…and which will never manifest again. CD and cassette players are gone forever…obviously. No more ashtrays…no problem. No more triangular vents at the front of the driver’s side and front passsenger windows, which were great for flicking ashes out of. Large backseat areas that offered ample leg room…gone and too bad.

But the yesteryear perk that I’m truly sorry has disappeared are those old, padded, well-upholstered, couch-like seats with the mohair velvet seat coverings. And the soothing old car aroma that resulted. (Which was occasionally mixed with the after-aroma of pipe or cigar smoke.) I’m talking about a grandfather-car aroma that I vaguely recall from way back. I visited a classic car show in Long Beach in the late ’80s or early ’90s — I might remember it from that.

Classic car buffs know what I’m talking about. It’s an entire culture unto itself.

I’ve never once sat in, much less driven, a 1920s-era Stutz Bearcat or anything resembling that swanky Norman Desmond car from Sunset Boulevard (a 1929 Isotta Fraschini — ee-ZOH-tah frah-SKEE-nee for morons), and I probably never will be. The luxury levels back then (i.e., Mollie Burkhart‘s era) were off the charts.

Car interiors have been almost all plastic and cheap metal for the last…what, 50 or 60 years? The padding in dashboards and trim is most commonly polyurethane foam, while the surface can be a mix of polyvinyl chloride and thermoplastic olefin. The most common plastic in cars is polypropylene, “a highly durable polymer produced from propylene.”