On our most recent urban hike up to Skinner Butte, we were greeted with a sight that is essentially timeless: two young guys with their Chevy V8 ‘project’ cars. I asked for permission to shoot them, which was duly granted. And shortly afterwards, they took off noisily down the winding road, and put on quite an aural display of Chevy V8 heavy-metal music on the one longer straight stretch directly below the viewing terrace. It’s got to be one of the most timeless sounds for anyone who’s lived these past 60 years. Will I be hearing it 30 years from now, if I’m still around and able to get out?
The whole experience, seeing these kids hanging out with their Chevys, and then watching and hearing them gunning down the straight right below the summit, the sound of two bellowing V8s reverberating up the hillside, was utterly time warping. How many times have I heard that sound, of a couple of Chevys strutting their stuff? I’ve heard it in big cities and little towns all over the country, ever since I was a kid in Iowa City in the early 60s, when ’55 – ’57 hot rod Chevys were just coming into their own, affordable to kids after having served one or two previous owners. And I’ve been hearing it ever since. It has to be one of the most enduring sounds of my life.
But will it continue to be? For how much longer will kids be able to (or want to) buy a cheap clapped out Chevy V8 and make it thunder?
Sure you’ll be hearing it. There will be some kid with an “old” (circa 2010) Chevy pickup outfitted with an obnoxious exhaust system.
Sorry for not being optimistic- thirty years from now these cars will be totally banned from public roads (for noise/ pollution/ insert whatever reason here). I’d go further to say you’ll not even drive, but be driven by an autonomous car.
Which brings me to one conclusion- this, now, is the last of the golden age. We’re still able to drive and “project” whichever car we want. Better hurry up and use it.
We’re not from from living in an era described in ‘Red Barchetta’. Except the car that my son’s uncle preserved for 50 odd years will be a 928, a V8 of a different sort.
I don’t care what the experts claim, but there is no way a self driving car is ever going to navigate a blizzard. Weather too thick to receive satellite signals and snow and ice frozen over sensors dictate that it ain’t gonna happen. Spring time mud is an issue where I live, and if you don’t navigate around the muck holes, you’ll be stuck in short order. Then there are dangers that a self driving car can’t recognize. A 1500 pound bull moose standing on the side of the road warrants that you slow down as much as possible, as they are completely unpredictable and the have poor eyesight and little fear or brains. Such a hazard is invisible to a driverless car.
I agree, Hardboiled. I have had, several times, navigation systems try to put me on roads that don’t physically exist!
Recent research with agricultural robots (“agribots”), which have to be able to navigate furrows & avoid random obstacles, suggests that autonomous offroad or blizzard navigation is a possibility at least. I’m sure the military is researching this, too.
BTW a French farmer interviewed in a YouTube video remarked that with these, he could hire fewer laborers. Hmm…
On the flip side there are plenty of humans who can’t drive in snow or rain either. Also plenty of humans who can’t avoid an obvious road hazard possibly because they don’t recognize it as a hazard also.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I would only add that there remains a glimmer of hope in the idea of very exclusive (read: expensive) clubs that would maintain private tracks for club members to play with their toys. Such things exist today.
As far as random curbside encounters with throbbing old Chevy V-8’s or those wonderful “Friendship Rally” classics I encountered in that small Vermont town, they’ll be just distant and cherished memories for those of us lucky enough to have had the experience.
I totally agree with Yohai’s assessment. The age of the drivable collector car is drawing to a close; I would say 15, perhaps 20 years. “They” may let you keep your non-compliant vehicle, but you won’t be able to operate it on public roads.
15-20 years? As far as I can tell the number of 2016 AVs are measured in the tenths of one percent vs driven cars. How many 15 year old driven cars do you see on a daily basis today? I’ll tell you. About as many or more as I do brand new 16/17s. Where the hell does one think all of these existing cars are supposed to go if their outlawed?
The fact is politicians won’t even raise the fuel tax to force consumer decisions out of fear of throwing their political futures away, think they’re going to force every single car owner to take a massive depreciation hit because a bunch of dreamers(not representative of any majority by the way) believe in blind faith that a zero fatality rate is achievable with a full AV fleet? Give me a break.
I think it’ll vary a lot depending on your country. Australia for one has so much hardly-populated open land that it wouldn’t be feasible to take a driverless car through.
Agree completely. Minor roads without lines on the sides are probably more common than not, and I wonder what an autonomous car would do with a single-lane bitumen road, where you have to move half onto the dirt to pass an oncoming car.
Great points. Whatever the future holds, we don’t know. But I’m not going to live my life being paranoid that some governing body is going to totally abolish combustion engine vehicles, or that the boogeyman is just lurking around the corner. If that was the case, they would have outlawed a Model T for use on public roads, because the car’s safety and features are horribly outdated.
When new self driving cars are readily available, local roads in wealthy areas will start going AV only, AV/CDL, etc.
Careful now. The age of technology has compressed new inventions down from many decades to a decade or a half. Twenty years is going to bring bigger change than it did from the years 1955-75. Just sayin’ as what has happened just between 2010- now has surprised me.
I keep remembering this fiction piece that Tom Kreutzer did here.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-fiction/curbside-fiction-the-future-is-now/
+1 JP… I cited this fine story when we had the last lengthy discussion on this very topic about a week or so ago (The Tesla AV Video and Audio of our fearless leader’s son’s blog).
AV(s) have become this site’s hotbed topic, much like when you mention the word “Dwarf Planet” with regard to Pluto on space.com – The debate over that planet’s demotion still rages on, nearly 10 years after the fact.
That pic says a lot. Cars from the 70s and 80s are loaded with yesteryear American style but remain completely capable in modern use. That makes them a very special era for collectors and rather ageless. When I was a kid in the 70s you never saw cars from the 30s and 40s tooling about.
In twenty years I’m not sure cars from the 90s and 00s will be very sought after but the gen 2 Camaro and last El Camino sure will be.
“When I was a kid in the 70s you never saw cars from the 30s and 40s tooling about.”
I do remember seeing the occasional car from the 40s out in semi-regular use. But it was never operated by a kid – only by the ancient man or lady who had owned it forever and would still take it out for groceries or church. Those things were much too slow to be of interest to testosterone-charged boys.
Agreed. In the sixties I’d see a thirties car maybe once a week, and there was one late twenties car in regular use that I saw occasionally – though as you say the driver was elderly. Kids’ interest in cars seemed to start with the late forties Holden – there was so much speed equipment for them.
Maybe 30s/40s cars weren’t tooling about, but there were tons of them at hot-rod events. (Which my dad insisted on dragging me to. Actually, I always wondered what happened to all those things.)
I don’t think that picture says all that much about car culture. It’s more of a 1980s deja-vu experience. Sure, they used to be like roaches, but it must have been decades since I’ve seen a clapped-out “trailer trash” 2nd gen Camaro or El Camino on the streets. The ones you do see are very well cared-for collector cars. The 1990s equivalents would be Camaros and Impala SSs, which are already collector status.
I love how you get such a wide range of perspectives here on Curbside Classics, from folks living in different places. There are at least four 80s El Caminos parked curbside in my neighborhood. They look super cool and make fine daily drivers.
There’s actually a couple street-parked El Caminos in my neighborhood, but they’re in near perfect condition, so I’d call them collector’s cars.
I see 70s and 80s El Caminos driving around all the time, which is interesting because they didn’t sell all that well to begin with, but people love them so the survival rate must be very high.
When I got my driver’s license in 1970, my daily driver was the family’s 1941 Chevy Master Deluxe. Definitely the most unusual car in my high school parking lot!
May not be a Chevy V8 but I’ve certainly contributed to the music with my loud Ford V8 the last decade. Quiet V8s miss the point entirely, impressionable young ears love the sound, what better way to recruit the next generation!
Some cars just look appropriate beat up and rattlecan primered, better than showroom new even. The 74-77 Camaro is one of those cars.
One man’s noise is another man’s music.
When I was a kid (1997) the sound was 4 banger fart cans from civics, eclipses, celicas, and cavaliers blasting a sub woofer. Oh there were the chevy v8 guys buy they were a dying minority by then…but then again today I see more people driving camaros than rice burners and all the import sports coupes from that era are long dead.
In my town in 1997, V8 muscle cars reigned supreme, the fart can crowd would get laughed out of the street races
As long as they stay off my lawn I’m cool with it. 🙂
Cheap old V8’s will be around forever in some quantity. But there are less of them around now than there were twenty years ago.
What I’m geniunely curious about is what would the owners have answered if questioned as to what (if any) new car they would want in place of these rides?
Old and clapped out V8 cars will never go away even with our ridiculous gas prices V8 powered cars from every maker are all over the place Ford Chevrolet in both Chevy and Holden guise Chrysler you name it some Kiwi is still driving it, The supply of new V8 cars is being strangled we’re down to Holdens Camaros and Mustangs, and a few Chryslers the Falcon having recently been put to rest.
I’ll take the pearl Avalanche.
So over distributors and carbs. Gimme LS goodness in my old Chevy – and my new one!
I assume that hopefully there will still be running Chevy V8s in 2046 whether it be a 1958 Chevy Del Ray because most Baby Boomers no longer can drive and their collections have been sold off or something newer like a 2025 Chevy Express done up in a 1970s Vanner Tribute. For all I know Chevy V8s will be confined to museums and fired up for tourists like Steamtown U.S. of A.
In a somewhat related note, the “modern pony car” sales seem to be falling off a cliff. There is speculation that aging baby boomers, the primary market for such cars, is aging out of pony cars because they want/need something more comfortable for their aging bodies.
Also of note… prices of pre-WW2 cars are dropping, as the people who remember them fondly are mostly riding in hearses these days. Yes, there are still collectors and museums that want them, but the nostalgia market is tapering off.
As for me, a child of the 60s and 70s… My recollection of the cars of my youth is not fond. Points and carburetors and primitive smog controls and 3-speed transmissions are not anything I want to experience again.
Yes, *someone* will keep driving cars with Chevy small-blocks. After all, they must have cast 20 million of those engines, or more. It sure won’t be me!
Modern ponycars are fat and overpriced(if you want a V8 soundtrack). Boomers aren’t the only generation who grew up with Mustangs and Camaros(contrary to the egos of some) and by far the biggest age group into mustangs in the local clubs are in their 20s-30s. Difference is we’re still driving vastly less expensive SN95s and F-bodies, the older demographic buys the new ones, and in reality, they aren’t usually boomers either, mostly gen xers who had 5.0s back in the day.
Corvettes are a better barometer as far as a rigid generational link goes. I know no one my age into cars who has a vette on their wishlist.
We’re not alone in thinking of the Vette as an Old Man’s Car:
http://corvettes.about.com/od/history/a/What-Can-Chevy-Do-To-Attract-Younger-Buyers-To-Corvette.htm
Besides price, maybe it’s insurance rates too. A good way to kill off young men, besides war, is to solve the cost problems of cars like this.
Heck, even cars from the 50’s are no longer moving. I can see 10 mid-50’s Pontiacs on Craigslist out my way for the last year. None have sold and I am not surprised. They have peaked in my book, in the level stage for awhile, before they start their decline. Next up the 60’s.
Ever the contrarian, it is my prediction that whatever V8 music we hear will be of a Mopar variety. Chevrolet ruled popular performance for a generation or two. But look at who is making the exciting V8 cars of today, which are the ones that today’s youth will enjoy when they start reliving their own youth and not that of their father or grandfather.
Whatever credibility Chevrolet has in the popular imagination today is built off of their products of the past. I don’t really notice young people enamored of modern Chevrolets, unless they are from die-hard Chevy families. Ford and Ram sell the hot trucks now, and outside of the low-production Corvette and Camaro, most of the V8 action is over at your Mopar dealer. The next generation’s favorite performance engine is the one that is most commonly found today.
But I have been wrong before.
I could see that. My new (’15) farm truck is a RAM 2500 5.7, and it has a nice tone when you get on it, even with the stock exhaust.
I really don’t hear these much at all anymore. Some pickups, sure, but very few cars. For cars it’s now fart canned ricers. Much less musical to these ears.
The Small Block Chevy will be around for a long time, even if most of the “Project Chevys” now a days are LS powered.
I don’t know if classic, collectible cars will be banned from the roads in the future… This hobby still moves a small universe of business around the world, would be a shame to see it fade away.
Anyway, the amount of miles we put on those cars each year is so insignificant…
Maybe I’m too optimistic.
Our old Mustang sounds musical…not noisy!
Self driven cars banned from the road in 30 years? That sounds like ‘sky is falling’ hyperbole to me. But I’ve been wrong before too…
I can’t see it either – they still allow horse & buggies on the road
Real engines (both V8 and I6) will carry on longer in trucks for two reasons: Trucks last longer, and trucks get looser laws. Individual drivers don’t have lobbies, but farmers and businesses do.
I don’t know about 30 years, but I’d certainly bet on 10 years. Plenty of ’60s and ’70s pickups (and a few ’40s and ’50s) are still rumbling around carrying lawnmowers and ladders, with no sign of disappearing soon.
It is interesting how infrequently the sound aesthetic of cars is discussed. For me, it is a big part of the appeal of the car enthusiast thing.
The song of a minimally muffled – tach’ed up Chevy V8 is a glorious noise indeed. Long may it live.
Agreed, I think it’s one of the big factors in the decline in enthusiasm for *new* cars, every noise has been classified as “unrefined”, to the point where all you can hear in some cars is tire roar, which I find far more irritating on a long high speed drive than the soothing controllable hum of a 90* V8.
If that were true, Ford wouldn’t be piping fake engine noise through the stereo systems on their EcoBoosts. Manufacturers in general probably put more effort into the tone of the exhaust note today than ever before. For performance cars, anyway.
I would say that supports the hypothesis, piping in fake engine sounds in a highly isolated modern chassis with a roary four cylinder to sound like…. a V8! In a Mustang it doesn’t surprise me one bit, the minute a 4 cyl Ecoboost was announced it was scoffed at and derided, so to try and win over the V8 snobs they made it lip sync a V8. But ponycars are now fringe cars, not reflective of mainstream standards. When it comes to the mainstream sedans though V8s sound naturally refined, they idle quiet, gently hum under normal driving conditions and growl rather than scream when you get on them. You don’t need to alter or drown out the sound completely with a V8.
Manufacturers today put a lot of effort into shutting up the more efficient four cylinders, and in all likelihood have an endgame set towards silent electric propulsion for mainstream appliances if/when battery charge time and/or sheer storage capacity can compete with fuel pump time. Until then though the goal is to continue reducing NVH on all levels, and with a whole sense removed from the driving experience it really takes something away for people with a musical ear.
Pretend engine sound coming out of the stereo! Hahahahaha!
I’m ashamed – so ashamed!
What would guys like Winfield, Navarro and Hilborn think of us now?
Shudder!!!!!
Heavy metal music coming out of a Camaro? Nah……
…Yeah. I’m 50 and I still listen to the Scorpions and Ozzy, Rush, etc…
Thank God this sort of thing still exists and carries on. This is where I started in the mid ’80’s with a ’71 Malibu.
Made me think of my Dad saying, “Yer not out there bothering the taxpayers, are ya?”
Self driving cars. No, thanks. “They” will get my 68 Chevy when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Proud to say that I’m making my contribution by regularly providing the music of my smallblock Chevy V8 (’97 Tahoe) – and in a European country where V8 sound is much much rarer than even in moderna-day America.
Regarding the future: I don’t believe combustion engines will be outlawed anytime soon. EV technology is not yet developed enough (actually it’s more a problem of infrastructure). EV cars will have mass appeal only when they are more affordable (they are very expensive, even with government subsidies), when batteries are improved and when electrical grid is significantly upgraded (I’ve read that a few percent of EV cars in Norway have almost brought the country’s electrical grid to its knees).
Someone mentioned how a Model-T Ford can still be driven today, a good point. In my opinion, cars from 40-50 years ago have more in common with modern cars than Model T with 60s-70s cars.
This is even more true for self-driving cars. Contrary to popular belief fueled by tech-companies’ PR announcements, the technology isn’t anywhere near ready to be actually used safely, and it won’t be so for decades. Engineers who know something about computer science and think soberly, predict that this technologiy needs at least another decade or two of further development before we see any meaningful results. What we’re seeing now are only interesting toys, nothing more.
Those two are straight out of my HS parking lot circa 1987, though they are a little crustier than they would have been at 5 years old. In NE FL where I live, I run across few old V8 daily-driver/beater vehicles (if you don’t count pickup trucks) and even fewer of those are driven by young guys. On the other hand, craigslist is still pretty full of affordable V8 vehicles from the 60s–80s and so I think that (at least outside of the rust belt) there will long be a pool of viable vehicles like these two kids are driving. I am also not seeing the sky falling on pollution control nor limitations on actually driving your fun vehicle if you want to.
One interesting trend is that the big three are selling a LOT of V8 and V6 and even turbo 4 pony/muscle cars. These are rear wheel drive, will depreciate quickly and then become fodder for young hot rodders—IF there is any demand.
I am a car nut, through and through. Only a few of my friends are. I know of some young guys that love cars (my son) but they like looking at them and driving them and not so much hard core wrenching like these two guys at the Butte. Who knows where trends will be in 20 years. I think that the overall percentage of ‘car people’ within the population will go down somewhat, but I think a certain percentage of them will always be young guys who finally have their license and who want to create their own vision and drive it. For them there will always be a pool of vehicles because people work with whatever they have around–that is the hot rodding tradition in a nutshell.
I choose not to have any V configuration engines in my fleet but it’ll be a sad day indeed when the roads are not carrying uncorked V8’s .
Many Hot Rods are just noisy ~ there’s a science or maybe art to making the exhaust sound right, many here have said ‘ Musical ‘ and that’s what I always strive for, not just blatting noise like some .
-Nate
I must say that I have a lot more respect for guys keeping cars like this than I did 25 years ago. At that time it seemed everyone had one, and they were the easiest path to a V8. (Being an AMC guy at the time I identified more with the Mopar crowd but I digress)
Anyway, all these years later this takes more effort and swimming against the current, so I applaud these two noisy old chevvies.
I have no fears of our (Canadian) government outright banning my old car. I’m sure if there’s a way to generate tax revenue off it there will be a path forward. Maybe that’s why paranoia is so popular, it’s non-taxable.
Here in Daytona Beach it seems like the muscle car era never ended. You’re more likely to witness that V8 growl coming from a pickup or modded Durango, but it’s certainly alive and well. Granted, a quick look at the average driver of these vehicles reveals that more of them are in their 40’s and up than what we might call “kids”, but judging by the numbers I’d guess those genes are passed along pretty prolifically. In the NY Metro area it seemed like Civics with fart cans buzzed all over the place like swarms of bees, but in this environment the buzz gives way to a steady rumble. Between the Harleys and the “302-and-up” crowd the traffic here sounds almost seismic from a distance.
As humans age, some are lucky to have the time and money to pursue a few dreams – and that often results in buying the ‘hot car’ from their childhood. Given that many performance cars are babied, you can assume 25 years from now middle age guys will be buying the uber pony cars we are selling now. There will absolutely be hellcats and mustang 350s roaring around all the way to 2040. Perhaps with limited Historical licenses or the like, but they wont be extinct. Too much public interest. However in busy city centers, highways, more reasonable efficient vehicles may be mandated (through taxation or other financial means). Which is fine. no one wants to commute in a hellcat anyway, seriously.
I would. Problem, again, with the notion of taxation/fines is for every hellcat and GT350 there is in 2016 there’s several million that are just plain ol appliances, more reliable and long lasting than ever. Those are not going to be outlawed within 24 years time.
I think one of the things that will lower the popularity and interest of younger generations to old pre WWII vehicles is the inability to drive a manual transmission equipped vehicle. This is a dying art form.
Most folks in the USA have been weaned on automatic transmissions. When I was getting tested for my driver’s license, we took the automatic car to the test verses the manual trans car. It was easier to take the test with a auto then a stick.
Plus on a lot of old cars the shifter is on the column meaning it is something else to learn.
The other thing is that there are some auto transmissions that get better gas mileage then a manual transmission. This kills off the idea that a stick car is better on gas.
Then there is the main reason that an auto is more appealing to most: Traffic, it is a pain in the @$$ driving a car with a manual trans in gridlock(especially on 495 in Maryland)
I love manual transmission cars and I have a 94 Probe with a manual transmission. However if it was my main car that had to dive everyday in traffic, it would be gone because as I mentioned it is such a pain in the rear driving a manual trans car on the beltway
The rise of “fart cans” and the continued aging of old Chevy V8s may eventually doom that wonderful sound only a Chevy engine can produce (FWIW, my 3.6L has that same type of sound, but in a lesser way).
However, those old, clapped-out Chevys are outlasting newer, clapped-out 90’s Civics which have mostly disappeared, thankfully.