Kid
I think you need to go back and review the majority of the movies Roy and Gene made. I find that the movies Roy made prior to WW II had few or no motorized vehicles. A large number of Gene’s movies used cars, trucks and buses.
It seems as if you’re exposure to these actors was mainly the later years. Your descriptions of Roy’s movies sound like they were from the TV series. With the jeep and station wagon, but I have yet to see Roy in a movie with robots, underground cities, futuristic tanks and ray guns. But Gene did a whole series called “The Phantom Empire”!!!
Go watch some of the real movies from each, and you’ll see what I mean.
Now to throw some coal oil on the fire!!!
Having watched numerous Autry movies and shows on the Westerns Channel (the Autry Museum helps fund it, and his programs restoration), and the few Rogers movies they choose to air, I have come to the following conclusion, though both Roy and Gene remain my childhood heroes:
Gene Autry couldn’t sing!!! (Too nasal in my opinion), and he couldn’t act! (Too stilted, and no real expression)
Let the fur fly!!!!