There’s no empirically correct answer to today’s Ask, but based on the comments, it seems like Autopian readers range in age from those who got their driver’s license in the Kennedy era all the way up to drivers who took the test while Biden was President. That’s a big spread, and I’m not here to ask what year you received your permit (I think we might have already asked, actually). I want to ask what you think were the best and worst years ever in history for becoming a new driver.
Having just done an article on Boss Mustangs, it seems to me you’d be hard-pressed to choose a better time than the mid- to late-sixties.
I had a work superior who got his permit in 1966, and two years later his parents helped him to get a new Chevelle 396 coupe.
I know, I know, muscle cars have major drawbacks, but just look at that thing; easily one of GM’s best-styled mid-sizers and with tire-churning power and twenty-cent-a-gallon gas it would be nonstop fun. Plus, you could tune the crap out of it and not worry about failing emissions or a CEL illuminating. Not a muscle fan? The European choices were all over the map; you could import almost anything you wanted and not have to wait 25 years. That’s got to be the best era to hop into a car for the first time.
What about the worst? Well, I was trying to find images of a yellow VW Bug similar to the now-nonfunctional one Jason has and the car from 1984’s Footloose came up on screen (though Ren’s car was a ’72 with cool FORUMULA V stickers and Jason’s is a ’73.).
You might not know this, but Jason regularly goes to grain elevators or warehouses and dances with reckless abandon to blow off steam. Maybe he didn’t want you to be aware of that. He’s just stressed out, but if you become a Member, that will help ease his mind. Just saying.
Anyway, over at the wonderful Internet Movie Car Database, they had the vehicles in Footloose (the original, of course, since I have no idea why they did a remake). This was about the time I was learning to drive myself, and looking at those pictures from the film, I was reminded that everything was pure, unadulterated crap while I was of license-getting age. Oh, sure, you can bring up some Radwood stuff, but it wasn’t MR2s and GTIs that we usually got. No, it was awful things such as Aspen/Volares like this:
Or reliable but dull-as-Hell Toyota Coronas and any manner of Iron Duke-powered FWD GM garbage.
Novas, Pintos, U.S.-made VW Rabbits with the square lights Jason hates – that’s what we were given from mom and dad (hey, are those Mercury Zephyr hubcaps on the Nova?)
Worse than that, we often got handed ten-year-old stuff from the heart of seventies malaise like that 1969 Dart Swinger in the top shot (we had a Grandma-hand-me-down in the eighties) or this Colonnade Chevy:
I’m not asking for your pity. Well, maybe I am. It was a horrible time to be driving 55 miles an hour, tops, in horrible cars that struggled to go even that fast – or even start, in some cases. When twenty-somethings whine about how bad Nissan Versas are, I just laugh; you kids haven’t got a clue how good you’ve always had it.
What about you? What era do you think was a magical time to be a new driver? Where were the lowest points on the automotive timeline for fresh license-havers?
Topshot graphic image: Paramount Pictures
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