This Old News Footage Of A Seedy Area Of Boston Is A Great Sample Of What The Mid-’80s Carscape Was Like

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