Stuff About 1980s Cars That My Kids Will Never Experience

As I was driving to pick up my son yesterday evening, I passed a car that didn't have its headlights on, and it suddenly occurred to me how rare it is to have a car without automatic headlights. And it also occurred to me that my kids will likely never drive a car where you not only have to turn the headlights on and off yourself, but you have to decide when to turn the headlights on and off. And the more I thought about it, the more things I thought of that are totally different now than when I learned to drive in the 1980s. Here's my list of "car stuff" that was part of my youth but which is and will be completely foreign to my kids. 

Ashtrays. Cars ALWAYS had an ashtray. And a cigarette lighter. Let's be honest: if you grew up in the 70s or 80s, at one point you stuck your finger in the lighter and burned yourself. Or at least lit a piece of paper on fire. 

Cassette Decks. If your car was fancy, it had a cassette deck as well as an AM/FM radio. And of course, that meant you also had to have a briefcase-sized box with all your favorite tapes. I'm still salty about the time my car got broken into and they stole my whole tape collection. As well as all the change in my ashtray. Which leads me to...

Change in the Ashtray. We always kept change in the ashtray, partly because you had to pay tolls in quarters (God forbid you have exactly the right amount of change but miss when throwing it into the basket), and partly because if you ever broke down somewhere, you'd have to find a payphone and use a dime to call for a tow. Probably from your dad.

Crank Windows. None of this electric button nonsense; there was a big metal crank you used to roll the window up or down. If you were really strong, you could do even it while driving. If you were in the car by yourself, the passenger window stayed where it was until you could pull over and reach over to crank it up or down. 

Manual Locks. Locks required a physical key from the outside. You had to lock and unlock each door separately, whether from the inside or the outside. From the inside, you used a little golf-tee shaped button, which was supposed to prevent a thief from breaking into your car with a bent coat hanger. Unfortunately, it also prevented you from breaking into your car with a bent coat hanger if you ever locked your keys inside. 

Antennas. Even if you were cool enough to have a cassette player in your car, sometimes you wanted to listen to the radio, so cars came with an antenna. Some people would stick a pom-pom or similar item on the end of the aerial to help find the car in the parking lot. Sometimes the antenna was on the back of the car sticking straight up, sometimes it was at the side of the front windshield at an angle. God forbid you forget to retract it when you went through the car wash.

Maps. In the ancient times known as the pre-GPS era, you always had a glove compartment full of state maps, as well as a large wire-bound set of street maps for your local area. If you had been on a trip recently, at least one of these maps would be a personalized, hand-highlighted TripTik from AAA.  

Missing Seatbelts. Massachusetts did not require seat belt use until 1994, which meant that even though people began to use seatbelts regularly in the 1980s, not every car had them. Well, they probably had them, but most likely the ones in the back seat had slipped into the crack, never to be seen again. If there were seatbelts in the back seat, they had giant metal buckles similar to the ones we now have on airplanes, which doubled as a weapon to be used if your sibling crossed into your "territory." Not that I ever did that. And they weren't three-point harnesses, they were only a lap belt, which meant that if the driver hit the brakes you got folded in half and smacked your face on your own lap. Fun times. 

Car Safety. Airbags? We'd never heard of airbags. Child seats? I spent the first decade of my life standing up (okay, "jumping up and down") on the "hump" peering over the front seat. If there had ever been an accident, I'd have been launched through the windshield like a tiny javelin. And yeah, we rode in the back of pickup trucks and station wagons with the gate down. On the highway. With a speed limit of 75 mph. I'm still not sure how any of us survived to adulthood. 

Station Wagons. Minivans and SUVs hadn't been invented yet, so the "big family car" of choice was a station wagon. If you were fancy, yours had wood paneling down the side and a tailgate that would open either gate or drop-down style. They were great to take to the drive-in. They also had a back-facing seat that allowed you to make faces at the people in the car behind you. Or wave at them. Or hold up signs claiming you'd been kidnapped. 

Gasoline. You didn't choose diesel vs. gasoline or your preferred octane, you chose leaded or unleaded. Leaded gas pumps had a bigger nozzle so you couldn't accidentally use it in a newer engine designed to use unleaded gas. Also, gas pumps didn't have a locking mechanism, so you had to stand there and hold the handle while you filled your tank. During the gas crisis, you could only fill your tank on your assigned odd or even day. 

Analog Dashboards. So. Many. Dials. Speedometer. Gas Gauge. Tachometer. Temperature gauge. Battery level gauge. Odometer. Clock. Radio dials. Don't forget, you tuned in the stations by turning that little knob until the static went away. You wanted 103.3 FM? Move that dial a little past the "102" indicator then tweak it and hope for the best. And then stay on that station FOREVER because there were no presets. 

Boxy Designs. We didn't worry about aerodynamics in the 1980s, so cars actually looked like the rectangles with wheels that we drew to represent cars when we were kids. 

Cool Cars. Although there are admittedly some pretty wild-looking new cars on the road today (Cybertruck, anyone?), the 1980s had a lot of very cool sports cars that people actually drove, that you would regularly see on the road. Chevy Corvettes were so cool that Prince wrote a song about one (kind of). The Camaro IROC-Z was equally awesome. Turbo-powered Volvos didn't look as cool but had impressive power and pickup. Even ordinary, non-sporty cars were pretty cool: the Acura Integra was introduced; hatchbacks like the Honda Civic, the VW Golf, and the GMC Gremlin were the poor college student's vehicle of choice; the Toyota Corolla and Honda Accord were a step up in both size and comfort from their smaller sister models; and the Chrysler K Cars were a precursor to the minivan. 

I'm sure my kids will get to experience plenty of car features that I never dreamed of at their age (self driving!). But I very much doubt they'll ever beat the coolness factor of a 1981 Delorean.