No, my Monte Carlo was the coolest car I ever owned.
Today’s cars are crappy. They all look exactly alike. Zero personality.
The dividing lines have to be moved a bit.
late ‘60s to early ‘70s is a peak. The oil embargo/epa/CAFE/CatConverters/poorly implemented safety stuff combined with labor union idiocy made for a bad period. Some of the most highly regarded U.S. cars are from the early ‘70s (e.g. 1970 Challenger with a six-pack can fetch $120K and up today).
The ‘70s Monte Carlos, Impalas and Caprices are THE picture of 1970s crime dramas. Try watching some old Rockford Files episodes and you’ll see what I mean. Who can forget Tom Selleck’s white Fairy Float full sized convertible in the same show? For smaller sized, there’s Rockford’s own Pontiac Firebird. The bad guys just wouldn’t be as menacing in a 1980s Caprice or a Cadillac Allante or even an Olds Toronado, a ‘90s Taurus would be worse still, even the SHO.
That said, the early ‘70s were a continuation of the ‘60s. How different are those cars from the Chargers (think ‘69 General Lee) and Pontiac GTOs of the late ‘70s?
That all said, the quality of the sheet metal itself was starting to go downhill, preventing me from keeping my ‘73 and ‘75 Dodge Darts operating in the salty midwest (My wife’s car, Desireé, a baby blue ‘73 with the white vinyl roof died from the front end collapsing as the torsion bars pulled out from the rusty frame. She was sent to a no crush salvage yard in Oregon, IL, where she remains an organ donor.)