I'm a child from the '70s (born in '68) and from another continent, so I remember these from growing up, watching TV shows and movies, Big Lincolns and Cadillacs were driven by the mafia, police cars were mostly Mopar, except on the streets of San Fransisco, and moms drove their kids to school in '76 Ford LTD's Country Squires...going on memory and generalising here, but the pics of cars that pop up in my head of what looked pleasing to the eye, when I was a kid, still please me now.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
I can't tell anything about lack of build quality, lack of power, to me the're just images of good times flown by, growing up...