While perusing online car videos last week, I came across one that touted the attributes of a very nicely preserved 1965 Pontiac Grand Prix. This example was claimed to be largely original, with a number of desirable factory options, and as the narrator did his walkaround review, I got a touch of a feeling I’d not experienced in years.

Though I’ve long maintained an appreciation for quite a broad variety of automobiles, I’ve tended to favor the American performance machines of the 1960s since my teens. Muscle cars were enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s when I was still in high school, and while many such cars were just approaching 20 years old, my friends and I thought of them as classics from another time.

Our interest was shared with lots of people from the previous generation, who’d been around when factory muscle cars were new. But, since those people had the power of nostalgia and the wherewithal of real jobs, they were usually able to claim first dibs on the best examples of the breed.

At the same time, there seemed to still be lots of examples of full-size models from the 1960s that survived in good condition, and plenty of people I knew turned to those as a more affordable way to have a neat old car. The thing was, not everyone thought those behemoths were all that great —to the average teen in the ’80s, those were the cars their grandparents had, and therefore, were not cool.

Therein lies the conflict I’d felt all those years ago, poking in from my subconscious as I looked at that ’65 Grand Prix recently. I recalled being drawn to cars like this in my youth, but often thinking I was somehow misguided for appreciating them. Looking back, I’ll blame it on yet another form of peer pressure.