Did we live in the golden days of motoring

[Tony]

Did we live in the Golden Days of motoring (50's and 60's) or do all generation feel that way? From my point of view I loved the fact that every make of car looked different and you could tell the different makes from a mile off.
Be it Minis , Escorts, Jaguars, Hillman or whatever. Or was it because I was young and the desire to own a car was over whelming. I do not know, but I am sure there was something special about the cars of those decades.
Maybe the younger members can enlighten me and tell me why their period was just as exciting.

[mike837go]

We definitely lived in the time when style was not dependent on the underlying tech of the car.

Previously, the body she'll simply housed the mechanicals and if you spent enough, you got a cabin that kept the weather at bay.

We drove cars that were mostly weather-tight, looked great, handled well and got you from A to B with a minimum of fuss.

Today's cars will get you where you want to go in greater comfort while using less fuel and requiring less maintenance.

Where is the Golden Age?

Just watch the auctions and see where the big money goes!

[abowie]

I'm certainly not one of the younger set, but I can tell you what modern cars offer and that's comfort and convenience.

I've owned about a dozen British sports cars from the sixties. They're fun, but they're also cramped, uncomfortable, impractical, unreliable, dangerous, gutless and always stink of petrol.

My daily drive is a Landcruiser. Effortless, powerful and like a lounge suite on wheels. Superb air con (I live in Australia) and will tow or carry just about anything. finally they're stupidly cheap for what you get and compared to any of my E Types, economical.

[PeterCrespin]

...handled well

You drove imports presumably? The average American model still wasn't handling well in the 90s. Comfy, yes, but good-handling?? Even Jaguars were being 'de-handled' for US tastes. E.g. - the 94-97 XJR which was sent to the USA with comfort suspension and you never got the normally-aspirated 'Sport' models or any kind of manual transmission Jags after 1979 unlike the rest of the world. Instead you got the supercharged cars eith full brightwork and usually walnut dash, where everyone else got that model dechromed and with lower suspension and 'sports' intetior. Jaguar knew what US customers wanted and sharp handling was resisted in favour of soaking up the slab joints and automatically-retracting steering wheels and seats for super-sizers to get in and out more easily.

Actually, that's not quite true - they did import a small batch of XJ-S five speeds, what with 'S' standing for Sport. Bad decision - dealers wouldn't take them and they sat on the East Coast unsold for I think a couple of years until Jag flogged them off cheap to staff.

[Simon P]

Or was it because I was young and the desire to own a car was over whelming. I do not know, but I am sure there was something special about the cars of those decades.

Don't worry - my lad (15) and his friends obsess about todays cars in a way that makes our own youthful efforts look like the quaint efforts of hopeless amateurs.

What did we have? The Observer's Book of Cars and the occasional edition of Top Gear Rally Special on tele (if like me you had the good fortune to grow up in the Group B era - now they were proper cars! :D ). When I was growing up seeing a Ferrari was a rarity, and I think there was a grand total of maybe 2 or three Countaches (Countachi?) in the land - one owned by Mrs Rod Stewart, one owned by a bloke who ran a demolition business, and a dubious white one owned by Transound in Manchester (funny how you remember these things)

By comparison my lad has the internet which is absolutely alive with car information and 'car spotter forums' abound feeding him information and photos in real time of anything and everything interesting as it take to the road. He (and his chums) also know every little nerdy technical detail of every car, in a way that was denied to us whose boundaries of knowledge were defined by whatever happened to be included on the Top Trumps cards.

Naturally we all tend to think that, like music, the cars the we grew up with have a lot more class and character than anything that's followed. But also like music we all tend to conveniently forget the overwhelming mass of utter dross that was around and only focus on the good stuff (did you seriously mention Hillmans? ).

'Tis only natural. I come from Lancia land. If you ever want to get a good debate going get a whole load of Lancia owners together in a room and ask them when was the last 'real' Lancia made (clue: it usually roughly coincides with whenever whatever Lancia they own happens to have been made: everything built since is just a FIAT :D)

[christopher storey]

The youth of today seem just as keen. One well known to me has

Maclaren 650S

Aston Martin V12 Le Mans spec, on its way to Oz for the Bathurst 12 hours

Wolf prototype group C racer

Lotus Elise Club Sport

Ford GT ( ex the infamous Clarkson ! )

Lamborghini Galliardo Spyder ( also ex Clarkson )

Lancia Delta Integrale Evo

Audi RS4 Avant

BMW electric thingy

and 2 Ducatis


They're just bonkers !

[MarkE]

I think that should read the very wealthy youth of today, Christopher!

I think that the golden age of motoring for each individual is when they were aged 16 to 25-ish, with the excitement and anticipation of driving, and the reality of the first taste of independence.

My father certainly thought that the 20s and 30s were the golden age of motoring, and he spent his youth pottering around the Worcestershire countryside in his 3 wheeler Morgan, Austin Nippy or Riley, until 1939.

When I bought my first decent car, a Lotus Elan, in the mid 70s, he took it for a long run to try it out. He thought that the suspension was way too soft for a sports car, isolating the driver from what was going on with the suspension and chassis! He also thought that the driver aids got in the way of enjoying a true sports car experience. He was talking about servo assisted brakes and an all-synchromesh gearbox. He wasn't too keen on a heater is a sports car either!

I would be taken along to Prescott and Shelsey Walsh several times a year as a kid to be shown what 'real' cars looked and sounded like, and as a result I do still really enjoy seeing cars like the Bugatti, Fraser Nash and Bentley, although I've never wanted to own one.

As interesting to me was the car park, which was full of the modern XKs, Healeys, TRs, MGs, Lotus and of course E Types.

Fast forward to current day, and attend modern car gatherings at race tracks, hill climbs or just get-togethers for one-make or model clubs. There is just as much enthusiasm for their cars, and a 25 year old with an 'M' BMW, or a Nissan GT-R or an Aston or an XKR is quite happy with sub 5 second 0-60 times in a car that is totally reliable and comfortable. They don't understand what rust is, the cars are relatively cheap to buy and run.

I watched a chap last year showing off to his mates with his V10 Audi R8. He wasn't driving it, but had his laptop on the bonnet, and was playing tunes with the engine, running it up and down through the revs using a modified engine warm-up program. That's the sort of thing the F1 boys used only a few years back, but now everybody can access their car's electronics with widely available and simply shared applications.

They don't know what points, condensers and carburetors are, and most don't want to! For them I'm sure it's the golden age of motoring.

[malcolm]

It's all about that terrible disease; Nostalgia.
We al get it from time to time. There is no comon sense to mit, and no rational explanation for it's musings. We all just like to live in our past sometimes.

[GravyGraham]

I'm not so sure Malcolm - I don't think nostalgia's a patch on what it used to be.

[Moeregaard]

Being 53, I missed out on the '50s and '60s, when you could drive off in a new MGA, Healey or E-Type, but I did come of age in southern California, when rust-free examples of these cars could be had for next to nothing. I guess this makes those years my personal "golden age," but it was also a time when the spares situation was really tough and the reproduction parts were rare and often of questionable quality. I can remember buying rubber bits for my MGA that were half-rotted when I bought them, but it was that or nothing. Today, most of these cars are very well supported by any number of specialists, and the parts situation is probably better in many instances today than it was when these cars were just a few years old. Also, the days of having three cars go into the restoration shop so that one could come out are fortunately behind us. I'd say that we're currently living in a golden age.

[richard btype]

The added value of this revised forum must be the 'similar subjects' box that highlights previous posts - 'the Golden age' as a lad during the late 50's and 60's and my father an ex racing driver and then a commercial traveller in the family firm. It was always a pleasure to passenger him through the school holidays when we would travel upto a 150 mile radius of Hertfordshire.

It was brilliant for a car hungry youth with a weekly diet of The Motor/Autocar and the best of the lot a monthly meal of Jenk's in 'Motor Sport'. My father was always pushing on and so we used to rapidly cross into the various counties that all had a different feel and road systems. My father used to work out the shortest routes and in the main were relatively traffic light.

There is and good and bad from then and this era, but in those days the road planners used to focus on 'freeing up' roads so one would encounter short sections of dual carriageway intersecting two way traffic lanes allowing one the opportunity to overtake and clear slow moving traffic such as paraffin fueled coaches and lorries. One of the frustrations these days is that those dual carriageways are now single traffic only!

The same applies to joining some roads these days when merging onto dual lane A roads such as the A41 from Hemel Hempstead (to Aylesbury) one is forced to follow a slow commercial vehicle up a now single lane (used to be a double) formerly allowing one to speed up to match the traffic speed of the road one is joining. These smack of a nannying control of speed and freedom.

I also recall with affection for example the A10 road through the villages and towns from Ware going North, one would drive through the centre of towns such as Buntingford (would be intolerable these days) before quickly exiting onto an open rural road, these were always more interesting in enjoying the centuries old architecture of the high street shops and houses and the landscape with perhaps neatly trimmed hedges bordering an interesting country estate, rather than the barren ring roads and not withstanding that the direction was intuitive where as ring roads can take one miles in a direction that is not clear.

I do on occasions search out the original such roads and on trips to Dorset rather than the bland and often slow M3 south, take the A30 which is invariably light of traffic and were in fact the roads we travelled on as kids and one can enjoy the sense of freedom and again the swooping and sweeping roads that force one to drive rather than just be a passenger nose to tail stuck behind the driver who insists on 70mph in the outside lane!

Light and shade - good and bad!

[Durango2k]

I think it is reasonable to say the Golden Age is now:

- medicine-wise, we can become old enough to enjoy life longer.

- car wise: fuels relatively cheap, and you can go to work in a modern plushy saloon on wheels to work like my Merc - but if I want to, I can take a car from my small museum and have a go.

Carsten

[chrisfell]

I do wish people wouldn't keep on mentioning the A30. It's my road. I live on it. Not "in a rolled up newspaper in't middle" way, but on it nevertheless. It is a peach of a road around here. It has long fast stretches, and plenty of hills and bends. It goes through villages and towns, rather than round them, giving life to these places and opportunities for travellers to stop. And it is almost completely devoid of dual carriageways until Honiton, where it takes on the character of a motorway for a long while and is best avoided.

I love searching out these old trunk routes. Many have been 'improved' which means that first they were straightened and by-passed. And as that sped the traffic up, they were speed restricted and armco'd, becoming the perfect conduit for the electronically muffled and protected tin box traveller. But no damn use for the engaged driver who revels in feeling the road through the steering wheel and pedals and seat cushion. It's the difference between getting somewhere and travelling there.

The golden days of motoring are still here. If I search out roads, program the sat nav to avoid motorways, I can still have extraordinary journeys. And while we are still able, I get across the channel for France whenever possible.

[Tony]

I think it was the Golden Age because we were in our Golden age. We were young and had everything to live for. A long drive was an adventure to cherrish. Our cars may have been humble but we drove them as if they were an Aston Martins.
Our desire to own a big powerful car was a dream but that did not stop us from driving our patched up heaps, We banged on stripes down the bottom of the doors, fitted wide wheels, big cibie spot lights, bucket seats and anything else we could afford to make the car look more powerful.
My first car a Ford Anglia 100E had the widest wheels a 1500 Ford Classic GT engine, standard brakes and air wipers that stopped going up hill untill I changes down. Wheels bearings , track rod ends, King pins seemed to go on a regular basis and rust was the biggest enemy. Eventually I managed to get better cars. Mk1 Escort in Broadspeed colour ( red and Gold), Ford Cortina 1600 E. TR6, Hillman Imp (first baby arrived) and then a few wilderness years of unmentionable cars while the children grew up untill I managed to get a big Rover, Carlton, Rover, Westfield S type Jag etc and so it went on.
These days I hate long journeys on motorways and the best drives are when I take the old routes through Wales and keep off the motorways.

[richard btype]

Perhaps the secret is to allow the necessary time (now and again) and plan a route via an old road atlas, we have a wonderful country to enjoy, fabulous towns and villages - also agree on France - just over the channel and turn right along the coast roads - invariably empty roads good and scenery is enjoyable.

The A30 from London to Winchester as children we used to have the job of keeping ones eyes peeled for the Hampshire police they in particular took great exception to the speeding motorist.

The worst has to be the british motorways - not sure what is worse the 71 mph overtaking & middle lane hog or the 50mph ave speed cameras that last for miles and miles...

[Bill B]

Did we live in the Golden Days of motoring (50's and 60's) or do all generation feel that way? From my point of view I loved the fact that every make of car looked different and you could tell the different makes from a mile off.
Be it Minis , Escorts, Jaguars, Hillman or whatever. Or was it because I was young and the desire to own a car was over whelming. I do not know, but I am sure there was something special about the cars of those decades.
Maybe the younger members can enlighten me and tell me why their period was just as exciting.

Yes.
And it ended in 1967.