I have owned 50% of that list. 2CV, 127, Citroen GS, Alfasud, Golf.
Can anyone beat that?
I have lusted after the Beta, and the big Renaults, and the Jag, and have always admired the big Peugeots.
Whoever wrote this list is my kind of chap.
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Alfasud, Beta (different version, though) and GS here. I have to say that I doubt I'd have been brave enough to buy any of them if I hadn't been a regular reader of Car, though. It's easy to forget how suspicious the average Brit was of anything 'foreign' until well into the 80's...
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Average pay was just under £3,000 IIRC>> Just out of interest what was the national average salary in 1979?
About £3,000 IIRC
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<£2k - Citroen 2cv 2-2.5k - Fiat 127 1050L 2.5-3k - Citroen G Special 3-3.5k - Alfasud 1.5 3.5-4k - VW Golf GLS 4.5-5k - Lancia Beta 2000 5-6k - Renault 20TS 6-7k - Renault 30 TS 7-10k - Pug 604 Ti 10k+ - Jag XJ5.3
Well I owed or my father's company owned a Fiat 127, Alfasud, Renaults 20 and 30, Peugoet 604 and I had also driven the Citroen GS and Golf. All were really good driving cars with flair and interest. I remember hiring a 127 in southern Spain and tearing up switchback mountain roads with ease, unlike the gutless and soulless Punto Grande I rented last week.
Almost all the cars above had far far better ride and handling characteristics that modern cars, mainly because they had thinner and taller tyres and there was less emphasis on the need for roadholding. If you drive at the right speed you don't need roadholding, just handling.
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>>At one time or another I owned a surprisingly high proportion of the Car list and I'd own >>any of them now in preference to the dull-as-ditchwater, gimcrack, gimmick-laden >>offerings with compromised engineering that people buy these days.
>>It makes me weep when I see people asking whether they should replace their Ford >>Focus with another Ford Focus. My wheelbarrow has a galvanised body and all-wheel >>independent suspension - which, in my book, makes it superior to something like a >>Focus.
You are joking of course-with tongue firmly in cheek.
I love classic cars such as those on the list but strickly in context. My expectations of a new car today are much much higher.
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"My expectations of a new car today are much much higher"
In what way? Most of the 'improvements' are electronic gizmos that have little bearing on comfort, ride quality and handling, and just add to the weight. I'd have one off the list like a shot if it came with galvanised bodywork!
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Most of the extra weight comes from the crash / safety gubbins. 30 years ago, you didn't have steel girders running along the inside of the door skins for side impact protection, or along the bulkhead to direct the engine underneath the steel safety cell that you weren't sitting in in the event of an accident. Of course, you also have things like power steering and air conditioning coming as standard on a Fiesta, when they used to be cost options on top end Granadas, and outright unavailable on everything else.
Were it not for the weight increases, I reckon you'd be able to buy a small, but full 5 seat petrol engined hatchback that did 0-60 in under 7 seconds and 45 mpg. You probably wouldn't want to crash it though. :-)
Edited by DP on 12/11/2008 at 14:00
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At least cars in the seventies had proper bumpers.....modern offerings are about as much use as a snooze button on a smoke alarm :-(
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At least cars in the seventies had proper bumpers.....modern offerings are about as much use as a snooze button on a smoke alarm :-(
Because proper bumpers and crumple zones dont mix. Its the crumple zone that saves your life not the bumper.
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Its the crumple zone that saves your life not the bumper.
Yes AE, but what you have always been very obtuse about admitting is that proper bumpers, which are cheap, will save the crumple zone, which is expensive, in the event of a light traffic shunt. I am sure manufacturers have every reason to be proud of their crumple zones, and I know you among others have reason to approve of them, but that's no excuse for ensuring that they get expensively crumpled when a small dog sniffs at them...
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Yes lud, but your are equally obtuse in admitting that death is much more expensive than a bumper. That in my book is excuse enough
May i suggest that you avoid hitting small dogs?
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Yes lud but your are equally obtuse in admitting that death is much more expensive than a bumper. That in my book is excuse enough
A bumper capable of sustaining a small <5mph impact without needing repair or respraying existed 30 years ago, on the Renault 5. Fitting that sort of bumper to modern cars wouldn't increase the risk of death at higher speeds.
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>Fitting that sort of bumper to modern cars wouldn't increase the risk of death at higher speeds.
How do you know? the R5 had no crumple zones.,
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"R5 had no crumple zones"
The R5 was a crumple zone! I'm with Lud, though - that safety-conscious (obsessed, even) outfit, Volvo, fitted hydraulic dampers to the bumpers on some models, thus eliminating damage from minor shunts. 'Body-coloured bumpers' are just a styling excuse, IMHO.
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death is much more expensive than a bumper.
No one in their right mind would deny such a thing. I don't know why you think I am doing that.
What I am suggesting is that it wouldn't be beyond human ingenuity to have some sort of traffic and parking nerf protection that didn't involve the crumple zone (or its flimsy but expensive ornamental bumper-shaped cover) unless the impact justified it.
Why is this not arranged? Because people don't insist on it. They just believe everything the manufacturers say without even looking at the crashing silences between the lines. As for the manufacturers, they think I am sure that we just love worrying about the tiniest impact at either end of our expensive new jalopies and can't wait to pay the astonishing cost of apparently minor body repairs and the huge insurance premiums they cause for some people. We must love it, because we just roll over and ask for more.
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Lud
makers design and produce cars that people want and can afford with a profit that keeps them in business. Alas your opinion does not count as you are not a new car buyer.
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Alas your opinion does not count as you are not a new car buyer.
That isn't why it doesn't count. It doesn't count because new car buyers don't understand that crumple zones could and should be made less vulnerable without extra cost or making drivers and passengers less safe. One is reminded irresistibly of countless thousands of clones of Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney.
That 'alas' is a bit hypocritical. Surely it should be 'fortunately'?
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> That 'alas' is a bit hypocritical. Surely it should be 'fortunately'?
Niether - it was sarcasm.
Tell me why makers make cars the way they do. (DO NOT come back with the "to make money on new bumpers" carp. No car maker can rely on or factor in the revenue from sales of accident damge panels.)
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Perhaps they are just carp designers. But it's probably more complicated than that. However, a proper answer would no doubt take a long and tedious Nader-style bit of investigative business journalism. I certainly don't know enough to give one off the top of my head. Perhaps you can tell me why crumple zones have to be so exposed and so fragile in minor traffic bumps, and what would be so difficult about fitting urban-parking-friendly bumpers?
I don't like Nader, I like cars. But I am not a pugnacious defender of the innocent good intentions of any industry I have ever thought about, outside the nationalised service industries.
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I had a '79 Trans-Am 6.6 that had soft bumpers that reputedly could take up to 5mph with no damage. And didn't some 70's Volvos have bumpers on a sort of shock absorber that would do much the same?
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and so fragile in minor traffic bumps, and what would be so difficult about fitting urban-parking-friendly bumpers?
who says they are?
I have deformabale - well not bumper - but you know what I mean
Recontly in a devon lane I had a "share half a narrow lan with a tractor" moment. The outcome was the the car hit a stump buried in the high mud sides.
In an old car i would have had bent metal, gouged chrome and possible bent bumper irons.
all HUGELY expensive to put right.
What happened? I had a scratch and the deformable "bumper" deformed and popped out of its mounting lugs. The car is black, the bumper is black and the bumper is made of black plastic - the damge can barely be seen
So whats the issue?
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"the bumper is black and the bumper is made of black plastic"
The bumper would still be made of black plastic if the car was white, yellow, or any other colour!
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"the bumper is black and the bumper is made of black plastic" The bumper would still be made of black plastic if the car was white yellow or any other colour!
yes but as the car is not white yellow or any other colour it doesent show
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"as the car is not white yellow or any other colour it doesent show"
Are you saying that's why you chose black? If not, I imagine you'd be annoyed to have the base colour show through every time you scraped or bumped the, er, bumper...
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So whats the issue?
You were lucky there AE, compared to the many people who have screamed the place down here, and the many nearly-new cars I've seen looking thoroughly abused after nothing much, and the Focus driven close to a bush that then had a hundred-or-so quid's worth of flimsy plastic needing to be replaced. You were lucky the lugs in your case or whatever they attach to were still viable.
I simply can't understand what your reason is for trying to justify the sale of unnecessarily shoddy goods for thousands of pounds. Who exactly are you defending who needs to be defended by irascible chaps from Surrey? And what (I might be tempted to ask if I couldn't see that you don't seem especially dishonest in that particular way) did they give you for it?
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"so fragile in minor traffic bumps"
They could be made from polycarbonate and thus be nearly indestructible, but that would add at least £10 to the manufacturing cost! My Lancia (mentioned earlier) had stainless, rubber-faced bumpers that must have cost even more, but they both worked and looked good, as did the rest of the car.
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Just out of interest what was the national average salary in 1979?
Whilst I know it doesn't specifically answer your question here's a link to my usual price comparison tool:-
www.measuringworth.com/ukcompare/
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When I posted earlier about seventies cars having proper bumpers, it was a dig at modern cars with body coloured bumpers that shatter and crack with a low speed parking knock, incurring an expensive repair. They may look better aesthetically but are not fit for purpose, i.e defending bodywork from parking knocks. As for setting lights into them, that's another nice little earner....
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At Uni in 1991-92 my mate had a 1975 Volvo 240 estate (hand-painted black). One of his party pieces, when parking in the basement car park at Sainsburys, was to deliberately roll into the reinforced concrete basement wall at 2-4mph.
He did it many times and there was never any noticeable damage to the girder, sorry, bumper on the front of the Volvo.
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I had a Volvo of around the same vintage and IIRC the bumpers had springs to absorb low speed impact.
Edited by Pugugly on 12/11/2008 at 22:19
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Yes they did, a sort of shock absorber, one on each end of the bumper.
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Yes, they came about to comply with the US Federal safety mandate for 5mph impact bumpers. The MG and MGB were fitted with rubber bumpers to comply. The first car to have them fitted was the Saab IIRC.
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and really horrid they looked too
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Remember the two-door coupe version...... ?what a hideous thing that was !
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DtA8VqY19dI
Mind you look strangely stylish 30 years later.....maybe the old time tunnel thing.
Edited by Pugugly on 12/11/2008 at 22:26
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They probably wouldn't have looked quite so bad if they had painted them the same colour as the rest of the car. It didn't help that they had to raise the suspension to comply with bumper height regs too.
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Cancel that - just watched the full Youtube thing - it is still horrible.
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Sorry PU, I was referring to the bumpers on the MG.....watching the you tube video made my eyes water!
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Your comments were just as relevant to the Volvo 260c - horrid
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Wasn't that the car which, when announced to the press, elicited the comment from one eminent British motoring hack that there was something missing?
When asked by Volvo's, deeply-concerned, top brass what it was they'd forgotten; he replied "The gun turret."
Edited by Screwloose on 12/11/2008 at 22:43
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IIRC the Volvo 260C was styled by Bertone. The slab sided RR Camargue was styled by Pininfarina. The latest Volvos were styled by Peter Horbury, a Brit. Hurrah!
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A good list and remember all of these cars from my "yoof" in the 80s .After buying this book. I got a load of CAR magazines from this era from ebay. They did tend to like their Citroens and Peugeots and it's not hard to see why.Despite being unreliable I rembmeber my grandfather's Peugeot 305 being much more comfortable and refined than my father's Cavalier when it did run. People were much more patient with their cars then, well my family were. Now we expect cars to start and run perfectly. I found the letter pages of CAR funny with one guy calling his Alfa an "Awful Sod". CAR countered that despite the revolting quality it was a cracker to drive
I still think that the French and Italians make excellent small cars that rightly attract a lot of praise.
Edited by Mattbod on 13/11/2008 at 12:41
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CAR countered that despite the revolting quality it was a cracker to drive
That was something Clarkson amusingly admitted to in one of his early car columns. He reckons he'd get loads of letters from owners who'd bought a car he'd raved about, only to find it had fallen to bits, or that the servicing cost a million pounds.
He reckoned that as motoring journos care about how a car drives, but neither know or care what it is like to live with, under no circumstances should one consider their opinions when making a buying decision.
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This is in response to a post from AE complaining about the appearance of certain bumpers
Have to agree with that AE. Those 5mph-impact bumpers with accordions on either side always looked appalling on almost any car, even a Porsche 911.
Edited by Lud on 13/11/2008 at 13:47
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