qwerty
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 2,419
Club RR Member Number: 52
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Cars of similar age have always and will always look similar because of the fashions of the time.
Saying modern cars are indistinguishable from each other has less to do with how similar they look and more to do with how little attention we pay them. As a forum dedicated to older cars its only reasonable to assume that on the whole we have very little interest in the new crop of cars.
Tom
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if anyone confuses an sd1 for anything else they reaaaaaly need a labrador and white stick! One dog please.    one dog?? need a whole herd if you confuse an sd1 for either of those!! ;-) |
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'80 s1 924 turbo..hibernating
'80 golf gli cabriolet...doing impression of a skip
'97 pug 106 commuter...continuing cheapness making me smile!
firm believer in the k.i.s.s and f.i.s.h principles.
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60six
Posted a lot
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Posts: 1,679
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I will see your 'looks nothing like an SD1' toyota and reckon an SD1 could look nothing like  |
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Some 9000's, a 900, an RX8 & a beetle
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vulgalour
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 7,282
Club RR Member Number: 146
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In a quick glance browsing through thumbnails, both those cars have tricked me into thinking they were SD1s. Anyway, here's a Volvo Carioca.  Which has a passing resemblance to a Desoto Airflow.  This is the thing though, sometimes a thing looks like another thing until you put them side by side. I mean, the Lifan 320 looks like a thing, until you put it next to that thing.  Lifan make a lot of things that look like things that aren't that thing. |
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Rob M
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,915
Club RR Member Number: 41
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The one caveat you would really need to apply here is that, while cars may well have all been formatted to tick the four door/boot, 2 door hatch requirements, cars back in time certainly did not all drive the same, sound the same or feel the same.
A MK3 Escort drives and feels different to an Astra, the Cortina MK4 was a different animal to the Cavalier etc etc.
Nowdays most cars DO all drive the same and feel the same.
I have a modern Skoda which is just like my sons VW, my sisters Audi and does a great impression of a SEAT.
The diversity of motor manufacturers in the past ensured diversity of switch gear, seating, suspension set ups and the like.
You may well have been buying a car that looked similar to another but, once inside, you knew what car you were in.
Badge engineering aside, there was greater variety than there is now.
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Cant be leaving my favourite marque out of this thread  Jowett Javelin - I don't think it can be beaten for style of it's era for a saloon but a few tried  Standard liked making claims that it had the first all new post war design with the Vanguard - it was a false claim of course - Jowett got there first  Peugeot 203  Volvo PV 444 would be a close second place in my book Then at the other end of the market  This quite often  Gets mistaken for one of these |
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benhar
Part of things
Posts: 23
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This quite often Gets mistaken for one of these At RNIB reunions?
Both lovely cars, but cannot be mistaken for each other by anyone who can see.
Ben
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Cant be leaving my favourite marque out of this thread Jowett Javelin - I don't think it can be beaten for style of it's era for a saloon but a few tried Standard liked making claims that it had the first all new post war design with the Vanguard - it was a false claim of course - Jowett got there first But Standard Triumph got the proportions right.
As the owner of a '51 Vanguard I may slightly biased.
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there wasnt much that looked like a mk2 astra in 1984, a product of the hundreds of hours spent in the pininfarina wind tunnel no doubt. but it did kind of set a trend for tear drop (in plan view from above) and wedge shaped (side on) 90s hatchbacks and beyond.   |
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60six
Posted a lot
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Posts: 1,679
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The one caveat you would really need to apply here is that, while cars may well have all been formatted to tick the four door/boot, 2 door hatch requirements, cars back in time certainly did not all drive the same, sound the same or feel the same. A MK3 Escort drives and feels different to an Astra, the Cortina MK4 was a different animal to the Cavalier etc etc. Nowdays most cars DO all drive the same and feel the same. I have a modern Skoda which is just like my sons VW, my sisters Audi and does a great impression of a SEAT. The diversity of motor manufacturers in the past ensured diversity of switch gear, seating, suspension set ups and the like. You may well have been buying a car that looked similar to another but, once inside, you knew what car you were in. Badge engineering aside, there was greater variety than there is now. I had two hire cars in quick sucession. an Avensis estate & a golf estate. both were so similar inside I had to look at the steering wheel to remember what one I was in. The outsides were obviously different but to drive, both were so disconnected from the actual driving experience. No real feedback from the road, deafeningly silent. Does nothing to help people drive carefully ... |
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Some 9000's, a 900, an RX8 & a beetle
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Oct 21, 2020 19:15:16 GMT
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Oct 21, 2020 19:39:33 GMT
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Ok this is cheating a bit because they are all basicly the same but different Austin Cambridge  Morris Oxford  Wolseley 16/60  Riley 4/72  MG Magnette  And a not totally different car, the Peogeot 504  |
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Oct 21, 2020 22:34:04 GMT
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 Renault 10  Skôda 100 |
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Cars tend to look the same in every era because if they look too different they don't sell.
To build a production car you plan to sell a lot of, that looks radically different is a pretty gutsy move.
The Chrysler Airflow was regarded as a failure, untill it was replaced by a bigger failure, the Edsel.
They werent bad cars, they were just a bit too far from the norm.
But later, the Airflow's general lines were copied a lot ( when the buying public was ready for it) and Roy Brown ( the Edsel's designer ) went on to design the Mk1 Cortina.
I guess that is why they used to build concept cars.
To gauge the reactions and see what they could get away with...
I think what we are used to looking at has a lot to do with it too.
Wunibald Kamm kame up with the Kamm Tail in the '30s , but they werent used much, even on racecars, untill the '60s ( GTO, Cobra Daytona , Alfa TZ, etc).
After that they became acceptable for regular production cars...
A few brands were able to completely go their own way ( Panhard, early Saab, etc) and pull it of...
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Oct 22, 2020 10:15:07 GMT
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paul99
Part of things
Posts: 414 
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Oct 22, 2020 10:17:27 GMT
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if anyone confuses an sd1 for anything else they reaaaaaly need a labrador and white stick! I'm sure it probably generational but even so the current crop of offerings are less distinctive than in years gone by. sometimes its a struggle to decipher brand let alone model just from body shape etc. Squint and take a look at an early 800....... Nose on there are a lot of similarities. Both good  |
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Oct 29, 2020 17:50:09 GMT
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Some of the unusual ones...   Wow! What are these two little beauties? |
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Oct 29, 2020 18:29:08 GMT
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Top: Panhard et Levassor Dynamic, introduced in 1936.  Bottom: '64/'67 Panhard 24.  To me, the 24 is an extremely beautiful car. But being front wheel drive with only 850cc, I'm not sure I could live with one. When Panhard was sold to Citroen, they did make a prototype with a DS engine ( the longer nose made it look even better ), but it never went onto production.  Edit. Building a prototype with a watercooled 4 cylinder in a car designed for a aircooled 2 cyl boxer seems like a strange move, since Citroen had their own aircooled 2cyl boxer which would have dropped straight in. But the Panhard's engine was actually pretty advanced and powerful ( succesful in racing in the smaller classes too ), so the 2 cyl Citroen engine would have been a big drop in performance. |
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