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David Castenson's avatar

I am much older than you so I got my drivers license in 1974. Cars of that era were not built to last. Transmissions lasted 20k-30k miles if you were lucky. By 60k miles, most cars were falling apart. 100k miles on a car was rare. By then the upholstery was splitting. Door handles, window cranks, and lock buttons, were cracked or missing. The cars handled lousy, were heavy, used a ton of gas, and were dangerous. I had about a dozen of my classmates die in car accidents before they reached 20 (of course the drinkng age was 18 back then.) The best thing that came about from the oil crisis in 1970s is that Americans found out about the superiority of Japanese cars.

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Rob Stephenson's avatar

I think it’s interesting that in many of photos from the 70s and 80s, the cars add such atmosphere and put a timestamp on the scene though, at the time, photographers like Joel Meyerowitz and Stephen Shore we’re just photographing the Kia Sorrentos and Honda CRV‘s of their day. Now photographers (myself included) are still drawn to those some era cars. Those cars were new in the 70s, which would be the equivalent of those photographers shooting Model As and Packards.

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