I remember people saying that in the 1970s about the 'boxy' saloons that everyone was producing, then in the 1980s that everything now looked like the 'jelly mould' Sierra.
Most new cars are always dull, it seems.
True up to a point, in that old cars have nostalgia value and always seem more interesting in retrospect, but there are ways in which cars have become less diverse in the last few decades.
A lot of previously independent manufacturers have been taken over by others. Twenty years ago, Volvo was independent; now it's owned by Ford. Skoda and Seat are now owned by Volkswagen, and so on. There's always been pooling of innovations between car firms, but there's a lot more platform-sharing going on than there was. New Skodas are all heavily based on VWs, for instance.
No-one builds a rear-engined car any more: twenty years ago, a couple of manufacturers (Fiat, Skoda) still did.
The vast majority of new cars are front wheel drive. Twenty years ago, even if you were in the market for a rep's car you could buy a Vauxhall Cavalier (front wheel drive) or a Ford Sierra (rear-drive).
Several manufacturers' quirks and innovations have been eliminated: Citroens no longer have the weird but rather effective pneumatic suspension.
And so on. Standardisation has been happening for a long time, but IMO there's no getting away from the fact that cars are more homogeneous now than they've been for a long time. That said, modern cars are safer, cleaner and more reliable than anything that's gone before, so it's not all bad news by any means...
