What family cars weren't boring in the 80's. For me, we rolled over into 1980 with my mom's Plymouth Volare wagon and my Dad's Duster. The Volare got traded in for an 83 LeSabre. That car was awful. Horrible.
Dad's Duster met with a drunk driver on New Year's eve of 1983 and into a Chevy Chevette he went. Need I say more? Of course, at the time, the only disappointment I had was that unlike the Duster, there was no 8 track player to listen to my Dad's favorites: Waylon, Willie, and Boxcar Willie. The Chevette soldiered on thru two engines and 18 gillion bottles of Quakerstate to the tune of 600,000 miles. By that time, there was no cloth on the seats, the seats had come unbolted from the floor, and the area where he parked it became our own little Superfund site thanks to said Quakerstate. We actually became close family friends with the mechanic he used to fix it.
In the meantime, supremely disappointed with the LeSabre, my mother thought she was getting a completely different car in her 88 Bonneville. Yes, she was. No longer she suffer through repeated false "low coolant" idiot lights, randomly delaminating trim pieces, and lost power anytime we went over....maybe 150 ft AMSL. Now she was in the big time, with a couple of randomly failing fuel pumps and at least 4-5 alternators. She soldiered on until the tranny decided to grenade, and made it to 1996 before buying...another Bonneville. I guess she was addicted to the sound of that 3.8l, which to me, always sounded like a bowl full of walnuts dumped into a food processor.
Yes, they were exciting cars indeed, if your idea of excitement is the anticipation over what's going to break today. I thought the 96 Bonny was a big improvement, but after seeing how much I liked my CR-V, as well as seeing how our neighbor who'd been buying Accords since the 80's never had car trouble, she crossed the Tiber in 2004. My dad, after going thru 2 Cavaliers in the 90's, made the BIG switch to a Sunfire coupe in 04. He retired at the same time so he just doodles around in it anyway. But he's not had a minute's trouble from it, I have to say.