What do you miss most about the 70's...?

Halter tops, hot pants and platform shoes.        

Firsthand, nothing, I was born in 84.  Secondhand, most of the music, the modern POTENTIAL of 70s cars. 

Having turned 5 in 1970 and 15 in 1980, I don't miss a Bob-damned thing about the '70s.  Even in retrospect it was a horrible time full of hideous tastelessness and economic disaster.

Lynyrd skynyrd (minus free bird), punk, my c3 and the girls who wanted a ride, Levi's you had to break in.

Born in 71.  The 70's pretty well sucked for a poor kid in rural Kentucky and Ohio.  Life in the back of the parents (unairconditioned) 1976 Honda Accord making road trips at a mind numbingly slow 55, slow cooking under the hatch glass.

Born in 1970 here, first couple years are a wash (I wish they weren't as I was born in Rota, Spain) but once we came stateside and settled into a small beachside bungalow, I spent most of the decade on the sand and in the surf.

Not a berkeleying thing!

I had just moved to Canada from Puerto Rico and let me tell you going from the beaches of PR with their ambulant scenery to the desolate frozen tundras of Canada when you are a young man is NOT a dream move.  I could see why all the kids felt that they had to be stoned all the time just to cope with the place.

I pouted until I got to University

I miss being a teenager with few cares in the world, I guess, but even so I don't think I'd want to go back and do it all over again to get where I am now.

Datsun310Guy said:

I attended Downers Grove South (Illinois) and was a sophomore in 1978.  We had a smoking area consisting of a lot of burnouts.  This bring backs a lot of wierd memories.  

DGS

Aside from it being in NE PA and the very early 80's, that film could just as easily have been made any day at lunchtime at my HS.

In reply to stroker : Vietnam,  well  it's what I remember most. I did my second tour in the early 70's with my first in the late 60's  

i was born in 1948 so in the 70's I was a young man   MG T series were $300 in nice shape I saw Jaguar XK's stacked like cord wood in junk yards including more than a few of the early Aluminum ones  ( today worth $300,000+)   You could buy a few year old   XK-E roadster in perfect shape for about $2,000 

 Reliable beaters  cost $50  and gas was 17 cents at Terrible Herbst  in San Diego  

I miss heading out on my bike in the Summer and not coming home until dusk.  No cell phones or computers.  Instead,  we had  slingshots, swimming in rock quarries, toilet papering houses, pool hopping, and an occasional fistfight.    Good clean fun......the kind that today would get you thrown in jail.  

I was born in 81, but the only thing from the 70's i feel like i missed out on was having 60s cars being just cheap used cars.

gearheadmb said:

I was born in 81, but the only thing from the 70's i feel like i missed out on was having 60s cars being just cheap used cars.

pretty accurate.... born in 59, I turned 17 in 76......    My 1968 GTO cost me all of $600.....   My friends 289 Mustang 4 spd cost him about $250 (family friend sold it to him)  My 1966 Shelby GT-350-H cost me $1000.

Euro stuff was cheap then too.   60s BMWs were under a grand,  I took a serious look @ a 64 Aston Martin Superleggera - $2500 (didn't have the $$).  I also remember seeing an AAR cuda for under $1500.

Yep... stuff was cheaper back then... but minimum wage was under $3 per hour.......... 

Type Q said:

I liked 70's Funk and some of the Disco.

The rest of the decade sucked for a young kid in Michigan. What I remember is oil crisis, inflation, drop in car sales, massive layoffs, recession, Japan bashing, school funding cuts. repeat.

That sounds like most of the 80's in Michigan too.  If there was a sense of hope it was that you could still send your kids to college and they could do better. We weren't exactly pushed away, but there was a very strong sense of not following in parents footsteps to farming or manufacturing.

Being able to buy a CD at a bank with a decent interest rate.

volvoclearinghouse said:

Being able to buy a CD at a bank with a decent interest rate.

While paying 18% on your home mortgage.. let's not gloss over that one!

I don't remember them. I had just turned 4 when they ended. Now the 80's.... yeah those were fun times. 

Being a kid through the heat wave of 1976 where England experienced freak weather conditions that saw cold winters and hot summers from 76-77.  I remember jumping off 8' high stone walls into snow drifts in the winter and temperatures constantly in the mid to upper 80's for weeks on end in the summer.   That may not sound that great to people here, but in the UK cool wet winters with a smattering of snow are normal, not real drifts that can bury cars.  I have a clear memory of a double decker bus getting stuck sideways across the main road about 1/4 mile up the hill from us in the winter.  We went out the next morning and the snow drifted all the way to the rood.   Summer temps tend to average in the upper 50's.  70's are warm and 80's make the news.  To get those temps for the entire summer was amazing.  It got so bad that there was a drought that meant a water shortage that saw millions of homes have their water shut off and people would have to go to 'stand pipes' on each street to collect water and take it home.  No, I'm not E36 M3ting you, one of the wealthiest and most advanced nations on earth people were reduced to queuing for water at communal taps int he street.  Luckily we lived about three houses outside the village limit so our water stayed on, friend a few houses down had no water.

dculberson said:

volvoclearinghouse said:

Being able to buy a CD at a bank with a decent interest rate.

While paying 18% on your home mortgage.. let's not gloss over that one!

Ah, yes.  Stagflation!

gearheadmb said:

I was born in 81, but the only thing from the 70's i feel like i missed out on was having 60s cars being just cheap used cars.

Yes, even in the mid-90's when my friends and I all started collecting our driver's licences and an assortment of used clunkers to thrash around, old iron was cheap.  A buddy had a 64 Mercury Montclair with a 390 he paid about a grand for.  My '77 Suburban was $550.  Other friends had early 80's GM RWD cars that were all bought for 3 figure sums of cash.  A few 300TD Mercedes bought for next to nothing.  My 1971 BMW 2002 was $250.  Another guy had a - 63?- Tempest he paid 800 bucks for.  And gas was cheap...I remember under a buck-and-a-quarter.  

Edit: Almost forgot a buddy's 79 Cadillac with the 425.  All.  The.  Torques.  And, All the Naugahyde.  Also, All The Browns.  

I paid $150 for my first car (1980 Buick Park Ave 350 Diesel) and had friends that bought olds, buicks and AMC's for not much more. My favorite was a friend of mine's dad tried to wrap a 2.8V6 s10 around a telephone pole. So that engine and 5-spd went into his Chevette 2-dr. My god that thing would destroy the right rear tire all day every day.

Seemed like every car was either a stick-shift or a Brougham.  Nearly everyone could drive manual transmission.  Good music of all genres on the radio with only six minutes of commercials every hour.  Detective shows.  Seeing Star Wars in the theater.  Foyt and Unsers and Andretti winning races.  I hear the drugs and women were great, but I was in grade school, so I couldn't tell you about that.

What I don't miss?  People smoked cigarettes everywhere.  In elevators, on airplanes, in the john, in the workplace, in closed-up cars in the winter.  Everywhere.  It was ridiculous.  Now you can't smoke anywhere, ever, which is almost as ridiculous.

My first car was a Hillman Imp purchased for £30 (about $43USD in 1986 money) from the Junk yard with basically nothing wrong with it.

In reply to dculberson : 18% interest rate didn't really occur until the 1980's  but I loved it!! 

I bought my first house GI nothing down really cheap because the usury law prevented mortgages from being written  

since I bought under the VA my mortgage was a V A mortgage I got it for I think 7&1/2% 

Bobzilla said:

I don't remember them. I had just turned 4 when they ended. Now the 80's.... yeah those were fun times. 

I was born in 79 so no memory of them for me either. But I hated the 80's. Don't particularly like the 90's - current days either, but hated the 80's. 

On the other hand growing up in the 80's meant that most of the cars I was around were from the 60' & 70's and is the reason why the 70's are my absolute favorite decade for cars by far.