The Golden Age of Cars...

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]If you could freeze time at any moment in car history and just keep car development right there, never to change again. No more updates, no more innovation, just stop all of it. What decade or what year would you pick? For you old heads watching, I'm guessing that many of you would go with the 50s or the 60s, maybe even the 40s. Cars around the middle of the previous century, they had soul and character and they smelled, like really smelled, of not just unchecked gas fumes, but also leather and vinyl and metal and oil.

[00:00:35]Newer enthusiasts would probably point to the 90s and the early 2000s, JDM sports cars, new-found performance and handling and also the beginning of car culture in many ways. How do we narrow something like this down? Here's the thing, I think I'm somewhat equipped to talk about the golden age of cars, not because I've lived through many or most of these eras. I'm not that old and I can't even afford most of the great classics. But, I do think that I have an appreciation for these different eras, for the boxy and wedge designs of the 70s and 80s, the square body trucks of the 90s. You know, pretty much every kind of classic car gets me excited.

[00:01:16]I've also owned and worked on classics from the 60s and many of my first vehicles were from the 90s. I think I do get what these cars are about and so I'm going to try to narrow things down and hone in on what I believe is the most logical choice for the golden age of cars. So, stick around, be ready to comment if you agree or probably disagree and let's get into it. But, before we get too far, I've got to show you guys this. I'm sure many of you are getting older like me. There's something about nearing the age of 40 or so that you just wake up and feel like you tore your ACL. Do you guys have this? Most of us spend way more of our time sleeping than even driving and having the right bed is just so important for your health. The tough thing is, how do you even go about figuring out the right bed for you? Well, today's sponsor, which is Helix Sleep, well, they've got you covered. They have this great simple sleep quiz that my wife and I took that helped us land on this specific Twilight Elite model, which is great for side sleepers and also people who toss and turn, and it's firm, which is what we like. This thing has been so comfortable, and this worked out at really just the right time, cuz I've been having terrible back and neck pain, and this mattress has just been so much better than our previous one. You can feel the quality. Not only is picking the right mattress easy with Helix Sleep, the setup is a breeze, they ship it right to your door for free if you're in the US, and the steps to get it going are pretty much nothing. It's so easy.

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[00:03:21]That's 27% off when you use the link below. Big thanks to Helix Sleep for sponsoring this video, and let's jump back in. I hate to do this, but Merriam-Webster defines golden age as a period of great happiness, prosperity, and achievement.

[00:03:37]Now, picking an era from car history really depends on your flavor of cars.

[00:03:43]You know, if you want the golden age of commuters or reliable vehicles, you're going to pick a different time than if, say, you're a sports car or supercar fanatic, or even a truck guy or you like luxury cars. When you take everything into account though, variety of vehicles, utility, the soul of cars, performance, comfort, in my opinion, it all comes down to two eras, the 1960s and the 1990s. Pretty much everything around these decades, the 70s, the 80s, the 2000s, these were times that really could be considered true valleys for automotive development. And the 60s and the 90s, they were the peaks. Now, I know there are some great cars that came out, for example, in the 70s, often leftover platforms from the 60s. Sure, you know, BMW got a whole lot better at this time, but the lasting effect of the fuel crisis is just undeniable. I mean, for goodness sake, cars like the Mustang and the Corvette, they went from making around 400 to 500 horsepower at the close of the 1960s to under 100 horsepower in some cases into the 70s and the 80s. And you know, the reason why the 90s were so dang good is because we finally got out of that malaise era and got back to making cool, great cars.

[00:05:04]Now, I want to make a case for the 1960s as the golden era. I want to make that case so bad because my personal favorite cars are from this time. No doubt, this is the peak of automotive styling.

[00:05:18]Nothing from, you know, the 90s can hold a candle to the swooping lines of, for example, the Alfa Romeo 105 or the Jaguar XK-E. Heck, even cheapo vehicles looked pretty dang good from this time.

[00:05:33]These cars also had so much soul and character. They were mechanical and raw, and there were major advancements in terms of usability and reliability in the 1960s. But listen, if we're taking everything into account, man, the '90s just had it all and I can't deny it was the golden age of cars. So, if the golden age of anything is about these three things that were defined in Merriam-Webster, that is happiness, prosperity, and achievement, I thought it would be cool to take these defining terms and use them to look at the car world in the '90s, starting with happiness. Man, what do we even say about happiness? Do you guys remember being happy? Was the '90s the last time you felt truly happy and well, like emotionally and mentally? Well, for one, in the '90s, car culture not only blew up, but it also kind of peaked at this time. Meetups, clubs, tuning and modding culture, there was just so much excitement around cars in the '90s. You know, the Fast and the Furious and the whole JDM car scene just going mainstream into video games and movies, it wouldn't have happened without all of these grassroots groups of people just obsessing over cars. Why were regular people so excited about cars in the '90s? Well, a major reason that car culture was so vibrant is pretty simple.

[00:06:56]Cars were still fun and still able to make you happy even on a tight budget.

[00:07:01]This was the era of the perfect sports car, right before every manufacturer started obsessing over specs. In the '90s, companies relentlessly pushed to give their cars excellent handling and speed, perfect enough for the road and really for any driver. But you still felt everything that the car was giving to you in terms of feedback through the steering wheel and through the seat of your pants. Look at the performance figures at this time. The legendary gentleman's agreement in Japan capped advertised power at 276 horsepower, and yet think about the cars that came from that rule. You've got the Nissan Skyline GT-R, the Toyota Supra, the Mazda RX-7, even in America a car like the 1990 Corvette ZR-1 made 375 horsepower and it felt like a rocket ship. The truth is you don't need more than 300, 350 horsepower and usually not even that much to have the time of your life on a public road. Any more than that is overkill and actually takes away from the overall driving experience. In a 90s car you could use all the power. You could rev the engine to redline and shift through the gears without immediately going to jail. It's not so much that this was the era of driving a slow car fast and that being more fun than driving a fast car slow like we have today. These cars were genuinely fast. But this was kind of a middle ground between the old classic sports cars that truly were slow compared to modern cars. These cars were fast enough is what I would say. Also 90s sports cars were the final form of really driver focused philosophy. You had thin roof pillars which meant that you could actually see out of the car. You had cockpits that were tailored towards the driving experience with no more or less than what you needed. Whether you had serious money to drop on something like the NSX or not so much money and you got yourself something like an Impreza or a Miata, the experience was mostly the same. It was just you and this physical mechanical machine and the open road.

[00:09:08]Now it's true that you know a little Japanese hatchback or like a rally car, it wasn't going to give you the same incredible sonorous engine noise as some rare expensive Italian sports car, but everything at this time was pretty visceral and very few cars of any price point today offer this kind of experience and even the ones that do, you know the cars that doctors and lawyers get on waitlists for, they're still muted compared to the iconic sports cars of the '90s. But, it wasn't just that sports cars and track day enthusiasts, it's not just that they were happy. Everybody who's into vehicles of really any kind had it made in the '90s. The businessman taking clients to lunch in his Lexus LS 400, the family heading out on a vacation in a Buick Estate Wagon, the broke student moving all of his belongings into his janky escort, they were all happy because all of their cars worked so well for them. They didn't all have to drive some various form of an SUV like we do today. All right, then we have the term prosperity. A true golden age cannot just belong to the rich. Now, if it were, no doubt today would be the golden era of cars because if you have millions of dollars laying around, then there's no better time to be an enthusiast than today with companies like Koenigsegg and Rimac and Bugatti all going head-to-head to make the most audacious cars imaginable, but who cares about those cars? They don't have any real bearing on us regular people. The golden age needs to be something that everybody could enjoy, and the '90s really excelled at making great cars accessible. The affordability of cars in this decade was truly unmatched. In part because cars were simpler, but also because manufacturers were willing to just make simple versions of their cars and to have certain options that were just stripped down and basic. You didn't need to have a massive bank account to buy something genuinely exciting or incredibly dependable. Take the Miata for example, it was a brand new reliable rear-wheel drive sports car that regular people could buy on a modest salary, and it brought back the old British roadster formula but for a new era. For daily commuters, cars like of course the Civic and the Camry, the Nissan Sentra, these were inexpensive cars that were built to last forever and they held their value really well. Even the performance world was pretty affordable. The Mustang GT, the Chevy Camaro Z28, they once again offered that roaring V8 feel for the working class but in more updated modern packages. The variety of cars available during this time was also staggering.

[00:11:55]Car companies were making a lot of money and selling a lot of cars, which meant that they were willing to take big risks and build weird cool things. You could walk into a showroom and choose between high-tech sports cars, rugged body-on-frame SUVs, premium luxury cruisers, practical hatchbacks. I mean, you name it. It was the golden age of choice. If you liked trucks, you could get a very straightforward simple boxy F-150 or Chevy Silverado that was built like a tool, not a luxury living room like today's trucks are. And of course, they also cost a fraction. If you wanted a commuter, you didn't have to just buy a boring crossover, you could get a station wagon or a coupe or a sedan.

[00:12:37]Manufacturers hadn't yet consolidated everything into the same few basic shapes that we see on the road today.

[00:12:44]Okay, last let's talk about achievement.

[00:12:47]The cars of this time were the result of a kind of coming together of a few different philosophies for cars and for car manufacturing. On the one hand, engineers gained this new level of understanding for things like weight reduction, use of new materials, aerodynamics, but not all of this would come at the expense of everything else.

[00:13:07]There was still this old-school feel and vibe to these cars and the result was really something special. The '90s represent the absolute peak of automotive engineering because it was the perfect sweet spot between mechanical simplicity and modern technology. Safety is a good example.

[00:13:26]The '90s was the decade where cars became genuinely safe without becoming bloated and heavy. Crumple zones, anti-lock brakes became standard, dual airbags became normal. Car companies figured out how to save you in the event of a crash, but they didn't need thick blind spot roof pillars and thousands of pounds of heavy battery packs and sensors. You got the protection for the most part that you needed and also all the other cars on the road were smaller in general and people could see and people weren't on their phones, but that's all a different video. The cars were for the most part light, nimble, they were engaging to drive and also cars at this time got pretty much just as good of fuel mileage as today. But the biggest achievement of the '90s was reliability and serviceability. This was the era of the unkillable engine.

[00:14:19]Computerized fuel injection had completely replaced finicky carburetors and this meant that cars started right up every single morning, whether it was freezing cold or super hot. The electronics were still simple. There are so many different engines from this time that could easily pass 300,000 mi with just basic maintenance. And if something did break, you could actually fix it yourself. You didn't need a specialized computer scan tool or a freaking computer science degree to work on your car to swap out the alternator. It was all pretty easy and there was just tons of space in the engine bay, parts were cheap and everything was just held together for the most part with nuts and bolts. Cars were well-engineered, but still simple, which is good engineering in my opinion. There was moderation. You know, we've gone way too far today with all of the silly extras that have just made cars way more complex and heavier.

[00:15:12]We also got things like rust-proofing at this time. The introduction of OBD-II in 1996 changed everything by standardizing a single plug under the dash that connects to an affordable scanner, cars could be easily diagnosed and fixed by local mechanics instead of blindly swapping parts. Anybody could pull a specific code to instantly pinpoint exactly which sensor or component was failing. Of course, this would also lead to a time where cars would kind of be overrun by computers and sensors, and that did start late in the '90s. More than anything, I think this era just brought drivers the ultimate balance.

[00:15:53]Cars that were safe enough to protect you and your family, reliable enough to start every day for 20 years, simple enough to maintain in your own driveway, but still fun and engaging and full of character. This was really the peak, the golden age of cars, right before marketing and all the regulations over complicated the automobile forever. You know, it's over. There's no going back.

[00:16:16]For me, this is the point where I would freeze car development forever. As much as my heart is pulled to the 1960s, the '90s is the simple answer. If we did this, local mechanics would still be able to work on all of our cars. Cars were still fun. You just had fewer headaches, and you could spend more time driving and enjoying them instead of just wrenching on them, and you could get in them and drive them across the country without having to think about it. Now, I would love to hear what your thoughts are. I'm hoping this video would be a great place for people to come and give their opinions hear others' opinions. So, let loose in the comments below. Hope you guys enjoyed it. We'll see you in the next one. Drive safe.