Sitting amongst the sea of white crossovers in the parking lot, it stands out like a sore thumb. Honestly, a red 1992 FD Mazda RX-7 would be hard to miss anywhere.
You remember seeing that double bump roof in the car magazines and wondering when this thing might depreciate to a point where you could afford one once you get that first real job. This was almost a race car for the street, a far cry from the more restrained cut-rate 944 of the previous model.
In the rust belt, you go out of your way to ogle such machines that are thin on the ground today. Just the sight of something like this can honestly make you forget the fact that you just shipped six hundred of the wrong things out to the field at work.
Looking around the back to see if this example has the infamous Bose sound system that looks like a digestive system …
It’s in looking at this detail that something hits you in the face like a brick: a “collector plate.” Oh, shit. This thing is the requisite thirty-two years old now to qualify for something you would imagine could only be stuck onto Tri-Five Chevrolets or other popular-with-boomers rides.
Damn, I’m old. What the hell happened? As much as I might make fun of those guys with New Balance sneakers and tube socks sitting in folding camp chairs complete with the logo printed on of the pride and joy they’re sitting next to, I’m just a stone’s throw away from that.
There are plenty of cars just like this today, from a McClaren F1 to a Nissan Z32 300ZX; cars I still see as modern, unobtainable objects that only exist in glossy advertisements. Now they’re classic cars to the latest generation, and it’s hard to deal with that.
How about you? What cars do you love with all your heart but in some twisted way cause you pain by reminding you that you’re a day closer to death and already eligible for an AARP card?
Top graphic inset: starush/stock.adobe.com
I don’t consider it a *bad* thing, but my Sentra SE-R and my Fiat Spider remind me of how old I am because I’ve had them since 1993 and 1990, respectively, roughly two-thirds of my lifetime.
I have something that borders on this. Keep in mind im not really old, but still. It also makes the school I went to at the time old, and, well, poor.
Anyway, in one of my books there was a picture of a landfill. Usual “We people produce a lot of garbage, and what can’t be burnt, is stored in landfills.” The thing that caught my eyes though was a nice, clean, wheeled bulldozer-compactor thing. Being a construction equipment fanatic I looked it up, and the results showed dinged up, rusted ones with the paint peeling. I had to look when the book was made, and it was 10+ years ago. Mostly it made the book and the school old, but a little bit me too.
My 2002 Acura TL. It’s a great car and I love it, it was my Dad’s and he drove it very little and got all the maintenance done on schedule. Problem is, it wasn’t garage kept and it’s black, so it’s going gray like me because the clear-coat is rapidly disappearing and the alloy wheel finish is corroded. It’s not a TLS, and I don’t really see anyone drooling over them as classics. It just makes me feel like someone who bought one in 2002 and hasn’t been able to upgrade or fix it up since, when the reality is even sadder than that.
The R35 Skyline was first delivered in 2007, making those cars 17 years old. In most countries that’s old enough to drive
The New Edge Mustang can now qualify for Classic Car status. I bought 2 of them in my early twenties. It only feels like 10 years ago…
This is slightly off to one side,but it’s the 1973 Olds Toronado that I stopped seeing.
Insurance totalled that car in 1981, after front end damage. It was drivable, certainly repairable, but not worth it, financially. My parents bought an Aries K wagon in tobacco brown and actually liked it better. Greater utility, easier to see out of, and no kids running it to 120 MPH on the freeway, just to enjoy the sparks when air pressure forced the front end of the Toronado so far down that the bumper hit the concrete.
Not, ah, that this happened. That was, uhm, some other kids.
The wagon hit just as mom and dad settled into their forties, and it suited them to a T. Is my point.
Someone bought the Toronado on a salvage title. Through the late ninetes and early two thousands, I would see it,once or twice per week.
One day in 2001 or 2, I saw it in a staff parking lot and realised… I still had my copy of the key. On my key ring. Jangling off the ignition of the Geo Tracker I was driving.
They’re at work. It was past lunch. I could take the old girl on a lap, get her back, no one the wiser.
I thought about it.
But I’d grown up just enough since we owned it to recognise that idea as really, realllly stupid.
I drove away. A year or so later, I realised that I’d stopped seeing it.
Which made me feel a thousand years old. Family moved states in that car, following the moving vans. We went to visit cousins, drove cross country. I learned to drive with it.
All that history, gone for good.
Any new car makes me feel old, I miss buttons and dials. I feel like car manufacturers have left anyone over 40 feeling this way.
It’s McLaren, Not whatever that is
Anything with an American Motors badge on it. I remember when you could buy those cars new. The last American Motors, non-Jeep branded passenger cars were sold for the 1988 model year.
My Z4 makes me feel old every time someone asks me about it’s age.
“Well it’s only … 20 years old now.”
Fuck me, I remember the bitching about the Bangle cars, but now they’re on their way to be classics.
It’s the new cars that make me feel old.
My very own 1982 Toyota Carina makes me feel old. My dad owned one and I just realized next year it will be 40 years ago we were buying it from a Subaru dealership as it was a trade in.
I also realize within a couple of weeks I’ll own mine for 17 years. In the Netherlands that’s the legal age to get started with driving lessons…
When I’m looking for classic cars, I always look how long the previous owner owned it. If it’s more than 15 years, he or she must have taken good care of the car. Whilst writing this, I realize I actually didn’t take proper care for this car…
Man, I’m getting old…
I am old now. I stopped getting shocked by it years ago. Time is a flat circle, life is bad, nothing matters, eat Arby’s.
I’m less shocked by the 411 being over 50 years old and more disappointed in myself for not figuring out how to buy a 911 earlier. It feels like every other opportunity to do better in life has already passed me by and that I’m a washed-up husk of my former self, so why wouldn’t 911 ownership be lumped in there, too?
Get off my lawn.
None,what car design makes me feel old are the lousy designs of modern age. They all look alike, they aren’t unique. I feel old because auto manufacturers are trying to design one car for every use. No longer do we get to buy a car that let’s us express our desire. Just a couple boxes stacked in an ugly design. Nothing new strikes my fancy but I don’t feel old I feel modern design sucks.
I don’t know if this is a hot take but I feel like every era of automotive design has had tons of copycats. If I just focus on the basic everyday transportation, things all just look the same no matter what decade I look at.
not a hot take at all. They all have looked the same within their generations. The bulbous 40’s and 50’s, the big tailfins, the boomer classics, the malaise era (although I can tell apart a Granada from a Mercedes) etc. Probably I can tell them apart more nowadays than those of years past.
I always say this. Like in the 80’s- 90’s, the Toyoyta, Mitubishi, Nissan sedans looked exactly the same
You are right. Tail fins, coke bottle, straight lines, jellybean, and now we have angry.
A high school senior listening to “When Doves Cry” by Prince today is like me listening to “In the Mood” by Glenn Miller as a senior. #classof84
The nastiest shocks for me are the cars that not only are now 40 years old, but for which parts are simply unobtainable. For years I wanted to get a late-80s Audi 5000, like my family had when I was in high school, but got warned off them because OEM parts don’t exist and even aftermarket support is waning. Those were not rare cars; how can they be going extinct?
I remember seeing my first 1959 Cadillac in the fall of 1958 at 3 years old. Do I win a prize?
I’ve never felt old in a car, then again I don’t drive Today’s technophilic automobiles.