Our vehicles in the 60’s were solid metal, they had very little plastic on them, and even the dash was metal. The steering wheel might have been plastic but the gauges in the dash and the tail lights probably would have been glass. The cars bumpers then were made from steel and then covered with chrome. The hub caps were chrome and sparkled in the sun.
If someone said they had a fender bender, that was all that was damaged, just the fender got dented but the back or sides of the car were not damaged. The fender or bumper could be replaced or the dent removed and it was good to go.
Today when you have a “fender bender” there will be major damage. The whole trunk and rear side panels or the whole hood and front of the car will have damage. Today there is no such thing as minor damage when you are in a minor accident or “fender bender”.
I miss all the chrome that used to be on vehicles from the bumpers to the trim down the side of the car and they even had chrome around the wheel wells and the hub caps were chrome. Chrome made the vehicles shine and sparkle and they looked sharper. To this baby boomer the black wheels of today are not as good looking as the old chrome ones.
The cars of the 60’s were not as big as some are now. Even the station wagons fit well into a parking space. But the worst part about the vehicles today; like the double cab pickups and the suburbans; they are tall as well as long. If you are parked beside them it is hard to see around them to see if so you can back out of a parking space. I was parked beside a pickup one day and the floor board of the cab was even with the roof of my Honda Accord.
We went out to eat one evening and we parked at the end of the row and over as far as we could get in the parking space. When we came out of the restaurant there was a big Suburban parked beside us. Luckily the people in the suburban that night were careful and they hadn’t dinged us and I thank them for that.
Parking spaces today should be wider because all the vehicles on the road, or most of them, are bigger than they have ever been and we need wider and longer spaces or maybe special sections for the big SUV’s and the double cab trucks.
When the baby boomers were growing up it was a big deal when the new car and truck models came out each year. Our dads would anxiously wait for them to be unveiled at the dealership. There was a lot of secrecy about the new models; they weren’t advertised on TV before their release. The dealership would cover all their windows when the new ones arrived so they couldn’t be seen until the day they were to be unveiled.
I often wondered how they got the cars into town on those huge double decker trucks without someone seeing them. Did they have them all covered or did they come in during the night and unload them and get them inside the building while the town slept?
The different car companies in the 1960’s strived to have cars that didn’t look like other companies cars; unlike today when they all have the same shape. Back then you could tell a Chevy from a Ford or Pontiac or any of the other brands just by looking at them. The styling was totally different. I could tell what car it was by the tail lights and especially at night. And you could tell the year and model car by the dashboard.
Station wagons were the rage back in the 1960’s. My dad had station wagons when I was in junior high and high school. The first one I remember was the 1962 white Pontiac Catalina station wagon. It was almost as long as an SUV but was the normal height of a car. It had a third seat in the back that faced backwards when it was up.
When we went skating we never put the third seat up. All the seats in cars back then were bench seats. There would be 2 kids in the front seat with dad, 4 kids in the middle seat and 4 boys in the back area. So he could carry half of our class of 20 to the skating rink 40 miles away.
Even the 1964 Pontiac Tempest station wagon he bought and drove until I graduated was all metal from bumper to bumper. It was smaller than the white Catalina station wagon but was still very spacious and could carry as many people and cargo.
Something I miss on cars today is Glass Packs. There is nothing like the sound of the glass packs. They were loud and mean sounding and every one knew where you were in town. Cars back then had larger engines and dual exhaust pipes which helped with the sound the glass packs made.
A lot of the small cars today sound like an engine that is wound up with a rubber band. Some people with bigger engines put a large pipe on the back to make them louder but they still don’t sound exactly like the old glass packs.
A man leaves our addition at 7:40 every morning in a Dodge Charger and he stops at the stop sign at our corner. The pipes on his Dodge sports car are not quite as loud or have the exact sound of the old glass packs but I enjoy hearing them when he puts his foot down to speed up when he gets onto Monroe. The sound makes me smile every morning even before I get out of bed.
Unless you talk about the technology in cars today that help prevent a crash, I don’t think the cars of today are safer than the all metal vehicles we drove in the 60’s. To contact Sandy: [email protected]
