The year is 2017 and so many people carry network connected computers in their pocket that you are surprised if you find a toddler without access and intimate knowledge of them. Marty McFly from 1985 came and went 2 years ago, and even though we don’t have hover boards, it seems like he left something behind in the future. The country is experiencing a recovery from an economic depression, we have a TV star as president of the United States, and cars from the 80s are in demand.
Economic Recovery
I don’t want to get too deep into economics, but if you look around, the economy is starting to look up. The housing crash of 2008 is still raw in many of our minds, but housing prices are in many places back up to their 2008 levels (before the crash of course). I bought my first house in 2011, which seemed to be the bottom of the housing market for price. In the 5 years I owned that house before my family outgrew it, it almost doubled in value. Most of us also remember that a few years ago, a gallon of gas peaked at an average of $3.60, which hit a lot of us right in the pocketbook.
Rewind to the 1970’s and the US and U.K. were experiencing “stagflation“. One of the suspected causes of this was a rapid increase in the price of oil as the supply dropped suddenly. You see a change in automobiles because of this from the land yachts of the 70’s, of which my father fondly reminisces, to economy cars of the 80’s like the one below. This economic recession bled into the early 80’s, but changes in government policies invigorated the economy and by the late 80’s people were getting back to work and seeing much welcomed increased wages.
Ronald Reagan?! The Actor?!
Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter when he was elected in 1980 and served as president from 1981 to 1989. People in 1955 would have known him as an actor, because he appeared in 53 films from 1937 to 1964 and was a well known movie star. He was hired by the company GE to host a TV program and spent several years during this time traveling the country as a TV celebrity. Reagan later switched political parties in 1962 and declared himself a republican. If this is seeming eerily familiar to our current president, Donald Trump, then you are just as spooked out as I am. In 2017 we have a president who is known for a TV career, being close to business, and for switching parties. Reaganomics were credited by many for the economic success enjoyed by many in the 80’s. We can only hope that President Trump can live up to the man he seems to be copying, because we all stand to do very well if he does.
1980’s Cars are Classics Now
Time passes and even cars made in 1992 are 25 years old now, which by common definition makes any car from the 1980’s a classic car now. Now this is just by technical definition, but I went to a car meet recently, and while this may just be an effect of e30 BMW’s, there were more people huddled around the e30’s and the Mk1 VW’s than there were around cars like this modern beauty.
I do think this car is curvaceous and a paragon of modern technology, not to mention performance. If you look at everything that new cars can do, with the 360 degree view cameras, low rpm spooling turbos, computer tuning, and automated everything, the 1980’s cars just don’t have a chance. Kia recently ran an ad for their 2017 Cadenza, and I think this ad illustrates why newer cars often don’t seem very special. Of course they are trying to compare their car to high end cars that cost a lot more money, because they don’t want to be seen as a cheap brand. In truth, though, new cars just seem to blend in with each other, whether it is a Toyota Camry, a Hyundai Equus, or a Mercedes S Class, it just seems like most new cars are just plain.
There are people now that suddenly have a lot more money than they did 5 years ago and want to enjoy it with a nice car, and so cars like the iconic Lamborghini Countach, as reviewed recently by Doug Demuro, are making a HUGE comeback with price tags well into 6 figures (cough $300k cough). Old e30 M3’s are selling for easily over $50k. A guy with a 1987 Testarosa gets more attention at a car show than the state of the art Audi R8 it is parked next to. The list of examples goes on, but the question is “Why?”. I think that there are a few factors at play here.
One of these is rarity. As even common economy cars get old, fewer and fewer of them are left on the road, and so you are surprised to see them. This means that they turn heads. Another factor is styling. In a world of sweeping aerodynamic curves, the hard lines of an 80’s car like an e30 BMW stand out, and they turn heads. Yet another factor is the raw experience of driving a car that isn’t so full of gadgets that you can hardly claim that you are driving the car. Cars from the 1980’s while many are still refined enough to have things like air conditioning, they lack driver assists like traction control, and so you can feel closer to the road. Lastly these cars tick the nostalgia box. A lot of people, myself included, remember seeing these cars back when we couldn’t afford them or even didn’t have licenses, and we idolized them.
History is Repeating Itself
Looking back at all of the parallels between the 1980’s and the 20-teens, is there any wonder that DMC has decided to bring back the Delorean and sell them brand new. In the din of modern life, I think we all wish we had a time machine and could go back to those days when life was simpler. While we may not be able to go back to 1985, I am grateful every time I see an 80’s car still on the road and I can show it to my kids and say, “back in my day we didn’t have TV’s in our cars, we had to read books or talk to each other on road trips.” Then I stop and think, “wow, I am turning into my father.”