(EXPANDED FROM 11/1/2023)
When this query was originally posted more than two years ago it elicited a fascinating range of responses. I have thus wondered if the passage of time might spur additional thoughts by Indie Auto readers.
What inspired the original post was a satirical story in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Alex Baze (2023) discussed a key part of the curriculum at Nonspecific Southern California High School: Each incoming freshman was about to be visited by their time-traveling future self.
Baze provided advice about how to make the most of this interaction. For example, he warned 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)
I would rather not think about my reaction as a high school freshman in 1972 to seeing how I would look more than 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 15-year-old me?
How might I have reacted to seeing today’s cars?
I might have been most impressed with how today’s family sedans have styling that is even more aerodynamic than mid-70s pony cars. For example, the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry both sport fastback rooflines and fairly low fascias.
Of course, one of the biggest changes over the last half century has been a shift to trucks and sport-utility vehicles. That might not have surprised me all that much because I grew up in southern California. In the 1970s outdoorsy vehicles such as Jeeps, vans and trucks were becoming increasingly popular.
I would have been even less surprised by the decline of U.S. automakers in the face of imports, which were already starting to eclipse domestic brands on the west coast. So what may have most surprised me about seeing today’s cars and trucks may have been how similar they look. Here I’m not just talking about stylistic details, but also about their mechanical underpinnings and size.
What hath globalization wrought?
In retrospect, the 1970s represented a high point of design and engineering diversity — particularly by national origin. For example, German cars tended to have a very different character than those from other European nations, let alone from Japan or the United States. Foreign cars were mostly much smaller and more efficiently packaged than those designed in the U.S.
That diversity has been largely washed away as the auto industry has consolidated into a handful of manufacturers competing on a global scale. To the degree that brand DNA is still protected, it largely involves carrying over a few superficial design cues such as Jeep’s vertical-slated grille.
There is also much less variation when it comes to vehicle sizes. Today you can’t buy a truly subcompact truck, and the smallest passenger cars are more akin to 1960s compacts. Although domestic automakers still have a lock on big trucks, major foreign automakers mostly compete in all other size categories.
Put more bluntly, pretty much everyone now has a religious devotion to bigger, glitzier and more powerful vehicles. The renegades are largely gone.
I wouldn’t have been impressed with retro designs
My design tastes can be fairly traditional. This is why I find the Mazda Miata appealing. The car does a good job of integrating design cues of the postwar era with current trends. Much the same could be said about the 2026 Dodge Charger.
Unfortunately, those are the exceptions to the rule for “retro” cars. They have tended to be given iconic design cues but are otherwise functionally dissimilar in character to the original. In other words, they represent the ultimate “postmodern” car — what you see isn’t what you get. Ironically enough, Volkswagen — once among the most unconventional of postwar automakers — has been a leading practitioner of vapid retro designs.
An early example was the New Beetle (go here). Despite that car’s unhappy demise, VW repeated its basic mistakes with the even less successful ID. Buzz. I would argue that this minivan was too big and expensive to have much appeal to those who admired the original 1960s microbus (go here).
Why oh why has styling become so . . . weird?
If shown today’s cars, I would likely have been most appalled by how overamped the styling has become on even fairly utilitarian models such as minivans. For example, I would have dismissed the 2026 Toyota Sienna as a work of satire — something that would only show up on a Simpson’s episode.
We have previously discussed how the rise of aggressive-looking vehicles was partly catalyzed by research that supposedly found that drivers have increasingly wanted to express a “don’t-mess-with-me” persona on the road (go here).
One could argue that brutalist styling is just another example of how the auto industry is still highly susceptible to flights of excess. Today’s Sienna is the modern equivalent of a 1974 or 1958 Buick. What this suggests is that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
How about you? What, if anything, might you have been surprised about today’s cars if you could have magically seen them back in high school?
NOTES:
This story was originally posted on Nov. 1, 2023 and expanded on March 31, 2026.
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.
ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:
- oldcarbrochures.org: Buick (1958, 1974)
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.
Ditto
l also remember reading a Mechanics Illustrated or Popular Mechanics article in the mid-’60s when l was in high school. It said that Ford Motor Company was planning to market an electric car/truck by 1975. I hadn’t thought in terms of ten years hence very often and “1975” sounded like science fiction! Now it sounds like bell bottoms and discos and a new generation of Ford vans that were NOT electric by ANY stretch of the imagination.
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…
High School for me was the early to mid-70s. Bumpers were ungainly as automakers hadn’t yet made them integral to the overall design. Emission controls were also just added into the existing drivelines and the cars ran poorly.
Now, 50 years later, the bumpers blend into the style of the car way better. Emission controls are also integrated into the auto’s engineering to the point where cars burn cleaner than ever with more horsepower and better fuel mileage than we believed possible.
I think of the hottest cars of back in the day, Shelby Mustangs, big block Chevelles and the like. A modern day Civic or Corolla nearly match their best 1/4 mile or lap times.
When I was a youngster, I would have been quite surprised to learn from my future self that modern cars are now styled like battle tanks, accelerate like dragsters, have no tailpipe emissions, and are unserviceable by their owners. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that sales are slow because prices are unaffordable.
Back in high school I could hardly think at all let alone forecasting so far into the future. But I am surprized and happy about many aspects of todays diverse car market – for many more niches than we had then.
Perhaps the biggest shock – 1920’s 30’s car styling is back with a vengeance. Big long flat roofed flat sided sedans with boxy back ends are obviously the trade marks of the 20’s and 30’s – Cadillacs, Nashes , Chryslers, Imperials , Lincolns Marmons and more. Down south a young guy athaetic is the”Capone mobile”. A dark austere Cadillac of no particular styling frippery.
One more thing – the great styling excesses of that former time are gone along with MArylyn and Elvis. Ford once so good at this – is now the automotive design equivalent of Cheynobyl.
1968. I’d repeat much of the above, and thought Chrysler’s amazing turbine car was coming along any time now. Still waiting. I want my car to sound like a Pratt & Whitney jet, use any combustible fuel, and look like something out of ‘2001 A Space Oddessy”. Even the future was better back then!