Any more, cars change very little between years. Sometimes hard to tell even after a “refresh” in the middle of a generation. My kid thinks it’s a superpower that I can tell the differences between generations of Corvettes. Like dude, I’ve had car magazines in my hands since I was half your age.
Yeah for a lot of cars (such as my own Audi a3 sportback), I’d only be able to give you a fairly wide range of years because whatever changes there were are more or less imperceptible.
Which is totally understandable, really. It makes no sense to retool every single year to make small adjustments like the 50’s and 60’s. That being said ford made several “generations” of mustang without ever changing the frame. I think of the last 3 full redesigns, they’ve all shared 2 generations of architecture. That’s too long to go without updating the core of the car.
Your husband and I could be best friends because I also have poor hearing and can do the same thing with motorcycles with a pretty high success rate.
We can sit in the same room not talking. Then one of us will think the other said something and yell “Huh?”. The other will loudly reply “What?”. Then that’ll go on for several minutes until we both smile and nod.
I consider myself hard of hearing, but only at certain frequencies. I can hear lower (bass) sounds much better than mid range sounds; high pitch sounds hurt like a mother!
I have a very bad sense of smell - not sure if it’s technically anosmia but if not it’s close - but the few things I can smell, I can smell very well and usually identify pretty quickly.
I can identify make and model but NEVER the year.
But my mostly-deaf husband can identify motorcycles BY SOUND (or lack thereof).
I can pretty much always do make.
Model for fun cars but not boring ones/trucks/vans/suvs.
Year for the outstanding exemplary best model years of the fun ones.
Any more, cars change very little between years. Sometimes hard to tell even after a “refresh” in the middle of a generation. My kid thinks it’s a superpower that I can tell the differences between generations of Corvettes. Like dude, I’ve had car magazines in my hands since I was half your age.
Yeah for a lot of cars (such as my own Audi a3 sportback), I’d only be able to give you a fairly wide range of years because whatever changes there were are more or less imperceptible.
Which is totally understandable, really. It makes no sense to retool every single year to make small adjustments like the 50’s and 60’s. That being said ford made several “generations” of mustang without ever changing the frame. I think of the last 3 full redesigns, they’ve all shared 2 generations of architecture. That’s too long to go without updating the core of the car.
There are generations. Like the same body style for several years.
Your husband and I could be best friends because I also have poor hearing and can do the same thing with motorcycles with a pretty high success rate.
We can sit in the same room not talking. Then one of us will think the other said something and yell “Huh?”. The other will loudly reply “What?”. Then that’ll go on for several minutes until we both smile and nod.
I consider myself hard of hearing, but only at certain frequencies. I can hear lower (bass) sounds much better than mid range sounds; high pitch sounds hurt like a mother!
I have a very bad sense of smell - not sure if it’s technically anosmia but if not it’s close - but the few things I can smell, I can smell very well and usually identify pretty quickly.