1979

My father had it made. He was born in the late-'40s, grew up during the 50's, and was a teen in the 60s.Back then, cars had class. Chrome. Tailfins. Exaggerated styling. Luxury cars actually looked luxurious.The attention paid to detail was superb.Even cheaper compact cars had sharp edges, dramatic rooflines, imaginative chromework, and truckloads of character. Take a look at an early-60s Plymouth Valiant or Mercury Comet if you don't believe me.All the cars my father saw when he was young would be considered "cool" nowadays, and that is reflected in baby boomers' enthusiasm of and appreciation for the cars of their youth. They'll see a car from the 1950s or 60s and stop for a moment to admire it.
Things started changing in the late-60s or early-70s. Cars got dull. Gas became scarce and expensive while emissons controls got tougher. Bumpers got larger to meet increasing safety standards. People who grew up in later decades were not surrounded by cool, fast, sexy cars. Most people born in the 1970s will not look at a 1975 Ford LTD or 1977 Chrysler Cordoba and talk about how cool they were.People my fathers age can look at the 1950s counterparts of those cars and say "Those were quite the machine in their day".
Which brings me to 1979. It was the year I was born.And arguably one of the WORST years for cars.Never mind the poor quality control.Just look at the cars themselves.Some of the most beloved cars were a ghost of their former selves .In 1974, Ford took the popular Mustang and put it on a Pinto platform, renaming it "Mustang II". Gone was the sporty pony car, replaced by a cheap-looking, watered-down compact.Yes, they redesigned it for 1979. Unfortunately, it wasn't a huge improvement. The 1979 Mustang still wasn't very sporty, looking more like an undersized luxury car (excluding the limited-edition Indy Pace car version).Pontiac redesigned the Firebird with an uglier front end and long, 1-piece taillight along the rear. And while I personally like the 70's-style Corvette, it is one of the least popular vettes ever, and one of the worst-performing due to its excessive emissions-control equipment.Even into the late-70s, Cadillacs were flashy and actually looked like luxury cars. By 1979, only the redesigned Eldorado looked the part.The rest of the lineup started getting plain and dull. Lincolns did retain those luxury-car characteristics but they were not appealing to many buyers. Too many people felt they were "grampa" cars.The Oldsmobile 88/98 full-sized models were ultra-boring and too boxy, unlike the earlier, more stylish versions. The Cutlass lost some of it's coolness when it was downsized. AMC was mostly selling their weakest entries, the Concord and Spirit, with the spacy Pacer barely selling and the semi-muscular Spirit AMX available only in limited numbers.Chrysler gave us the Aspen and Volare, 2 of the dullest cars of the 70s. Cordobas were ridiculous looking and never seemed a serious contender for the luxury market. Fords LTD was a conservative-looking  car that created no excitement among anyone, and the Grand Marquis soon became associated with senior-citizens, and devoid of any character.It was the last year for US-sales of VWs iconic Bug/Beetle and Datsuns Z car was trying too hard to be a high-tech sports-luxury car,while the earlier 240 and 260 were less stylish but better street-racers.The only bright spot was the introduction of Mazda's RX7, which would continue to improve over the years.
1979 really was the beginning of the 1980s, when luxury cars were ugly and looked cheap, sporty cars were slow and underpowered, and nondescript compacts began to dominate.
I graduated from high-school in 1998. At that point, the SUV craze had gotten into full-swing. I never liked SUVs. They are all, by nature,boxy, so they cannot differ much from one another or be very distinctive (unlike cars, which can be boxy, round, or pointy).People were driving Jeep cherokees, Ford Explorers, Dodge Neons, and Chevy Cavaliers. Good cars for what they were intended,but not exciting, shapely or stylish.
A lot of younger folks like the 60s and early-70s cars, and I can understand that.They mostly saw boring cars growing up and can appreciate the cars made during the times when designers showed imagination and viewed autobiles as an opportunity to be artistic and creative. During the year I was born, they were too cautious and lost that sense of adventure. Quality suffered and performance was stifled. Honestly, I'm not sure offhand what my favorite car was for the 1979 model year,as so few interest me.Thats reason enough to consider my year of birth one of the worst for cars.
Nowadays, we have the Cadillac CTS-V. The Corvette was reborn into a serious sports car. Dodge gave us the Viper.Before the divisions were eliminated, Pontiac and Saturn gave us beautiful last-ditch efforts with the Solstice and Sky. Honda offered the S2000.Ford learned their lesson and made the Mustang a hot rod again. Even the Camaro returned as tire-burnin' muscle car. Yes, 1979 and the early-80s were all a bad dream.But the car companies started making up for it in the 2000s, giving us some memorable, notable cars.There is hope.Too bad,though,that I wasnt born in a different year.