I either forgot or never knew that you are a fellow Brit. From the ages of about 15-20 I dreamed of getting a 1.9 GTI as my first car (as in, the first one I bought myself rather than borrowing my parents’) - I thought at the time it was reasonably realistic, as by then it was already out of production for about 10 years, so I thought the price of them would be affordable. But by the time I was actually in a position to buy my own car, aged about 25, they were just too outdated, and any good ones left would have been rare and therefore pricey for what they are. So I ended up getting a 206 GTI instead, which was a lot of fun. A bit heavier but with more creature comforts, and a poky 2.0.
The funny thing is how well that name flows. You’d never have a Chevy Venturi or a Buick Venturi; that’s just wrong.
But “Pontiac Venturi” sounds completely believable. It’d be a good decoy answer on a trivia game. Maybe too good.
The Venturi Effect used to cause the carburetor on one of my VW bugs to freeze up, even on a warm day. The car would quit running and when I opened up the engine compartment the bottom of the carb would be frosted white. The solution, which sort of worked, was to replace the idle adjustment screw with one that had a heating resistor on it wired into power. No shit, a hot idle adjustment screw.
It wouldn’t always prevent the carb from freezing but if you pulled over and turned the engine off, then turned the key back on, the resistor/element would heat the carb back up and thaw out the carb.
Do not miss those days.
I have five motorcycles in the garage with a combined 8 carbs. And one of those 5 has fuel injection.
I used to own an MG with two Weber carbs.
The actual name was the Pontiac Ventura but that sounds choppy.
I’m over 40. When I was a cab driver back in the 80’s the number one cab car was a Chrysler New Yorker which had a carburetor. I don’t remember if the next car I owned after that, a 1993 Nissan Sentra had a carburetor.
Yes, some newer small aircraft engines have fuel injection, sometimes even “digital engine management” meaning a computer worries about that sort of thing.
I’ve flown both sorts. I can deal with carburetors, but I don’t have any love for them.
I was born in '84 and my first car was a 1969 Mercury Park Lane that had a carburetor. But I had a family member that was a classic car junkie that regularly had up to six in rotation, so my experience is probably not the norm. I really miss driving those old boats, I drive a tiny Honda Fit now. Hard to feel cool in it. 
Per some trivia I learned back in the 90’s the Subaru Justy was the last time a new car was sold with a carbureted engine in America as a three-banger (1987 IIRC). But even the Justy transition to fuel injected in later models.
Per Wikipedia, however it seems only fuel injected were sold. So, maybe I’m misremembering; it’s been almost 30 years since I read about that.
I’ve heard that trivia about the Justy as well, but then Wikipedia claimed the Isuzu pickup was the last vehicle available in the US, with a carbureted engine offered through 1994 (I actually got the year wrong in the OP, but now it’s too late to edit it). I’m guessing that may simply mean they technically listed a carbureted engine in the brochure, but in reality sold very few trucks equipped that way. Although there were probably a few cheapskates who wanted the absolute most bare bones truck possible.
A long, long time ago, I had a '68 VW Beetle. So yes, I’ve driven a car with a carburetor.
In fact, being 60 years old, pretty much anything I drove in my twenties had a carb.
I’ve owned many motorcycles in my life. With one exception ('96 BMW R1100RS) they all had one or more carburetors.
I’ve rebuilt plenty of motorcycle carbs, ranging from an S&S Super B (unbelievably simple) to an SU (very fiddly).
There are plenty of bikes on the market today that still have a carburetor. Or several carbs.
Never has a thread, by title alone, made me feel so elderly.
“Grandpa, tell us what it was like driving a car with a carburetor…”
mmm
At least you didn’t have to clean up after the horses. Grandpa!!
I was in college before I drove my first FI car.
I learned to drive in a Plymouth Valiant…with a push button transmission! I do still remember pumping the gas to get the car to start (and praying I wouldn’t flood the engine). That was because of the carbuerator??? Huh.
I drove a Hornet after that. Then, I went to Hondas and never looked back.
Not only have most of the vehicles I have owned/driven been carburetated, one of them, the '58 F100 had a manual choke and the '83 RX-7 had a semi-manual choke.
From this remark, it appears you must be about 5 years younger than me. Something I remember about the embargo was everyone discovering that building gas pumps that could only register prices up to 0.99 9/10 per gallon was … shortsighted. It was the Y2K of gas pump prices!
I don’t think there were many 3-lane “Blood Alley” roads like that. You must be referring to the old Monterey Highway heading south out of San Jose. I remember that road. At least it was a mostly straight level road with good visibility. Much worse was State Route 14 running northeast from San Fernando Valley out to Palmdale and Lancaster – 3-lane winding hilly road through the mountains! Always crawling with teen drivers on weekends, and equally crawling with Highway Patrol. I lived out in that area (Saugus) during my senior year in high school (Class of '69!) and commuted to school in the Valley every day.
(ETA: Okay, to keep this post on-topic, the car I drove had a carburetor.)
I got to ride along on a flight in a Beechcraft Sierra with elaborate auto-pilot and I think it had “digital engine management”. At least, the pilot (practicing his instrument training) and co-pilot (doing the mentoring) spent most of their so-called “piloting” time fiddling with settings on the touch-screen. The auto-pilot was sophisticated enough that it could fly its own instrument holding patterns from ILS data stored in it.
I asked the pilots how much of the flight they actually spent flying the airplane and they said about 20% of it. What’s the fun of flying a plane like that?
So what I wonder is: Do pilots still have to futz with mixture and carb heat? Or is that all automated now so your engine doesn’t quit at 1500 feet because you forgot? Geez, cars had automatic chokes in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s or so, but pilots are still futzing with mixture?
ETA: I must add, that marvelous auto-pilot had slow roll oscillation that made me queasy.
My dad had a 1966 Datsun pickup that I used to drive. It had a carburetor. I also drove my parents’ 1976 VW Rabbit, which had some pretty bad carburetor problems. The first car I owned was a 1979 Plymouth Champ, also with a carb.
1976 was the last model year that the Rabbit had a carb. It had a problem that over time the needle valve seat would go out of round, which would cause it to flood. When this happened, the car was very hard to start. With most cars this wouldn’t be a big problem because the needle valve seat is replaceable. Not so with the Rabbit. The seat was part of the carburetor body, so the whole carb had to be replaced. A new carb cost several hundred dollars (which in the 80s was a whole lot of money). Our mechanic told us that this happened to a lot of Rabbits, that VW knew about it, but they refused to do anything about it. I’ve had a low opinion of Volkswagen ever since, and I wasn’t as surprised as many when the diesel emissions scandal became big news several years ago.
I depends on what you’re flying.
I gravitated towards smaller aircraft, sometimes very small aircraft, and most of them were older (one was built in 1942). The older and smaller the more likely you’re dealing with a carburetor although the Ikarus “sportplane” I flew had a very modern fuel injection/digital engine management system so there are exceptions to that rule.
I also flew aircraft that had no autopilot so all the flying was by yours truly, including “futzing” with the mixture.
For me, doing the actual flying was part of the appeal, but for some other people a different aspect of flight is what makes them excited. I could see where someone flying mostly instruments would prefer a lot of automation.