What was the Best Era?

[Pops1967GTX]

As I get older looking back , the 70”s was the best era. Hanging out with friends, cars and listening to the best music..

 

[WileERobby]

Mesozoic era

gave us the juice for our musclecars !

 

[toolmanmike]

As I get older looking back , the 70”s was the best era. Hanging out with friends, cars and listening to the best music..

Good for us. Our parents thought the 50's were the best. The 30's and 40's were hot and cold depending on whether it was war time or not.

 

[Billccm]

While Ronald Reagan was in the oval office. My career was taking off. I owned a B body and a A body Mopar. My daily driver was a Horizon TC3. America was great. America was happy. I miss those days.

 

[snakeyes]

for me I think the 50 s and 60s the best

 

[66 Sat]

I was born in the early 70's so hard to comment on before that, but in the movies the 50's and 60's always seem like a good time. Late 70's and 80's were still good for me, outside all the time playing.
Definitely not 2020 onwards...

 

[Mopar Hunter]

The best era of my life is between January 20, 2017 – January 20, 2021, everything after that’s been a **** show.

 

[Under Pressure]

The best era of my life is between January 20, 2017 – January 20, 2021, everything after that’s been a **** show.

Couldn’t agree more.

 

[Richard Cranium]

I was born in 1959 and glad I grew up when I did. Personally, I'd say that age 12-25 were the greatest times for me in my younger years. As a kid, there was no computer, so we built forts, built models, sledding, arranged ball games at the schoolyard, wet to the local carnival, driving miles and miles on my bicycle exploring all day. And our parents didn't worry about us being gone all day. We kept ourselves busy using our minds and imaginations and picked up hands-on skills .... something that is truly lacking with today's youth. Getting our hands on a Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler magazine was like hitting the sex jackpot at age 12-ish. When I got older and into cars, there were tons of 2nd hand musclecars that were affordable and I eventually had enough money to afford a summer car and winter beater. Exploring junkyards for parts and buying parts from people in the local want ads .... and we actually found out how to get to these junkyards and seller's houses from verbal directions that they gave! Bought my first new car in 1984 (Dodge Daytona turbo) and drove the snot out of it; across country, Florida, Canada, etc. I always loved exploring on my bike & then in my car. Now, in my retirement, I hope to do some more traveling while I'm still healthy enough.

 

[DeltaV]

2265

 

[moparwacko]

The 60's and 70s
Musclecars were born, and then became cheap used cars by the mid 70's. It was common to find $500-1000 Camaros, Mustangs everywhere. Even then Mopars were more expensive, they were $1200 for a 67 GTX.
But yes the times were different, went and played all day without a cell phone!
Playboy was naughty, Penthouse was porno, and if caught with a Hustler magazine you were going straight to hell.
Rock & Roll was never going to be better, and then Disco came .......OK I do listen to some.
It was all over by the mid 80's, and pretty much sucked after that as real life set in.
Going to the garage and crank up some CCR and Eagles.

 

[moparedtn]

I was born in 1959 and glad I grew up when I did. Personally, I'd say that age 12-25 were the greatest times for me in my younger years. As a kid, there was no computer, so we built forts, built models, sledding, arranged ball games at the schoolyard, wet to the local carnival, driving miles and miles on my bicycle exploring all day. And our parents didn't worry about us being gone all day. We kept ourselves busy using our minds and imaginations and picked up hands-on skills .... something that is truly lacking with today's youth. Getting our hands on a Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler magazine was like hitting the sex jackpot at age 12-ish. When I got older and into cars, there were tons of 2nd hand musclecars that were affordable and I eventually had enough money to afford a summer car and winter beater. Exploring junkyards for parts and buying parts from people in the local want ads .... and we actually found out how to get to these junkyards and seller's houses from verbal directions that they gave! Bought my first new car in 1984 (Dodge Daytona turbo) and drove the snot out of it; across country, Florida, Canada, etc. I always loved exploring on my bike & then in my car. Now, in my retirement, I hope to do some more traveling while I'm still healthy enough.

Fortunes aside perhaps, I can pretty much mirror RC's description for my time above dirt as well.
RC's got me by a couple years but other than that, a dead ringer for me (my first new was an '85 GLH Turbo,
so yeah, same car pretty much even).
Oh, retired? Not me - I'll still be working 5 years after they've planted me like corn. Med bills, ya know.

 

[Richard Cranium]

The 60's and 70s
Musclecars were born, and then became cheap used cars by the mid 70's. It was common to find $500-1000 Camaros, Mustangs everywhere. Even then Mopars were more expensive, they were $1200 for a 67 GTX.
But yes the times were different, went and played all day without a cell phone!
Playboy was naughty, Penthouse was porno, and if caught with a Hustler magazine you were going straight to hell.
Rock & Roll was never going to be better, and then Disco came .......OK I do listen to some.
It was all over by the mid 80's, and pretty much sucked after that as real life set in.
Going to the garage and crank up some CCR and Eagles.

The big disco scare got me into listening to more 60's music. I like a fair amount of 80's new-wave music and a couple songs out of the 90's. Sadly, rock n' roll is long dead and what's on the radio is completely unlistenable to me. I can't believe that rap/hip-hop has been around as long as it has been & I wouldn't know a Taylor Swift song if you played it now. I guess that makes me officially old.

 

[bearman]

I'll would have to repeat what rc has said that was my life. Remembering picking up my first 64 dodge for a 100.00 bucks couldn't wait to get it home to start on it. The rest is history

 

[Detective D]

I am younger than the majority here, I was still very young in the Reagan years.
It seems to me, in my time on earth so far, people were happiest in the late 80's going into the early 90's. But this is from my local observations of rural farm communities in WI. People could still leave their car unlocked downtown, people could still screw around because the police knew the difference between a screwball and a real bad actor(bad actors stood out still, not so many around) A working class job would still afford you a house and a used car, two incomes in the family meant one car was probably new(ish) unless you had like 4 or 5 kids, and then you could afford 4 or 5 kids without being in the poor house.
The car scene around here was people buying the shiny new front wheel drive stuff, but kids were running around with beater V8's having a great time, saving up for a V8 with actual power(read: older than the 1980 cars we mostly had) or modifying something, and stuff was still simple enough youngsters could figure out how to work on things.
Teachers in school were still "old people" that had been teaching in the farm community since the 70's, and were both excellent teachers and guides for the kids, handled, "ambitious" kids without suggesting drugs, that sort of thing.

Farming had it's golden age between 1950 and 1980. But in dairy farming, the older farmers held on to that method until the 90's, sometimes by choice and sometimes because the 80's were not conducive to expanding a farm. In my younger days, we still farmed with simple equipment from the 60's and 70's, had a big family, and managed to not go completely bankrupt, although that was coming.

As I proofread my little shpeel here, I realize this was all before the internet. Around here, the internet came in the era of computer cars, all the teachers I knew retired out(maybe a coincidence) and the economy had been put on track to eat itself from the bottom up, including family farms.

I don't think anyone my age or older can say truthfully the time after 2000 or so was on par, much less better, than the times before. I suppose if you asked someone (if any are still around) that grew up in the 1910's or 20's they would tell you some stories of hardship and discontent. Who knew it would only take a century to hit peak and race back towards the bottom?

 

[68BabyBlue]

I was born in 1953, and in 70 years, I haven't seen another period that could match the post WWII financial boom, accompanied by a national optimism that lasted until the late 60s, when the country started paying the piper for missteps that ended the boom times. When new, my '69 GTX epitomized, to me, an era that I thought would never come again, and the car still rekindles that sentiment every time I get behind the wheel.

The world I'm nostalgic for wasn't my life in that era. I observed it from outside the window, looking in, and have a photographic memory of the good stuff that passed me by. I was a hard to place adoptee, with all the baggage that went with it, growing up in modest circumstances. After I got out of high school (wretched experience, but one that made later corporate life seem like a cake walk) I devoted every waking hour to capturing the life I had watched pass me by early on. When I finally acquired the means, I immersed myself in the cars ('62 and '66 Imperials as daily drivers, GTX for weekends, later a Chrysler 300F,) the music, and coerced my spouse into dressing as a Camelot queen.

The economy of the 90s approached the good times of the post WWII expansion, and I think more than a few baby boomers seized the opportunity, as I did, to vicariously relive those good times as their careers took off.

 

[copper67sat]

I was born in 1964. Don't have a lot of memories of the late 60's. My youth was relatively carefree similar to what RC described. I remember the 70's being somewhat bleak. Dad was laid off from McDonnell Douglas sometime around '72 and money was tight for a while, but we always had food, clothing and stable housing. Got my driver's license in 1980 and that really accelerated my interest in cars - mostly 60's-70's muscle cars, but I never had any money. I went to a private college-prep high school and had a combination of scholarships and work grants (worked at the school for $2/hr) that covered most of the tuition so I didn't really start making any money outside of cutting grass and doing odd jobs until I graduated from high school. Even then, the earnings from part-time jobs went to cover college expenses. Finally bought my own car (67 Satellite) after college, got a decent job, got married, bought a house and really started our adult life. My wife went back to school after we were settled and completed her degree which led to her getting a much better paying job. We finally felt like we were getting ahead of the curve by the mid '90's into the early 2000s so those were some of the best times for us. My wife started having some health issues in 2013 and retired early in 2015 because of them. Cutting back to a single income put a damper on our high-flying lifestyle and recent economic conditions have made it even more difficult to stretch my paycheck. The last 10 yrs have felt like an uphill battle and it's hard to be optimistic about the future, but our life is still quite good compared to many. I do hope to retire sometime in the next 5-6 yrs and enjoy what I have worked to build for so long. Just need keep my own health and sanity long enough for that.

 

[eldubb440]

70s........ 90s were pretty good...... I base everything on the music

I'm not old enough to remember the 60s

 

[snakeyes]

1950s

 

[snakeyes]

1960s