal torque converter (ZC33S) and still in yellow at 1/6th the distance.
I’ve always heard CVTs were a bit of a gamble. The manual was a challenge to find, but the upside was that most people were looking for automatics anyway, so the few manuals I found weren’t getting a ton of clicks. I was originally looking to get a Civic hatchback, but they were too old and there were too many half-baked project cars.
Those Swift hatchbacks are killer! I love Suzukis. My friend in high school had one of those little 90s Vitaras. We would ride to the beach in it to go surfing. So much fun to whip around town in.
My wife and I are both all in on the anti-monochrome club. Our other vehicle is a 2021 Kia Sorento turbo AWD in sapphire blue. The colors compliment each other nicely in the driveway 😂
manual 2006 yellow ford focus hatchback, here
Just did a road trip in the same generation jazz, because my 25 year old car shit the bed on the day of departure. Great little car, that is deceptively spacious. Although that 1.3L engine with 3 of us in the car really struggled sometimes, especially on mountain passes.
The fit is gaining a lot of popularity as of late
Is it any good in the snow? I think it might be dangerous in the winter due to it being lightweight
lightweight cars are fine in the winter. just get snow tires and drive well
source: drove a Tercel in the winter for years, did it later on with a Yaris as well
I dislike heavier cars because they have so much more momentum. hard to change direction with little traction and you run into things with more energy. little cars you can just spin the wheels, find some traction, and go where you’re pointing.
I drove a Tercel through many Canadian winters. It’s lightweight but it’s a 65/35 split, 65% of the weight over the front wheels so it really helps with traction. It did well in the snow.
Yeah, I had a Honda Civic and I think it was similar. Front wheel drive in a lightweight car with the weight over the front wheels makes it easy to drive in slippery conditions. But, it probably also helped that it had manual transmission.
Agree to the other guy next to me. Light cars are no bad in snow. Just wear winter tires. No all season crap.
And actually lighter cars sometimes are even better in the snow. They usually have thinner tires as for example a heavy suv. More pressure on thinner area. More space for snow and walter to flee towards.
Also because of the heavy weight of suvs and such such heavy cars are more likely to slidder. Just imagine a wet floor in a shop. Now imagine yourself as a kid sliding over it and how far you would go. Now imagine the same as an full grown adult - but with the same speed. You will go further. Wayy further.
Also if you have suuuper much snow under your tires - lets say you slided and went off the road into a field that has tons of snow.
Your small car wont weigh down in the snow that much. Making it not sink that much. Wich makes the chance higher that you will be able to recover/drive back to the road by yourself higher.
All around lighter car? Better for winter.
awhile back i saw a toyota prius hybrid with ‘collector’ plates that are used by classic and antique car owners (and cheapskates that want the cheaper plates in exchange for some use limits).
