Originally Posted by Kurtatron
It seems to me like 70s meet be the sweet spot for owning an older car. About right?
It depends. Neither of the vehicles you mentioned in your original post were from the 70's, but they served their owners well. It's also a safe bet that neither of those vehicles saw any modern city/freeway traffic in a major city.
70's cars could be a nightmare of pollution control devices, and they were often underpowered, even by the standards of the day. I enjoy my 442, but I wouldn't drive it in city/freeway traffic. If I wanted to drive it in city traffic, I'd do some serious upgrades to the braking and suspension system-70's vintage cars handle nothing like the vehicles of today, and modern braking systems are far superior. Vintage carbureted vehicles often have issues with vapor lock, which is another thing that would need to be addressed. You also need to know what you're doing with maintenance-know how to use a timing light? Set the dwell on points? Trace down a vacuum leak? Replace brake shoes and drums? Know how to check for bad plug wires?
70's cars weren't known for their corrosion resistance-even a car from outside the rust belt can easily have rust issues in hidden areas. In order to make it safe any car of that vintage should be taken completely down, any rust correctly repaired by a competent restorer, and then put back together. I've seen multiple 70's cars that look great on the outside, but once you pull the interior out it's a nightmare of hidden rust-even on vehicles that have been in a dry climate.
But then if you do all the upgrades to a 70's vehicle to make it safely driveable in city/freeway traffic, you no longer have an honest 70's vintage vehicle, and you've spent a lot of money on something that still won't perform as well as the average appliance vehicle of today.