Jalopy Talk readers have been voting on old cars: a heart or a thumbs-down under every photo in our car articles, from 1960s muscle cars and station wagons to the crossovers nobody bought. We’ve pulled it all into one report: 6,717 votes from 1,526 readers on 441 car models and hundreds of dashboards, gas stations, drive-ins and driving habits, plus 1,823 answers to our car polls.
Please note that some of the images in this article were created with the assistance of AI.
The short version: readers love the old metal. 79% of all votes were hearts. But not every era made it.
The golden age runs to the 1960s
Would you like to save this?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!
Car models from the 1940s to the 1960s drew 85% to 87% hearts. Every later decade scores lower, and the 2000s are the low point at 49%, the only decade readers split down the middle. Some of our articles are friendlier than others, so we also compared every car with the other cars in the same article. The pattern held: the 1960s came out strongest and the 2000s weakest.
Muscle cars and wagons win; SUVs and minivans lose
Station wagons (86%), muscle cars (85%) and concept cars (84%) lead, with sports cars (81%) close behind. SUVs and crossovers (47%) and minivans (44%) sit at the bottom. Japanese models drew 60% hearts, against 74% for American and 71% for European cars.
What Our Readers Say
- When our readers loved a car photo and tapped a reason, body style came out on top at 28%, just ahead of plain nostalgia at 25%.
- Cars restored to concours condition got hearts 82% of the time from Jalopy Talk readers, compared with 74% for the other images in the same articles.
From Jalopy Talk reader polls and votes.
The cars readers love most, and least
At the top: Austin-Healey Sprite (100%), Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser (100%), 1957 Pontiac Safari (100%). At the bottom: SsangYong Rodius (0%), Second-Generation Ford Taurus (0%), Subaru B9 Tribeca (0%), along with the Cadillac Cimarron and the Pontiac Aztek. When readers gave a reason for a thumbs-down, the answers were spread out: the look, the shape, “not for me” and “looks dated” all drew similar shares.
The polls point the same way: 56% of readers picked the 1950s over the 1970s and today as the best-looking car era, 74% prefer lots of chrome to a clean look, and 65% say good riddance to the 1970s vinyl roof.
The full report
The Classic Car Report scores all 441 car models (the ranked list is in the dataset), breaks them down by decade, body style and origin, shows which cars aged well and which flops readers forgive, and adds why readers loved or rejected each car and 1,823 poll answers. It includes the full dataset.
Get the full report at StatwrenHow we did this
- Readers tapped a heart or a thumbs-down under each photo in our car articles between Aug 31, 2026 and Oct 30, 2026. One vote per reader per photo.
- Votes are anonymous: no names, emails or accounts. Readers were reacting to photos of each car, not driving it.
- Percentages are the share of hearts. Decade, body style and origin are our own tags for each model.
- More on how we collect reader data: How our reader data works.
Would you like to save this?
We'll email this post to you, so you can come back to it later!