What Type of Car Should Make a Comeback?
Photo: Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Automakers are big on revivals right now. Nostalgia sells, so we’re getting new Broncos and Integras and Supras to capitalize on that American lust for simpler days. But what if car companies could go further, bringing back entire swaths of the automotive market rather than just a few individual nameplates? What if they revived not just cars, but types of cars?
That’s the question before you today: What type of car should make a comeback? Plenty has been sacrificed at the altar of shareholder value, from cheap roadsters to work trucks with usable bed heights, but what tops your personal list? Any car genre that’s dead — or nearly dead — in the modern era qualifies.
Photo: Jeremy from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
For my pick, I vote that automakers bring back the compact convertible off-roader. The idea of picking a point on the horizon and barreling towards it with the wind in your hair is incredibly appealing, but to do so in a modern vehicle means buying something truly enormous. A current two-door Wrangler is well over a foot longer than an old FJ40, and longer still than a CJ-7. The new Bronco sits over twenty inches longer than its 1966 original, and we haven’t even mentioned the Suzuki Sidekick. Automakers, please — give us drop-top off-roaders that we can actually street park.
That’s my pick for a type of vehicle that needs to return, but what’s yours? Do you miss the classic family station wagon, or yearn for the days of thirty-foot-long Cadillacs? Leave your top picks in the comments below, and we’ll collect the best answers tomorrow afternoon.
