Walking through a vintage car show, you can't help but notice just how different old cars feel. Hop in one and you realize that they're built like tanks (or boats, as we used to say) but somehow, they also feel oddly futuristic.

Your Dashboard Has Never Been More Complicated

When I was recently upgrading my own ride, I realized just how complicated new cars have become—and I consider myself a bit of a tech-head. The sales associate offered to give me a crash course in all the features.

There were so many that I told him I'd rather just look up everything on YouTube when I get home. Turns out, that's pretty common.

From Old to New: Dashboards
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(Sidenote: On my way home from the dealership, I had to pull over and watch a YouTube video just to figure out how to get my speedometer to show up on the dashboard.)

They Might Be Gone, But Some Car Features Were Pretty Neat

It got me thinking about the cars I grew up with in the '70s and my own clunker collection from throughout the years. They seemed totally normal back then, but now, they've got this retro cool factor.

So, let's take a fun road trip down memory lane and revisit some of the old-school car features we kind of miss, even if just a little.

LOOK: Cool Car Features We Kind of Miss

Kids these days don't know what they're missing out on! But hey, let's be real, some of those old car features were pretty awesome. Yeah, they might've been a bit risky and even tried to kill us, but they made our rides feel way cooler.

Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz

LOOK: Can You Recognize These Iconic '70s Objects

Let's take a walk down a very groovy memory lane and ponder some of the things that made life easy, fun and undeniably cool in the '70s.

Gallery Credit: Stephen Lenz

LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

Gallery Credit: Sophia Crisafulli

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