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

gsemike

I just moved last weekend and am now back riding the LIRR to and from NYC. The 40 mile or so above ground trek provides me an interesting vantage point to see what's going on in the back lots of some body shops. A couple of interesting vehicles:

- A fairly decent looking Delorean. Only problem that I saw was a missing back window. However, the car looked like it was sitting for quite sometime and the window wasn't taped up probably causing alot more damage. How much would a back window for that car run?

- An early 70s Cougar with the rear jacked up to the moon to accomodate his 14 inch 50s mounted on pitted Cragars. The riveted on snorkel hood scoop and missing front bumper were the final touches that scream, "Let's rock"

Mr_Shiftright

There's some guy who bought up all the Delorean dealer parts after their collective ritual suicide. Putting windows in a Delorean in might actually help the rain leaks a bit but won't cure them. Such a sad story. It could have been a decent car with the right engine and built in America.

bigworld2000

Never saw one before. Looks like it's a Japanese rebadge of some sort.
http://www.moderngroup.com/ModernShop/Used/Cushman.htm

gsemike

The Delorean was built in Ireland, right? How did it end up there? Do they build any cars in Ireland?

Mr_Shiftright

It ended up there because of massive subsidies (basically free money) promised to Delorean if he built the car there. The idea was to bring employment to a blighted area. Unfortunately this gave him a willing enough (they needed the work) but undisciplined and untrained work force. But yes, it is listed as an "Irish" car. I'm sure in the deep dark past they made British cars under license no doubt somewhere in Ireland.

The whole thing is so wildly misconceived one wonders where everyone's brain was at the time.

jrosasmc

Shifty can any Delorean be made to run trouble-free like today's Toyotas, Hondas etc?

Mr_Shiftright

Nah, it's an old car, like any old car you have to keep an eye on it. But it's just a generic Euro V-6, nothing exotic about it. So I'm sure you could do short trips with it no problem. Don't think I'd strike out cross country though.

au94

I've seen Cushman "trucks" before being used as maintanence vehicles around golf courses, but never a van. Did I read the price right? 11k???

boomchek

In British columbia (i think the whole canada) the rule is if a car is 15 years or older you can import it here without any strict emission or safety controls.

We have quite a few Nissan Skylines here, some european cars like the Citroens 2CV (I tihnk thats what they're called), and a few of those mini mini vans from Japan. They are about the size of the Scions but with sliding doors etc...

stickguy

rare to see in any case, but this one was a full out drag race car! It was on a trailer next to me this evening when I was stuck in traffic.

Giant slicks, huge wing, parachute, the whole enchalada. The body though looked very stock.

No idea what the engine was in it though. Wish I could have seen it up close.

Mr_Shiftright

Aren't 510s great? 35 years later and you still see them racing in drags, SCCA and AutoX.

Gets my vote for the best Japanese car EVER. (the original two door coupe I mean, not the "newer" 510).

stickguy

I always loved these cars. This was a "real" one (gen 1). Still looked better than most cars made today.

If I could find a clean one that wasn't a rediculous price (assuming there are any left not totally rusted out), I would snap it up. Then probably Brock-ize it. Front lip spoiler, set of minilites, some suspenrion twaeks, and good to go.

ghulet

....I can't remember the last time I saw a 510 that wasn't either heavily modified, a basket case, or a four door. Oh yeah, and some have the strange-for-Japanese column-shift automatic. My parents bought one new ('71, orange, coupe, 4-speed), they both loved that car.

ghulet

Let's see, this week I saw the following:

*2-door stick shift Pontiac T1000 (Chevette clone)
*69 Cadillac Sedan de Ville, lavender with hideous oversized gold rims
*STUNNING burgandy and silver two-tone early Cordoba with wire wheel covers, just amazing, looked like it came out of a 1976 time capsule, THE disco-mobile
*67 Plymouth Fury four-door hardtop, white, in about the condition you would have expected to be as a daily driver about thirty years ago

boomchek

i think i read an article in a magazine somehwere that soneone stuffed a new 350Z motor in one of those 510's.

But I also agree that the original 510 is one of the coolest cars from japan. very clean looks and lightweight.

imidazol97

I had forgotten about Cordobas. They were great. Does anyone have a memorable picture to post?

fintail

This morning I saw a beautiful black 560SEL with chrome wheels. It looked brand new, not pimped or ran down in any way. 126s are lovely cars.

Yesterday I saw what I think was an 80s AMG car. It was a 126 LWB sedan with a full bodykit, period style spoiler, and a SEC grille. It was kind of a reddish burgundy and it looked in showroom condition.

This morning I also saw a late 90s Rolls, the last of the old Spirit/Spur sedans, the kind with an updated front air dam and wheels. It was driven by a couple of VERY old men - in their 80s if anything. It was black and of course spotless.

fintail

I don't see the point, but the old RR junkyard in the background is cool

Allard with the good engine

Worthless anywhere but England

If I had this, I just might detail it and tidy it up...but not restore it

Shifty-mobile

Put down the crackpipe

Crude and funny

It's got a look

Probably one of the best left, and it's not even a runner. Surprise!

Classy

Speaking of Lancia Flaminia

Nice overpriced 60 Edsel

And as it is ebay, here's another just like it

Nice last of the DeSotos...bizarre-ness eveywhere

Pretty early Riviera, interesting dashboard

Gorgeous Eldorado Brougham, amazing how a big finned boat can seem elegant. I love the interior too.

Pristine finned New Yorker

One for Andre

New Dodge Coronet

Unusual Zephyr

Low mileage high priced W108

This is nice looking

This is pretty cool and very unusual nowadays

Seems like a small engine for such a car

Weirdo wagon

"Okay here is the Road Runner that Wally [sic] Coyote caught and kicked the crap out of"

Pretty (for the time) GP

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jrosasmc

That blue '77 Grand Prix is so Andre! I bet that he would be drooling to get his hands on that car right now... :P

Mr_Shiftright

Actually a desirable car and you watch, it'll sell for more than you think.

I think all the sellers who have "0' bids after 5 days should have a large clown face sent onto their computer screens when they log into eBay next time, and it should say "WHAT DOES THIS TELL YOU?!!!!"

Armstrong Siddeley -- shoot, I'd buy it at the current bid of $1,950 but not a penny more.

I LOVE that NSU Spider!

'66 Mercedes Time Warp--- the question is, is an original 37,000 mile old sedan worth 5X the book value? Probably not. Be nice for $3,500 though.

57 Cadillac Brougham -- nice nice car (if you like that sort of thing) but GEEZ, is the seller really trying for more than the $33,000 bid. Damn fool should drop the reserve right now and he'll get more if he does that. He's right at retail now, so anything over that is gravy. Surprised it bid this high so fast. Hmmmm.....

57 New Yorker---should bid out around $21,500.

'63 Riviera -- low reserve, smart seller. Should bid out at...hmm....$12,500?

Lancia Flaminia -- no way, the seller wants #2 money for a #4 car....ain't gonna happen, especially with the notoriously cheap-skate Lancia cult...they're worse than Studebaker bidders if you can believe that.

boomchek

Love that 1966 Olds Eighty Eight wagon. Beautiful and clean lines.

Looks like it's unbelievably mint shape too. It looks cleaner than my month old Civic.

I guess that tells me that none of my cars will ever become collectible the way I treat them. :sick:

imidazol97

The Brougham is a jewel. Did it really have two four barrel carburetors--it was before my time so I don't remember.... grin.

>ENGINE - Car has not run since 1998. The following steps have been taken to get the car running again:
- new battery was installed (once installed, all lights shone brightly),
- all spark plugs were pulled and each cylinder was lubricated,
- new plugs were installed,
- new distributor cap, points and wires were installed,
- both 4 barrel carburators were removed and rebuilt with carburator rebuild kits,

andys120

I LOVE that NSU Spider!

Me too, the Frua styling makes it look like a baby Maserati but did you notice that the seller "don't know" which motor it has? If it's a Wankel, fuhgedaboudit!

Mr_Shiftright

I don't think they put a Wankel in those...but if they did, you can just throw it over a fence, useless thing that it is, and put in a Mazda rotary engine.

TWO 4-barrels? Talk about over-carburation! One is plenty for 400 HP Chevy street rod engines so I don't think we need more for this car. Geez, you'd have to perfect mid-air refueling to drive this thing.

jrosasmc

Is over-carburetion a bad thing in most cases?

lancerfixer

Depends. Do you like watching your gas gauge noticably move toward "E" while accelerating?

Mr_Shiftright

Yeah, it's a bad thing...a REAL bad thing...aside from wasting gas, the car runs like crap except at WOT, and often there's so much unburned fuel it will wash the oil off the cylinder walls. This is one reason why most 50s and 60s engine need rebuilding at 100,000 miles or less--that and their tendency to carbon up with the fuels of the day.

This is why Shiftright gets crazy when people take SU carburetors off their MGs and Volvos and put on Webers. If you aren't racing, you don't need a Weber. Sometimes a Weber is justified when the stock carburetors are just too damn cranky (Porsche 912 fer instance).

grbeck

An unrestored 1963 Dodge Polara station wagon on the road between Dover and Dillsburg. The condition was nothing special...it looked like a daily driver.

A white MGA (with the top down) pulling out of the local Burger King parking lot. Once again, the condition wasn't anything spectacular, either good or bad...it looked like a daily driver. It was driven by an older couple.

A very clean 1969 blue Mustang Mach I driven by a 50-something gentleman was pulling out of the parking lot of a government building in downtown Harrisburg. Very nice...too nice, in fact, to drive in rush hour traffic.

imidazol97

Saw it this morning. V8. The colors were the orangish brown and dark silver on the rear quarter panel top inside the moldings. I rarely see the orange brown on these cars at shows. I'd to think if that was original or not. The dark silver really set it off. Those were the good old days. No pearl blizzard vs pearl whiteout choices.

The '55 was followed by a black 56. It had been modded some.

fintail

I am sure it had dual quads, yeah. I also wouldn't be surprised at tri-power, although I dunno if it existed in 57.

I am surprised GM didn't put FI in the Brougham, seeing as it was meant to be the very top of the line, and GM had the technology. IIRC in 58 FI and air ride both were available on Pontiacs.

Mr_Shiftright

Yeah but the FI wasn't very good for everyday driving. I think it would have brought grief to Cadillac. It worked better in a car that was going WOT than putting around town.

fintail

I thought the FI was OK in those old cars. Once in awile you'll see a 57 Chevy or 57-58 Pontiac with it, not to mention the period Vettes . Maybe they should have developed it more...as on old MB, FI is a very good thing.

Mr_Shiftright

No the FI was fussy and yes, they could have developed it. It was sort of a weird system though as I recall. Benz came out with FI in 1955 and it was bullet-proof, although it tends to foul plugs if you putt putt.

jrosasmc

That means old injected Benzes would like to be driven the "Shiftright way," which means full-throttle acceleration at all times, right?

fintail

I can say from experience that if you sit in a 30+ minute traffic jam in my FI fintail, it begins to foul out and acts like it's going to stall. But his the gas for a couple minutes, and it's all fixed.

But I'll still take it...I've known a couple people with 220S (dual carb) fintails, and those things can be miserable. In my 10+ years with the fintail, I've had to adjust the idle speed now and then, and once I cleaned the cold start solenoid. That's it.

ageorge

Cordobas were great what? Boat anchors? Must have been the worst car, remember fine corithin leather lol

ageorge

The bmw 2002tiis with Kugelfischer mechanical FI were, and are as I have one, pretty good. the pumps still run hundreds of thousand of miles. Occasionally cold start problems but it fast and sassy.

andre1969

weren't bad cars when you consider the timeframe. With the '75-79 models, at least, they were no worse than their GM and Ford rivals, although GM got a definite advantage on handling and fuel economy, and space efficiency, with their downsized '78 intermediates. Cordobas of that timeframe could actually be quite luxurious and comfy, when equipped right. It was probably also one of the first domestics to offer leather for the masses. Before the Cordoba, leather interiors were mainly the domain of Caddies and Lincolns, the Imperial and New Yorker Brougham, and once in a blue moon, an Olds Ninetey-Eight or maybe a Buick Electra.

The '80-83 Cordoba, and sister Mirada, were good looking cars IMO, but were poorly put together. They were also big and heavy compared to the likes of the downsized Monte Carlo and T-bird. Basically they were about the size and weight of a Caprice coupe, but only had the interior room of a midsize. The base slant six was grossly overmatched in these cars, and the 318 barely adequate. There was a 360 offered for 1980 that, in 4-bbl setup made the Cordoba/Mirada one of the quickest intermediates around, although that's not saying much. They put out something like 180-185 hp, which sounds laughable, but when you figure the typical '80 T-bird 302 might've had 129 hp, and a Monte with a 305 (and by 1980 more and more of them were getting 229's and 267's, or the dreaded Diesel) might've had 140-150, that suddenly left the Cordoba/Mirada about the closest thing left to a musclecar in 1980!

imidazol97

Cordobas were a luxury feel automobile. They were heavy and smooth. Build was a D-.

>Monte with a 305 (and by 1980 more and more of them were getting 229's and 267's, or the dreaded Diesel)

Monte Carlos had a diesel???? I've forgotten that. Guess the excursion in diesels for US market was something worth forgetting for GMers.
Do I recall wrong but didn't the Chevette have a diesel offered?

andre1969

Monte Carlos, and all of GM's RWD intermediates, had a Diesel option up through 1985. Full-sized RWD cars were limited to the 350 Diesel, but there was a Diesel variant of the 260 V-8 offered for a couple years in the midsized cars, and also a 262 (4.3) Diesel V-6 (the 350 with two cylinders chopped off) in later years. The 4.3 V-6 also found its way into the FWD Electra/98/DeVille in 1985, and I believe it also ended up in the Celebrity/6000/Century/Ciera.

The Chevette did have a Diesel option as well. IIRC it was a 1.8 Isuzu unit that put out something like 52 hp.

From what I've read, most of the GM Diesel's bad rep came from the 1979 and earlier 350's. The 1980-85's were supposed to be much more reliable, and I don't think the 260 V-8 and 262 V-6 were particularly bad. Just slow. Either one only had like 85 hp, and when you figure that even the 350 Diesel only had like 200 ft-lb of torque, it must've been really bad on those smaller engines.

lemko

...all at once this past Sunday as it was the Fall Meet for my chapter of the Cadillac-LaSalle Club. The most obscure was a pristine 1931 Cadillac V-12 roadster. Other oddities were a 1977 Cadillac-Superior Ambulance, a 1974 Cadillac flower car, a 1988 Cadillac S&S hearse, and a 1962 Cadillac Town Sedan - a short-deck version of the Sedan DeVille marketed to city dwellers.

As for my 1989 Cadillac Brougham? She took First Place in the 1980-89 class.

lemmer

You would have hated my MGB - it was a 1977 with a Weber.

It wasn't too bad, really. The guy I bought it from had done about $2,500 of suspension work to it to undo what the federal regulations had done to it. The engine had been breathed on a little bit. It actually felt kind of fast as you worked your way through the gears, until you were in fourth and realized you were only going 45 mph or so. I think it got in the mid teens for MPG. I really liked that car.

Mr_Shiftright

Well on a '77 MGB I'd certainly excuse anyone who put on a Weber...they were so emissions-strangled by then, it was kinda pathetic, and a Weber helped a lot--even if it sucked gas...I know a guy who completely re-worked a 1980 model, engine, suspension, etc.---made it the car MG should have built. It ran and handled beautifully.

lemmer

That is one thing about the South that you might see as good or bad - Pretty much all older cars have every bit of the emissions stuff removed. I bought that car in Atlanta, and even in a reasonably big city, it was exempt from any testing, visual inspections, etc.

fintail

Monte Carlo diesel badge from a car at a local lot



It was in decent shape but poorly detailed. They wanted a grand for it IIRC

jaserb

I'm no NSU expert, but I'm guessing that that car DID come with a Wankel:



Mazda still uses the same styling motif on the RX8. That NSU with a Renesis would be a whole lotta fun.

-Jason

fintail

I can't resist these

kyfdx

Okay.. now, I'm officially depressed...

Mr_Shiftright

I wanna see the needle bouncing off 300 kph, that's a man's territory these days. Of course, this will be on a track, of course.....

fintail

For Shifty....Brabus tuned W220 S class



260kph is fast enough for me, in a C class

126s can go fast too



W113 SL