.pretty much anything new these days is going to have more features than a 55 yr old vehicle.

Not necessarily. My exact one, sure, my grandfather didn't order but eight options. It is genuinely very 'base'; part of why I like it so much. But in 1971 someone could have ordered a Chevy truck pickup with air conditioning, power windows, power steering, power brakes, 4wd, several different engines, several different transmissions, four different beds, two rear suspension systems, AM/FM radio, 9000 paint schemes, hell even cruise control was available on them as a dealer add-on. And that's just on a farm truck, which at the time was still thought of first and foremost as a workhorse.

You went for a Cadillac? You could get auto-dimming high beams as early as 1952; many modern cars don't even have that! It had problems and from what I gather GM gave up on it in 1966 only to dabble again in the mid 00s, but still. There were cars built in 1952 that had a feature not found on cars built in 2026 that buyers in 2026 want to have. Who'da thunk?

SOME vehicles from 1971 are less equipped than a Slate, but some of them have damn near a contemporary level of gadgetry factory equipped. It just wasn't commonplace at the time to force every single car to have every single gadget like it is today, so back then you could walk a dealer lot and see a car that didn't even have power steering parked next to the same make and model that had auto-dimming headlights.

Even better, if you sat down with a salesman to spec one out? You could itemize every single option. That's how us old car nuts will find really odd configurations from time to time; someone might have a car with power brakes but manual steering, or one car might have been spec'd with the heavy duty racing suspension then they had the straight six put in it, or another one might have all the fancy exterior trim but the base model interior. Sometimes we'll find the biggest engine and a 4-speed on offer in a car with unassisted four corner drum brakes and the base strippy interior. If it was a feature that could be changed, you could change it, and you could do so pretty much independently of any other changes you made from base.

You can't customize a car like that today.

That kinda ties back into Slate....they are bringing at least a taste of that back. There aren't packages to choose from, you just grab options ala carte. I'll grant the options list for a Slate is quite small, but it isn't like you only have 2-4 'packages' to choose from and then 12 colors.

Secondly, we cant put any "pros" on slates side yet regarding how servicing/owning/drivability will be. No one has driven this car. No one has any idea what the REALITY of owning it will be vs what has been promised.

May not be able to say for sure and it is 125% possible they pull a bullshit on us last second, but they've been saying good things. As I said I'm not reserving one myself but, based on what I have to go on, I like that it's on the market. If it delivers what's promised it is a good thing to have on offer; not everyone's gonna buy one but enough people will that itt'l make everyone else in the industry pause for thought.

If these things deliver and succeed we might just see the big money carmakers go back to letting us peacemeal our F150s and 3-Series and whatnot option by option like my grandfather was able to do with his C10.

This is a comany that has never developed/sold/serviced a car en masse before

That was once Ford, too. That was once Tesla, too. BMW. Toyota.....

......It was also once Packard. Studebaker. AMC. Willys.

There's a lot of dead marques in automotive history, but every single nameplate that's ever been plastered on a car had to start from somewhere.