I am musing a bit about automobile technology over 20 year periods. Obviously today we have some EVs which did not exist in 2000 (save the abortive GM attempt). But if we take a "regular car", say a Honda Accord, today it is more efficient than in 2000, but the car is more or less similar. They went away from the V6 to a set of Turbo fours.
In 1980, cars were pretty bad overall, many still had carburetors. They were underpowered in general and got poor fuel economy.
In 1960, most cars were behemoths in size, we didn't have compacts generally speaking. A standard car would be a Chevy Impala with a 283 cid V-8 and 2 bbl carb and two speed transmission. It would get maybe 13 mpg highway. Nobody cared. No seat belts. Bias ply tires and drum brakes.
In 1940, things were changing, but cars had standard transmissions, mostly 4 and 6 cylinder engines, manual chokes, foot mounted starter, no AC of course, no radio, no power anything. Some may have had magnetos, not sure.
And cars pre-1985 or so needed pretty routine maintenance. I think a big change was fuel injection, better fuel delivery, oil lasts longer, less buildup on sparkers and cylinders, etc. I think electronic ignition came along 1972-1975 for most. I used to spend a fair bit of time under the hood of a car.
