Another car guy. I had and built one of those old cool cars. They do two things really well: look cool and go in a straight line. No denying the wild styling was amazing then, modern cars are cookie-cutter the same for the sake of aerodynamics, efficiency, and safety. Heck, my boring-ass stock decade-old Honda will do 0-60 in about 7 seconds, and it’s about as exciting as…well, a boring-ass Honda sedan.
Engines back then had massive displacement but the materials science wasn’t there to drop in high HP at a reasonable weight for most cars with those hefty cast iron blocks. Now you can get 500hp without batting an eye on the LS platform, in aluminum, and higher HP is attainable without any extreme work at all. The most powerful V8 stock in the mid 60s was probably the ‘Vette at just over 400hp. ‘50s V8’s probably all put out less than 200hp. Modern stock V8s in some of the cars are just stupid powerful, I think the SRT is over 800. Nuts.