Quote:
Originally Posted by mineistaken
some strange American trend to make new cars look "oldschool". Mustangs, camaros, challengers, now this  |
that's because the older cars had more curves and better looks.
Here in the U.S. they started putting a ton of regulations (thank you Federal govt.) to make us all "safer".
Starting around 1973/1974 they set a standard of height for a car from the ground. That INSTANTLY fucked up a ton of small European sports cars here in the U.S.
That same year they also instituted new bumper regulations which instantly killed all the beautiful chrome bumpers.
Most European sports car manufacturers put ugly big black rubber bumpers on their U.S. exports and kept the beautiful low-to-the-ground chrome bumpered cars selling in the rest of the world.
And of course the federal govt. regulated catalytic converters and emissions controls which then de-powered all the cars.
So the car manufacturers started trying to compensate by making the cars more aerodynamic to offset the loss of handling (height raised) and loss of power (emissions controls). And we ended up with all those butt-ugly box and wedge cars of the 1980's.
But now technology has FINALLY gotten up to "speed" (pun intended) and they can most definitely make cars with modern day fuel injection, low emissions, and meeting the height requirement and still have sharp handling (though never as intuitive to me as a low slung MG sitting a few inches off the ground with no power steering and a "primitive" spring suspension).
So they are now making the cars look more beautiful again and going back to the classic designs that most all car aficionados agree are the most beautiful, stylish, and aggressive looking.
I like it! I've seen some of the newer mustangs that made me look twice to see if it was really a "modern" one or just a refurbished old Mach 1 Mustang.