15 Cars Florida Families Had in the ’70s That Disappeared

Close your eyes and you can probably still smell it.

Hot vinyl seats, a little gasoline, and the AC wheezing against a Florida August.

The family car of the 1970s was a whole world, and most of those models and even a few of their makers are long gone now.

Here are the cars that filled Florida driveways back then and disappeared.

The Ford Country Squire

The undisputed king of the Florida family driveway wore fake wood on its sides and stretched on for what felt like a city block.

The Country Squire was Ford’s full-size wagon, and it hauled entire neighborhoods to the beach.

Kids piled into the way-back, that rear-facing seat nobody wore a belt in, waving at the cars behind.

The woodgrain paneling baked and peeled under the Florida sun, but the thing ran forever.

Ford finally retired it in 1991. A whole generation learned to get carsick in the back of one.

The Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser

If your family was a notch fancier, you had the Vista Cruiser, the wagon with windows in the roof.

Oldsmobile built those raised glass panels over the back so the kids could stare up at the Florida sky, or more often, bake like a casserole on a July afternoon.

It was roomy, it was distinctive, and grandparents loved it.

Oldsmobile itself is gone now, shut down by General Motors in the 2000s, taking the Vista Cruiser and that whole proud name with it.

The Buick Estate Wagon

Bigger still was the Buick Estate Wagon, a wood-trimmed barge that could seat the whole extended family and a good chunk of their luggage.

The tailgate did a fancy trick, the rear glass sliding up into the roof while the bottom dropped down, which delighted every kid in Florida at least once.

It glided down the highway like a boat, soft and silent, sipping gas like there was no tomorrow.

Buick soldiers on, but the great wood-sided Estate Wagon sailed off years ago.

The Chevrolet Caprice

The Caprice was the everyman’s big car, the one in half the driveways and most of the police lots in Florida.

Full-size, comfortable, and plain in the best way, it served as the family sedan, the airport taxi, and the unmarked cruiser that pulled you over on I-95.

Chevy built them by the millions, and they seemed to last forever despite the salt air.

It was the car the cool uncle drove, the one that looked fast even sitting still in a Florida carport, chrome gleaming in the heat.

For years, it anchored Pontiac’s lineup and turned up in driveways across the state.

Then General Motors pulled the plug on Pontiac entirely in 2010, and the Bonneville and its proud arrowhead badge drove off for good.

The Plymouth Fury

For a stretch there, the Plymouth Fury was simply everywhere.

Families drove them, cops drove them, and they ate up the long flat Florida highways without complaint.

Big, sturdy, and affordable, the Fury was a workhorse with a mean-sounding name.

Plymouth as a brand has been gone since 2001, folded up and discontinued by Chrysler.

A whole make of car, the one that built the Fury and the Duster, simply stopped existing, and most younger drivers have never heard the name.

The Mercury Marquis

Mercury aimed the Marquis at folks who wanted a Ford with a little extra plush, and Florida retirees ate it up.

These were big, hushed, softly sprung sedans built for floating down the highway in air-conditioned comfort, the official car of the early-bird special.

The Grand Marquis hung on for decades as a favorite of the snowbird set, easy to spot going forty in the fast lane.

Mercury closed its doors in 2011, and one of the most beloved retiree cruisers in Florida history retired right along with it.

The Ford Pinto

Not every ’70s car was a giant.

The Pinto was Ford’s answer to cheap, gas-sipping wheels, and they sold a ton of them.

Small, simple, and easy on the wallet, the Pinto put a lot of Florida teenagers behind their first steering wheel.

It also earned a rough reputation for what could happen in a rear-end collision, a story that followed it everywhere.

Ford ended the Pinto in 1980.

Plenty of people remember theirs with a strange mix of fondness and relief.

The Chevrolet Vega

Chevy’s little Vega was supposed to be the import-fighter, the economical compact for a new age.

For a few years, it sold like crazy, a cute and affordable runabout perfect for zipping around town.

Then the rust set in, helped along mightily by Florida’s salt and humidity, and those aluminum engines started giving up early.

The Vega was gone by 1977, remembered less for how it drove and more for how fast it dissolved.

The AMC Gremlin

Leave it to American Motors to build the strangest car in the driveway.

The Gremlin looked like a regular car that got its back end lopped off with a hacksaw, and somehow that made everybody love it.

AMC also gave the world the bug-eyed Pacer and the sturdy Hornet around the same time.

They were cheap, they were odd, and they had character to spare.

AMC got swallowed by Chrysler in the late 1980s, and its whole lineup of lovable misfits vanished with it.

The Volkswagen Beetle

Then there was the original Bug.

The air-cooled Beetle buzzed down every Florida street, simple and cheap and impossible to kill, the first car for countless college kids and young families.

You could fix one with a screwdriver and a prayer.

That rear engine made the heater a joke.

Volkswagen stopped selling the classic Beetle here at the end of the 1970s, and no amount of nostalgia has brought the real one back.

The Volkswagen Microbus

The Beetle’s bigger cousin carried whole families and all their gear, slow as molasses but full of charm.

The VW Microbus became the unofficial vehicle of road trips, surf runs, and Florida beach days, with room for everybody and a top speed that tested your patience on the interstate.

Painted flowers optional, breakdowns included.

Volkswagen wound down the classic air-cooled bus around the same time as the Beetle, and the originals now fetch a small fortune from collectors.

The Datsun That Became a Nissan

Here’s one where the whole brand pulled a disappearing act.

Datsun flooded Florida with affordable, reliable little cars in the ’70s, from the economical 510 and B210 to the gorgeous 240Z that made sports cars attainable.

They were the practical import of choice for a lot of families.

Then the company decided to retire the Datsun name and sell everything under Nissan instead.

By the mid-1980s, Datsun was gone from the showrooms, a household name erased almost overnight.

The Dodge Dart and the Slant Six

Some cars disappear because they were bad. The Dodge Dart vanished despite being nearly indestructible.

Built around Chrysler’s legendary slant-six engine, the Dart and its Plymouth Valiant twin ran and ran and ran, long past the point where they had any business still running.

Florida families handed them down to kid after kid.

They weren’t pretty and they weren’t fast, but they refused to quit.

The original Dart bowed out in the 1970s, and a brief revival decades later couldn’t recapture the magic.

The Chevrolet Nova

Half of Florida learned to drive in a Chevy Nova.

The Nova was the dependable compact that did everything asked of it without fuss, the car of student drivers, first jobs, and tight family budgets all decade long.

It wasn’t flashy, but it was honest and easy to fix, and it earned a loyal following that lingers today.