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The 50's were about flash and style. The 60's began the power revolution and the 70's refined both. Then came along the 80's and then all of a sudden, we were driving slow boxes. No power or style. Now the same people who loved cars in the 60's and 70's still loved them (or would have) during the 80's. All of a sudden, in the 90's the performance / style revolution was reborn. I contend that it never should have had to be "reborn". It was allways there, just not utilized by the manufacturers. i cannot understand why automakers couldnt make powerfull cars like the have done the last few years in the 80's. The basic technology was there. Computer electronics already controlled them. Basic V8 GM cars barely put out 150-160 HP. 115 HP out of a 4 banger was unheard of let alone 200+. The current 6's put out as much and more than some of those 8's. So if the demand wasnt the cause of the consumer what was. Insurance? Nah. Cars today are rediculously faster than ever and it's not a problem now? Okay, if they ahd to make them slow, did they have to make them ugly too???

The 307 was built from 1980 through 1990, produced from 140hp to 180hp, and was installed in just about every car Olds built in that period at one time or another, including the Cutlass/442, Delta 88's, 98's and Toronados. It was also used in many Buick, Pontiac, Cadillac and Chevy models. You can get a quick estimate of the year of the engine by looking at the 1" high casting number on the lower-left corner of the block and/or head.

 
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I have no clue all 80s cars should be destroyed and forgotten about. The mustangs corvettes camaros all were the ugliest things on earth. And all the cars were boxy and plain. Im glad cars were able to recover.

 
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I think the ugly/slow cars produced by domestic automakers was in response to the gas crisis during the Carter administration. And they also wanted to compete against the 1st gen civics and corollas.

 
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Good thread. I think it's because in the 80's, cheap economic cars were the big thing. Jap sales were rising and it was affordable and conveinent to own a jap 4 banger.

 
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well in the us anyway they stopped making high performance cheap cars due to emissions worries and the gas issues. this happend in the mid 70's about 73 to be exact. you could still then get performance you just had to buy a vette or a european luxury car maybe. i agree though 80's body styles were more of a box than my fridge and come on they had the ugliest like 10 inch rims lol w/o hub caps to disguise the ugly face. however i do like late 80's bmw m6 all done up and buick grand nationals are alright

makes me happy my dad found a 71 chevy chevelle convertible although its far from high performance

 
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^^ Gas was expensive and emmisions were really hard to keep up with. Like mentioned, there were performance cars, but not too many. Fast forward to the 90's and after a lot of work we got decent gas-mileage and a lot more performance cars.

 
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the car im my avatar is an 88 chevy spirnt. It came standard with a 3 cylinder. It was the ugliest thing ive ever seen but it ran like hell. After being rolled once and jumped off a ramp 36 feet it kept running and then we jumped it off another hill and it was still running. We poured a whole bunch of water and dirt into the intake to see if we could kill the thing but we never could. Finally we finished it off with a 86 chevy van. Smashed it to pieces. heres a link to our jump video www.bklahd.shackspace.com click on the 13.9 meg file the others are warm ups.

 
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actually try the 4.6 to see the car, the 13.9 is the van doing a burn out

 
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actually try the 4.6 to see the car, the 13.9 is the van doing a burn out. We actually got that van to jump off a ramp too, funniest thing ive ever seen.

 
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i think it was cause during the 80's we had stagflation because of OPEC's 2 oil embargos against the US.

damn...i actually remembered something from econ...i think....

 
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The 60's began the power revolution and the 70's refined both.

The 70s and refinement? There were some nice muscle cars made in the very early 70s like the 70 Chevelle SS 454. But most of the US made cars of the mid to late 70s were some of the worst cars ever made - the Chevy Vega , Ford Pinto , Mustang II , Ford Fairmont and Granada , any Chrysler product. GM produced diesel powered cars that flat out did not work. This is the time that the Japanese cars really began to take off. Cars like the Toyota Celica and the Accord. Fuel efficiency with decent performance and at least in the case of the Celica - very good reliability.

The 1970s saw many domestic V8 powered cars that were lucky running high 16s in the 1/4 mile - case in point - my 1975 Monte Carlo powered by a 350 with a 2 barrel carb - with headers and shift kit I ran a 16.8 at the drag strip. Today an 03 or 04 four cyliner Accord will beat that. The 1970s saw the apperance of the 124 mph Vette - hell an EX Civic will do that! Even the last years of the 454 Vette were pretty anemic performance-wise.


True most of the 1980s domestic cars still really were not that good. Such as my 1988 Buick Regal 2.8 V6. My Civic LX would blow it away! But the car was far more refined then any 1970s domestic product and would get 30 MPG. But in the case of performance things did start to look up - by the mid 80s the Corvette was again running in the mid 14s and 155 top end. The Camaro and especially the 5.0 Mustang offered a great bang for the buck. The Buick Grand National Regal appeard in the 80s and would blow just about any 70s car off the map. Chrysler began importing many Japanese cars and also began to turbo the hell out of everything.

Yeah a lot of the 1980s cars sucked but the 70's were worse yet with the exception of the very very early 70s and then only a few select vehicles - the LT1 Vettes , 450 HP Chevelle , Buick GS and the last of the 426 Hemis.

 
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Look at a '72 mustang. Next, take a peek at the '74 mustang. I will never, ever be able to understand what possessed Ford to do THAT to such an amazing car.

OK, gas prices sky-rocket. Doesn't mean you have to produce such an UGLY car. The cars of the late 60's and early 70's were beautiful, IMO. Then came the pinto, the Gremlin, the Pacer, the Vega and the Mustang II.

I don't understand why they didn't keep producing cars with the same style, but with restricted power. The Mustang was originally available with a low-power inline-6, coined the "secretary special". Too bad they couldn't keep on producing it...

Supercharger technology was about as good back then as it is now. What's good about forced induction is that enables you to get a significant increase in power without the equivalent penalty in gas mileage. A supercharged 2.0liter 4-cylinder uses less gas, on average, then a comparable V6.

Yes, the late 70's and 80's were a terrible time for the auto industry. Chrysler almost went bankrupt until they Lee Iococca rolled out the "K" car... eeeek.

 
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they didnt have NEARLY the computer technology that we have now. Look at a vortech supercharger kit and you'll see the nice piggyback ECu that they have to keep the car from self-destructing. In the 80s all you could do was bolt on a roots blower and cut your hood to fit. COMPUTER power was what made these new cars performers. EFI brought back power and economy.

 
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I can assure you there has never been a 442 or a Toronado produced with a 307. I also don't recall ever seeing a 307 in a Delta 88 or a Olds 98. Maybe a 350...but, not a 307. The 442 originally came with a 400 small block...and later, 2 different versions of the 455 big block. The early Toronados had one engine choice...the 455. The 307 was used in smaller cars...like the Nova, and base model Chevelles. It was NOT a performance engine by any means.

 
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In the late 70's the federal emissions laws started taking effect, hence, the cars started getting slower because of restrictive exhaust systems etc. In the 90's they figured out how to get the performance with the environmental compliance. It's mostly due to computers and new designs that we can have the power we enjoy now. Looks are subjective....look at houses from the late 70's and 80's...and the clothes. Maybe people liked how it looked then? I'm sure in the 70's or 80's if someone saw a prius or an insight they would go "WTF?!"

 
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It was all because of Nader.

 
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lol im still like WTF!!! but it all truthfullness the rest of you statment is true i just dont understand why style had to go down the too

 
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Nader also did a big push for auto safety, as outlined in his now infamous book "Unsafe at any Speed".

ACJones20 - good point on ECU technology. But, from a thermodynamic standpoint, todays engines are still incredibly inefficient at transforming heat to mechanical energy. The first person to successfully manufacture an engine block out of ceramic will be a very rich man or woman. Keep in mind that all the heat that exits the tailpipe and through your cooling system is lost energy. In theory, a normally-aspirated 1.7 liter engine could produce in excess of 500hp. That will never happen, but as time progresses, the output will increase. Take a look at 2-liter engine from 1979 and compare it to one from today. Back then you'd be lucky if you got 70hp, using a carburator and no computer control... Today, we're making twice that power and using about 40% less gas. I'd like to see the 2020 civic... lol.

 
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i dont think that really happened like you think it did. in the 50s and 60s and probably 70s the cars that were considered "muscle" cars did not produce that much HP compared to what we consider "muscle" or performance now. i mean the porsche speedster (356) had a 4 cylinder and only made like 90hp tops, and that was a sports car in its day. the cars that had 300+ cubic inches were considered huge, now we have like 500+ cubic inches...its a whole different ball game.

in the 80s gas was expensive, so people moved to more economical cars. but its not like the corvette or camaro or firebird or mustang ever died out. the supra and rx7 were also produced throught the 80s, they just werent as popular back then in the US as they are now.

i think it really all comes down to the baby boomers. they have such a huge impact on the marketplace that whatever they wanted was what was being produced.

 
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About what ELaudio said, I remember reading a sport compact car article about the inefficiency of modern engines, check this out: where the energy goes
35.3% exhaust heat
30% engine heat
8.5% internal friction
4.2% charging change
6.9% air resistance
4% rolling resistance
6.4% translation losses (acceleration)
0.6% rotay losses (acceleration)
0.3% axles
0.9% transmission
0.4% clutch losses
1.5% alternator
1% power steering pump

so technically if we could get rid of exhaust and engine heat, cars would have a 65.3% increase in power (in accordance to the chart)... a 127hp would have about 209.93 hp wouldn´t it be nice???

the chart came in the october 2003 issue of scc

 
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*COUGH* Ferrari Tesstarossa *COUGH*

 
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Well, you guys gotta admit there were a few diamonds in the rough. Look at great cars like the Golf GTI. The origional GTI can outperform the new GTI in a drag using a much smaller engine and much fewer horses. Not bad considering the price it was at the time.

But like was said about about fuel and emmissions. Times were different then. The market wasnt allowing for supercars. So it made cars like the GTI a hit.

 
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Nader published the book "Unsafe At Any Speed" in 1966, was an attack on the alleged handling problems of the Chevrolet Corvair. But there is no proof for this, Nader just was like any other lawyer trying to make a buck.

About five to six years after “Unsafe AT Any Speed” was public the Federal Department of Transportation issued a report disproving the books allegations that the Corvair was unsafe.

From another web site:

“In July 1972, the Federal Department of Transportation issued report # HS-820 198, entitled "Evaluation of the 1960-1963 Corvair Handling & Stability". This was in response to Nader's 1970 letter to the DOT Secretary, openly accusing GM of "supression of data damaging to the Corvair" and that the cars were "exceptionally facile rollover candidates", among many other charges.

Keep in mind that this was 5 years after his Unsafe At Any Speed book and roughly one year after the Corvair had ceased production.

The report addressed each and every charge against the 'vair and disproved each one thru real world testing (something Nader did not bother with). The 100-page report's conclusion was "The handling and stability performance of the '60-63 Corvair does not result in an abnormal potential for loss of control or rollover and its handling and stability performance is at least as good as the performance of some contemporary vehicles both foreign and domestic".”

 
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4 real

 
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Uh, I don't think you heard. but those cars WERE as dangerous as portayed in that book. My friends dad had one, and he said it was the scariest car he has ever driven. My uncle also had a friend with one, and it wasnt any better. Naders book was an honest account of the cars severe safety problems.


The difference between cars then and cars now, is American companies were SO hell bent on making a new redisigned car every year in the 50s, that they just made shitty unreliable cars. That stopped working in the 60s, so they started making HUGE engined boats of cars that belched filth into the air, and while that lead to these "fast" cars being really cool and popular, after 20 years of this, the environment was in utter shambles because of the waste that thes cars created. In the late 70s, and early 80s, car companies HAD to make cleaner running, safer, better built cars, because it was finally starting to be regulated (thank god). Japanese manufacturers always made small engined clean burning cars, take the civic CVCC, thats the only car in that era to pass emmissions WITHOUT a catilitic converter, thats a clean burning engine! See, if american companies were not getting back into that whole idea of making redisigned cars every year, and not refining all thier cars better, and just did stuff like Japanese companies, there would be less stringent laws now if things had just gotten better on thier own.

 
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Didn't you read the other half of my post? I gave proof that the car was not like Nader said it was. It was proven by the Federal Government that it was safe in every argument that Nader said it wasn't. So how is that an honest account of the cars severe safety problems?