America's car companies have lost the plot. I can only imagine this is what it must've been like in the mid-50's when great marks that survived even the depression began to fall one by one.

Hudson.... Nash.... Packard.... Kaiser.... Willys.... Studebaker.... even claiming DeSoto.

In my time, I've seen Plymouth, Oldsmobile and Pontiac die.

I've seen the birth and death of the "Sport Compact" range of cars. We're on the precipice of seeing American-made 2-door cars disappear!! That just blows my mind.

But, American car makers have forgotten two things that would draw people to a car: Style and Substance.

I'm sure we can all agree that cars today are not.... pleasing to look at. There are very, VERY few exceptions. I thought the Dart and 200 were cute - I was waiting for a sportier, 2-door version to come out.
The 2015 Mustang is pretty darn good looking, dare I say it's one of, if not THE most attractive car to come out of Detroit in a long, long time. But with every update, they're just taking a hatchet to the poor thing.
Not all of us, but I'm sure some of us have sat in the garage, with or without compadres and just sat and admired your vintage car. My AMC Javelin is gorgeous and beautifully sculpted. E-body Challengers and Cudas with their simple yet aggressive style. A Charger with it's full-width tail lights and flying buttress roof panels.... I mean, these are damn-near pieces of ART in comparison to modern gobbledy-[censored]!

Nothing seems to stir people any more. Or if it does, it costs an ever-loving fortune!!! Detroit tells us "Nobody buys 2-door sport coupes anymore." Huh. Well, somebody better tell BMW that because they've damn-near cornered the market there. Honda, too.

Or how about a small, sporty car that's cute, fun and affordable? Oh crap. I had to throw that word in there. A few years back, I went and looked at one of those little BRZ/FR-S/GT-86 that Subaru/Toyota had come up with. Fantastic Premise, great little car, sexy styling but oh mylanta..... I dunno about the USA, but up here in Canada I spec'd one out that couldn't quite match up to the STANDARD EQUIPMENT of a Mustang, and the FR-S was $33,000 plus tax. I had to pay extra for an f****** ARMREST. I was about $5000 shy of a Mustang GT that came with more features as standard and more than double the power.

I don't think there is a single car today for sale for under $20,000 in either Canada or the USA. Hyundai used to have their Accent for $9,999.99 and that wasn't that long ago!!

Personally, I'm disgusted by the absolute useless garbage they ladle into cars today. Automatic Braking; Radar-Guided Cruise Control; One-button parallel parking..... Those are all the things a person should learn when driving. If they can't do those things: they shouldn't be driving!!! I refuse to pay money for something I'll never use.

I almost think we need something revolutionary. A modern Model T. Something that provides good, reliable, comfortable transportation at a reasonable price. It's no wonder there are fewer and fewer younger drivers: A) we've practically priced them OUT of the market. Anything older and *cool* is a small fortune; and anything modern and reliable is..... a small fortune. The average kid making minimum wage would have to save every penny he earned for 2-3 years to buy a used chunk of $hit.

I think we need to go back to crank windows; manual adjusted seats, manual steering. Hell, my first car was an '82 Honda Civic! It had all those things, a snippy little motor, 5 speed gearbox and ran for 2 weeks on $12 worth of gas. I think the federal regulations on cars too has choked them out of the market. Making something small and fuel efficient isn't going to be 5-star crash rated; hence the gigantic bro-dozers people drive today.

We need to get back to basics. Could you imagine the fuel economy of something like an '82 Civic with a MODERN, fuel-injected engine??? But some Ralph Nader / Karen type would complain "it's unsafe" and destroy any chance it had.