> Not if you look at safety, max performance, reliability or efficiency. Drive a 1940s car and compare. Hell, try a sports car from the early 80s.
By the late 1920s >80% of US households had at least one automobile, and even if they had stopped improving, the productivity change of going from (steam/oil-powered) train and animal power (the primary options pre-1910) had made a transportation step change in the US by the 1930s:
By the late 1920s >80% of US households had at least one automobile, and even if they had stopped improving, the productivity change of going from (steam/oil-powered) train and animal power (the primary options pre-1910) had made a transportation step change in the US by the 1930s:
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2924825-fighting-traffic
By the 1960s >60% of households had two cars.
So yes, there have been incremental improvements, but the transformation change in society was done decades ago.