There are decades that breeze in from the past, and then there are those that kick saloon doors open.

It's time to throw on a pair of mirrored aviators and get ready to watch a high-speed chase on TV. The 1970s were a glorious, polyester-clad riot where American cars were enormous, fashion was louder than a brass band in a biscuit tin, and television cops used tyre smoke as a form of communication.

Welcome to the age of Disco, Detroit and... dig the vibe, baby!

A flamboyant era

Let’s begin with the cars, because in the 1970s, American cars weren’t simply transport; they were characters in their own right. No one “drove” anywhere; they arrived, usually sideways. Detroit was at its most flamboyant and excessive. The likes of the Ford Gran Torino, the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am and the Dodge Monaco were less machines and more rolling statements of intent. And that intent was simple. Burn petrol like it’s going out of fashion, which, incidentally, it briefly did during the 1973 oil crisis. They do say history repeats itself because today, we have another oil crisis, but with none of the automotive pizazz!

1970s American cars were simply vast. They were the fabled Yank Tanks. You didn’t park them so much as dock them. Bonnets (or hoods) were measured in hectares, rear overhangs required planning permission and fuel economy? Well, that was virtually non-existent. But, oh! The noise. The thunder of a big V8 was the soundtrack of the era, a basso profundo growl that suggested something crazy was alive beneath your bonnet. What better stage for these mechanical leviathans than the golden age of American cop shows? Television in the 1970s decided, quite sensibly, that what viewers really wanted was two men in flared trousers chasing villains through fruit markets at speed. And, very often, that's what we got.

Take Starsky & Hutch, for example. Here we had David Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Ken Hutchinson (David Soul) tearing around in a bright red Gran Torino with a white stripe so bold it looked like it had been applied with a yard brush. It was less a police car and more a declaration of war on subtlety.

Then there was Kojak, starring the incomparable Telly Savalas, a man who could solve crimes, deliver philosophical musings and turn a lollipop into a cultural icon; all without raising his voice above a conversational murmur. His car chases were less frantic. We got the impression the criminals might simply pull over out of respect.

But it wasn’t just cars and the cops; it was the culture swirling around them. A heady cocktail of disco, rebellion and flamboyant tailoring. There was more width in the lapels, more height in the collars and more flare in the trousers. Shirts were worn unbuttoned to somewhere just north of the navel, revealing enough chest hair to knit a cardigan. Gold chains glinted in the nightclub lights like treasure in a pirate film. As for hot pants? Nuff-said!

And speaking of nightclubs and disco (and hot pants). If the cars were the muscle, the cop shows were the theatre, and disco was the soul, then the soundtrack of the decade pulsed with the beats of The Bee Gees and Donna Summer. Such legends transformed dance floors into shimmering arenas of self-expression and, perhaps, a tad of dehydration. The film Saturday Night Fever captured it perfectly. John Travolta strutted across the screen in a white suit that was impossibly immaculate, moving with a swagger that suggested he alone understood the meaning of life on a light-up dance floor.

Larger than life

The 1970s brought all these things together. It was a veritable buffet of all things larger-than-life. The cars, the fashion and the cop shows weren’t separate phenomena; they were threads in one gloriously garish tapestry. The man stepping out of a Pontiac Trans Am in 1977 wasn’t just getting out of a car, he was making an entrance worthy of a disco anthem. The police officer launching into a high-speed pursuit wasn’t just enforcing the law, he was performing; his vehicle was an extension of his personality and his siren a kind of iconic backing track.

Credits: Pexels; Author: Malcolm Hill;

Of course, beneath all this glitter and chrome, there was a certain chaos. The oil crisis loomed large, emissions regulations began to strangle the horsepower out of those gigawatt V8S, and the sheer excess of the era teetered on the brink of parody. But that, in a way, is what makes it so enduring and so utterly fascinating.

In many ways, we’ve never quite recovered from that. Sure, modern cars are faster, safer and vastly more efficient. But they lack the sheer theatrical presence of their 1970s ancestors. Today’s cop shows are grittier and more complex, but they don't feature a car that feels like it's the co-star. And that's a real shame in my book.

As for fashion? Well, mercifully, we’ve learned to button our shirts a bit higher. But every now and then, you’ll still hear the distant growl of a V8 or catch a glimpse of a wide-collared shirt at a themed party. Perhaps you’ll see a rerun of Starsky & Hutch and be transported back to a time when everything was just a little bit bigger, louder, brasher, but somehow more alive.

In the 70s, Detroit ruled the roads, disco ruled the nights and TV cops ruled absolutely everything else.

And honestly, don't you think we could do with a bit more of that zest? Just writing about it has cheered me up. I hope reading it has done the same for you?

Who loves you, baby!?