Anybody that owned and really drove the late 60s and early 70s cars on a daily bases says the new cars are not as good as those were has a short memory. I have owned a lot of Mopars, both cars and trucks since 72 that had over 100K. Without any doubt, the newer cars are much better. The older cars were simpler to work on, although easier to work on is still in question. The cars back in the day could be repaired at home with simple tools, if you knew what you were doing, the newer cars require more special tools and repair information in harder to come by and more complicated, but if you know what your doing they are still repairable. The older cars seemed to have parts go bad at certain intervals, exhaust, brakes, shocks, and things like that were wore out about every 30-35K. Many people would trade in their cars at 35K, or around 60K, once the miles passed 70-75K used car dealers wouldn't give you anything for a trade. The conception was that by then the car was wore out, and they were hard to sell (except to teenagers.) Ever hear of the stories of "bought this car from the back row of the dealership for little or nothing" those were the 6-7 year old cars with 70-80k. I bought a 70 Road Runner from the back row in 75 with 60K, had a 383, 727, and a Air Grabber for $600.00.
Most of the new cars back then had 12 month/ 12,000 mile warentee. It pretty well had to be a real heap to have anything done under warentee.
As far as crashes, often the cars held up better, but the passengers came out on the short end of things. Some of the cars were poorly designed and a 5mph bump could cause $500 damage! Remember, new cars could be bought for $4,000. Insurance would fix just about anything if the estamate came in under 1/2 the cars value. Most people didn't want a car fixed, they would fight to get it replaced.
It was a different world back then. Sometimes change is good, sometimes it isn't. The older we get, the less we like things to change. But I'd bet for most of us, if we could jump into that time machine and go back to those "good times", we probably wouldn't want to stay there. Gene
