Cars Are So Much Better Than The Old Days

It's fine to be nostalgic about cars from bygone days, people have fond memories of their first car or their parents cars. People also look at the range of different looking cars produced over the last century and compare them to a snapshot of today's current crop of cars as evidence that cars used to be more varied in styles than they are today, missing the point that the cars of any given year all look the same at the time. But there's no getting away from the fact that cars are vastly better than those of yesteryear.

1970 Ford Escort Mark 1

2015 Ford Focus

Take for example basic specs of a given model. In 1968 Ford introduced the Ford Escort as their affordable everyman's car. It was ultimately replaced by the Ford Focus in 1998 as Ford's affordable everyman market entry. If you compare the specs of the then-and-now equivalents it's amazing to see what you can get for your money today.

To summarise the table below, for around about the same money (adjusted for inflation) you can get a car today that is about twice as fast, twice as powerful, and 50% more efficient with  a whole bunch of safety features and comfort features that everybody expects as standard today but many of which weren't even conceived of in 1970:

As I've already covered, the number of road deaths is about a quarter of what it was in 1970 too, despite there being vastly more cars on the road than back then. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that cars in 1970 had drum breaks, skinny tyres, no seatbelts, no ABS, no side-impact bars and drink driving was common.

So, all in all, cars are immeasurably better than they used to be.