Car companies realize that streets full of their products look terrible
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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Cars used to be awesome, now they suck. Go look at pictures of cars from the 40s to 60s or 79s even... there is no comparison.
This isn’t necessarily true. Even back then the streets were filled with shitbox cars that all looked the same. But only the cars that were beautiful and unique are still remembered and the rest are forgotten
I don't know, I think the streets were probalby really rad in like the late 40's early 50's. I mean:
If you ignore all the nice neon and look at just the cars all you see are a bunch of similar looking cars. They all look like a Chevy Bel-Air to me. Now I am sure a 50s car enthusiasts would be able to name them all, but to your average person there aren’t any significant differences.
This is the same for cars today as well. Maybe 60 years in the future people will reminisce about the good old days of the Mazda Miata, Shelby Mustang, or Toyota Supra without realizing that these cars were few and far between and the streets were actually just filled with cheap Toyotas and Kias and Nissan Altimas.
Nothing wrong with that!
I always love the “cars all look the same these days” comment as if vehicles of every decade weren’t closely following the same design trends. Cars today don’t look the exact same unless you’re blind, especially if these people are supposed to be enthusiasts, so the other option is these people are just fuckin’ stupid.
One thing I will give older cars, though, is that at least they were colourful. I have a WRB BRZ(that’s mostly parked because I have great public transit options) and I feel so out of place not because it’s a sportscar but because it’s not a greyscale mass of shit rolling down the grey road.
But the shit boxes people were driving in the 60s were VW Beetles, an objectively good looking car. Easily the most popular car of the 60s was the Mustang, an objectively beautiful car.
The real shit boxes didn't start popping up until after the oil crisis in 73.
How dare you rip on the Pacer and the Gremlin!
Some of the conformity is safety. Cars today are generally designed with crumple zones, airbags, and other safety measures in mind. That leads to them looking similar to other cars designed with the same requirements.
There are still some beautiful cars today, but they are outliers. For example, I saw a Honda Prologue recently and loved it. It has a somewhat unique look that was much more obvious in person. And the Alfa Romeo Stelvio and Giulia, while bigger than their older brethren, always make me smile.
There are other examples. But largely, cars have become pretty samey and boring.
stuff like the VW buzz shows that you don't even need to deviate much for it to stand out quite a lot, just a slightly different shape and 2 colours and bam i instantly like it so much more than the standard car
Uh, my first car ever was a '79 Chevy Malibu. There has never been a more boring basic car in existence, and for good measure it was mechanically a piece of shit. The only good thing about it was that it had once been owned by semi-famous comic book artist P. Craig Russell.
You throw the right tires and tint some windows on a Malibu, and it looks like a car with attitude.
Otherwise yeah, it's fairly mundane, I agree.