What better way to spend New Years Eve than continuing a rant?

Right. Nostalgia.

Nostalgia is a trap!

People remember the feel of old machines, not the consequences. They talk about how a vintage boat of a car “soaks up the road.” They don’t remember the ways it needed 200 feet to stop on a wet road. They don’t remember bias-ply tires squirting out from under you in a rainstorm.

Nobody waxes poetic about lap belts, bias-ply tires in the rain, or steering columns aimed at the sternum. Funny how that part never makes the highlight reel.

Modern cars hide their safety systems well because when safety works, you don’t notice it. That’s the paradox: progress is invisible when it works.

Memory has a way of sanding down sharp edges. But modern cars don’t rely on memory or luck—they rely on engineering. So how did we get from hopeful mass to managed safety in the first place?

A 1960s land yacht weighing 4,200 pounds didn’t feel safe because of weight. It felt safe because it looked massive. Under the hood and under the sheetmetal, there was very little to protect you in a real crash. Tires were bias-ply. Brakes were drums. Steering was vague. Suspension tuning traded precision for that “floaty” feel.

It wasn’t that those cars rode like clouds because they were magical. They rode that way because engineers tuned them to soak up bumps — at the astronomical cost of handling finesse.

Modern cars are heavier for a different set of reasons:

• Crash structures that absorb energy where people sit
• High-strength steels and engineered deformable zones
• Electronics, sensors, and safety systems
• Better brakes, better tires, better handling

The result is a car that weighs about the same as a big old sedan but stops and steers in ways nothing from 1965 could.

That lack of control didn’t stop people from feeling safe, though. In fact, many still remember those cars fondly. Which makes me wonder: are we remembering the machines accurately—or just the way they made us feel?