hmm , avoiding the risk of being too romatic about history ...
Handling was awful compared to modern cars !
BUT for their day the handling of the best were well head of the ordinary street car.
Bad variation in camber, bump steer, dive steer, variable brake performance, live axle tramp, wheel bounce, wheel chatterclutch slip, suspension movement, toe-in/out affected by brake/acceleration.turning, limited damper operation, limited spring movment. And we've not even started on the engine, fuel and ignition
However, put in competition bushes, mult-link axle, rose-joints and multi-rate shocks and springs and they can handle nearly as well as a modern car. Modern brakes and replace rears with disks with variable bias. Modern fueling, piping and ignition and in terms of TIME will be faster than the modern cars -- all due to WEIGHT.