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

fintail

The Z1 could have been driven by a German tourist who wanted to take their car along with them or something. I think that is relatively easy to do, just not cheap.

The 959 was never a convertible that I recall. But I do recall kind of bad 959 lookalike kits to bolt on to a normal 911...maybe it was one of those.

Yesterday a beautiful blue 66 or 67 GTO convertible drove by my place, in the kind of odd combo of blue with a white interior.

fintail

Tonight about dusk I saw what appeared to be a pristine 77-79 Town car, in dark blue. I can't recall the last time I saw one so nice. It looked new. Maybe it was the low light, but it sure seemed to have a lot more dignity and presence than the current models.

michaellno

On my way to work yesterday morning, a wicked looking white Lamborghini Diablo was on I-25, motoring sedately amongst the pedestrian vehicles.

I cannot begin to imagine what that must have been like to drive in bumper to bumper traffic .. the driver's left leg must be as big around as a sequoia!

andre1969

those mammoth mid-to-late 70's Lincolns seem to have had a pretty good survival rate. I tend to see plenty of Mark IV's and Vs, and the big Continental sedans and coo-pays still around in good shape, but the big Caddies don't seem to have fared as well. Sure, I'll still see them regularly, but they usually seem more ragged out.

I wonder if the Lincolns were bought by people who didn't like the idea of a downsized car, so they decided to buy one of these monsters and just hold onto it and pamper it? Where, in contrast, a Caddy might have been bought, traded after a few years, and ultimately run into the ground as a used car, as it got older?

fintail

I think that makes sense. Probably why a lot of big 77-78 Chryslers seem to have survived, too. I know that's how it was for my grandpa...he had one of the last of the big boats, and he held on to it through the mid 80s when he finally thought it was too old.

andre1969

I tend to see an awful lot of those final late 70's Chryslers too, mainly the New Yorkers, but even the Newports seemed to have a good survival rate. And considering that they weren't very well built, and unitized to boot, I think it's a miracle that there are so many around still in good condition. I also see an awful lot of '79 5th Avenues around, still in fairly good shape, considering how few were built. They only built around 15,000 5th Aves, compared to about 40,000 "regular" NYers that year, plus around 77,000 Newports and maybe 34,000 St. Regises. I hardly ever see any of the other R-bodies around, and when I do they're usually pretty ratty.

There was a '79 St. Regis in the car corral at Carlisle last weekend. Price was marked down to $900, but I heard the owner would've taken $500. I was extremely tempted. Grbeck met my friends and me there, and I told him I was going to need him to try HARD to talk me out of it! Well, he did, but his way of talking me out of it was "you need to buy that '63 Dodge 880 over there instead!" :P

The St. Regis actually wasn't too bad, although it had some serious rust around the rear wheel opening on the passenger side, and its blue paint was a bit faded. It had a 360-2bbl, which is somewhat rare, as most of them only had 318-2bbls. It also had a trailer hitch on it, which worried me and made me wonder if it had been worked hard during its life.

lemko

...would've scared me more than a mouse at a cat show. I liked the cool fluted clear headlight covers on the St Regis. I've always thought they were superfluous. If the cover is clear, why raise them? Did you have the choice of illuminating the headlights with or without the cover?

I remember looking at a white 1976 New Yorker about 17 years ago. It had the clock pretentiously labeled as a "Chronometer" in fussy script. This car was the same car as the Imperial in 1975. The 1975 Imperial sold poorly, but the 1976 New Yorker sold better.

fintail

Yeah, a lot of those 5th Avenues make it to ebay too...and I see a lot of the earlier cars listed, but they actually seem common!

I remember when I was little a friend of the family had a K-Car coupe with a 'chronometer' digital clock in cursive script.

I too would be very careful of just about any car with a trailer hitch. Unless it got an engine and transmission rebuild the previous day or something.

andre1969

what the deal was with the clear St. Regis headlight covers. They dropped down when you turned the lights on, just like the body-colored covers on my New Yorker. I've heard that it was common for the opening/closing mechanism on the St. Regis to fail (but for some reason, not on the NYer...I thought they'd be the same part). Back in the day it was common for police departments to wire the covers permanently open, or take out the bar that flips them. And sure enough, this St. Regis at Carlisle had the headlight covers permanently open.

I don't know if having the covers closed would have diluted the intensity of the headlights or not? After all, those old '64-66 Imperials and the '65 NYer had glass-covered headlights. The St. Regis covers, as well as the '78-79 Magnum, were just made of plastic though, so maybe that made a difference? But then, on my Intrepid, and most modern cars I presume, the outer part of the headlight assembly is just plastic, so I don't see what the big deal is.

As for the '76 New Yorker, IIRC it was priced about $2,000 less than a '75 Imperial, so that's probably one reason it sold so much better. It wasn't long though before inflation took out the slack. Still, $9,000 in 1977-78 wasn't nearly the same as $9,000 in 1975!

lemmer

On the way to work I saw a 1988 Mazda RX-7 Turbo 10th Anniversary Edition. This is the car that was white, and had white trim, and had white wheels, etc. It looked more than a little outdated to me, mainly because of the white treatment.

I also saw a Solara convertible pulling some sort of work trailer. It seemed like a really bad idea to me, but the guy had the top down and looked like he was loving life.

ghulet

...Let's see, this week I saw THREE different first-generation MR2s (kinda rare in Chicago what with the rust and all); one, black and junky, one red with t-tops, pretty rusty, and one without t-tops in seriously almost perfect condition, even had the nice untouched factory MR2 body color mudflaps.

Today, I saw a very nice black with tan interior '65 (possibly '64) Lincoln Continental sedan (hardtop), a kinda ratty '87 or '88 Cadillac convertible conversion and (FINTAIL), a very nice C-something or other (43, I think, but coulda been a 36, it was almost a week ago), black with (non two-tone) black interior, very nice.

fintail

A C43...cool. They are like the invisible car.

Today I saw a pristine dark blue Dodge Diplomat and a really nice looking dark green 1st gen Seville

PF_Flyer

Ran across a bright orange 1971 Dodge Demon this afternoon cruising the streets. I'm not sure I've seen one of them SINCE the 70's!

PF Flyer
Host
News & Views, Wagons, & Hybrid Vehicles

The Subaru Crew Chat is on tonight. The chat room opens at 8:45PM ET Hope to see YOU there! Check out the schedule

andre1969

I saw a 1960 Chevy 4-door wagon, in kind of a cocoa metallic color. Had extra-wide wheels in back, so I'm guessing it was tubbed. Looked like it was in really nice shape. It said "Impala" on the front fender, but back then didn't Chevy give different names to their wagons, like "Brookwood", "Kingswood", "Nomad", etc?

Also, is something like that legal to drive out on the streets? I'd imagine that to get those extra-big rims and tires in back, you'd give up most, if not all, of your suspension travel in back. Must be a rough ride on anything short of a drag strip!

fintail

Yeah, I don't recall there being an Impala wagon

Spotted a very clean dark grey maybe 81-82 Audi 5000. Very few of those on the road anymore.

lemko

1960 Chevrolert wagons and their car equivalents:

Brookwood = Biscayne
Parkwood = Bel Air
Nomad = Impala

I don't think the Kingswood name would arrive until the late '60s as a Caprice Equivalent.

lemko

Spotted at lunchtime - a light blue 1978-79 Plymouth Fury wagon. When I was in high school, late '70s Furies were as common as dirt. Did they smash them all up on the "Dukes of Hazzard?"

andre1969

some of them survived into the 80's and were smashed up in "Hunter", the "A-Team", and just about any other tv show that required the whacking of a police car! A similar fate awaited the '79-81 R-body copcars. I've heard that one reason these cars were popular to smash up was that the torsion bar/leaf spring suspensions made them really easy to modify for stunt work.

Now that I think of it, there was a '78 Monaco coupe (the midsized one, Dodge and Plymouth both dropped the big C-body models after '77) that the Salvation Army was auctioning off at Carlisle. It was a bit of a stripper model, with no a/c., etc. It also had no vinyl roof, which had to have been rare by that time. It had the hardtop style with no B-pillar, but the rear window was stationary. I think in earlier models the rear windows rolled down, but eventually they either made it an extra-cost option or just made them all fixed, across the board.

It was in fairly solid shape, too, which I thought was impressive for a 27 year old Mopar from one of Chrysler's darker years. I tried to do a mental comparison to my '76 LeMans, and it seemed like my LeMans was roomier up front, but more cramped in the back, but had better seats overall. One thing that impressed me about the Monaco though, is that when I closed the frameless door, it didn't shake and rattle near as bad as it does on my LeMans. So I guess Chrysler could still do a FEW things right by that time! :P

lemko

...are wrecked in "The Blues Brothers" movie excluding the 1974 Dodge Monaco the brothers are driving? Looks like Chicago's entire fleet of of 1977 Royal Monacos was wrecked in one scene.

fintail

Here's one for Andre or anyone else who likes big 70s GM metal:

I parked next to this in the garage at work today. I guess it's a 75 or 76 Caprice. It was in remarkably good original condition, very straight body, and the interior looked excellent, velour. It had a little bit of bubbling in the front rockers and around the back window, and the paint needed to be buffed out, as red-based paints often do. It was kind of a burgundy color in real life. Excuse the pic, it's from a phone.

ghulet

I've always kinda liked those big Chevies, though they're total hogs in almost every way.

Fin, I saw a few kind of interesting old Benzes this week: a 300SDL, charcoal with gray interior (yawn), in decent shape with the mid-90s 'upgrade' 8-hole wheels, which IMO just don't quite look right on 126; a very nice silver 300CD Turbo, which I saw while filling the Jeep with petrol, wondering what kind of mileage those typically get. I also saw another coupe of the same era, but gas (most likely a 280CE, though I couldn't see the badge), and unfortunately also shod with the 8-hole wheels and those damn tacky chrome wheel well trim pieces that have destroyed many a Mercedes.

andys120

I saw a '65 Mustang convertible, light blue metallic, top down, just shimmering in the July haze. Looked like an older restoration or very well kept original.

No engine badge so prolly a 200CID six.

fintail

I didn't mind that big Caprice either. When I was maybe in 1st grade a friend's dad had one like that. I remember it was getting to be an older car even then, but his dad was very set on hanging on to it and caring for it. Silver with a black vinyl top, IIRC.

I don't like those 8 hole wheels on the 126 as well, or really on anything but a late 124 or a 140. I think the flat face wheels from later cars look the best on a 126, and I have chrome versions of those on my car. A 123 looks best with bundt wheels. And the wheel trim pieces are the worst. They are either used to hide rust, as many old MB from bad climates attract wheelarch rust, or their presence creates rust by trapping moisture and gunk. And they look gaudy too.

I think a 300CD might net around 30mpg.

lemko

The big Chevrolet is a 1976 Caprice, the 1975 model had round lights. 1976 was the last year for those big Chevies.

Spotted today: beautiful white 1977 Buick Electra Limited coupe.

bumpy

Say, how rare is a bugeye 300D? I didn't think MB sold the diesel Es that late, but there's one around here with the badging (and I can't imagine anyone wanting to add fake diesel badges to an E).

fintail

I knew someone would gues the year of that Caprice. Anyone want it? I forgot to add...it had a for sale sign in the window. They were asking 3 grand.

A bugeye 300D is uncommon. They sold them in NA through 99 I believe, maybe 3K units per year in the US. There's demand for them still.

And here's a good one I spotted today with the phone camera. My 126 has a twin! I noticed this thing on autotrader, and I had to take a peek. It's the identical car to mine, the VIN puts it about 2000 units older. It has 80K miles on it and is pretty decent, but not to brag..my car is a Pebble Beach winner when the cosmetics are compared. The paint was a little faded on it, like it had never been waxed, and the interior looked more aged than mine. They wanted $7K for it. I do not need another one...but it was a cool sight.

lancerfixer

Boy, the E-codes make all the difference in the world, don't they?

fintail

They really do. They take 10 years off the looks of the car. Best investment I've made on it.

Ebay time:

Once upon a time Buick had some prestige. And in foreign markets, export model Buicks were a highline car equiv to a nice MB or Lexus

And Caddy had elegance and prestige. Talk about a machine exuding swankiness. I think this is similar to a Hot Wheels I had as a kid

And Lincoln was up there as well. I really like these Brunn touring cabriolets, with their cool windshield observation windows, and the laundau rear end. I've only seen this body on Packards before

Good name, unfortunate styling...some nut will want it

Good name, good styling, I wonder what it is worth. Very 50s chic

I wonder how and why this ended up in an American barn

As every 58 Packard remaining sooner or later hits ebay...

Neat car, really pretty, nice colors, but the owner seems to think he has a #1 car

For 80s GM big-car buffs

This car says "I'm ugly...you got a problem with that?

Decent driver

OK, this is cool. Another Airflow, but a 34, which is the design in its purest form. This thing looks like a spaceship compared to a 34 Ford or Chevy. It's easy to see why it failed...it's not bad design so much as it is just being too much at once. I've always had a thing for 30s streamlined cars. I could see myself with something like this. Kudos for its originality, too

Not many of these left compared to the lower line fuselage cars. Dig that brocade interior

Hey Andre...

Few cars can pull off this color. They are only new once...and this is. Time warp cars like this are fascinating in their own way.

lancerfixer

Put Paula Cole on the CD player and set the wayback machine to 1996, Mr. Peabody!

Perfect lancercommuter. Too bad I'm not in the market. Well, Mrs. Lance isn't in the market, which pretty much means I'm not, either.

andys120

Fin, I always thought the '61 MoPars were in a class by themselves when it comes to ugliness. Plymouths were even worse than Dodges! :surprise:

jlawrence01

on that the '58 Packard pictures, there was not a single picture of the front of the car ... that is weird.

andre1969

those Packardbaker Hawks actually aren't bad looking from most angles...except the front! If it weren't for that Godawful nose the car would look just like the Stude Hawk, which is a pretty nice car! I'd say not taking a pic of the shnoz on that beast was a stroke of genius! :P

As for that '61 Dodge Dart Phoenix, it lives on in video games! Check out the front end of this car from "Grand Theft Auto" Just ignore the 50's Oldsmobile 2-toning!



There's another car in the game that copies the reverse-slant tailfins of the '61 Dodges, but I couldn't find a good pic that shows the rump.

I always considered 1961 to be to Chrysler what 1958-59 was to the rest of the industry. I think out of the whole lineup the best looking cars were the Chryslers, although it takes awhile to get used to the slanted headlights. The compact Valiants weren't bad looking, either. And those '61 Darts and Polaras were drop-dead gorgeous compared to a Plymouth, DeSoto, or Imperial!

In mid-1962, Dodge took a '62 Newport and put a '61 Dodge front clip on it, and called it the Custom 880. It was a half-hearted attempt to field a mid-priced big car. Chrysler once had a broad selection in this range, but with the drastic downsizing of the Dodges in '62, the death of DeSoto, and the cheapening of Chrysler, they were basically down to just the Newport and the non-letter 300 series. I kinda like them, though. There was a '63 Dodge Custom 880 at the Mopar Nationals in Carlisle for sale. It was just a 4-door sedan, but it was in pretty good shape. Could've used a pain job and a bit of upholstery work. I took a pic of it, along with a bunch of other stuff, which I'll upload when I get the ambition.

andys120

the '61 Valiants (and Lancers) were actually fairly good looking. The looks of Dodges and Plymouths started to improve in '62 when the big Plyms and Dodges borrowed the styling language of the compact lines.

Awful (1961)

Better (1962) -note roofline, windshield and fender blisters from Valiant/Lancer

Nice! (1963) cleaned up nicely!

fintail

Wow, that's a gorgeous black E320. Great interior...it really looks new. If it's been maintained...drop a few grand off that price, and it would be a great deal. Excellent cars, you could do a lot worse. I like that one a lot.

lemko

...could you post a picture of the Chrysler Fifth Avenue from "Grand Theft Auto?"

Anyway, Das Awkscht Fest, (Macunguie) is August 5th-7th this year. Any plans?

fintail

This morning I saw an absolutely showroom looking VW squareback. Probably the best one I've ever seen.

andre1969

here's a couple shots of the "5th Ave" from the Grand Theft games...

http://www.g-unleashed.com/files/16_vehicle_greenwood.jpg
http://www.g-unleashed.com/files/GTA%20VC_Greenwood.jpg

The video game artists took the liberty of taking the "upside-down" headlight/turn signal treatment of the real car and flipping it.

As for the car show at Macungie, Grbeck and I are defnitely planning on being there! We usually get there fairly early on the Saturday of the show. Email me and we can coordinate trying to get together. I'm not going to put a car in the show, though. That time of the year it's hot enough that a/c is pretty much mandatory, and none of my antique cars have working a/c!

Mr_Shiftright

I like VW squarebacks. First mass production car with electronic fuel-injection I believe. That's a milestone right there. 20 years ahead of Detroit more or less.

fintail

And this one was certainly able to go to shows. Beige of course, period roof rack...nice old piece.

Today I spotted a running Jag XJS, a Bentley Turbo R, several 1st gen Mustangs, and a really nice W126 300SE ...champagne, of course.

I was also cruising around swanky Medina today (home to Bill Gates among others) and parked near a house was a 230S fintail that looked like it had just been taken out of a barn. The tags were about 10 years old, and it was very dirty. The interior had cobwebs to compete with a scene in an Indiana Jones movie...an amazing amount. Dark gray green with cream leather, Becker Europa...not very rusty, but still a parts car or a real labor of love.

ghulet

....yesterday I saw a running (barely, I'd say) '86 Jaguar XJ6, white with tan interior, with non-funtioning tail and brake lights, belching really stinky, hazy bluish smoke.

Mr_Shiftright

Well poor thing. You know, when a car's resale value approaches that of an equal size pile of sand from Home Depot (maybe less than the sand actually), then it's going to fall on hard times----since the people who buy them so cheap can't afford to take care of them.

Saw an FJ40 Toyota Land Cruiser that looked to be highly over-restored. It was like SHOW quality, quite something, although definitely "tarted up". I asked the shop about it, where it was being worked on, and the shop foreman told me the owner had over $55,000 in it.

:confuse:

andys120

it's easy to over restore. FJ40s didn't have much shine to their paint or a lot of fancy trim
but then I've never understood why anyone interested in serious offroading would by a glitz-mobile.

They don't- they buy FJ40s or CJ-5s

lemmer

2 door 1970s Dodge Monaco in horrible shape. It was actually going down the road, but it was listing to one side, had a huge amount of collision damage, had to slow down to 10mph at every corner (and still looked like the wheels were going to collapse under the stress), and left a trail of smoke.

debaser853

VW Pointer City. Mexico plates, in a public lot in Breckenridge, CO. Not as small as I thought it might look, but I had to wonder how well it got up and down the mountains.

mazda6iguy

Saw a nice looking 1976 Chrysler Cordoba parked in front of a Chrysler Dealership for sale... in of all places a rural area - Dalton, OH.

lemko

Obscure - dark blue 1941 Oldsmobile coupe spotted last night.

Not so obscure - bronzish 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air spotted last night. Seems there are a lot of surviving 1957 Chevrolets compared to Fords and Plymouths, especially when Ford outsold Chevy that year for the first time since the 1930s.

kyfdx

The one based on the Z3 convertible.. In Imola Red... This is one funky looking car.. which I would take in a heartbeat....

doohickie

I thought maybe it was the Pontiac Wave sold in Canada, but that wasn't it. I googled Pontiac Mexico and found the Matiz. Is this the same platform as the Wave/Aveo? It doesn't appear to be. (By the way, I'm in Fort Worth, Texas, several hundred miles from the Mexican border, although it is not unusual to see a car with Mexican plates.)

I also thought I would mention that since I've started looking at small hatchbacks including the Suzuki Reno, I've noticed that its sedan/wagon kin, the Forenza, is actually getting to be pretty commonplace around here.

lemmer

There is one of these in my neighborhood, a silver one. I would love to have it. My wife hates it (and she generally loves BMW).

kyfdx

My wife hates anything that vaguely resembles a wagon, hatchback or a mini-van.. But, she loves SUVs... Go figure... I've tried explaining it to her, but you know how that goes..

That said... I'd rather have the M roadster.. especially '01 or later when they got the bump to 316 HP.. But, those are seriously expensive.. The earlier ones with the 240 HP engine are starting to get relatively cheap..