There is little argument that today’s cars are safer than cars of yesteryear.
The truth is modern vehicles can compensate for bad drivers in many critical areas because of giant leaps in technology that control horrible driving habits such as poor lane change decisions and tailgating other drivers.
Jim Sutherland
None of these modern driver-assist features were available on vintage vehicles, consequently drivers from a bygone era were forced to rely solely upon their own skills to avoid a collision with solid objects during that time frame. A lack of good judgement (coupled with poor driving skills) may have resulted in dire circumstances, up to and including injury or death at the hands of retro automotive engineering.
MyStarCollectorCar decided to list five retro features found in old cars that would never be found in modern vehicles.
The first item on our list is an old school steering wheel, particularly ones with giant chrome horn centerpieces that closely resemble the nose cone on Wile E Coyote’s Acme rockets, the ones designed to eliminate a famous pesky desert bird with a cocky attitude.
Wile E had no success taking out the Road Runner, but the horn assembly in many old cars did take out many drivers when they became impaled on the steering wheel after a major collision. The only air bags in this gruesome scenario were the driver’s lungs.
The second item on a retro ride that contributed to a higher mortality rate was metal dashes, mainly because it turned out that metal dashes were not a soft landing for passengers’ skulls after Car A runs into Car B.
Padded dashes were an option before they became a standard feature but unfortunately many people did not check off the padded dash option on their new car order list back in the day.
MyStarCollectorCar’s third item was also a missing feature on many retro rides: seatbelts. These now-common safety restraint devices were also an option on many old cars when they were new, but seatbelts were not a typical add-on option when the vintage rides were built at the factory.
The grim reality is seatbelts may have kept yesteryear’s drivers away from fancy steering wheels–and passengers away from metal dashboards or windshields.
The fourth item on our list might well have contributed to collisions in the past, namely a single pot master brake cylinder. They were designed to provide hydraulic brake pressure to all four wheels at the same time and lived up to their end of the bargain.
Right up to the point when a leak developed in the brake system and completely collapsed a retro ride’s stopping ability.
Modern vehicles have separate front and rear brake systems, so a hydraulic failure is not as catastrophic because there are still two brakes left to stop the car.
The fifth and final addition to MyStarCollectorCar’s list is the steering and suspension system on an old car. In short, retro engineering in these two areas did not provide the same ability to steer around a traffic problem compared to a new car. Additionally, even if the driver somehow managed to avoid contact with a road hazard, the suspension may not be enough to avoid a rollover after the near miss and sharp turn during the desperation veer.
The good news is that old cars make people into better drivers if they understand their retro rides’ limitations and practice an enhanced form of defensive driving whenever they have them on the road.
The sharpened defensive driving skills angle, along with an old car’s inherent cool factor, are solid reasons to own a retro ride in our humble opinion here at MyStarCollectorCar.
Jim Sutherland
BY: Jim Sutherland
Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section.
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