I never said they were well engineered or fun to drive–I also never said anything about the history–I just think the styling has aged well, particularly on the wagons. Somehow the way cars look has shifted enough to make the lines look good again. Back in the 90s, full-size wagons from the sixties and even seventies looked much better to me, but now I'm finding an appeal in the look of these. I wouldn't say I want to own one.

I was born in the Midwest in the '80s, so heaps like this had completely disappeared from the roads by the time I was five. In over 20 years meticulously inspecting every car within view, I only recall seeing a handful of Pintos and Mustang IIs. And the only Vega I've ever seen had a SBC shoehorned into it.
And I think that's where the disconnect lies. Your generation experienced these crapboxes first hand, whereas gearheads under 30 didn't. I've always heard the stories about how epically awful these cars were, so there's never been any question in my mind that they sucked. There's a kitsch factor about them, since it's a miracle that any of them survived, but no way would I want to own one.
Same thing goes for a lot of the other sacred cows around here. The early Fox bodies were terrible, gutless, shoddily-built cars. Beyond the poor man's Audi styling, there was nothing redeeming about the Fairmont and the Mustang was completely disposable until the H.O. 302 came out for '82. More recently, there's the humungous B-body GM wagons of the '90s that everyone but me seems to love. The beached-whale styling helped kill these cars, and they were generally a step backwards towards the barges of the '70s.
And if I heard anybody speaking kindly of the Cavaliers, Grand Ams and Neons that littered my high school parking lot 30 years from now, I'd be beside myself. You'd couldn't have been there and actually thought those cars had redeeming qualities. And I imagine that's where you stand…bad cars should stay dead and buried.