I recently serviced a vehicle for a man who has been my longest client with our relationship going back 30 years. I got to thinking about the car I serviced today, a 2011 VW Golf and the car he owned that I first serviced: a 1980 Plymouth Horizon.
The Horizon, while it got from A to B just fine was quite frankly a piece of crap. The engine revved too high at idle and it thunked into drive with severe harshness. These cars were interesting: they were built at a time when Chrysler was coming out of bankruptcy and Lee Iacocca was at the helm. With the writing on the wall that the big American cars of the 1970’s were out of favour, Chrysler copied the VW Rabbit and created the Plymouth Horizon and the Dodge Omni. They unfortunately were not as refined as their German counterparts. The late 1970’s and early 1980’s were an awful time for American cars and I can’t really think of one that was great.
Fast forward to our VW Golf of today: while not a high end car, it still has a fabulous sounding touch screen stereo, air conditioning and runs so smoothly that you can barely feel the engine running. The emissions coming out the tailpipe are extremely clean. It’s a great and welcome change from the past and makes me wonder what we might be driving 30 years hence.
