Can You Believe This Is The Way Things Used To Be?

We can’t go back in time. So as we work to keep car culture moving forward into the future, sometimes it’s incredible to consider just how different things were back “then”. Here are a few entertaining—and eye-opening—clips we could find.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0NefrD5H-o

Someone captured and uploaded films made on the 1986 European Touring Car series, meaning you can follow an entire season across this 1h30 minute upload. Be warned: it’ll soon be impossible to not covet the Volvo 242 Group A Turbo.

In 1956, the General Motors Motorama was the hottest ticket in the U.S., with this very well-made film displaying the crazy technologies of the future—including a gas turbine car superhighway.

This is what a racing school looked like in 1959. Let me repeat: this—oversteering Austin and all—is what a racing school looked like in 1959.

Three years later, Jim Russell Racing Driver’s School sure looked like a fun place to practice driving in 1962, especially because the pupils got to drive Lotus formula cars!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZjqIwKV3WM

To sell the world’s most advanced family car, you needed a kicking, 1-minute-long clip that makes us wish there was a bit more swing in modern car commercials.

I know what you’re thinking: “But the crazy East African Rally couldn’t possibly get more interesting”. You’d be wrong: this is a documentary produced by Diamond Rio trucks, after they’d sent a heavy truck from the U.S. to be the “trailblazer,” meaning the vehicle that ran before all the others.

Great narration, too…

Another racing school? Yeah, but this is our video with the Skip Barber. Here’s what he has to say about the racing world decades ago, and how he’s trying to keep a piece of it, Lime Rock Park, going into the future.

It’s 1991. You’ve just bought a Mercedes-Benz SL, and with it a VHS tape that explains the ins and outs of your new purchase. It was a very advanced car for the time, yes, but with sections as menial as “Locking and Unlocking,” this is one instructional video you won’t want to miss.