American Nostalgia: The Best Decades

November 19, 2013, 4:41 PM GMT+0

Americans are nostalgic for the culture and fashion of past decades, but the cars of today are widely regarded as the best yet.

While they may not have the design appeal of classic cars, the all-electric Tesla cars are widely viewed as the next step in car technology, and are also the safest cars on the road. After two separate car fire incidents, however, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is looking for possible defects with the cars and to examine if battery problems are behind the fires. The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, took to his twitter to defend the company and point out that over 100,000 gas car fires happen annually, and that if there were a safer car, it would have to have "magical healing properties".

The latest YouGov research shows that Americans are generally nostalgic when thinking about the "best" decades for culture and fashion. People were particularly dismayed about the current state of things, ranking the period since 2010 as the worst era for everything except cars. That said, the most recent complete decade, 2000-2010, won in three categories: Television, Fashion and Movies.

Unsurprisingly, what people consider to be the 'best' decade varies significantly according to age. The fashion preferences of older people generally show that earlier decades, like the 60s, were their favorites. Younger people said more recent decades were better. It is notable that the 70's, the so-called "Polyester Decade" is no one's favorite - in anything.

Most "bests and worsts" were non-partisan, though Democrats are slightly more inclined to like music from the 80's, and Republicans music from the 60's. There was a noticable divide however, in terms of cars. Independents and Democrats were the most likely to prefer cars from our current decade, while Republicans favor classic cars from the 1960's.

Full poll results can be found here.

Image: Getty.

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