This ’80s Boston Driving Video Will Make You Appreciate How Much Cars Have Changed

The holidays are a natural time for a nostalgia trip. Tis the season of ritual and romance, and … didn’t Grandma’s stuffing taste better last year? Of course it did. But if your nostalgia, like ours, extends to things with four wheels, pull up a chair by the fireplace and relax with GBH’s excellent video archives.

GBH, also known as WGBH is Boston’s local NPR station, but it also owns an amazing collection of archival footage containing everything from the infamous blizzard of 1978 that buried highways waist-deep to old clips of I-93’s Central Artery elevated highway before the “Big Dig” moved it underground. You may have seen these videos floating around online; the station regularly posts them to its archival Facebook page, and you can also find them on YouTube and Instagram.

The videos span from roughly the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, but most of the action is concentrated in the malaise era: the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Marked by the oil crisis and ensuing environmental regulations that sped up the adoption of catalytic converters and shrunk power outputs, this era was famous for big hair and low engine outputs. Let’s take a trip down Allston’s Harvard Avenue in 1983 to see what I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc2hx_1JphA