Was it a popular thing in the 80s for people to wear tight fitting jackets?

Mac seems to barely fit in his leather jacket, either keeps it unzipped or when he zips it, seems really snug.....

Might be eighties style and chevignon brown bomber looks better unzipped on Mac in my opinion too. Same goes to black leather jacket what he wears later episodes.

Which jacket are you talking about?

His bomber and flight jackets are both loose; as were most of his other jackets with exception to his 2 biker style jackets which are designed to be close fitting to reduce wind drag when riding.

I can tell you, from personal experience, the black naked biker jacket he wore is tight fitting when zipped up. I wore mine unzipped most of the time, as it was too constricting in the arms when it was zipped up.

I wonder why they had it made so tight?

Because it was part of the 80's fashion culture, maybe?

Fashion was definitely more 'constricted' back in the 80s. I can't comment specifically on leather jackets but clothes in general were tighter fitting. Tennis comes to mind as a very good example of this. Take a look at the following youtube video of Agassi vs Conners at the 1989 US Open QF. And check out Agassi complete with mullet toupee .....

I think it is eighties style to wear little small sized leather jacket also in knight rider Hasselhoff aka Michael Knight had small black leather jacket.

No it wasn't.

80's clothing was baggy and loose fitting... and bright - so bright! I still wake up in a cold sweat some nights with images of fluro clothing flashing in my mind.

Yikes!

Rainbow trousers of doom!

Bwahahahahaa!

Tight Jackets are called Slim Fit Jackets.... In 80s many movies use their actor to wear slimfit jackets like Tom cruise Top Gun jacket

I think some jackets are tight when buckled, buttoned or zipped up were intentionally designed to be worn open. As has previously been mentioned MacGyver's black naked biker jacket and Michael Knight's Members Only looking black leather jacket. Another example is the jackets worn by the Colonial Viper Pilots on the original "Battlestar Galactica". They were always worn open / unbuckled. On the episode "Take the Celestra" Apollo told Starbuck to buckle up his jacket as they were going to meet a member of the Council of the Twelve. Just as Starbuck was about to buckle his jacket the sound of laser fire was heard in the hangar bay, he and Apollo ran to investigate and the jacket was never buckled up.

Now granted, the pilots wore their jackets buckled up on "Galactica 1980" but this was done in part because there were different actors playing different lead roles and they wanted there to be some differentiation between the original version and what was suppose to develop into a new series.