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

andre1969

Oddly, that Caprice interior looks like a tasteful, toned down green color on my monitor, except for the floor carpeting, which looks sort of dark gray, which I guess is what "pewter" is. But, it doesn't look as "green" as I remember the interior of my grandparents' '72 Impala being. It's funny how, in those brochures, even the cheap, plasticky parts (like the lower half of the door panel in both the Monte and Caprice, manage to look nice.

That 2-tone Grand Marquis is really nice looking. I never really cared for the '73-78 big Fords, but always thought the Mercurys were really classy. Seems like dove gray was a common color for them, too. In my paternal grandparents' old neighborhood, I remembered one that sat just up the street, for years. My memory was thinking it was a solid dove gray, but then I remembered it being in the background of a pic that my Granddad took, of me in my DeSoto when I first got it. Here's the pic...

Sorry about the iffy quality, but he had taken the pic, had it enlarged, and framed it for me. But it wasn't one of those types of frames you could easily take apart, so I took a pic of it with my phone, from behind the glass.


It's hard to tell in the pic, but to me it looks like it's sort of a gray color, with a rust-colored landau roof and lower body contrast.

It's kinda weird to think that that picture is almost as old now, as the car was when I bought it! (well, ~30 years, versus 33-34 years)

ab348

andre1969 said:

Oddly, that Caprice interior looks like a tasteful, toned down green color on my monitor, except for the floor carpeting, which looks sort of dark gray, which I guess is what "pewter" is. But, it doesn't look as "green" as I remember the interior of my grandparents' '72 Impala being.

Looks green to me also, especially the areas closest to the camera. Odd.

Chevy offered pewter on the Monte Carlo in '72 as well, and this is what that looked like:

kyfdx

We are watching Schitt's Creek on Netflix. Season 3, they buy a Town Car. '77 model, as near as I can tell.

ab348

kyfdx said:

We are watching Schitt's Creek on Netflix. Season 3, they buy a Town Car. '77 model, as near as I can tell.

The other day I was watching the series Rehab Addict Rescue on HGTV with Nicole Curtis, and it turns out she has a Town Car of that vintage she drives around in too.

fintail

Thinking of those Lincolns on the screen, I remember Roy Walley has one in the original "Vacation", a probably hen's tooth variant:



And Jackie's dad's car in "That 70s Show":

kyfdx

uplanderguy

Yeah, those last RWD Montes were not clearcoat. First Chevy I owned that was, was my Beretta GT. It was non-metallic bright red but looked like a mirror still when I traded it.

andre1969

What was the first year that they went to those environmentally-friendly paints, where it would peel off while it was still shiny? The newest "old school" car I had was the '86 Monte Carlo my Mom gave me, and it just did the usual thing where it would fade, and sometimes crows-foot, but would at least hold strong.

sda

andre1969 said:

Oddly, that Caprice interior looks like a tasteful, toned down green color on my monitor, except for the floor carpeting, which looks sort of dark gray, which I guess is what "pewter" is. But, it doesn't look as "green" as I remember the interior of my grandparents' '72 Impala being. It's funny how, in those brochures, even the cheap, plasticky parts (like the lower half of the door panel in both the Monte and Caprice, manage to look nice.

That 2-tone Grand Marquis is really nice looking. I never really cared for the '73-78 big Fords, but always thought the Mercurys were really classy. Seems like dove gray was a common color for them, too. In my paternal grandparents' old neighborhood, I remembered one that sat just up the street, for years. My memory was thinking it was a solid dove gray, but then I remembered it being in the background of a pic that my Granddad took, of me in my DeSoto when I first got it. Here's the pic...

Sorry about the iffy quality, but he had taken the pic, had it enlarged, and framed it for me. But it wasn't one of those types of frames you could easily take apart, so I took a pic of it with my phone, from behind the glass.


It's hard to tell in the pic, but to me it looks like it's sort of a gray color, with a rust-colored landau roof and lower body contrast.

It's kinda weird to think that that picture is almost as old now, as the car was when I bought it! (well, ~30 years, versus 33-34 years)

Great Pic, I assume that is you with that sly grin??

andre1969

Thanks. And yeah, that's me. I've probably posted it in the past, years ago, but somewhere I have a pic of me and the couple I bought the DeSoto from, on the day I bought it. They had a 1980 Buick Century, and you could just see the tail of it at the edge of the picture. One thing that's funny about the pic, too, is how next to me, the car doesn't look that big. I think usually when they photograph cars for ads, they use smaller people. For instance, I heard they used Dustin Hoffman in some old VW commercials, to help make the cars look bigger than they were! And of course, in the old illustrations, the cars look monstrous, in proportion to the people in the ads.

uplanderguy

Is that Maryland?

tjc78

kyfdx said:

Would need to see the dash to confirm it’s a 77. Many Lincoln guys feel the 77 is the best. True Lincoln dash, waterfall grill and still could get the 460.

kyfdx

tjc78 said:

kyfdx said:

Would need to see the dash to confirm it’s a 77. Many Lincoln guys feel the 77 is the best. True Lincoln dash, waterfall grill and still could get the 460.

I think waterfall and skirts make it a '77

tjc78

Yep absolutely correct ... completely forgot about that.

explorerx4

This guy knows his stuff about Chevy Muscle cars.
He keeps saying I won't go into too much detail, but then points out a bunch of incorrect details.
He saved his client a lot of money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHqBw-Aoknw

stickguy

I’ve seen his stuff. Yeah, he knows all the minutia. Saw one where he broke the bad news to a guy that owned it for about 20 years or do, and was getting ready to sell.

stickguy

That video though, he actually isn’t saying it’s not a real SS. just that there was enough done in the restoration that some parts are no longer accurate. Good reason not to pay extra for numbers matching! Once it goes through a full restoration anyway, how original can you claim it to be? Even original block, if completely rebuilt, isn’t very authentic SNY way.

I love that car though. And if some picky details like hose clamps saves me $20k, all the better!

texases

Those Magnum-style wheels just don't look right to me on a Chevy.

ab348

The whole "numbers matching" thing sometimes is a bit murky. He was basing it (apparently) on th efact that the block has been re-stamped. But then he says it could be the original block that had some work done and thus required a re-stamp. And while he notes the repro hose clamps , the replacement rad and water pump, and the repro interior pieces as strikes against it, he seemed not to be bothered by the repro engine compartment labels on the alternator. I think if the car is not being touted as "original" (which anyone could clearly see this isn't) then the claim should simply be that it cannot be documented as perfectly original.

stickguy

Yup.

explorerx4

The stamp is the date code, so why would that need to be re-stamped?
He reported it back to his client as not numbers matching, so I think he was being kind in the video.
Maybe didn't want to ruffle feathers at the dealership.

ab348

Well, that’s the Velo “museum” who have a long history of questionable descriptions in their ads.

uplanderguy

I never have heard anyone call them "Chevelle El Camino". Although, it's clear this guy knows the cars.

On Facebook (shocker), the number of armchair-'expert' dolts that comment stuff with absolute certainty always makes me wince. '70 Chevelle SS shown for sale for $195K (insane to me, no matter what the market says) has the original window sticker that says "Malibu 8 Spt Cpe" at the top and shows the SS package as an option. That is completely for-real, as at that point the SS was an option package on the Malibu. Every single 1970 Chevelle SS is a Malibu. "Fake!"; "Tribute car", "it's a Malibu!", blah blah blah, people post. Sheesh. I remember that from when I was twelve years old, for cryin' out loud.

Similarly, the number of armchair experts on JFK assassination websites (I've been interested in the possibility of conspiracy for decades) is astounding. They know more than the many, many experts who have professionally investigated. SMH. (BTW, Oswald had to have been involved....every single thing he did after the shooting says 'flight'. Plus, he had a moving straight shot. At the grassy knoll, a shot would have been akin to shooting a metal duck moving left-to-right, like at a fair). But that's not interesting enough I guess.

andre1969

uplanderguy said:

Is that Maryland?

The old pic of me in the DeSoto? Yeah, Riverdale, MD. My grandparents bought their house there in 1963. It got sold off in 2017, after Granddad died at the ripe old age of 101 and 11 months. I went there and looked it up on Google street view to see if I could somewhat emulate the same view as that pic. Here's about the closest I could get...


Apparently the neighbors across the street are doing okay. That Roadmaster in the driveway has been replaced by a Range Rover...

The last time I was by there, they had a dark green late 90's style Caravan, that they'd had for years.

Somewhere I have an old pic of my Dad's '63 Impala sitting in Grandmom and Granddad's driveway, taken sometime in the mid/late 60's. I'll have to find that and scan it in, to show how the neighborhood changed over the years.

xwesx

andre1969 said:

Apparently the neighbors across the street are doing okay. That Roadmaster in the driveway has been replaced by a Range Rover...

Maybe.... but the part you don't know is that the Range Rover hasn't moved in years....

uplanderguy

Unrelated to cars, but something that made me laugh and it might make others of a certain age here, too:

Among posts on FB about the cancelling of Pepe LePew, someone posted, "Every little breeze seems to whisper 'Louise'".

I had totally forgotten about that, and admit I cracked up.

Originally sung, as the Three Stooges would say, by "Maurice Chevrolet". (There, that's car content!)

andre1969

Of course, one little detail the cancel crew is leaving out is that the female cat was usually enjoying Pepe's advances, until she actually caught a whiff of him! So it wasn't that she wasn't interested...she just couldn't stand his smell! And then she tries to run away, but he thinks she's just playing "hard to get". So the real moral of the story here is, COMMUNICATE!! And also, perhaps, that Axe body spray is not a good substitute for a shower!

Oh, Uplander, you'd get a kick out of this. One of my friends and I went over to another friend's place on Monday to hang out, have some pizza, and watch tv. Well, as we're riding over, my friend who was driving, got a text from our other friend. The text asked if we had heard of "Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte". Well, my buddy had this hands-free thing, where you could speak and it would send it as a text. He'd never heard of the movie, but I told him I've seen it, that it's an older movie, but he'd probably like it.

So, my friend tries to dictate a text response, but it translated it into something that had the word "Australia" in it! So, he tried again, saying "Andre has seen it, I have not". That got translated into "Andre has a habit!"

Finally, he tried "Yes for Andre, No for me". That one, it translated perfectly, and he sent it. But then our friend misinterpreted that as me being interested in it, but not my friend. At that point we were only a few minutes away, so I just said let's explain it when we get there!

Anyway, I know that's one of your favorite movies, Uplander, so I thought you'd get a kick out of that! Oh, and my friend, who hadn't seen it before, liked it a lot. It had been awhile since I'd seen it, too, so a lot of my memory on it was a bit fuzzy, so it was fun to watch it, again, and with people who enjoyed it. Oh, and I had forgotten how Buick-heavy that movie was. At least a couple of '64 Electras, and the 6W pillared sedan variety. And, a '64 Special or Skylark.

uplanderguy

Yes, it's my favorite movie. As a kid, it was shocking to me. The effects are laughable now, but I think for the most part, if you watch the whole movie, it holds up. I like it better than "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?". I'm a fan of the '64 Electra 225 six-window pillared sedan that Charlotte tells Miriam, "I've rented a car for you". Dr. Drew drove a Dodge Dart but Miriam was driving an Electra 225!

I have to say, to this day, I still hold my breath at the scene in the 'summer house' near the beginning! LOL

Agnes Moorehead provides some needed comic relief in it. Amazing to me she was doing "Bewitched" at the same time. She's unrecognizable in "...Charlotte"!

A small place I always chuckle is when the seedy tabloid reporter from NY, hands his latest magazine about the murder to Mr. Wills from London, and he replies, "Ah yes, very colorful", hands it back, and wipes his hand on his suit jacket, LOL.

I love the dinner table scene. For about one minute, Charlotte and Miriam seem to be enjoying each other's company, LOL.

Without a spoiler here, I think Bette Davis does a LOT in her scenes in about the last five or ten minutes of the movie--and without one word of dialogue.

Thanks for the story!

andre1969

Funny thing about the special effects, but for the time period, I don't think they're bad at all. I think one saving grace is that it's black and white, which hides a lot of sins. And the movie really isn't all that effects-heavy. Anyway, the movie overall was still enough to creep out my friend who hadn't seen it, who was mostly raised on stuff like "Halloween", "Friday the 13th", "Nightmare on Elm Street", etc. So, it did the job!

Oh, I might have mentioned this before, but in "The Paul Lynde Show", which only ran from '72-73, there's a reference to that movie. In the show, Paul's cousin Charlotte (Charlotte Raye, who was Mrs. Garrett in "The Facts of Life") came to visit, and was overstaying her welcome. At one point, the wife is commenting, "Well Charlotte says " and eventually Paul gets tired of it and mocks "Charlotte says? Charlotte says? Well you know what I say? Hush-Hush, Sweet Charlotte!!" It got a pretty good laugh. I'm sure it would go over most audience's heads in this day and age, but the first time I saw the episode, a year or so ago, I certainly got the reference!

uplanderguy

In an age of color, the deliberate choice of B&W for that movie worked well. The cinematography was an Oscar nominee I think. I want to cheer when Charlotte comes out upstairs on the balcony near the end!


Speaking of Paul Lynde, last summer on an Ohio country drive, I went maybe 1/4 of a mile off Route 3 which I was travelling, and found Paul Lynde's headstone. He was from Mt. Vernon, OH, a town several miles away. This was a quite small country cemetery. He did provide me a lot of laughs back then, mostly from 'Hollywood Squares'.

uplanderguy

One last "....Charlotte" question....be honest...did you guys watch the whole thing? I know it's long. Some reviewers say it could have had a half-hour or so cut out of the middle of it. I liked it as-is.

andre1969

I just looked it up, WOW, I didn't realize the running time was 2 hours and 15 minutes! We definitely watched the whole thing...at least I think we did. We had to pause it now and then for bathroom breaks...you know the old saying, you don't buy beer, you only rent it! We watched it on Netflix streaming, I think, and they're usually pretty good about showing old movies and tv shows un-cut and un-edited. And yeah, my friend who hadn't seen it LOVED the ending!

I know some movies, and tv shows, do seem to get padded, to where it seems like they were fluffed up to get a longer running time. A lot of the hour-long "Twilight Zone" episodes were like that. And so was "Thriller" that anthology show that Boris Karloff was the host for...sort of a cross between "Hitchcock" and "The Twilight Zone" But, "Charlotte" seemed good, to me, as-is.

uplanderguy

LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrZLHSQMMlY

andre1969

LOL...I was expecting it to be "You vile, sorry little b****!"

omarman

I don't think I ever saw that movie but I was hoping for, "what a dump!"

uplanderguy

andre, I thought I might have an issue with the moderators on that one! I'm sure that's the first time I ever heard that word on TV, LOL.

uplanderguy

I think Mary Astor (Jewel Mayhew character) did a whole lot with a little in her part in that movie. One of the few restrained performances! It was her last film.

explorerx4

The fan shroud on these cars always cracks me up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l1e3YbT5YU

andre1969

I always thought the fan shroud on those had sort of a homemade look to it. Like someone took an old 55-gallon oil drum and cut it up.

texases

I had a 'what the heck?' reaction the first time I checked the oil on one of those at the Sohio station. One of the better examples of style over function. I do like the style!

ab348

A shame that Monte isn’t in better condition. Too many things that need to be redone.

uplanderguy

That interior is awful....and the seat covering is replacement as-is!

I had forgotten that those cars had the map pockets down in the lower carpeted section of the door panels.

Funny, I never liked the '71 and '72 Chevy (and I'll assume GM) color palette. In '70 you had beautiful Black Cherry, and a light metallic turquoise, and other striking colors, when '71 brought us urine-like light green, oranges, and browns, and green interiors the color of a canned pea. No maroon colors outside; no red interiors. 'Polyester colors', almost.

andre1969

Another problem with colors, is that by the time the '71s rolled around...even though there were still SOME tasteful colors, people weren't buying them!

For instance, I think the '71 Impala looks nice in this shade of blue...


But, I don't think I've ever seen one. Usually I've seen them in brown, beige, gold-ish colors. Or if it is a green, it's rarely a tasteful hue.

uplanderguy

Chevy called that "Sea Aqua" and it was only available on the '71 full-sizes and that is my FAVORITE '71 color! That sedan has the optional body side moldings and wheel opening moldings. I could like it without both of those things. I always liked the '71 and '72 wheelcovers. I used to always like the '72 better but I like the wide rocker trim on the '71--there's none on the '72 Impala!

The only real Sea Aqua '71 I very distinctly remember at our local dealer, where even at 13 I hung out, was a Bel Air 4-door. It had black vinyl interior and had had a touch-up on the RF fender as there was Sea Aqua on the very top of the "Bel Air" nameplate there. The dealer had that car in inventory for months and months.

ab348

The online color charts show Sea Aqua available on any '71 Chevy except Corvette. Olds called it Capri Aqua and it is a very rare color there as well.

uplanderguy

The online color charts, I don't believe, are correct at all here. Again, I trust brochures more than generic charts, but you've got me wanting to look at the brochures. I remember not a single '71 Chevy except a full-size in that color, even in pics, over the past 50 years.

EDIT: Not in the '71 Chevelle or Nova brochures as a color choice. Monte Carlo was built in the same plants as Chevelle so I'm confident it wasn't a color available either.

ab348

I think you're right. In '71 for some reason GM made certain paint colors available on the full-size cars only. That Aqua is one, and the dark blue metallic is another.

uplanderguy

I'd like that same car andre showed, in a Custom Coupe with black vinyl top. The only B-body other than a Grand Ville with a formal roof. For some reason, on the Chevy specifically, that year's Sport Coupe roof to me looked too small for the body. I don't think that on the P-O-B cars. The Chevy body is more slab-sided than the others, and has more squarish, cut flat-with-the-body wheel openings, which may contribute.

andre1969

I always thought that, too, that the more fastback Sport Coupe roof just didn't look right on an Impala. Yet somehow, it works fine on the B-O-P cars, even though they're actually bigger cars. The '71 Bonneville was the largest car to use that roof, with a 126" wheelbase, but the roof doesn't look that out of place to me...


For comparison, here's how that roof looked on a '71-73 Impala.


Note: I mirror reversed the Impala pic, so that it would be easier to compare to the Bonneville.

The Chevies were on a 121.5" wb, while the Delta 88, LeSabre, Centurion, and Catalina were on a 124". The Bonneville and Grand Ville were on a 126" wb, but at some point, 1973 I think, they dropped to 124".

You might be right, Uplander, perhaps it's the more slab-sidedness of the Chevy, that made it clash with that roof. That roof does seem to be designed with a more curvy car in mind. I think there's something about the way the beltline kicks up in the rear quarter window area of the Impala, too, that makes it look a bit awkward, whereas the beltline is flatter on the Pontiac, all the way back to the base of the C-pillar. Maybe that plays tricks on the eye, and makes the roof look shorter?

andre1969

Here's a video of a '71 Impala for sale, on Youtube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WDUGjzOmdk