There will come a time when even a car from the nineties will make you feel old
03/30/2022
If you're driving a very young classic car or a more mature youngtimer built between 1990 and 1999, there's hardly anything missing. These cars feel modern, can be driven easily (by almost anyone) and usually cause few worries. They hold their own in traffic and don't break down in the first traffic jam. They can be filled with whatever fuel is in stock at the filling station and neither their noise nor the gases escaping from the exhaust make passers-by resent them. Some of these cars from the nineties may even still be in daily use, providing mobility and driving pleasure in everyday life as an inexpensive vehicle. This is perhaps also the reason why some enthusiasts do not see these cars as real classic cars, even if they are 30 years old.
For us, who have grown up and matured with such cars, these vehicles are completely normal. But what will it be like in 10 or 20 years' time? How will drivers who have grown up with electric cars and digitally assisted driving see the "classics" of the 1990s? They will miss the adaptive cruise control as well as the hill start assist that prevents rolling backwards. Traffic sign recognition will be missed just as much as augmented reality, which projects information onto the windshield that is not immediately visible. And if traffic signs are one day transmitted to the car via radio signal, or speed and distance information is passed on digitally from vehicle to vehicle, then the vehicles of the nineties will have to manage without these messages, as will their drivers.
It's still hard to imagine that you would miss all this, but at some point such comfort and safety features will become just as commonplace as an automatic choke or preselectable interior temperatures, or even electric windows and exterior mirrors that can be adjusted from the inside.
Watch how young passengers react when they are allowed to ride in a "really old" car. They are just as surprised about window cranks as they are about the lack of seat belts or a non-resetting blinker lever. Let's not even start talking about the fuel tap, hand throttle or ignition timing adjustment.
Anyone who learns to drive an electric car will one day even miss the "one-pedal driving" in the still quite youthful ICE (= Internal Combustion Engine) car ...
