Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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My best friend got one that year, which was our senior year in high school.
The seats were plush, the engine was hot-rod-ISH ( we had it up to 140 MPH once - SHHHH!! ) and it was a very nice and respected ride for high school and college kids in 1981.
Given the anemic engines in '81, that must have been kph.
I thought the '81-87 Grand Prix was a sharp looking car, but it just wasn't that popular with the public. Whatever magic the earlier models had, this one lost it fast. I think sales peaked around 150,000 in 1981, which was actually better than 1980. But they dropped to around 90K for '82, and went downhill from there, bottoming out around 16,000 for 1987.
The Cutlass Supreme and Buick Regal were still hot sellers in that timeframe, although the Monte Carlo had a rough spat in '82-83. Eventually though, these cars all just got outmoded, and the love affair with personal luxury coupes started to wane.
A 1985-87 Grand Prix wouldn't be a bad car with the Chevy 305. I had a 1986 Monte Carlo with that setup, and it was a good car. Decent blend of power and economy...for the time, at least.
It was June 6, 1981. We were coming back from a Judas Priest concert in Odessa TX. ( I know the date because I still have the concert stub and posted it on Facebook recently. $8.50 General Admission.)
The speedo on the Grand Prix maxed at 140. There is a town about 40 miles from our hometown, the last real town before we hit our fair town.
Right outside the city limits of that town, about 40 miles from home, my friend asked me if I was in a hurry to get home. I said sure.
He floored it, and pegged it, and never let up until we were about 2 miles out of our hometown.
Whatever the max speed REALLY was, if it was not the advertised 140, we hit it for about 38 miles.
Oh the idiocy of youth !!!
Nowadays, photo radar would nab you.
My wife noticed the clunker proposal in the news today and she doesn't pay much attention to car news. So the idea may be gaining traction.
Shifty, even 115-118 mph sounds a little optimistic to me for an '81 GM, unless it was a Corvette, Camaro or Trans-Am.
I have a Mopar police car book that covers the years 1979-94. In 1981, even the best police cars only topped out at around 110-115 mph. The fastest was a Crown Vic with a 351-2bbl, at 116.4 mph, and next up was a Diplomat with a 318-4bbl, at 116.3 mph.
In 1982, when the CHP started using Mustangs, Motortrend got one to top out at 128 mph. That was the fastest police car since the 1978 Dodge Monaco, which got up to 133 mph, according to the Michigan State Police.
Even the LT1 Caprice of 1994, the one with the 260 hp Impala SS engine, only topped out at 141.2 mph.
So, I kinda doubt a 1981 Grand Prix could hit 140 mph. Maybe on a long enough downhill run? I mean, I got a 1991 Civic rental up to 115 once, but I had a several mile downhill stretch of interstate out in California to do it!
It just might, but, then, the GP trumps the Porsche in displacement, and you know the old saying, "there's no substitute for displacement."
I'm actually surprised how easy, relatively speaking, ~130 mph is to attain. When FWD police cars started coming out, the Taurus with the 140 hp 3.0, which was just the old Vulcan pushrod, topped out at 129. Dodge tested a Dynasty in police setup, with their 3.8 pushrod V-6. I forget how much hp it had. I want to say around 160? Anyway, it managed to hit 128. It never went into production as a police car, although evidently some departments bought civilian models and used them for detective cars and other light duty.
In 1993, the Michigan State Police unofficially ran an Intrepid with the 214 hp 3.5 V-6. I think it topped out at 127 mph. Kinda interesting that, with the added power, and better aerodynamics, that the Dynasty was still had a slightly higher top speed. At least, an Intrepid looks sleeker, but sometimes shapes can be deceiving.
Oh, I hated those even in the little things I was driving back then. I cannot even imagine having one in a Vette.
It must have had one of the two V8 options - there was a 4.3 liter and a 4.4 liter option, and thus that was why the speedo read all the way to 140 mph.
It was probably just a marketing trick to get people to think it could go faster than 120. But the speedo did go up to 140, and I remember that because it was the first one I had ever seen that went above 120.
I had forgotten about the 4.4 being used briefly outside of Chevrolet. That was the Chevy 267. I think it had 125 hp. The 4.3 would've been Pontiac's 265, which had 120.
Anyone driving an early 1990s American car at 127 mph is nuts. Maybe a cop car with HD suspension, special tires and a trained driver...well, okay...maybe....but a showroom stock car, that's a death wish. Crappy OEM tires, lots of "lift" under the front end and just one golf ball sized rock and you're dead.
Hadn't race cars of the past had a tach set in dashboard so that rev limit rpm was straight up at 12 O'Clock position? Driver did not have to "study" guage and hand, but could quickly glance and get readout by general position of hand.
Test drove a Honda Civic hatchback a couple years ago and liked the digital speed limit readout sitting on top of dashboard. Less distraction from driving to check speed vs usual guage in dash.
On topic, if one merely wanted to get a new car and keep current stable of vehicles in household, could you buy a driveable old junker for a few-five hundred dollars and then get the great proposed government deal on a new car?
This "Clunker" label is a real misnomer. Any rebate plan should at least accomplish the task of getting rid of gross polluters and dangerous cars.
That of course creates an interesting dilemma---people who own gross polluters and dangerous cars are hardly in a position to buy a new one, and people in a position to buy a new one usually drive used cars that are still perfectly useful. :confuse:
Like the 55 mph speed limit and Prohibition, it was one of the dumber laws in our nation's history.
Was it only for domestics? I am pretty sure V8 MB of the period have 140 or 160 on their speedos.
Those things won't have to be retired via a clunker plan...time has done all the work needed.
I can't afford a new car but I've got some old iron rolling around my yard that I might take $3K to get rid of. :lemon:
2019 Kia Soul+, 2015 Mustang GT, 2013 Ford F-150, 2000 Chrysler Sebring convertible
The real purpose of clunker laws isn't so much for families to reduce the number of cars they own, but to spur sales of new cars.
"Compared with new vehicles sales - which are at lows unseen in decades - the used car market is doing well," observed Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl. "Desirable used vehicles are becoming harder to find, pushing up their prices, while today's new cars are heavily discounted. This is creating an unusual economic event: It can actually be less expensive to purchase a new car than a used car."
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
And it's all new vs. one year old cars. No two year olds in the field.
Edit...OK, I see now that the real news is that finance deals on new cars are so good that since the used 2008 has no such finance deal, the new car purchase actually saves a small amount of money over the life of the loan.
Again, I have to ask, is that news? All the times there were 0% incentive loans available from manufacturers on their new cars, wouldn't such a purchase have saved me a bundle over a 1-year-old car bought for $2000 less and then paid for over 5 years at say 5%? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes, and we have had LOTS and LOTS of 0% APR incentives in the last 8 years.
Bottom line: if I have cash to spend, buying used is still the less expensive option for me, even now. Being a CCBA'er, I was half hoping this would be true as it would raise my car's value for trade-in, but if it is true it is not yet reflected at KBB or other valuation websites.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
From what I can tell, the website valuations are lagging.
Unlike several months ago, new cars seem to have the value advantage over used now, in my opinion. As usual, though, YMMV.
Programs of this kind "have been successful in boosting auto sales in a number of European countries," Obama said. The auto scrapping program is part of a larger administration effort to increase car sales and modernize manufacturers' fleets.
In Germany, new car registrations rose 21 percent in February after the government offered consumer rebates of 2,500 euros ($3,150) to trade in vehicles that are more than nine years old for new more energy-efficient ones.
Similar government programs have been launched in France, Spain and Italy.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20090330/ANA02/903300276/1078
(registration link)
I really think you fail to understand that the president's intentions here have nothing to do with trying to do something for the environment. He's adding some tidbits to the rhetoric to make the enviro-crowd feel better, but his only real intention is to spur car sales with the clunker plan, period.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Also, for some people, it's not a wise financial move to increase their debt to buy a new car. Further, how fair is this plan for people who purchased a new car before today? They not only miss out on the incentive, but the value of their car drops because the supply 2009 and 2010 cars on the road will increase.
I thought PA had laws on the books that could ticket you for having a smashed fender? It is very rare in San Diego to see a car in the condition you describe. We do get a lot of smoke belching stake bed trucks up from Mexico. They are doing a service by hauling old tires, appliances and building materials down to Baja. :shades:
If I were to trade a clunker on a new vehicle, it would not be a domestic. I would say the plan would be lucky to net GM 10% of the sales of efficient cars.
Back in college, one of my friends got busted by the campus police for driving a car that was beat-up. He had a 1977 Chrysler Cordoba that had been hit twice. The car was technically totaled because of low book value, but still more or less driveable. And fortunately, the vehicles that hit him were relatively tinny little things.
Still, one of the crashes was enough to push one of the bumpers sideways (can't remember now if it was the front or back), to where it jutted out on the side. One of the campus cops saw it and gave him a warning. Said either get it fixed, or don't bring it back on campus or it will get ticketed. He sold it, and "graduated" to a 1978 Newport. A few years later, he saw the abandoned hulk of his Cordoba on a desolate stretch of road. Oddly enough, he saw the abandoned hulk of another one of his former cars, a 1982 Cutlass Supreme sedan, in almost the same place a few years later!
I know you can get a ticket if you have a headlight, taillight, turn signal, etc smashed, but I don't know about other types of damage. I guess if a real cop (versus a campus cop) saw a car part hanging off like it could come loose at any moment, or a bumper jutting out to where it could snag another car or pedestrian, he could probably issue some kind of ticket for a safety violation.
For the most part, there are two types of people who drive cars like that.
1) People who can't afford anything better. Giving these people $3,000 or whatever towards a new car, with the hopes of getting their death trap off the road, is pretty senseless, because the chances are they're still not going to be able to afford the monthly payment and insurance on a newer car.
2) People who can afford something better, but are just too cheap. They often like driving cars like this because they feel like they're beating the system. They get a perverse sort of jolly out of saving money by not buying a newer, better car...or even maintaining their current ride. They just fail to see that they're endangering their own life in the process. Giving someone like this $3,000 or whatever towards a new car would be pointless as well, because they'd look beyond that initial incentive, and see the cost of monthly payments, insurance, etc.
Most other people, who are in between, would probably never let their car get to the point that it was dangerous, to begin with. They might let it get to the point that it's a bit ratty looking, but it would still be fundamentally safe. It's not like you'd have to start repeating Psalm 23 out of the Bible every time you take it for a drive. Although I might have to, because I just got new license plates for my truck and the number has a "666" in it! :surprise:
Forget about scrapping. That would be wasteful.
Our genius President needs to put 2 and 2 together, think out of the box so to speak.
Recall when he said in primaries that he would talk to Castro (either one) of Cuba without pre-conditions. Maybe now is the time to start talks.
If Cuba has dollars and/or commodities the U.S. can use, Obama could strike a deal with present Castro to sell and ship all of the 8-10+ year old trade-ins (don't refer to them as clunkers to Castro) to Cuba. The Cuban people can then replace their true clunkers from the 50's and 60's with more current 80's and 90's models from us. And, the Obama/Castro deal would also set up mechanisms for our parts suppliers/manufacturers to sell parts to Cuba for the next 30-40 years.
This is a win-win proposition for both U.S. and Cuba. Somebody tell Rahm.
But, given Miami's financial woes, they may be ready to bend....
Clearly, cars in this condition should not be driven. I favor using current inspection laws and ticketing over a clunker plan for addressing these hazards because the latter will also remove perfectly safe and usable cars - the kind we own - from circulation. It favors the relatively few who can take advantage of this type of program over the many (current and future taxpayers).