It’s amazing to me how much cars have improved since I was a kid. When you took a car trip when I was young you would always see cars broken down on the side of highways. Some poor guy would be standing next to the car and the hood would be up. Sometimes smoke would come billowing out, other times the driver had no idea why his car had stopped. There also seemed to be a lot more flat tires than there are today. I hardly ever see a car with a flat tire. There were certain things in the old days you expected when you bought a car. If you bought a Cadillac you knew you would be hearing rattling and other noises. Cars were just not made as well as they are today and they were a lot heavier. There were certain cars which were considered very light and the thinking at the time was the heavier the car, the better the car.

In 1957 Chevrolet came out with a car which was considered far more luxurious than anything which came before it. The car weighed 3,420 pounds. I remember a member of my family saying this was not the type of car you wanted to take a long trip in, because it was too light. He would only buy Buicks and was very proud of the fact his Buick weighed at least 800 pounds more than the Chevrolet. Needless to say gas mileage was absolutely terrible. Today cars like the Honda Accord which I consider to be very good road cars and yet the curb weight of the 2016 Accord LX is only 3,239. It is lighter than the 1957 Chevrolet. This would’ve given my late relative fits if he had to drive it. The entire way we thought about cars was completely different than the way people think about them today. One of the big differences is the distances we drive. We used to think driving 30 miles away was a real big deal. I don’t think anyone today feels this way and many people go further than this just traveling to work one way.

One of the big differences in cars had to do with the ignition system. In the old days, I’m relating back to the 1950s, cars had what is known as a set of points. These points had to be adjusted so the gap between was set to factory specifications otherwise your car wouldn’t start if there was a big difference from the specs or it would be hard to start if the points weren’t too far out of whack. This worry has been eliminated now that we have electronic ignitions and they are controlled by computers. We used to have to adjust these points periodically and even replace them as they got worn down. The rule of thumb used to be if you could fit a matchbook cover between them this spacing would do. Today even finding matches is difficult. There were certain things people used to do in the old days and one of those things was taking a penny and inserting it upside down into a tire tread. If the tread was so shallow that Lincoln’s head showed, then it was time to get a new tire.

Another thing which we were used to seeing all the time was cars being started by using the battery and charging system of another car. You still see this today, but it is very rare. Just about everybody in the old days carried what was known as jumper cables in case they broke down. This way we could ask a passerby to give us a “jump”. As I said this was merely using the battery from another card to start ours because there used to be a lot of dead batteries in the old days. Another thing I used to see a lot more often than I see today, was people who ran out of gas and had to go to the nearest station with a can, fill it and bring it back to their car to pour into their tank. Sometimes these people didn’t know just pouring gas in the tank is not enough. You also had to put a little gas in the carburetor. Nobody had fuel injection in those days.

A lot of my friends bought old used cars. These were their first cars and sometimes someone would want to get his car painted. In those days there was a place called Earl Scheib. They used to advertise they would paint any car for $29.99. Believe me when I tell you a lot of people went to take them up on this offer and found out the hard way they shouldn’t have. I remember a friend of mine bringing his car there and they did paint it for the advertised price, however they painted everything, the chrome, got painted, paint was on the glass and they even painted the door handles which were chrome. It was a real mess and they never prepared the car in any way before painting it. There was no base color applied, just raw paint. We all got a good laugh, but it wasn’t funny to my friend. On top of the mess with the paint, all kinds of dust got into the paint and gave his car a fuzzy look. No they never baked the paint before returning the car.

There was one thing we all did when we got a car. There was a very twisting and winding road which we always took our cars out to, to see how well they could take the hairpin turns. I had opted not to get an old car, but instead bought a Volkswagen beetle. One of my other friends had purchased an old Renault Dauphine. The rest of the gang had assorted American cars. I remember being in one of those old cars and taking the turn so fast two of the wheels lifted off the ground. Looking back I have to say we were lucky we didn’t get in an accident.

Today cars have a lot more get up than they were in my day. If I would’ve told anybody back in the day there would be cars driving themselves they would’ve put me in the loony bin. Even if I would’ve mentioned adaptive cruise control where one car on cruise control uses the car in front of it to maintain a certain space and even stop and start again if the front car moves, I would’ve been laughed out of the group. It is hard to believe how much automotive progress has been made since I was a kid.