It was a mixed bag back then. Some things were better made, some were not. I owned cars with wing vent windows, curb feelers, suspensions so loosy-goosy the car would roll so bad the curb feelers would scrap during a brisk left hander (say to make a yellow light in the left turn notch), defrosters that didn't, vacuum wipers that stopped working when you accelerated, tube AM only radios, bias ply tires, drum brakes that were scary dangerous in the rain, suspensions that had to be lubed regularly and frequently by hand or the whole car squeaked like a cheap motel matress, and you had manual steering that required about twenty turns lock to lock, made parking lots of fun!
Or how about motorcycles with engines that needed top end rebuilds every 20K miles, often less than that (cast iron cylinders and heads), no through studs from the case to the head so a hot engine could start lifing the cylinder barrels off the case when you got on it, and small tube diameter frames with cast junctions that flexed visibly under any kind of hard cornering load. Riding my old iron barreled Sportsters fast on a mountain road you could see the skinny forks flex and the frame felt like it had a hinge under the seat from the way it would load up and let go, what piles of shyte those things were. Rear tires back then were skinnier than modern front tires and everything was bias ply and slithered around under cornering loads or on rain grooves. No drive belts or O-ring chains back then either, you had to oil the chain every other gas stop and it was always messy back there from oil flung off the chain. Modern carbon fiber belts are so much better.
TVs were black and white, had no horizontal or vertical hold to speak of (you had to adjust vertical and horizontal hold seemingly every time you changed channels, but you only had 13 channels max back then), required constant little adjustments to contrast and brightness, antennas required constant fiddling to find a signal and all the stations went off the air from midnight till 6:00 am. At midnight they would show a picture of a US flag waving in the breeze, play the national anthem and from then till six all you would see is a test pattern. Oh yeah, you had to march down to the tube tester in the grocery store at regular intervals to test your tubes and replace the defective ones. I vividly remember my dad showing me how to use a heavy duty screwdriver to discharge something in the back of the TV so you didn't kill yourself when you started removing the tubes to test them. Eff that!
No pcs back then, no internet, no web discussions like this, and vacuums back then were not all that powerful in many cases. Some were close to what you can buy today but vacs didn't really start getting good until the 1980s.
Oh, and back then peanut butter was not homogenized, so the oil separated and required vigorous stirring every time you opened the jar. And people smoked in the grocery store. Gross. I remember watching a butcher cut meat with a smoke in his mouth. Everyone smoked everywhere. It was horrible that way.
And, there was no duct tape!
Nope, I am very much glad I live when I do and not in the past.
