This is a question that may be most interesting to older Indie Auto readers. What brings it up for me is a fictional story in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, which is a humor magazine. Alex Baze (2023) discusses a key part of the curriculum at Nonspecific Southern California High School, where each incoming freshman is about to be visited by their time-traveling future self.
Baze provides advice on how to make the most of this interaction. For example, he warns that students should not be alarmed by their future self’s appearance:
“Stress can have a negative impact on one’s physical appearance, and your future self wouldn’t be here if the situation weren’t very dire. Your FS could be malnourished, dehydrated, or suffering the effects of cobalt poisoning; under the circumstances, weight loss, sagging skin, and bruising are all perfectly normal, so don’t despair. Your future self may also be dressed oddly, maybe in paramilitary gear or a soiled tank top. This is probably due to issues of clothing availability and not a future downturn in your personal style.” (Baze, 2023)
What if your future self had shown you today’s cars?
I would rather not think about my reaction as a high school freshman in 1972 to seeing how I would look a half century later. So let’s take an automotive detour. What if my future self told me about — and shared pictures of — today’s cars? Would anything have surprised 14-year-old me?
One of the biggest changes in the U.S. automotive market has been the shift to trucks and sport-utility vehicles. I might not have been all that surprised by that because I grew up in southern California, where outdoorsy vehicles such as Jeeps, vans and trucks were already somewhat popular. I would have been even less surprised by the decline of domestic automakers in the face of imports.
Also see ‘How typical was car snobbery in postwar high schools?’
What may have most surprised me was the level of design conformity in today’s auto industry compared to the early-70s. For example, I never would have guessed that Mercedes-Benz would become so similar to other luxury brands.
I also would have been surprised at how overamped the styling has become on even fairly utilitarian vehicles such as cargo vans. And if I had been shown a photo of a BMW i8, I would have dismissed it as a work of satire. Who would want to drive that?
How about you? What, if anything, might you have been surprised by?
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Baze, Alex; 2023. “What to do when you encounter your time-traveling future self.” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Accessed Nov. 1.
The rise of the SUV as the family car replacing the station wagon.
The near total demise of the 2 door coupe mainstream market.
So few manufacturers value good aesthetics. Some are just awful. Other are overwrought.
The lack of car enthusiasm by high school age kids – many seem to defer when they bother getting their license.
Loss of 3 pedal offerings.
Cars that were just cars when we were at that age that now a major auction features. Some of these were not even good cars when new but now are revered.
Loss of the car magazine – either cease to exist or their current outlook is unrecognizable to what they were.
Expansion of the ultra premium market to where those cars are not an extremely rare sight. Bentley, RR, Ferrari, Lambo. That all of these would also have SUVs is outright blasphemy.
The existence of electric cars.
I agree with everything above and would like to add: I’d NEVER imagined Pontiac (my perennial favorite) and Oldsmobile would be gone, and that generally the US domestic industry would be so deflated. I’m not surprised about electric cars, but even that still remains to play out. I guess overall I’m surprised that technical advances haven’t developed even further by this juncture.
I also agree with the above comments and I’m certain I would be disappointed there would be no flying cars and all “cars” (“that’s what those are?”) look alike. I would be thrilled with the “new” muscle car era, but would question the whole truck obsession, even though I drive one. What would surprise me the most is this renaissance of vintage cars and what people are paying for these relics I abused and cast aside without a thought. My, oh my.
Some of our answers are going to depend upon what year(s) we are going back to. For me high school was 1969-1973.
If I switch to my college time at Art Center in car design that would be 1975-1978. During this time I was very focused and plugged into the automotive world. The Japanese companies were setting up satellite studios in So Cal with a few rumors of some European manufacturers having small outposts.
Would have never expected that GM Design would become only a dim shadow of itself as an industry leader of design.
That VW would end up conglomerating not just Audi (which they already owned) but Porsche, Bugatti, Bentley, and more.
Nissan would go deep into the wilderness with their design after the early successes of NDI when led by Jerry Hirschberg.
Mainstream huge performance cars would come back.
Retro car design. This was just flat wrong to us then. The idea was to move forward and that did not happen by k=looking in the rear view mirror.
The 1959 Cadillac becoming hugely desirable. This was a point and laugh car then.
That Guigaro would run his course and become irrelevant. Bertone would go bankrupt. Pininfarina would no longer do Ferraris.
The smallcars of that time would all evolve to grow at least 1 size class.
I graduated in 81. I echo everything said here. But I’d like to reinforce the utter blandness and the “me too” styling and the lack of color options. Any color you want as long as it’s white, silver, gray. The blandness of styling and choices is overwhelming. And yet the prices keep go up. They have become just people transport pods. Appliances to go A to B.
Expansion of the ultra pThremium market to where those cars are not an extremely rare sight. Bentley, RR, Ferrari, Lambo. Clearly I’m in the wrong neighborhood. I graduated high school in 68* The surprise would be cars lasting forever and do not change from year to year, the lack of color, trim, and powertrain options, the lack of rear legroom and trunk space in all but the largest SUVs, and the infotainment systems. *That’s 1968 not AD 68.
I graduated in the early 80s. One surprise is the rise of the Korean automakers. Korea wasn’t even on the horizon in terms of motorcycles then, much less cars.
Another is the expense of repairs to components that aren’t any more reliable than they were. I went from a $300-400 rebuild (You had to work 100-120 hours labor back then for that amount) for a Ford C-4 to $6,000 for a rebuild/reman now of pretty much any transmission, and at that price, which costs you 300 lours of labor at $20 an hour, they should last longer than a C-4, but they don’t. That efficiency costs a lot coming AND going!
The uglification of the auto landscape is another. Surely you can sacrifice 1 mpg for a more pleasant looking design, can’t you? Until 10-15 years ago, pleasant looking design was the norm. Paramount, even considering the sacrifices in room, safety or versatility it required now and then, like the bunker-esque slits they expect modern Camaro drivers to look out from. I don’t see any vehicle that I can possibly afford now that lights my mental tires like a Karmann Ghia would have or a Toyota MR2 and Subaru XT actually did when new. Even the mid 60s Chevy light trucks had style. Now they look like a rabid Transformer. I’m at the age where I can easily afford a Mustang…and I’m not interested in a new one at all.
The condition of the roads. Perhaps we -need- SUVs to cope with their condition.
1962: William Hanna-Joseph Barbera’s “The Jetsons” on A.B.C.-TV debuts with flying cars!
1949-1961: G.M.’s Motoramas tested public acceptance of styles and features.
2023: 600+-horsepower cars and trucks with fuel-injected superchargers, mostly put into custom remanufactured vehicles with huge wheels and tires. The Holy Grail: Numbers-matching Hemis and Bloomington Gold C-1 and C-2 Corvettes.
I graduated from high school in 1982 and expected that the K-cars, X-cars, J-cars, and Ford Escort were the future. I expected the 55 mph speed limit to be permanent and 100 hp to be the maximum in mainstream cars, maybe up to 125 hp in luxury and 150 hp in sporty cars. I expected diesel engines to be common.
Interesting question. High school for me was early to mid seventies. Being Australian, I might have seen things a bit differently.
Japanese domination of the market is no surprise. It was already well on the way down here, as Japanese quality relegated the previously-preferred British and European brannds to a “Why’d you buy that?” status. But the emergence of Korean and latterly Chinese brands would be surprising to the 1970 me.
I loved the sporty style of the late sixties/early seventies. I would have seen the future as an evolution of those clean surfaces and minimal detailing – but that’s sure not what got! Italy had global design leadership pretty well sewn up back then, though the Japanese were doing interesting things in bridging the gap between American and European ideals. The Brougham/formal style never really took off here, though Holden and Chrysler tried it to some extent and Ford swept to market dominance by adopting a more European look. Where is design going these days? I have no idea. Is there any discernible direction, or is everyone just floundering in the darkness?
Progress in engineering, however, is just stunning. I would never have thought twin-cam four valve engines with turbochargers would become mainstream. Who would have thought electronic engine managemant systems could accomplish so much? Nor would I have expected the American pushrod holdouts would be able to produce such high specific outputs. And as for electric vehicles, while I loved the idea, I never thought there’d be the technology to allow them to make a comeback.
Infotainment systems, as they’re commonly called, would come as a total surprise. And having so many functions controllable through a touch screen – sorry, it just seems like too much of a potential distraction to me. GPS? Reversing cameras? Parking assist? Wow!
I would never have thought of SUVs as a force, nor the emergence of dual-cab pickups as a regular family vehicle. Given that, crossovers make perfect sense though (though I wouldn’t have seen them coming), as does the move toward taller vehicles for more interior space. I would have expected sedans and wagons to continue as the popular shapes. Don’t we always expect the familiar to continue?
I would never have foreseen the downfall of GM, and the takeover of Chrysler by Fiat still seems like a bad dream, an alternate-universe scenario. Nor would I have expected Mercedes-Benz and BMW to have become so focussed on visual superfluities rather than nailing the essentials. It’s almost like they’re channelling Cadillac ca. 1980; ie. they seem to have lost the plot.
I graduated high school in 1980. If you would have told me 43 years ago that we’d all be driving some derivative of a station wagon, I’d have told you to get mental help. In the late 70’s and early 80’s we thought we were facing a bleak future with gasoline prices headed to $5/gal. by 1985. It didn’t happen, thankfully.
I never would have imagined that the Detroit Three would sacrifice so much territory to all of their competitors. I never would have imagined that we would be able to buy 700+ HP new cars from the factory at this point in time (2020’s).
I never imagined that cars would last as long as they do now. When I was a kid, a three year old car was largely toast. A car with 100,000 miles on it was a rarity. A fifteen year old car was a garage or show queen. Here we are all this time later and I’m driving a fifteen year old car with nearly 200,000 miles on a daily basis. I’d get in the dumb thing and drive it across the US without a second thought or even checking the oil level.
A lot of good has taken place in the last 40+ years, from an automotive point of view. With the advent and uneven adoption of battery electric vehicles occurring now, potentially more good stuff could happen. What I want to know is: what do the next 40 or so years look like from circa 2023?
Also, not to worry. We recently purchased a new 2024 “SUV-inspired” styled station wagon. Just to keep with everybody else…