the acme of "mechanical" automobiles. The could not be improved upon in any significant way insofar as materials, workmanship, perpetual reliability, longevity, and well thought out and pleasant design. Much of the electronic content that has crept into cars since has been to meet mandated safety and pollution standards, but the great bulk of gizmos (GPS, etc) was to fancy up the cars so they might sell better. And much of it was a question of "building to a price"...which made much suffer.

The "better" cars of 20 years ago are in many ways the high points of what automobiles were supposed to be...98 percent of "progress" since then has, IMHO, in fact been retrograde.