The Sorry State of Affairs in Automobilia in the 1970s, 80s and 90s

[Max Rockatansky]

Can't believe that I didn't get around to watching this until now:

A story like this only could have come from the 1970s.

[Max Rockatansky]

W-Body

[Takumi]

Days of Thunder! We're gettin' a satellite dish!

[Max Rockatansky]

Days of Thunder! We're gettin' a satellite dish!

Just remember.....HIT THE PACE CAR! 

Although Juan Montoya pretty much forever one-upped that by hitting the jet dryer in the Daytona 500.

[Max Rockatansky]

51 pages dedicated to the seat belts:

[J N Winkler]

51 pages dedicated to the seat belts . . .

The seatbelts in the first-generation Lumina were one way of implementing the passive restraint requirement that the Reagan administration fought but eventually had to start phasing in by 1987.  I never understood how they were supposed to work in collisions where the doors flew open.  My 1994 Saturn meets the requirement with (1) a driver's-side airbag and (2) automatic shoulder belts for driver and front-seat passenger that slide in tracks anchored to the spaceframe over each door.  My family also used to own a 1990 Toyota Cressida (my mother's favorite car in her lifetime) with similar automatic shoulder belts.  Both cars were equipped with separate manual lap belts.

[Max Rockatansky]

51 pages dedicated to the seat belts . . .

The seatbelts in the first-generation Lumina were one way of implementing the passive restraint requirement that the Reagan administration fought but eventually had to start phasing in by 1987.  I never understood how they were supposed to work in collisions where the doors flew open.  My 1994 Saturn meets the requirement with (1) a driver's-side airbag and (2) automatic shoulder belts for driver and front-seat passenger that slide in tracks anchored to the spaceframe over each door.  My family also used to own a 1990 Toyota Cressida (my mother's favorite car in her lifetime) with similar automatic shoulder belts.  Both cars were equipped with separate manual lap belts.

The first car I bought for myself was a slightly used 1992 Pontiac Sunbird.  I to say that it wasn't the 92 that was configured like that but the 94 was?  It has been so long that I honestly really don't remember, all I seem to recall was that the car was uncomfortable over time and had issues with rust on the bottom pieces of the front doors.  I've never understood what was supposedly safer about that spaceframe mounted setup.  It would seem as though you would want the seat belt mounted to an actual piece of the frame...like you said it wouldn't be inconceivable for the door to come off in a severe accident.

[PHLBOS]

The (misguided) intent of GM's door-mounted seatbelts from the early-to-mid 90s was that one could keep the belts buckled at all times.  In theory; one could just open the door, slide in the seat, & close the door without needing to fasten the seatbelt. 

[J N Winkler]

The (misguided) intent of GM's door-mounted seatbelts from the early-to-mid 90s was that one could keep the belts buckled at all times.  In theory; one could just open the door, slide in the seat, & close the door without needing to fasten the seatbelt.

That was indeed the intent, and car dealers were actually required to display the cars with the seatbelts fastened.  At the time there was considerable concern not just about the doors flying open in a crash, but also about lightweight passengers (such as young children) being ejected from the car when the door opened under normal conditions.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/15/style/consumer-s-world-gm-is-challenged-over-seat-belts.html

GM gave up the door-mounted concept under pressure from the feds.

At the time, power door locks were also fairly unsophisticated and people were urged to lock their doors to reduce the risk of ejection in an accident.  I wonder if this was a factor in GM management thinking they could get away with door-mounted belts.  Nowadays, it is common (if not universal) for power door locks to engage by default when the car is in a driving gear, although in some cars (including my 2005 Camry) this behavior can be modified.

[Max Rockatansky]

Wasn't there a thing in the 80s or something where a kid opened a door and fell out of the door?    I seem to recall whatever happened had reached urban legend status by the late 1980s.  We (my siblings and I) had to wear seat belts in the back seat of sedans but not in coupes because of the lack of rear doors.  I also want to say Michigan might not have had a back seat belt law on the books even up to that time period.  Station Wagons were basically a free-for-all with bouncing around the back free range.  Weird to think that child-proof locks weren't all that common even back in those days and it was still difficult to convince some people to use seat belts.

[slorydn1]

Was difficult? In many cases it still is difficult to get people to wear them. At least 3 of the 7 deputies working my shift right now categorically refuse to put them on while on patrol "in case they need to exit the vehicle in a hurry". As with many traffic related laws, on duty LEO's are exempt from NC's seat belt laws.

A few of them (as well as other friends/acquaintances) refuse to wear them in their personal vehicles as well. They'd rather take the ticket because "they heard about JimJoBob who would most certainly have died if he hadn't been ejected from the vehicle as it rolled over because the roof was crushed (etc,etc)". Dead serious, I can't make this stuff up, SMDH.

I won't move my car across the street without putting mine on-I didn't need a law to tell me to, either.

[J N Winkler]

In my family we have had a 1962 VW Bug, 1964 Ford Falcon, 1966 Dodge Dart, 1967 VW Bug, 1974 Buick Regal, 1981 Toyota Tercel, 1986 Nissan Maxima, 1994 Saturn SL2, 1990 Toyota Cressida, 1995 Nissan Maxima, 2005 Toyota Camry, and 2009 Honda Fit.  I have lived memories of all but the first three.

The 1981 Tercel was the first that I remember having usable lap and shoulder belts.  If I do a Google image search for the 1967 VW Bug, I can find pictures of various designs of front seatbelt, but I can't really tell whether any of them are OEM.

The 1974 Buick Regal did have front seatbelts, and I think they were lap and shoulder belts, but we never actually used them.  My recollection is that they came packed into plastic strips at the edge of the headliner, just over each door (our car was a two-door hardtop), and thus required some assembly by the owner.

When I was in elementary school, I came home one day full of the health and safety propaganda that was then standard--don't smoke, wear your seatbelts--and asked about seatbelts in the Buick.  My father went into the car, pulled down lengths of webbing attached to what I think was an anchor point, looked at it for about fifteen minutes, said "The hell is this?" (or similar), and packed it away.  It was not until September 1985 (we bought the 1986 Maxima early in the model year) that all of the family cars had usable seatbelts.  It took some years for my mother to stop reaching out with her arm to cover the passenger seat when she had to brake heavily.

Kansas did not have a seatbelt use law until 1986 (it was Chapter 35 in the session laws for that year).  It is still secondary enforcement only for adults, and applies only to cars made after January 1, 1968 and to cars made earlier that have OEM seatbelts.  (That date in 1968 is presumably the effective date for whatever section of FMVSS requires seatbelts.)

[slorydn1]

In my family we have had a 1962 VW Bug, 1964 Ford Falcon, 1966 Dodge Dart, 1967 VW Bug, 1974 Buick Regal, 1981 Toyota Tercel, 1986 Nissan Maxima, 1994 Saturn SL2, 1990 Toyota Cressida, 1995 Nissan Maxima, 2005 Toyota Camry, and 2009 Honda Fit.  I have lived memories of all but the first three.

The 1981 Tercel was the first that I remember having usable lap and shoulder belts.  If I do a Google image search for the 1967 VW Bug, I can find pictures of various designs of front seatbelt, but I can't really tell whether any of them are OEM.

The 1974 Buick Regal did have front seatbelts, and I think they were lap and shoulder belts, but we never actually used them.  My recollection is that they came packed into plastic strips at the edge of the headliner, just over each door (our car was a two-door hardtop), and thus required some assembly by the owner.

When I was in elementary school, I came home one day full of the health and safety propaganda that was then standard--don't smoke, wear your seatbelts--and asked about seatbelts in the Buick.  My father went into the car, pulled down lengths of webbing attached to what I think was an anchor point, looked at it for about fifteen minutes, said "The hell is this?" (or similar), and packed it away.  It was not until September 1985 (we bought the 1986 Maxima early in the model year) that all of the family cars had usable seatbelts.  It took some years for my mother to stop reaching out with her arm to cover the passenger seat when she had to brake heavily.

Kansas did not have a seatbelt use law until 1986 (it was Chapter 35 in the session laws for that year).  It is still secondary enforcement only for adults, and applies only to cars made after January 1, 1968 and to cars made earlier that have OEM seatbelts.  (That date in 1968 is presumably the effective date for whatever section of FMVSS requires seatbelts.)

Our 73 Chevy Vega, 74 VW Bus, 75 Olds Starfire, 77 Pontiac Catalina and 78 Ford Granada all had lap/shoulder belts up front (the Catalina and I think the Granada also had a center lap-only belt, to seat 3 up front). I'm struggling to remember if our 1970 Plymouth Valiant had lap/shoulder belts or not.

[Takumi]

My 1991 Prelude has the same kind of seat belts as that Lumina, and the manual indeed says they've should always remain buckled in.

Meanwhile in Japan...
https://youtu.be/-S0dKSHCU4I

[Max Rockatansky]

My 1991 Prelude has the same kind of seat belts as that Lumina, and the manual indeed says they've should always remain buckled in.

Meanwhile in Japan...
https://youtu.be/-S0dKSHCU4I

So in 17,000 KM driven nobody ever bothered to take the plastic wrap off the sun visors and rear seats?  Obviously someone was putting in a lot of effort into things like maintaining the exterior appearance much less everything else on the car....who the hell would do that for Toyota Crown?  That would be like someone's Grandpa state side doing the same thing to a third generation Buick Regal.

[J N Winkler]

So in 17,000 km driven nobody ever bothered to take the plastic wrap off the sun visors and rear seats?  Obviously someone was putting in a lot of effort into things like maintaining the exterior appearance much less everything else on the car....who the hell would do that for Toyota Crown?  That would be like someone's Grandpa state side doing the same thing to a third generation Buick Regal.

It didn't look to me like a lot of effort went into keeping this specimen in near-hundred-pointer condition; it presumably wasn't driven much, having been owned by the Japanese equivalent of the grandpa with the third-generation Regal.  I did think keeping the factory plastic wrap on all three (!!!) visors and the parking brake release was a bit much even by grandpa standards, and probably reflected a very Japanese concern with quality.

The Crown has its American aficionadoes.  There is actually a white RHD mid-1980's supercharged hardtop Crown kept somewhere near Stillwater, Minnesota.  It was unplated but I got to see it when the owner informally exhibited it at a parking lot near downtown while I was on my way back from the St. Croix rapids last May.  It didn't have the grandfather lace covers, though.  Before I saw the video clip Takumi embedded, I didn't know those were a thing.

About a year and a half ago I looked into getting a MX83 (1989-1992) Toyota Cressida as a hobby car.  It is probably the closest thing to a Crown Toyota has tried to sell in the US market in the EFI age.  By current standards it is pleasingly weird:  I6, not V6, RWD instead of FWD, performance-oriented wide angle between the intake and exhaust valves (the "G" in the 7M-GE engine designation) instead of the economy-oriented narrow angle that is now universal on US-market Toyotas, and lots of little touches like the second bank of HVAC controls that opens when you push a button.  To maximize the weirdness factor my preference was for 1989-90, with the special Cressida-only star-in-hands badging; 1991-92 had the modern Toyota triple oval.  However, it is now very hard to find a specimen that isn't riced out or clapped out, and there is a head bolt torque issue that spells early death for the engine if it isn't caught in time.  The best specimen I found was online, a 1990 from a specialist dealer in the Northeast, that had about 28,000 original southern California miles and all the original paperwork.  The asking price was a bit north of $9,000 and so was slightly less than half the MSRP when new ($20,000).  That was more than I was willing to spend, so for nostalgia purposes I just harvested the 250-odd photos that accompanied the ad.

[Takumi]

The 7M-GE and it's turbocharged version, the 7M-GTE, were also used in the Mark 3 (1986-1992) Supra, and suffered the same head bolt issues. In 1990, Toyota introduced the famous JZ engine in JDM Supras and the Aristo (sold as the Lexus GS300 here). Both had twin-turbo variants, but the only twin-turbo JZ sold in the US was in the Mark 4 (1993-2002) Supra and was identical to the one from the Aristo.

[PHLBOS]

The 1974 Buick Regal did have front seatbelts, and I think they were lap and shoulder belts, but we never actually used them.  My recollection is that they came packed into plastic strips at the edge of the headliner, just over each door (our car was a two-door hardtop), and thus required some assembly by the owner.

Given that 1974 was the year of the controversial and very short-lived vehicle won't start unless the front outboard seatbelts were buckled; it's safe to say that all '74 models (including your Regal) had the combined lap-and-shoulder belt (aka the 3-point belt system that's still around today) for the outboard front seats.

Many '73 and earlier models had your fore-mentioned separate shoulder belts that were typically stored along the headliner when not in use.  Very rarely were these separate shoulder belts were ever worn.

IIRC, lap seatbelts for all seats (station wagons had optional third row or dual-facing) were mandatory from the 1966 model year onward.  I think by 1968, the separate shoulder belts for the front outboard seats would be mandatory as well for all cars except for convertibles.  I know that my grandfather's '68 Galaxie 500 sedan and my '69 LTD sedan I had in high school had the separate shoulder belts.

[Max Rockatansky]

48 MPG city BELOW BASE at Cars and Coffee:

[D-Dey65]

Want to talk about the sorry state of cars? You people should see the article I just read with the false perception of baby boomers and their attitudes towards autonomous cars.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/are-baby-boomers-afraid-of-autonomous-cars-because-of-this-plymouth/ar-AAmLoIP?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp


No, dimwit. They're not afraid of them because of "Christine." They're afraid of them because they can be frigging HACKED! And if you want to use fiction as an example, use "ex-Driver."

[PHLBOS]

Want to talk about the sorry state of cars? You people should see the article I just read with the false perception of baby boomers and their attitudes towards autonomous cars.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/enthusiasts/are-baby-boomers-afraid-of-autonomous-cars-because-of-this-plymouth/ar-AAmLoIP?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

No, dimwit. They're not afraid of them because of "Christine." They're afraid of them because they can be frigging HACKED! And if you want to use fiction as an example, use "ex-Driver."

Consider the source of the article-link.  MSN is not known for giving objective nor accurate reports/commentaries regarding vehicles.

[Max Rockatansky]

Christine wasn't even that scary of a movie, that is just asinine to insinuate that a book and movie over three decades old has any influence at all.

[GCrites]

^There was also T3

[lordsutch]

On the other hand, I am told newer cars with CVTs make it very hard to develop well-modulated engine braking for descending hills safely at a high but still controlled speed without using the brakes.

I have a 2016 Subaru Outback (and prior to that, a 2011 model) with a second generation CVT. The 2011 had the first generation CVT. To share some experiences:
* Going down from Clingman's Dome to Gatlinburg, TN in the Great Smoky Mountains requires some use of the brakes around the tightest of corners, but I downshifted successfully for about 90% of the route. What infuriated me was that the vehicles ahead of me - SUV's, just braked almost continuously. They had no idea how to drive and by about half-way down the mountain, I could smell their brakes. They had to pull over and let them cool down. Even if you don't have paddle shifters, you can downshift.
* Going down Mt. Washington's Auto Route was more difficult. I did downshift to first and second gears but had to pull over several times to let the brakes (and my nerves) rest. I laughed at the mandatory requirements for downshifting when I was at the base but they are not kidding around!

In general I haven't had any trouble with my CVT-equipped 2009 Nissan Altima on downhills; it can be thrown into a virtual "manual" mode if you really, really want to engine brake, which is what I tend to do if I see someone running radar.

Longer term I'd imagine most CVTs are going to be in hybrids and plug-in hybrids where regenerative braking is preferred over engine or friction braking in most circumstances anyway.

[Takumi]

The official car of "I don't want a chip on my card, that's how they GET YA!"
https://youtu.be/qfK0PqP_Bjg