Have you ever wanted to travel back in time? What about for really mundane, terrible reasons? Like, instead of viewing monumental moments of history or making small changes that will cascade to better humankind’s situation overall, you just wanted to go to Boston’s former red-light and general smut district and see what sort of cars were there? If that’s something that’s been a dream of yours, but money or medical issues are preventing you from using one of our nation’s fine bonded and licensed time-travel agencies, then boy, do I have good news for you!
The good news is that there exists a nice chunk of video from 1985, shot originally by Boston’s WGBH-TV station, which you likely remember as the producers of Zoom. In a slight departure from the usual content of shows like Zoom, this bit of footage shows the traffic around an area of Boston known as the “Combat Zone.”
This area of town was once lauded by the Wall Street Journal as being a “sexual Disneyland.” I mean, I assume that was praise?
But we’re here to talk about cars, not imagining what a carnal version of Space Mountain would be like! So let’s check out the footage:
I was first made aware of this footage by our own The Bishop, who noted that the footage really seemed to capture what normal, everyday cars were like in the mid-’80s. And, generally, I think he’s pretty correct: this footage really does seem to capture what the overall carscape was like in the middle of the ’80s, at least on the East Coast.
Things felt a little different out West, with more imports, proportionately, I think. Also, these clips don’t show any old air-cooled Volkswagens, which I remember as being fairly common even well into the ’80s.
Here’s another GBH-shot video, highlighting Boston’s double-parking woes, and it also really captures the overall feeling of mid-’80s traffic:
Let’s take a look at some of the automotive recurring characters of the era! I do want to note that Ford Tempo up in the topshot, because those are all but extinct now, and were once surprisingly common. Now you’re more likely to run into a Sasquatch on the road.
Oh, and speaking of once common and now essentially extinct, that car up there is the poster child for that phenomenon: a first-gen Honda Accord sedan. That one looks like a 1980 (or maybe 1981), the exact same year and color as my mom’s car in that era. That one is a five-speed instead of an automatic like mom’s, but still.
These Accords were wildly popular, a best-selling car that really made the Big Three fearful of Japan, and now they’re pretty much extinct, except in captivity. I see more unrestored old Beetles trundling around than Accords a decade newer. Where did they all go?
Even the second-gen Accords, which arrived in 1982, have all essentially vanished. I dated a woman who had one of these in the late ’90s, so they were still around then, at least.
Cars like this Chevy Celebrity were the water in which we swam; ubiquitous and ignorable, these boxy things were everywhere, a filler like rice in the poke bowl of the automotive landscape, if you’ll permit me some metaphor mixing.
If the Celebrity was rice, this blue Saab 900 was a big chunk of tuna: less common, but tastier. These were interesting cars for people who wanted something a bit less normal, and they got it, starting their cars by reaching down to their key in the floor. That brown Chevy van behind it was another unseen-but-everywhere sort of vehicle, too.
Look, there’s another brown van, this one a Ford Econoline (I was wrong earlier, so thanks to commenters for catching that) lurking at the right edge there, but I want to talk about the Mercedes-Benz SL there, which I think is a 450 SL, with the big 4.5-liter V8. That was a classy ride!
Also, see that Ford Maverick ahead and to the right of the Benz? With the huge dent in the rear quarter panel?
Somehow all Mavericks seemed to be in this general condition throughout the 1980s. They weren’t even all that old when this footage was taken – that car is probably, what, nine or 10 years old? The oldest it could be is 15, which is not that far off from the average age of a car on US roads today. Cars just aged harder back in the day, and didn’t really last as long.
Speaking of aging harder, see that Ford Granada reversing into the spot up there, in front of the Maverick? There’s a detail there that seemed to be part of every single Granada Ford made: the broken reverse light lens:
You can see it on the right there, from the video. And on the left, I have the Granada used in the movie No Country for Old Men, which also has a reverse light lens broken! They all did, for some reason. I think they either came from the factory that way, or Ford was making reverse light lenses out of spun sugar or something like that.
Look at this mass of ’80s iron! There are a couple of interesting specimens up front, a BMW 3-Series, and to its left, what seems to be a 1983 or so Toyota Celica notchback! I always liked the pop-forward lights on those. There’s a Chrysler K-Car parked on the left, too, and what could be the D-pillar of a Volvo 240 wagon?
This has to be the jewel of these bits of footage, though: a second-generation (’81-’83) Dodge Challenger, which was a re-badged Mitsubishi Galant Lambda. This one is particularly fetching in its two-tone red-and-gray paintwork.
If you’re nostalgic for mid-’80s carscapes, I hope this helped. I think if anything, it probably took a bit of luster off your nostalgia?
Anyway, I wonder what’s playing at The Pilgrim today?
Top graphic image: Screen grab, WGBH
I can’t unsee all the cars that didn’t clean the snow off their car and merrily continued driving.
Just like too many people 40 years later…
First generation Honda Accords rusted like they were Italian. The carscape looks very similar to NYC in that era. IIRC WGBH also produced the science show Nova, as well as giving us Zoom.
“which you likely remember as the producers of Zoom.”
Being on the west coast I never heard of this and after watching that intro I look back at my ignorance with envy. Holy mother of God that was TERRIBLE!
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to find some bleach.
“This area of town was once lauded by the Wall Street Journal as being a “sexual Disneyland.”
Having just watched a YouTube video on Disney *adults* I’m now even more grossed out by that depictor.
Wonderful
These are magnificent, and I could name just about everything on screen in real time.
And I agree that it’s a little surprising to see zero VWs (not even a Rabbit). Probably all across the river. Not in Boston, but near Boston…
There is a brown rabbit in the double parking video. – where is over the river? I’m in Australia but my partner is from Boston.
She’s not allowed to drive my cars.
The People’s Republic of Cambridge. Commies there. They love them ferrin cars
oh. ok. you would probably hate Australia then.
“the People’s Republic of Cambridge” was a slur at one point, now pretty much embraced by the left-leaning populace. I assume Dan was being lovingly sarcastic.
Yes – very much the sarcasm and affection. Other than trying to drive around or purchase housing, I think Cambridge is great!
All good. I’m still learning about USA demographics (and humour haha). I asked My partner about cambridge today and she explained the north/south divide a bit better. We have the same thing here in Melbourne, Australia with the north side of Melbourne being similar to your Cambridge. (Universities, tech companies and overpriced apartments). Can’t wait to get there one day!
And all of the tony suburbs were filled to the brim with foreign cars, still are. The Combat Zone was a VERY working class area.
So many G-Wagens in Wellesley
And Weston.
All those trophy wives need all that off-road capability, I guess.
As a kid in the 80’s, I can remember vividly the sides of streets and parking lots were covered in disgusting puddles of oil, transmission fluid and anitfreeze.
Space Mountin’
Is there a carnal COTD?
The GBH Archives is a time machine treasure trove. It’s a rabbit hole I go down fairly often.
My stereotype of Bostonians makes me surprised I don’t see baseball bats aimed at double-parked assholes. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.
I love watch old video footage like this. My friends and I movie nights, and when the movie is over, we will put on something like this in the background and occasionally watch and talk about it.
The WGBH Archives social media accounts are a true collective national treasure. Growing up in the Boston area myself (I am actually typing this in Boston right now), this is really how I remember the city from when I was growing up. It was gritty, dirty, and risky, and just dangerous enough to make it kinda fun.
They constantly post videos like this from the 70’s-90’s, which is just awesome for car dorks like us. Tons and tons of B-roll footage of Malaise Era barges and the like ambling around old Boston and surrounding towns. There are a few great ones, including one of a guy in a 70’s El Camino that got into an accident in a rotary, and he’s out of the car arguing!
Also, wait until you see the Two-Mobile. Your heads will explode.
Hahaha! I forgot about the 2 mobile! Yes. Epic.
There was also the Dirty Old Boston socials a while back
Nostalgia glasses on: A distinctly American automotive patina was certainly a distinctive element of the time and place. Long before global platforms were the norm aside a handful of exceptions of the time (think: Chevette, Ford Escort, some Japanese examples) each major market definitely had its own thing going on.
Domestic automakers of each part of the world very much catered to their own audience. Japanese automakers would not be considered more American than America until the 1990s at the earliest.
This still exists to some extent: pickup trucks are a very America thing, most global vehicles are sized up for North American consumption. Japanese kei cars are very Japan. European nationalism still means brands like Citroen, Fiat, SEAT, and Skoda still have their own going ons, even of they share the guts of larger conglomerate vehicles.
But the Crown Victorias and Caprices died out, the Mustangs and Corvettes went upscale to be proper sports cars. Cutlasses became Camrys which begat RAV4s. Cadillac went Euro luxury.
Nostalgia glasses off: I’m pretty sure every Chevrolet Celebrity ever made came pre-rusted off the assembly line and I’m almost certain some of those double parked cars are worth less than the towing bill to get them out of the impound lot.
“Also, these clips don’t show any old air-cooled Volkswagens, which I remember as being fairly common even well into the ’80s.”
Yeah, a combination of factors such as road salt, geography, and economics, etc, etc, would account for the wildly variable distribution of air-cooled VWs around the country.
My hometown was a college town in East Tennessee, nestled amongst the Appalachians and a relatively short drive from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So air-cooled VWs were indeed ubiquitous around here because college students could afford them and natives appreciated them for ease of maintenance and the ability to get around in the hills & mountains year-round. These VWs were a common sight well into the late 1990s and even early 2000s.
Alas, once the internet came into widespread use around here such VWs pretty quickly entered the realm of “I know what I have” pricing; so many ended up as garage queens only to be rarely taken on outings to get ice cream with the grandchildren and so many others ended up being spirited away to other locales into the hands of the more affluent…
Shortly before the pandemic started one of my kids visited L.A. for a couple of weeks and with some great envy reported seeing so many air-cooled VWs and older Subarus (as well as other older Japanese cars) just tootling around (at the time my kid had a 35-plus-year-old Subaru station wagon that had unfortunately just succumbed to rust though it did faithfully provide a good number of years of service prior to that.)
In the news business, this kind of footage is known as B-roll. In this first example, however, it’s B-roll, C-roll and Double D-roll.
When Hemmings had online features they ran a bit called ‘Car Spotting’ by Daniel Strohl (spelling?). He would post a vintage photograph of a street scene or a parking lot and the readers would comment on it and point out the different kinds of cars we saw. Could Autopian do that?
There’s a now-defunct but still online version of this at theoldmotor.com. The publisher would upload old Kodachromes of US city scenes and the commentariat would have at it. You’d quickly learn key differences between ’48 and ’49 Hudsons, or how to tell a Biscayne from a Bel Air. Plus automotive scenes from, say, 60-70 years ago are generally interesting for the wealth of details.
Ooh! Chevy Celebrity! The official car of 1990’s divorced dads!
I most associate it with mid-to-late 90’s high school parking lots. I swear, half my classmates had them when I graduated in 97.
My grandma had one. I remember it rather fondly as a nice car, though that’s probably because the crapcans we had were always old and held together with duct tape and prayers.
My heart skipped a bit at the close up of Boston Bunnies.. I was expecting to see myself get out of the passenger seat of a red Tempo. I was, not honored, not proud, I guess inflicted (?) with being one of the last patrons of Boston Bunnies. All these places shut down not long after this video. Now, the phrase “sexual Disneyland isn’t exactly accurate.. I’d put it more along the lines of “sexual roadside reptile farm”..But man that video was a flashback.. I spend a lot of time in Boston at the time.
The naked i lasted into the early 90s, but just 2 clubs left now. Super gentrified neighborhood. Cambridge st in Gov Ctr still looks like that, traffic-wise
I’m thinking this must be early 85 at the latest. I dont see any composite headlights. Also – so many G and B body GMs! The Cutlass was insanely popular.
I watch a bunch of 80’s/90’s (mostly forgotten) movies on Tubi, just to catch scenes like these – cars of the day just doing their thing behind the action. Sometimes I pause it just to see a particular one in passing.
I watched the two seasons of “Banacek” and was distracted by a lot of establishing shots’ cars (those were filmed around Boston, though it was filmed mostly in Hollywood studios, which also had some nice, mostly extinct, cars).
You feel good, good, good about Hood!!!
I saw Sexual Disneyland live back in 09. They were ok, but other bands have done the J-pop/retropunk/folk fusion thing better since then. The ‘Sex and Candy’ cover was fairly legit, tho.
Granada Taillight is the father of Camry Dent.
Came here to say this; glad you beat me to it.
Thought this earlier but got squirreled into making another comment and forgot what I was looking for…
Why yes I am in my late 40’s, why do you ask?
Are you still alarmed by the aphasia, or have you learned to roll with it?
At this point I’ve just kind of learned to roll with it. Between the effects of being in my 40’s and parenting an elementary aged kid, my brain is basically mush at this point…
It’s nice that it makes me pick silence sometimes hahaha
Right there with you. The back pain is a nice bonus too.
Yeah, my back would be a complete mess if it weren’t for 5 minutes of daily planking.
You made me stop and think and the only major joints that are working at what would be considered a normal level are probably my elbows and right hip. A lifetime of sports and hobbies that involve treating your body like a rental car with $0 deductible coverage has a way of catching-up…
Genetic mutation
Also the 3rd Gen Explorer tailgate crack
The thing that gets me is how many of these cars are cars, and not pickup trucks or SUVs. Nowadays, those two vehicle types probably account for more than half of all traffic, even in the city. I didn’t watch the video, but in those screenshots, I can’t see a single pickup or SUV. Lots of vans though, which is cool.
Also, despite the overwash of gray slush and white snow, you can tell that most of the cars are actual colors. Now that grayscale is the norm, city streets like this are just that much more depressing in the winter.
I soooo don’t miss wintahs up north.
I went to college from ’83 to ’87, and I recognize the shift going on in the combat zone. the great economy was driving up rents on a lot of the businesses in the zone, and they started going out of business.
yeah the “zone” became a street, then part of a street, then about 3 businesses..
I remember Boston Bunnies, what was the other one? Pussycat something?
Pussycat Cinema.
Nice!