“Like Miles Davis, I’ve Been Swayed by the Cool,” or, “An Expose on Retro Styling.”

Retro styling is a pretty big deal in the automotive world right now. Car companies like Jaguar and Aston Martin are constantly trying to remain true to their heritages while continuing to design their cars on the cutting edge of modernity and companies like Dodge simply repackage their old cars and resell them because they’re out of good ideas. No matter who you are, if you’re an automotive designer, you need to give some serious thought to the “retro” concept.

This is How Everything Used to be Done. With Mustaches.

Personally, I’m somewhat averse to retro and classic cars. First and foremost, if a car is referred to as “classic” this is simply code for “broken.” Odds are good that you will be spending your daughter’s college fund on a rusting Charybdis of automotive misery and toil that will never be as good as your dentist neighbor’s Toyota Prius. And that alone might make you want to kill yourself.

Disturbingly Accurate.

Retro cars aren’t much better, as evidenced by everything that Dodge currently makes. Let’s look at the Challenger for example. Its fuel economy is worse than an aircraft carrier, it’s slower than glacial drift, and it has a suspension setup that was considered revolutionary and exciting during the siege of Troy. It’s too big to fit on the moon, much less a side street or your driveway.  All things considered, it’s awful. And yet, people continue to shell out a premium for this ghastliness.

I'm Sorry. I've just been sick.

This is because they don’t have any taste.

However, this diatribe isn’t meant to scare you away from the looks of a classic car. Some cars with classic looks are much better than many other modern cars. For example, let’s compare this year’s Shelby Mustang GT with a Morgan Plus 8. You can walk out of your house and head to a dealership right now and buy either one of these cars.

Beauty Incarnate.

A Device For Turning Money & Gas Into Noise

Let’s start with looks. The Morgan is, there’s no other word for it, exquisite. The Mustang is vulgar and disgusting. Point for the Morgan. The Morgan is also $10,000 cheaper, and that’s before you start adding options onto the Mustang. The Morgan is handbuilt from wood in a forest in Great Britain. The Mustang is assembled by some robots and an overweight man named Bill in Dearborn, Michigan. Both are completely road legal in the United States.

But here’s the good number. Both will do 0-60 in under 5 seconds. That’s right. This Morgan, which looks like it’s from 1949 and was built in a British shed from wood is basically as fast as this roided out muscle car.

If you’re truly interested in classic looks, why would you buy a Challenger or equally moronic modern muscle car? 

Do yourself a favor and give Morgan or an equivalent marque a serious look.