Car-wise, what did you hate about the 70's?

Running on empty at midnight looking for a gas station that was open, after scrounging for the loose change in my seat- seventy five cents could actually get you enough gas to get home!

 

The 70's was the greatest(automotive)decade of my life! and my buddy
still has a set of 15"x15" SS Cragars to prove it.Muscle cars were cheap,
Hot Rods were cheaper, and vans were chick magnets.(I tried to roll them
all together with a 57 Chevy sedan delivery with mixed results).
Workingstiffs could still throw together a nationally competetive drag car.Manufactures would actually give you parts at the track with a handshake,plugs,oil ,tires on and on.
I see lots of you remember AMC, I remember AMC pro stocks kicking
some Big 3 @ss,(74 or 5 Gatornationals come to mind).I remember crewing
a Super Stock AMC that ran against Thunderbolt Fairlanes with good
success. I remember not really giving a shit about what the dealers had on
their lots cause I wasn't interested.
Come to think of it that last one hasn't really changed over the years...


And last but not least I remember Linda Vaughn and Jungle Pam...

 

"You can't ride like a Pacer unless you're wide like a Pacer"

 

Actually, if the Pacer had flush rectangular headlights (with the bumps taken out of the hood) and a rubber-covered bumper, it would look like a Taurus with the roof raised about a foot higher, in front.

I don't particularly care for them either, but to me they're kind of like the Airflow, the styling a good 10 years ahead of it's time and to this day ridiculed for it. AMC's are some goofy looking cars but they didn't look like anything else on the road. The Hornet and Gremlin got built for like 17 years straight, they just changed the model names about 1980. I think the Gremlin became the Eagle - it's the same car, the side window is a different shape is all.


But what I hate.. all the goofy things they did to sell cars in the '70's, and all the crappy economizing... probably the #1 thing I hate: The 301 Pontiac. But I managed to blow one of those up, so... And I tore apart one of those metric/standard GM cars, too. Pain in the ass...

I actually looked at an Olds the other day that had a 267 in it. The car was such a POS that even though it should have been vanadlized to hell where it sat, I think the neighborhood kids felt sorry for it and that they couldn't possibly make it any worse.

But I like the cars up through about '74, especially the big GM fullsize cars. That's why I have three '72 Pontiacs, two of which I drove daily for a couple years. Back when you could afford to put gas in a car with a 455 that got 14 MPG.

 

After the Oil Embargo of '73 and the "new" smog regulations, every manufacturer went to de-tuned motors with air pumps and other crap. To save "gas", they built 4 bangers and small displacement V6 motors.
To be specific:
Ugly square shaped cars, like the Ford Fairmont, Mercury Zephyr, etc.
The exploding early model Ford Pinto.
Short wheelbases with long extensions in front of and behind the wheels.
Chevy Vega aluminium cylinder 4-banger motors.
As said earlier, "decorated" cars not "styled" cars.

Of course in the "oughts", (2005, 2006, etc.) we also have ugly square shaped cars, like the Honda Element and Toyota X-box. We also have underpowered 4-bangers and now computer controlled V8s that shut-off some of the cylinders so you only run on 4-cylinders. What kind of a stupid idea is that. Oh, to save fuel.

We also have electronic controlled throttles, i.e. a form of "fly-by-wire". There is NO direct link between your foot and the throttle control. How safe is that? Its NOT!!! It wouldn't be allowed in any racing organization I know of! Where is the safety? What are they doing about the control of the software in the computer to prevent inadvertent speed up in the engine?
How long before software glitches cause somebody to die?

 

Hey man dis the Vega all you want buy lay off the Pinto. I had a first year model with the Kent motor, drove the living crap out of it with very little trouble, put 100K plus on it before it was stolen. Didn't worry then or later about the fuel tank problems, buncha overwrought hooey. We like to drive 70 year old cars and we're worried about safety?

 

Ugh.






The worst thing about the 70's is When Jill Monroe left to become a professional racing driver on the grand prix circuit in Europe.


The best thing about the seventies?
The birth of punk Rock!!!

 

Laugh all you guys want, the Volare Roadrunners and the "Petty Kit Cars" have been climbing in value. As are solid early Pintos, which, when outfitted with a small block and a rake are bad ass. A guy down the street had a metallic green one when I was a kid, Cragars, tunnel ram, loud exhaust, that thing would fly...


Porn, also, came from the 70's. 35mm baby, Seka. That's what built the internet...Porn from the 70's. hahahaha.

 

FreeBird..............

 

"Street is Neat " Stickers

 

The 70's were GREAT for me, carwise. Fortunately....I was too fuckin poor to be able to afford any of the wonderful new offerings of the 70's. I had to suffer with driving around in cheap old iron...jacked up 57 Chevy convertible, solid cammed 327 and 4 speed. Handfull of other 55-7 chevies. 70 Gran Sport Stage one 455 4 speed. 67 Grand Prix. Remember , muscle cars were cheap, after the big oil shortage of the early 70's. You could even buy them as donor cars for your 50's cars cheap enough.
What sucked...Vans, and Pimpmobiles. My mentor, who was building customs since the 50's, wound up putting fake Mercedes grilles, and triple bar headlights, and towel racks on Caddies to pay the bills, instead of chopping Mercs, and such.

"Keep on Truckin"

 

Meeting my wife.

 

theres good looking 70's amc's also damn it!!!! like these...i own a amx dad bought new and my uncle bought a rebel the same week.to bad amc didnt have the funds to keep up with the worthless three!!sorry had to help my fellow amc buds out!however, pacers make good green houses!!!ahh, the merthmoblies!!shaa right

 

Howzabout those fuckin "moon roofs" I cant tell you how hard it is to fill those holes back up with metal.

 

Nothing wrong with AMC's I've had a few 2-68 Javelins, 1- 69 Javelin, 1 68 AMX (390 4 spd). 4-5 Ambassadors, and an Eagle. Also a 63 or 64 Ambassador station wagon with 327 3 spd o/d. The Javelins and AMX kicked ass with everything I ran against.

 

Fuck you danny....that describes most of the cars i had in high school

from what i remember (everything from mid 69 until, uh..yesterday, is kinda of a blur)

the bad....
Fake zoomies on vans
L 60-15's on damn near everything
replacing vacuum line by the roll on every gm i touched
my 1st ex wife

the good
I was selling parts in the 70's...LOTS of parts for anything that came out of Detroit & making a decent living at it

July 4 1976 doing wheelies on a hopped up kz900 in the middle of downtown omaha at 6 in the morning

and this chick named Annie

 

"Have a Nice Day" stickers,,,,80 foot whip antenaes with green tennis balls to protect the paint.

Have a nice day!

 

SHIT, i forgot all the candy painted, slammed on struts, Kerker piped KZ900's me and my buddies used to thrash back then! Great bikes

 

Compared to nowadays that is nice. Not likely to find a $50 laying under the seat to fill up with.

78 Mustang "King Cobra". 302 2 barrel 139 horsepower...nuff said

 

I think I must have missed something, those were my "organic farming years".

 

Chrome sidepipes
"resto-rods"
"keep on truckin" mudflaps
the whole van thing

 

Man ... if you hated the vans ... you never had one !!! .... may have been the best part of the 70's next to the bikes .......

 

Man, I love this stuff! It's resto-rods that I hate.

 

Well, if you ever get on a commercial airliner, just remember that all the hydraulics that control whether or not that plane falls out of the sky are the very same "fly by wire" systems.

Sir, would you like a pillow?

 

yep...if i had a buck for every set of the "keep on truckin" mats i sold...i'd be retired .....

the van thing did suck, however, the van chicks were......


ah hell, they sucked too

 

Guy across the street from me had a jacked up Cordoba with a Sparkomatic radio, equilizer, white lettered tires and leaky t-tops. Even sadder, as a kid, I thought it was cool and wanted one.

 

What I hate about the '70's?
The fact that I didn't keep my Challengers and GTX's.
I bought a new '78 Dodge van and that is the last new vehicle I have bought.
It was a POS.

 

The cars where I was was

Concieved:


Born:


And educated


Thanks for the opp. Pigpen

 

Yes, I know that the new, modern commercial airliners are "fly-by-wire". But who flys? I thought hot rodders drove their hot rods everywhere?

 

AHH, an idea for a new post!