30 Years On

Podcast Episode: 0246
How much as the automotive industry changed in the past 30 years?

         ​What if the strides in automotive design over the past 30 years are not as revolutionary as we once imagined? Join us on a journey through time as we compare the evolution of cars in different eras, inspired by the time-travel adventures of "Back to the Future."  ​​We'll reflect on the differences and similarities

between the innovations from 1995 to 2025, and the significant transformations between 1955 and 1985. Despite the dreams of flying cars that once seemed inevitable, we question whether the pace of innovation has met our expectations.

       So, it's the beginning of 2025, and I come across this meme on Facebook that actually makes me think. It makes me look at things. It said if Back to the Future happened today, we'd be going back to 1995, because that's 30 years ago. But from the original movie it went from 1985 to 1955. And I've been saying this about the automotive industry for the past two decades. There's not a lot of changes in it. And when you look at the changes between 1955 and 1985 in the Back to the Future movie and then you take a look at vehicles from 1995 to 2025 today, there's not a whole heck of a lot of difference. The DeLorean looked like a spaceship to people in the 50s, but the DeLorean that's coming out now, that Alpha 5, you could put it in 1995 and it wouldn't blow that many people away because there were concept cars that looked very similar to what's coming out now. So today, AutoLooks is going to take a look at 30 years on how the automotive world has changed across 30-year time gaps.
 
          Welcome back to the AutoLooks Podcast. I am your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there. Stop by, check it out. Read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings. Go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all Car companies from around the globe, all available on our Corporate Links website page. You can find most of them attached to global or their main corporate pages, where you can find even divisional pages that go right to your home market. Yes, all from the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. 

       So, like I said in the beginning, 30 years on Now I'm only using the 30-year period just because of well, back to the future, because that one little meme made me think. I remember when I was a kid growing up in the 90s and I remember my parents' style coming back into play in the 90s. You know, style from the 1970s. Funny thing is, today I'm looking at my kids getting close to my age. I was when I started wearing stuff that was similar to my parents from only 20-some years previous, even 30 years, 1965 to 1995.
 
        There were big, big changes. Hell, you want to see an advance in technology. Look at the difference between taking first flight in the Kitty Hawk to landing on the moon. Got to remembers the Wright brothers made their first flight in 1903, and yet we landed on the moon in 1969. We were in space by the end of the 50s, so within 50 years we made such an astronomical change. Now, a lot of that new technology was in place due to two world wars happening, because a lot of technology increases at a substantial rate when you're trying to stay ahead of somebody else who's trying to take you over.
 
      What do you think? The nuclear bomb if you go back and watch the movie Oppenheimer, why it was pushed through and finally made at the point that they made it, because they literally took the best minds that they had to build it. But what has happened in the past 30 years? Did we literally just become so complacent in the world around us that we don't really have that many more changes we can do to it? We get it. We see shows like Star Wars and Star Trek and we're out in the vastness of space cruising around discovering these new worlds. Is that the only thing we have to look forward to in our future? Seriously, we're talking about flying cars. We've been talking about flying cars since the 1950s.

​      Now we're just starting to get into using drone technology to make new flying vehicles, so it's a little bit different. A flying vehicle today, if we go back 30 years, would really turn some heads, kind of like the flying DeLorean from 2015. When I went back to 1985, that was 10 years ago, and I still don't have a hover conversion on my car, and really, I would love to have a hover conversion because I just hate driving on the road. Trust me, if I could fly through the air, it'd be so much better. Why? Because the infrastructure required to get to my home city would probably be complete a lot quicker and easier. We didn't have to blast and cut trees down. So, what has happened and how did we change? 

​           You have to remember the automobile essentially dawned upon us in 1885. Now, the original automobile or movable machine dates all the way back to France in the early 1700s. It was actually a mobile unit that used steam, essentially an old school tank. But after that it got people thinking, and that's when we started getting into trains. And then we started getting into tractors, and then people started saying, hey, we can use these to clear fields and help us grow food, and we could build these massive units to carry tons of people across great distances. But what about personal mobility? And in 1885, carl Benz decided to make it happen, with his wife by his side, miss Martha Benz, who actually drove the original Motorwagen from their home to the patent office, where Carl was that morning, to showcase that his invention actually worked. He was just there to patent it, but she literally drove it to showcase that it worked. It was 1885, and it was essentially a three-wheel buggy with a flywheel combustion engine. Now Heinrich Daimler essentially had his piston drawn engine and when the two of them got together we had the inevitable internal combustion engine.
 
              And within the first few years of the automobile and people starting to learn how to build their own and create their own, many different people across the world started building their own horseless buggies. Essentially, that's what they were in the beginning. They were the buggies that we pulled behind horses to get us around, and they started fixing these power units to them. So there really wasn't a lot of change because you can remember, the buggy hadn't really changed that much in nearly a hundred years hell, even longer. And remember, we've been cruising around in enclosed buggies for centuries before that. So there really wasn't much of a difference. But when we get in the automobile, we started realizing that this open-air environment is good, but now we can move faster, which means we can cross greater distances in a shorter amount of time. So, we started enclosing them. Then we started enclosing the engine to ensure that its viability, make sure it was reliable, make sure it wouldn't get damaged and make sure people wouldn't steal or break it. The automobile was becoming something bigger for the population around us. 30 years after that, from 1885 to 1915, a massive change.
 
           I've gone back and read books and I actually read one not too long ago. It's talking about the automobile industry during the 1930s and they're showing a used car dealership in the 1930s. Now you got to think about it. The 30s is when we started having enclosed vehicles. Well, the 20s is when, essentially, the horseless buggy became more of an enclosed automobile for us, because the Model T which predated that was an open-air environment. It had a roof, but it didn't have doors, it didn't have side windows. Now, all those great features that we eventually got, we've started enclosing it, making sure that we can get around in the winter time, stay warm, stay secure and stay dry, because that's what we really wanted. So, these advancements, from going from a buggy in 1885 to an open automobile with a covered front and more amenities in it in 1915. 30 years from 1915 is 1945. 

       We take a look at vehicles across that 30-year time gap. Our enclosed vehicles started to happen and as we started enclosing our vehicles, we started molding more and more pieces into it. So instead of having fender flares and running boards that were completely just added on after the fact, we could take them off and repair them. We had wood-spoke wheels. We had kerosene lamps for our headlights. We started getting electric. We started integrating electric. We started integrating everything into it. Wheel wells became a main feature by the 1930s.
 
       Throughout the 20s, the massive boom of the automobile industry showed many changes. The beginning of the 20s to the end of the 20s we went from a lot of people having these horseless buggies with an open top environment to having a fully enclosed vehicle. There was one solid unit by the end of the decade and by the 30s, even though it was getting close to wartime, we started bringing those vehicles in and at a time in history which had so much depression and so many people out of work. Our automobiles still changed and into the 30s our vehicles started to get more and more enclosed and more refined.

​      Our windshields became integrated, our windows had the ability to roll up and down. Our vehicles were starting to become more streamlined. They were starting to look more like the trains of that day, our Art Deco buildings between the 20s and 30s. And here we are, 1935. That's quite a way, 50 years since the inception of the automobile. So, from a horseless buggy to a fully enclosed automobile in 50 years. But our changes in our designs were starting to make a difference. By the 1940s we started adding aerodynamics to the vehicles and the rise of the war gave us more inspiration for our designs. At the end of the war and by the late 40s, the earliest dawn of tail fins, massive amount of chrome, big grills and a fully integrated body started coming into play. 

       ​A vehicle from the 1955, going back 30 years to 1915, would blow people's minds. A car from 1955 to 1915. It's just crazy. Hell. From 1955 to 1925, people would still be blown away. Be like whoa. That is amazing Because you can remember, in the 20s we still had vehicles with wood spoke wheels, thin wagon style wheels, and in the 50s we were getting into radial tires. This started taking off by the mid 40s and its inception came to us in the 1930s. We got smaller wheels, which made a big difference. Now, from 1955 to 1985, we already know where the automobile industry went.
 
         The 30 years on and its inspiration changed so much from the 50s, the beginning of clean Art Deco, bubble-style vehicles to big tail fins and a massive amount of chrome. By the end of the 50s Into the 60s, we started getting more streamlined, cube two-box designs. We still got our grille, but we're starting to get more simplistic designs. By the end of the 60s and into the 70s, power reigns king and making a vehicle as big as possible and as powerful as possible sets a new standard for design and technology in vehicles. From the 50s into the 60s, our windshield went from two-piece to a singular piece. From the 60s to the 70s, seatbelts started coming into play. If you go from 1970 all the way back to 1950, just 20 years take a 1975 Chevrolet, corvette, stingray and go back to 1955 and put the two of them next to each other Completely different vehicles.
 
          People in the 50s would look at that vehicle that's only 20 years older than it and be amazed Its design has changed so much and it's only 20 years. Taking a look at this, there are so many different design changes, and that went with the environment around us. The 50s were about moving to the suburbs and this amazing curved chrome appeal. If you look at appliances, houses, furniture, they all went together. The 60s had stale colors and more simplistic designs.
 
        We were starting to look at vehicles as getting bigger and maximizing the space, we started adding new features. Well hell, automatic started becoming a mainstay and even front wheel drive was changing the layout of our vehicles. We were able to get even smaller than we were before. So, technology was changing. Our designs were changing. Our vehicles were changing. 

          Every decade had its own design culture. Remember, we went from wagons in the 1880s and 1890s to covered automobile style vehicles in the early 1900s to the teen years. By the 20s those vehicles got enclosed and more streamlined. By the 30s we completely enclosed the bodies of our vehicles. By the 40s we cleaned up the designs and made it match the world around us. By the 50s the classic cruiser and chrome inspiration hit us. By the 60s we get more simplistic. By the 70s we get more simplistic. By the 70s we get power by the 80s we start getting into more two-box designs and plastic cladding. In the 90s we get teardrops and by the 2000s the teardrop turns into just a standard bubble Cab-forward designs for the front-wheel drive craze from the 1980s and into the 90s is now gone.
 
          Railroad drive is starting to come back. See layouts change. We go from rear wheel drive all the way up until the 70s. Same with body on frame vehicles. Unibody only starts making an entry into the 1950s and in North America we really don't start seeing it until the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s. Full unibody construction of most standardized vehicles doesn't come into major play until the 1980s when we start decreasing the cost of our vehicle because of the massive amount of competition everywhere. We open up the floodgates to a global world as opposed to just being within the confines of our own country or 30 years open up. Another thing from back to the future that you never notice is when doc is fixing the car in the third movie, he states the fact that no wonder this capacitor failed.
 
     It says made in Japan. Well, in the 1950s Japan was rebuilding itself after the devastation of World War II. Their economy had to be built up, and because there weren’t enough men, they started to get into more robotic and automation. Well, because of that they were able to build things quicker and faster and to get money to build their economy up. They built the cheapest, easiest things for all the other markets around the world. From that they reinvested the money back into research and development to help build better vehicles, better products. They were innovators. The Japanese marketplace was more about innovation than invention. They took what was out there and made it the best. So, by the 1980s, Japan was a leader in technology and products around the world. Sound familiar.
 
       30 years ago, anything that said made in China was garbage. Yeah, 1995, made in China was usually the junky things that you just got. You know those gift bags you get at birthdays. It's, you know the stuff out of little gumball machines, throwaways of parties, giveaways and auto shows. It was all the made-in-China junk. Today, China surpasses every other nation for electric mobility units. Their technology is surpassing even the Japanese. So, 30 years on, there is a change. If I showed up 30 years ago in a Chinese vehicle in North America, that would change people's mind. Take a Xiaomi right now and go back to 1995. 

         Its design won't throw people off. People will look at it and go be like, oh, is that like the new Dodge Intrepid, is that the new Impala? Who's it from? They wouldn't be like flabbergasted to look at it and go, whoa, what the hell is that? This is like a futuristic space machine. No, some technology within the vehicles would freak out people the second the door opens and they see that fully digital screen that could play tv right on it. That will amaze somebody. In 1995, held in 2015, when we started getting GPS systems fully integrated into our automobiles and the ability to call each other and everybody having the ability to call each other. Going back to 1985, from 2015, That technology would throw people off. But the Tacoma if you go back into actual 2015, there's a back to the future edition of the Toyota Tacoma. It's a club cab, black roll bar and lifted. It's got all the makings of Marty McFly’s Tacoma, the one I'm staring at. That's a Playmobil toy right above my head. But the technology in those Tacoma’s is the only thing that throws people off. Driving that thing back, even it's a 1985, would throw some people out, but you have to remember 1985.
 
       We're starting to look at vehicles like the Countach is still around. The Testarossa is coming out, the Corvette is getting cleaner. Sure, our standard automobiles are just a bland, boring two-box design like the Plymouth Reliant and Dodge K car. They're boring, they're bland and a lot of them still come with the standard square lights because we haven't moved into the bubble light era of the 90s. See, taking a car from 1995 and going back to 1985, you could freak out people. That's only 10 years. But when the last Dodge Caravan came out, I looked at its design and the first thing I said take that and plop it in 1989. Change out the headlights with square ones and literally it just looks like a cleaner variation of an 80s caravan. This is a vehicle that's nearly 30 years into its production and yet it doesn't look much different or out of place than its original counterpart.
 
      You see, today vehicles are not about changing the design aspects of the world. We've constantly changed technology in our vehicles. Hell, the DeLorean was more of a digital setup than the vehicles in the 1950s. They were all just standard gauge clusters. Hell, one of the first GPS systems dates back to the 1970s. Hell, General Motors had one of the most technically advanced vehicles in the 1980s with a full onboard computer system.
 
       Tons of people had car phones from the 80s into the 90s. It was cool If you seen somebody with a car phone. Oh my God, my best friend growing up. His dad was a salesman and he got the first-generation Dodge Intrepid just when it came out and he had to get a car phone installed in it. This is the early 90s, 30 years after that. 

             Take something like the brand-new Charger. It'll look a little bit out of place in the early 90s and the technology will throw people way off because they just push a button on their steering wheel and they can call somebody. They have to touch a screen to change a song. It is what has changed. We just look at automotive design to play a key role in the environment around us.
 
          30 years on, and automobiles haven't changed that much. A vehicle from today, placed 30 years ago, isn't much different. Hell, a vehicle today, going back 10 years, is much different. Just take a look at the Tesla Model S. Its design has barely changed since it came out and it's been around since the late 2000s and it's still riding off its original design formula. Hell, the Model Y now has the new clean style laser lights on it Besides band lighting. What major difference do we have now that we didn't have 10 years ago?
 
           Full digital dashes weren't fully integrated 10 years ago. But you have to remember the Model S existed 10 years ago and that massive 21-inch center screen was there. So, screens were there 10 years ago. 20 years ago, it'd be almost like hooking your laptop up. But then take a look at the Fast and the Furious. They had digital DVD players and screens pop out of the dash. The aftermarket and tuner industry had technology like that. Standard automobiles didn't, but we did see them. So, seeing a TV in a car 20 years ago wasn't all that off. 25 years ago, still wasn't that far off.
 
       1995, going back 30 years, maybe a little different, because in 1995, we're the generation that would have been playing with Game Gears and Game Boys in the car. Having a digital screen inside automobiles wasn't a big thing until the mid-2000s. That's when onboard DVD players became big. The DVD essentially revolutionized digital play in automobiles because people were buying them to entertain their children in the back. Essentially, the parents that can't control their kids were buying them just so their kids could be zoned in like zombies to watching a movie in the back of the vehicle. And that was all done because of DVDs. A DVD player was easier to set up than a VCR and TVs with LCD screens had gotten skinnier. But thin screens like that were just starting to come out in the late 90s, just like when people look at hybrid vehicles. You know the Prius is from 1997? Yeah, it's a 90s car. But when we think back to it, we only think of the second-generation Prius, we don't think of the first generation. The first generation was actually a sedan, not a hatchback, but it didn't sell well because at that point in time that technology was not needed in the environment around it. 

               As we've changed and gone with more aerodynamic, added tons of more safety features to vehicles, our designs have slightly changed. The Viper is no longer here due to new safety standards. Literally, safety killed that car. It killed the second generation too. But because we need to be safe in our vehicle, these changes have to happen.
 
                Technology is now taking over for designs of vehicles and one thing I've noticed through my ratings is vehicles are becoming more of a standard C style design. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go back. Go to the AutoLooks website and check the ratings tab or rated tab and go back. You can see stuff all the way back to 2009, for when I started rating vehicles and see how much the average has changed. Vehicles from way back then were way all over the place. Hell, this past year, I had less than 10 vehicles on the top list, which means designs aren't getting better, they're just becoming more standard. When I started this nearly 20 years ago, designs were all over the place. We were going through a phase where safety didn't mean good design, quality didn't mean good design, good design didn't mean quality. Today, we have everything together. Now we're just trying to keep these things evolving in the standard designs that they have now.
 
          When everybody says that there's a problem with Chrysler Corporation and its products, well, take a look at its products. The Pacifica could have been sold 15 years ago, no problem, hell. Even the new Dodge Hornet could have been sold 15 years ago. There's nothing within its lineup that you literally couldn't sell 15 to 20 years ago and still be able to make money off of it, because it's not that far ahead of where we once were. Today we're all about safety, mileage, airflow and brand new features You're looking at laser light, front hood spoilers, rear split spoilers, cameras, autonomous systems. They're all the things that we're now finding on our vehicles. In the past two years, I've watched how our shark tail fins for our antenna has disappeared from most vehicles. Now, with fully digital vehicles running off of a Wi-Fi system, we don't have a need for a radio system, so that shark tail is disappearing, being replaced by autonomous cameras. But those autonomous cameras are both on front and rear, on top and on bottom of vehicles. As we change our power sources and our driving systems, that's the only thing that's really starting to dictate how our vehicles change 10 years from now. Unless we make a major change in automotive design, vehicles 10 years from now could be sold today. Vehicles from today could be sold 10 years ago. 

                Back to the Future really showed us that a 30-year time gap all the way up until the early 2000s was a possibility. Every 20 to 30 years you could freak out the previous generation with what exists in your market today. Nowadays, there's not much different. The cell phone that sits next to me may seem cool and may seem like it does more than its predecessor over a decade ago, but there's not a whole heck of a lot of difference between them. Having this phone in my hand, like even the new iPhone today only has new features compared to the original iPhone. So, when you really think about it, have we stopped inventing and moving ourselves forward? Are we literally stuck in a massive rut where we need something to pull us out of it? Because, essentially, in the world of today, we're just innovating. You can tell me that artificial intelligence is going to take us on a whole new journey, but you have to remember artificial intelligence has been around for a long time. It's just become more mainstay. Think about the internet when it came out in the 90s. How, 30 years ago, having this handheld cell phone being able to connect to the internet and go to websites would have freaked out more people than the car that I drive to work.

           The automobile industry really hasn't made a major change in nearly 20 years. Technology can only go so far, but design language can set a generation above the previous. So, in 30 years, where will we be 2055, What are automobiles going to look like If we keep just innovating? They're not going to be that much different than what we have today, and we have to start thinking about that. 30 years on, will we be much different Unless we start getting our hover conversions to add to vehicles? We won't be. We'll be stuck in the same rut we are in today, with really only cameras to make things start disappearing from our vehicles. Grills are now disappearing, just like our antennas, but there's a reason for that and it doesn't really make us see anything differently.
 
             So, in all reality, if I hop in my DeLorean and go back to 1995 right now, if I walk out of the vehicle the way I am dressed today, are people going to look at me completely flabbergasted about what I'm wearing, what's on my feet, what's on my wrist? No, the vehicle I'm driving won't even scare them. The only thing that will make them freak out is when I pull out my cell phone to make a phone call. Literally, the handheld PDA device we all carry is literally the only thing different from today to 30 years ago. Think about that when you're looking for your next vehicle. 

            What do you think about the 30-year effect? Do you really think the 30-year effect has made such a major change? Or do you really think that, literally, we're stuck in a rut of innovation? I'm tired of just seeing innovations and innovations. Come on, we landed on the moon in 1969. Then we built a space shuttle in the 1970s and by the 1980s we were taking off and going to our own space stations, but we still have not set foot on Mars. We still can't get to Mars as quick as possible. The technology we have today isn't much different than it was 30 years ago for space exploration getting around in the automobile.
 
         So, in all reality, are we really evolving or have we now got stuck in such a normal rut that humans only exist for innovations? You tell us, send us a comment, click the like button and send this off to all your friends, family, well-wishers, co-workers, bosses, whoever you know. Tell them about this, ask them their specific questions about this, get an answer from them. Have we really evolved or are we just innovating ourselves out into the future? Ask them and then click the like button on the bottom so you can hear more of the podcast from the AutoLooks.net website and the AutoLooks podcast, and after that, stop by the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings. Go to the Corporate Websites page. Big or small, we have them all Car companies from around the globe, all available on the AutoLooks.net website.
 
          In all reality, click the like button and tell us what you think, and if you really want to tell us? Send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. The AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. The host of the AutoLooks Podcast is none other than Mr. Everett Jay, the owner, founder and operator of both the AutoLooks.net website, Ecomm Entertainment Group, and the AutoLooks podcast. Like we said, if you want to get in touch with us, send an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. So, from myself, Everett Jay, the Ecomm Entertainment Group, PodBean.com, strap yourself in for this one fun, innovating ride that the world of lack of proper planning is going to take us on. 

Everett J.
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