Why did basically every car in the 50s and 60s look like a beautiful work of art...

Why did basically every car in the 50s and 60s look like a beautiful work of art, including the cheapest basic town cars you saw everywhere on the road? Now the only beautiful cars are very expensive and not a viable purchase for most people, and average cars just look cheap and plasticky

Lead, lots and lots of lead.

Safety, fuel efficiency and price.

Nostalgia viewed through rose colored memories. Old cars are pretty horrid desu and I've restored plenty.

if your shitbox looks like a lambo, you wouldn't buy a lambo.

Golden age thinking. 60 years from now there will be people saying the same about early 2000s cars.

Nobody in the future will think of a 2010 Impala like we think of this Impala

You mean, Dean and Sam's car? Man, that's the best Impala evar! All that's needed is a trunk full of supernatural-butt-kicking weapons and kit, and Castiel in the back seat! Hells Yeah! IMPALA

If I were to guess, then I would say that it's mostly because safety regulations were far more lax back then, which meant they could focus on making the cars look pretty without having to accommodate crumple zones etc.
Can't think of any justification for those retarded angry headlights, though.

Cars were (relatively) more expensive back then. Today's classic muscle cars were considered high points back then.

Look at stuff like the ford falcon. Practically nobody gives a fuck about them. Hell, the only reason half the people on Veeky Forums even know what a falcon is is because of that normal car review guy.

Differing standards and tastes of the era. Not everyone owned a car back then, you'd typically have one car per household and if you're gonna pay a shitload for a car it damn well better be fancy. Owning a car wasn't so much of a necessity as it is these days so companies had to put more effort into designing it in order to sell. Cars these days are much more of a necessary burden required to achieve anything in life and as a result much of the passion for the hobby has died out as a result. Companies don't have to try at all to make the car look good because you need one anyway and the modern look has shifted towards the "jelly bean" style, anything else would be considered out of date by the average joe.

DON'T YOU DARE TALK SHIT ABOUT MY BABY

Nostalgia for an era you were never a part of. I bet you post YouTube comments on Led Zeppelin videos telling everyone how you're 14 and none of your friends listen to """real music"""

Except for the fact that they brought it to Australia and we've continually redeveloped and improved it to the point where it no longer resembles the original and is a mostly good car, although different eras are hit and miss in terms of looks and reliability.

they didnt
see
youre deluded

Safety regulations. It's mandated that cars be tanks these days. So that's what you get - a boxy heavy tank on wheels. Don't you feel so safe these days.

I suppose at some point they'll mandate the tank treads and there you go, everything will look like a tank.

Well, for those that can't pay to find the loopholes to the rules or just outright bribe the bureaucrats.

And too, ever since the 2000s the economy has been in the dumper and nobody really feels happy anymore. And the inner misery expresses itself in the dumpy uninspired reincarnations of the Chevy Chevette.

Because Americans had enormous amounts of wealth to piss away from the post-war boom and grossly lived beyond their long term means, as visible when everything came crashing down in the '70s.

Because there were no restrictions for car design back then. Designers could go hog-wild making their cars as outlandish and outrageous as possible.
Nowadays they need to worry about safety standards worldwide and regulations for car design.

It'll be different cars, obviously, but the mindset still applies. I also meant mostly pre-2008 because it was a boom time for the economy.
The Impala was a nice looking car back then, but not near the status it now has. The early 2000s equivalent will be aging millennials trying to get a hold of G8 GXPs or VW GTIs and beating off like you are about how things were so much cooler back then because muh rose color glasses.
I don't think you know what the word boxy means. Cars back then are more defined rectangles than anything we have right now. Bloated, yes. Boxy? No.

Lack of wind tunnel testing, no obsession over fuel economy, and design teams that knew they had to differentiate from other brands to get recognition

Also pedestrian impact and crash testing. You can't have sharp edges anymore or kids will get cut in half left and right.

Think of it like this, OP

A car was more of a luxury item, the same as flying in a plane. Air travel used to be very high class back then because it was so expensive. Big seats, lots of legroom, actual meals, etc. But as more and more people wanted to fly the airlines had to cut costs to get more people and still make a profit to operate. So we get small seats, people crammed in like canned fish, microwave meals, etc.

Apply this to cars. Cheap plastic trim, fuel efficient econoboxes, and safety regs all point to the uninspired hunks we are sold today. But you can still find what you're looking for in cars in the same way that you can in flight.

In essence: fly business class or better, and buy a luxury car.

>and design teams that knew they had to differentiate from other brands to get recognition
Then why do all American cars of a particular model year look roughly identical?

Thank you Caltrans for tearing down those terrible shitpiles to make room for the glorious 101.

the 101 is a lot of things in this area but glorious is not one of them.

They were a pain in the ass to keep looking nice, so the styling was simplified to clean boxes in the 70s, after that evolution just took its course.