I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today! (Archived)

Michaell

fintail said:

Here's a time warp, probably been 25 years since I've seen one so clean

Too bad about the gouge on the dash, maybe can be repaired. Window sticker has an ADM - the more things change.

Nice - I knew someone in CA who owned one of those.

stickguy

I like the Sube. Nice honest little car. Would likely hate driving it though. Those were pretty noisy and crude.

xwesx

stickguy said:

I like the Sube. Nice honest little car. Would likely hate driving it though. Those were pretty noisy and crude.

That's for sure. For a 30-year-old car, it looks really good. For a 26,000-mile car, it's taken some serious wear. At least, a lot more (on the interior, in particular) than what I would expect for those miles.

andre1969

That Grand Prix is definitely an odd color combo. Both of those colors are fine, by themselves. Just, not together! If it was all yellow, I think it would be okay. Or if they used a white or black contrast, instead of the Firethorn. Or something along the lines of tan/beige/buckskin or similar browns. Or hell, even the right shade of green.

Interesting too, how it's well-equipped in some respects, such as the Rally wheels (even the spare looks like a Rally wheel!), T-tops, bucket seats/console, cruise, and tilt, 8-track. But then it just has crank windows, AM-only radio. The 301. Idiot lights instead of gauges. Or excuse me, "gages"

imidazol97

This one's in honor of @Fintail and MB. They all belong to the brick house with the Farmall in the front yard.

tjc78

The Pontiac is so strangely equipped.

T-Tops, base engine, AC, cruise, manual windows and an AM only radio.

And yes that color combo is just wrong.

kyfdx

tjc78 said:

The Pontiac is so strangely equipped.

T-Tops, base engine, AC, cruise, manual windows and an AM only radio.

And yes that color combo is just wrong.

A lot of AM radios in that time frame. Our ‘72 Lincoln had an AM/8-track stereo.

fintail

Looks like I have a kindred spirit in your neck of the woods. I definitely approve of that white W126 on what appears to be 80s era AMG Penta wheels. The slightly decrepit looking old house is interesting, too.

imidazol97 said:

This one's in honor of @Fintail and MB. They all belong to the brick house with the Farmall in the front yard.

fintail

It's a Subaru, it probably had dogs in it

I remember tons of that style on campus when I was a student in the late 90s. They were already looking rough.

xwesx said:

stickguy said:

I like the Sube. Nice honest little car. Would likely hate driving it though. Those were pretty noisy and crude.

That's for sure. For a 30-year-old car, it looks really good. For a 26,000-mile car, it's taken some serious wear. At least, a lot more (on the interior, in particular) than what I would expect for those miles.

imidazol97

I'll post a second picture that includes the white car. I didn't know if any or these are unusual. I believe two or three more of this person's "fleet" are at a nearby repair shop. I kept seeing several MBs at this house and the repair shop and noticed after several months at the repair shop, the old red two-seater came back here.

This house had the whole front yard FILLED with cut tree branch wood stacked and large trunk pieces. Here you still see some stacks in the porch and the east end of the property, along with some wood in the back of the Chevrolet pickup. Too bad MB didn't make pickups for the US market, or this guy would have had one, LOL.

The whole porch of that house and whole front yard were filled with wood stacks. I suspect there was some kind of fight going on with City Hall types who told owner they couldn't do something but there was a disagreement over the code. The wood has been there almost 10 years, I would guess. At least 6. The trees likely were on the property that were cut down.

It's a nice little town with a lot of self pride from city's importance in the past as a commerce center for shopping and light industry, mostly gone.

imidazol97

When I right click on this picture, I get a smaller picture in a new window instead of the usual picture same size that can be clicked for higher resolution.

Pic taken with Samsung Galaxy J7 camera.

explorerx4

The picture got larger for me on my desktop.

fintail

None of the cars are particularly rare or expensive, and I suspect simply via being exposed to the elements in a somewhat harsh climate, they are probably well beyond economically feasible restoration. The white 126 is still a looker, all of them have their fans, just no apparent real rarities.

The house is much less appealing with the wood-filled porch in view. Probably would be a pretty house if restored, that later 19th century revival style architecture not often seen in this part of the country (as it was sparsely settled at that time).

imidazol97 said:

I'll post a second picture that includes the white car. I didn't know if any or these are unusual. I believe two or three more of this person's "fleet" are at a nearby repair shop. I kept seeing several MBs at this house and the repair shop and noticed after several months at the repair shop, the old red two-seater came back here.

This house had the whole front yard FILLED with cut tree branch wood stacked and large trunk pieces. Here you still see some stacks in the porch and the east end of the property, along with some wood in the back of the Chevrolet pickup. Too bad MB didn't make pickups for the US market, or this guy would have had one, LOL.

The whole porch of that house and whole front yard were filled with wood stacks. I suspect there was some kind of fight going on with City Hall types who told owner they couldn't do something but there was a disagreement over the code. The wood has been there almost 10 years, I would guess. At least 6. The trees likely were on the property that were cut down.

It's a nice little town with a lot of self pride from city's importance in the past as a commerce center for shopping and light industry, mostly gone.

imidazol97

I wonder if the owner of house is associated with the repair garage several blocks away that has lots of premium vehicles that sit in the lot for months, probably waiting on parts or money to repair. The garage used to be a gas station back in the 60s-70s.

Probably lots of money spent keeping the MBs running.

fintail

I suspect those things aren't maintained by the book, and no doubt have piles of deferred maintenance. So maybe no money spent keeping them running

The wagon is an 86-87, I think. The red roadster in front is maybe around 1993-94, white car behind it probably 1986-88, the older roadster appears to be badged 560SL, so 86-89, and the white E behind that is a 94-95. Really hard to tell individual years, as the cars changed little, and there's not much data to go on. Both SLs are on later aftermarket wheels.

fintail

Spotted in a fintail group, someone was able to pair up a fintail Universal wagon with a W126 wagon. Both of these are period conversions, and extremely rare. Apparently period tuner Zender built 4 of the W126s (the rear side window appears to be from a W123 wagon) and while Universals aren't quite that rare, a W111 like this is a rarity, with probably no more than around 300 units built. MB wouldn't have a factory built wagon until MY 1979.

ab348

The fintail wagon design looks quite good to my eye. Even the rear end has integrated the fins nicely. Those rear light assemblies would be bespoke units of some sort I presume? An ambitious effort for such low production.

fintail

Yep, the rear lights are unique to these cars - not sure if reproductions have been made, but I'd hope so. The cars were made by "IMA Universal" in Belgium, and while I believe were offered everywhere, I suspect 80% of production remained in Europe, where such a car was maybe more palatable to locals. They were very well made with a cohesive design, but I think are known to be rust magnets.

Kent Bergsma had a W110 Universal, I saw it several times when I lived nearby and stored the fintail in his garage. His car was purchased new locally, and when he sold it, apparently the cult went wild and was competitive. IIRC the car was exported back to Europe.

ab348

I think @uplanderguy might enjoy this one.

andre1969

I think both of those Benz wagon conversions came off really well. The only nitpick I can see is the glass in the rear door windows. The fixed spacer window is too large, in proportion to the roll-down window, and that just seems a bit off.

But, on the flip side, I don't think I've ever seen a station wagon conversion of a Lincoln, Cadillac, or a senior Buick or Olds, that didn't have a bit of an awkward, hatchet-job sort of look to it. Now, I'm not talking about hearses or ambulances, with their raised roofs and such, but just something like a conventional sedan, where they tried to graft a wagon rear onto it.

fintail

There were other MB wagon conversions of cars from the late 60s through the 70s. Some of them looked better than others. Most seem to have been by British builders, maybe a MB wagon was a status symbol of sorts by then. Cars with kind of a lip at the rear always looked a little off to me:





But some carried it a little better:



Production numbers for anything like in these pics was probably in the double digits, I've never seen one in person.

roadburner

BMW built a few wagon versions of their E3 sedan for use as support vehicles for the 2002 rally team. BMW GB then had a few E3 Estates built for sale. It's believed that no more than 12 were built and only one or two survive.

stickguy

that kink just does not work on a wagon IMO.

fintail

That E3 isn't bad, but I think it suffers from rear lip syndrome. It seems with most wagon conversions of the day, they didn't try to make it not look like an add-on. What was the first factory built BMW wagon (not the 2002 Touring)? E34 or late run E30?

If we want to get really weird, there was a Bentley S2/fintail hybrid wagon made by Wendler. This is another one with a "distinctive" look:





There were also Adenauer conversions that didn't look bad, dignified:

uplanderguy

ab348, thanks for the pic of the DesMoines Register truck; I'd not seen it.

You can't really tell from that photo, but when those trucks were introduced for the '49 model year, the styling was considered pretty advanced, as the step was inside the door. Of course, Studebaker used the basic styling on one-tons and larger until the '64 model year, a record only beat by Jeep I think!

Building a full series of trucks right through the end of U.S. production is another thing I think distinguished Studebaker from other independents.

ab348

Here's the full piece on the Studebaker delivery van: https://blog.consumerguide.com/1951-studebaker-2r6-delivery-van/

uplanderguy

Thank you for posting that link as well. I have certainly heard of George Hamlin in the national club and I believe I met him once. He has a bunch of Studebakers as far as I know, including a fairly-basic '63 Lark four-door sedan with the optional Skytop sunroof, which makes Lark people go ga-ga.

fintail

Saw one of these out in the slush today, looked immaculate, early 90s flashback:

ab348

Reminds me, I saw a mid-80s El Camino in the wild yesterday, appeared to be a very nice original car.

kyfdx

Earlier this week, spotted an early '90s 2-door Nissan Pathfinder, with the weird reverse diagonal trim on the side window.

fintail

Hilarious what became of the Pathfinder name.

Thinking back, also spotted a W123 300CD out in the slush this morning, so definitely not a coddled baby of a car. Also a Mk II GTI (I think) has turned up on my block, and it hits a few PNW VW bro stereotypes: expired registration, rattlecanned black paint, lowered, no dashboard - replaced by a piece of wood with gauges, and the piece de resistance, a steering wheel club.

Michaell

kyfdx said:

Earlier this week, spotted an early '90s 2-door Nissan Pathfinder, with the weird reverse diagonal trim on the side window.

We looked at those briefly before we pulled the trigger on the ‘88 Trooper.

roadburner

We had a 1993 four door Pathfinder SE from 1994 to 2003. I bought the Wrangler in 2002 to use in my campaign that year, and fully intended to sell it afterwards. As it turned out the whole family liked the Jeep so we sold the Pathfinder instead.

Michaell

roadburner said:

We had a 1993 four door Pathfinder SE from 1994 to 2003. I bought the Wrangler in 2002 to use in my campaign that year, and fully intended to sell it afterwards. As it turned out the whole family liked the Jeep so we sold the Pathfinder instead.

In the late 80's, there wasn't a 4-door Pathfinder.

The only models available were the Trooper and the OG Cherokee (which was out of our budget).

andre1969

Back in the summer of 1993, I had this feeling my life was at a bit of a threshold. I had finished up my last college classes during the first half of that summer, but wouldn't technically graduate until the December ceremony. And my job with McDonnell-Douglas was letting me work, up to 39 hours per week, but kept jerking me around about when they'd make me full time. Anyway, I figured I had it made, and toyed with the idea of getting a compact SUV. I do remember liking the 4-door Pathfinder a lot, but the salesman said you couldn't get a sunroof in them, because of some bulkhead in the roof. Kind of a shame, because out of the rigs I looked at, I think I liked it the best, overall.

At the end of the day though, it was still around $27,000, and even though I thought I was about to have it made, I was making a whopping $10/hr at the main job, and a bit over $7/hr at my second/evening job. I talked myself out of it even before running the numbers, but I have a feeling that seeing those numbers written down would have scarred me for life! Either that, or if I had bought it, I would have been living under my grandmother's roof a few more years...

kyfdx

I leased the last year of that model in '95. Mine stickered around $29K. $2500 upfront and $416/month. Interest rates and lease rates were rough, back then. I couldn't really afford that at the time.. but, there you go.

andre1969

That actually doesn't sound half bad, but then again, that's a lease, so at the end you still either have to pay more to buy it outright, or end up with nothing at all, so there's pros and cons.

My Mom and stepdad are leasing an Escape. I forget the year, but it's fairly new. I want to say its MSRP was north of $40K. For a cute-ute! (okay, so they haven't called them that in ages, now, but still). I want to say the lease payments are in the high $500 range.

I guess, once you factor in inflation and such, maybe it's not THAT bad. But it just seems it to me.

tjc78

kyfdx said:

I leased the last year of that model in '95. Mine stickered around $29K. $2500 upfront and $416/month. Interest rates and lease rates were rough, back then. I couldn't really afford that at the time.. but, there you go.

Yeah it was a lot different then. IIRC my 2000 Solara (purchased 12/99) was 30K and the payment was $450 36/10. That was with just first DAS.

kyfdx

tjc78 said:

kyfdx said:

I leased the last year of that model in '95. Mine stickered around $29K. $2500 upfront and $416/month. Interest rates and lease rates were rough, back then. I couldn't really afford that at the time.. but, there you go.

Yeah it was a lot different then. IIRC my 2000 Solara (purchased 12/99) was 30K and the payment was $450 36/10. That was with just first DAS.

I was also earning 9% interest on a CD in 1995...

fintail

Becoming obscure maybe, I saw an early Echo sedan (Canadian model) that had the sport cladding/wheels package. Grounded to the ground! Also saw a 92-95 Taurus LX with the fancy wheels, moonroof, etc.

In 1999 you could buy houses in Seattle (and probably Bellevue, Kirkland etc) for ~250K that would be ~1MM easy now.

roadburner

I believe one of the Brit magazines wrote a scathing review of the Echo. Under "Also Consider" they listed "Walking."

fintail

Has to be the "Good, Bad, Ugly" section of "CAR" magazine. It was a riot back in the 80s and 90s - they held mothing back. I held on to a small pile of mid 90s issues, I'll have to dig them out.

I forget the car, maybe a Lada or an early southeast Asian/Indian import, their summary was "you'd have to be an idiot to buy one". Also the final run Volvo 240 - "antique cars for antique dealers" (probably because the main character on the British series "Lovejoy", an antique dealer, had one).

roadburner said:

I believe one of the Brit magazines wrote a scathing review of the Echo. Under "Also Consider" they listed "Walking."

Michaell

Out running errands today, and spotted an Acura Vigor. I had a co-worker lease one of those when I still lived in CA (early 90's) - I want to say his payments were around $450-475/mo.

ab348

The idea of an Echo sedan with a “sport” appearance package just boggles the mind.

I remember the first time I saw an Echo. I was leaving the office one day and one was parked at the curb. My initial thought, not really knowing what it was, was that someone had built an 8/10th scale replica of a ‘50 Chevy.

fintail

We only got the 2 door Echo here, a trunkback thing with odd proportions. They were super cheap when new, under 10K for a new Toyota, which was the selling point. Apparently they are durable, but I suspect the driving experience is what one expects for the price and market position.

imidazol97

I can imagine driving one of those on a windy winter day from Cincinnati to Chicago. One radio talk guy told about doing that back in the day when they were being sold. It was not fun from his description.

fintail

They have a tall and narrow look, no doubt susceptible to crosswinds. Also another with centrally mounted gauges, which I anyway don't embrace.

explorerx4

I had an Echo as a loaner once. A VW bug was a vault compared to it.

andre1969

My uncle was interested in an Echo, awhile back. He liked the idea of getting a basic, bare-bones model with just a stick shift and no a/c, to drive back and forth to work. In those days, he was commuting around 130 miles per day round trip, and his main transportation was a '97 Silverado that was racking up the miles pretty quickly. It had the 4.3 V6, and all things considered, got decent gas mileage. But, he wanted a cheap commuter to basically run into the ground, so he could keep the miles off his truck.

The only problem? He couldn't find any Echos that basic, at least around here. We asked about having one special ordered, and the sales lady said that they could try, but there was a chance the factory would reject the order. Most of them were more in the $14K range, and equipped with an automatic and a/c, but they still had a certain cheapness about them.

He ended up getting an early '03 Corolla, Memorial Day weekend 2002. It was a fairly basic CE model, and ended up in the $15K range. Automatic and a/c, nothing fancy, but it had a decent radio, at least. Still, for what it was, it was a decent car. Seemed like it was definitely worth the ~$1K as equipped price premium over an Echo. It was still kinda ugly, a big egg-shaped and goofy, but it did the job. He made it to something like 238,000 miles, and traded on a 2013 Camry LE.

Looking back, I imagine driving a cheap stick-shift subcompact with no a/c, in DC area traffic, would lose its charm after awhile. He tended to work long shifts, where he'd get up early enough to usually beat the morning rush, but sometimes he'd get caught in the afternoon/evening. And, as the years rolled past, the beginning and endpoints of what constitutes "Rush Hour" only got worse. Hell, some parts of I-95 between DC and Richmond seem like they're stuck on Rush Hour 24/7!

texases

A friend did the same thing. Went to the dealer for an Echo, ended up getting a Corolla for not much more. He was happy he did.