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I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today! (Archived)
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When I bought my '79 Continental about 10 years ago it still had the factory 8-track... naturally I went searching through my grandfather's house looking for some tapes. Lo and behold I found tons and played them for a few weeks, until I broke down and put in a CD player.
2025 Ram 1500 Laramie 4x4 / 2023 Mercedes EQE 350 4Matic
Anyway, my Cadillac DTS has a port for an Ipod as does my sister's Ford Focus.
MK9
looks good but needs a "choke" I thought these were FI
I think he should just really scrap it, no one will miss it
A bit much for this XJ6 Coupe?
Don't see any of these around anymore
Targa style convertible XJS
Here's a nicer XJS but waaay more money
I can have this newer one for even less
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
I had to pop into local CL:
In England, this would be restored by now
Late XJS for a fraction of the one above
Or if you prefer visiting your local mechanic with the top down
Something depreciates faster than a German tuned car, cool
What's cool is it still has the same look and generation as new ones currently sold, so nobody will know you paid the price of a compact car to own it.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
XJ Coupe --- rare, yes. Valuable----maybe to a fanatic in the UK, but not here. Figure 20% premium over an XJ and that's about it. Oddity, but not worth that price or even close. Not even in England I don't think.
Jag 3.4L -- just doesn't have the panache, desirability or get up and go of a 3.8. Worth less than half of a 3.8 and hardly any chance of appreciation in the future. Not a good choice for restoration. Investment grade "D".
But still...in England they will restore anything.
Either get a 2003 XJ Super V8 or a 2005 XJR.
The Aluminum body Super V8s haven't depreciated enough yet and they started out much higher in price.
Bill
This upholstery never caught on
Lemko or Andre dream car
Survivor from the age of excess
And its brother from the same seller
Don't click here if you have a weak stomach
80s Mopar
Weirdo wagon
If you have a dog named 'Flash'
CMX
"Restored"
Nice late fintail
Dynamic
Early airbag
Parts for this can be found at any corner store
And this is even easier to fix...and no point shipping it home
Car bodies, chainsaw engines, Ossi style
59 Caddy -- world's most grotesquely designed car? My candidate anyway.
Peugeot 403 wagon --charming little car. I hope someone saves it even though it's throwing money in a furnace.
67 Fintail -- I like that color on that car. Bid is getting close to all the money in the month of August 2009. This isn't 2007, when $7500 might have been possible.
60 Dodge -- the SECOND homeliest car in the world? Also one of my candidates.
73 Deville Custom---kinda trippy. I rather like actually. Value? Arghh...hard to say without inspecting it. What will it bid to? I'm predicting about $55,000.
How weird. No name of builder, no AC, no shots of the engine!!! Pretty presumptuous given the numbers he's throwing out in the ad.
i drove right by that bank in my mustang just as the police were getting there.
good samaritan
59 Caddy -- world's most grotesquely designed car? My candidate anyway
Nah, not with these around>
Or these>
In fact as I think about it the Caddy (which is hideous) wasn't even the most grotesque car of 1959, remember these>
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
For some reason, the 1960 Dodge really appeals to me. Normally, for any given year in that timeframe, I tend to go for a DeSoto, but in 1960, the Dodge really does it for me, although it's mainly the bigger "real" Dodges, the Matador and Polara. IMO, the Dart is really more of a prettied-up Plymouth, although I wouldn't mind having one.
There's something about the bigger 1960 Dodges that, to me, seem more upscale and luxurious that what Dodge usually came to represent. Now a 1960 Matador was at the same price point as a 1959 Royal, starting around $2900 for a 4-door sedan, while a Polara came in around where the 1959 Custom Royal did...basing around $3140 for a 4-door sedan. So maybe these Dodges really weren't more luxurious, but at the same time, the Dart was smaller than the 1959 Coronet had been, and for the most part cheaper. A 1959 Coronet V-8 4-door sedan started around $2700, which is where a 1960 Dodge Dart Phoenix V-8 came in. But the Dart also comprised the cheaper Seneca and Pioneer lines. Meanwhile, DeSoto was moving downscale, and losing its larger, more luxurious models, and the bulk of Chrysler sales were the cheaper Windsor lineup, so maybe these bigger Dodges seemed luxurious, because their peers were starting to drop off?
For 1961, the Matador was dropped and the Polara moved down in price to where the Matador had been, starting around $2966 for a 4-door sedan. Then for 1962, the Polara shrunk up to midsize proportions, while the Custom 880 took over, starting at $2964 for a 4-door sedan...same price as a Chrysler Newport.
Oh, and I definitely like that '755 Electra! Back in 2001, I found a '75 for sale locally, black with a black interior, for something like $1500. Looked really nice, except for the plastic endcaps for the rear quarters were missing. It had that same, nice diagonal patttern on the seats, which I think was the Limited trim.
That old Adenauer is nice, too. I'm really impressed that they made a 4-door hardtop like that, where even the quarter windows in the C-pillar roll down! It almost doesn't look like there would be any place for them to go though, what with the wheel well and all. I wonder if they pull out, rather than roll down, and then you have to stow them in the trunk, like a T-top?
By 1959 I think the Imperial was getting pretty bad, too. While it still used the gorgeous 1957 body shell, the front-end was just getting too heavy-handed and clunky looking.
I actually don't mind those Lincolns that much, at least the 1959-60 styles, which seemed to have cleaner front-ends than the '58. But a Caddy just seems so much more sleek and modern. The '58-60 Lincoln looks like someone tried to sculpt a brick. And the reverse-slant rear windows always had awkward proportions IMO, although I realize that was necessary to allow for a roll-down rear window.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
The Caddy lowrider appears to be well done, but like Shifty said, it's hard to judge it unless you can see it in person.
Monaco cop car - very cool.
Restored 82 Ramapge. It looks really cool, like a brand new old car. But why would anyone want to restore that?
Two Trabants I liked too. I think they sold for a fair price. Good luck with parts unless you go to Eastern Europe.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
The 60 Dodge is just an unique style that tends to polarize people one way or the other. I believe they sold alright because of aggressive pricing.
If you love big boats, you can't help but love the Duece and a Quarter! They pretty much drove as well as the Caddies and often looked better.
Maybe it would be cheaper to restore a Rampage than a car with real collector value? But therein lies the problem.
While THIS BOOK was focusing on 1958 cars, it was also talking about the '59 Caddy type of excess.
Some interesting older vehicles there:
63 Chevy Nova, parked beside a 65 or so Mustang convertible. Must be same owner. Both light blue period colors.
An early 80s Tempo, with a ton of dust so it looks like it hasn't been driven in years.
A Jeep Jeepster, two tone white and blue, no top, but looks to be fully restored.
Across from it is a new Jeep Wrangler Rubicon totally done up with neat accessories. Probably same owner too.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
Not to my eyes. I always thought the '55 restyling transformed Pontiac from a safe, conservative lower-middle market brand to a youthful, aspirational one...one you finally didn't have to make apologies for. The same could be said for Chevy for '55, whereas Olds, Buick and Cadillac were already inspirational. They just became more so in '55.
The whole Chrysler Corp. line-up went through a similar transformation as Pontiac for '55.
Fords, Mercurys and Lincolns had been hip and aspirational since '49, and earlier with the hot rod set.
1955 was a watershed year for car styling--possibly the most dramatic one year transformation in automotive history, all across the board, for just about every domestic maker.
Even some of the Europeans got the bit in their teeth in 1955.
Yeah, but the press isn't always in synch with true public opinions. The 59 Caddy turned heads (maybe from amazement - just kidding!) and you saw them a lot in parades and stuff. Now the public did not like the Edsel.
I can't think of another single year that has been even close.
1949 was a big change year for the big 3, but it embraced the 'pontoon' kind of style, which I am sure seemed very modern in 1943.
1977-79 or so was another time of change, sharp angular lines again, and downsizing.
Then 1985-86 or so when everything went aero, and then again in 1993-95 when roundedness was the law of the land.
Since 2000 there has been no consistent change, and everything seems random. Roundness and sharpness meet, strange body contours, and designers who don't seem to understand homogeneity.
The main thing 1955 gave us was hot new engines across the board, brighter colors, and record sales, as the recession of 1954 lifted.
For 1957, in contrast, everybody was all-new, with the exception of Chevy, Pontiac, Lincoln, and the few independents who were still hanging around.
For 1965, all the standard-sized cars, with the exeption of Imperial and Lincoln, were all-new, plus we got the Mustang. The Dodge/Plymouth intermediates were heavily revised.
I don't really give the GTO as much credit as many others might. In those days, GM really wasn't a leader. However, they were such an excellent follower that they'd often beat out the "true" leaders. For example, the Riviera, Toronado, and Eldorado were responses to the 4-seat T-bird. Ford and Mopar beat GM to the intermediate market by two years, even if Mopar did it accidentally, with "full-sized" cars that were downsized about 15 years prematurely. Ford and Mopar both beat out GM in conventional compacts by a few years, as initially, GM tried to go off the wall with the Corvair. We wouldn't see the Chevy II until 1962, two years after the Valiant and Falcon. And as for the whole musclecar thing, the idea of putting a bigger engine in a smaller car was nothing new. That was the whole concept behind the Buick Century and Olds 88. And Mopar's "accidental" intermediates of 1962-63 could be had with some brutal engines that would send a GTO crying home to Mommy. All GM did was coin the term "musclecar"...they really didn't invent the field.
GM actually did beat Ford to the market in one area...the sporty compact. The Corvair pretty much failed as a mass-market compact, but the sporty Corsa and Monza variants were pretty popular, and prompted Ford to take the idea of a sporty compact one step further, with the Mustang.
Actually, now that I think of it, instead of the 1958 T-bird, I think Studebaker really should get credit for inventing the personal luxury coupe, with the likes of the 1953 President Speedster or whatever it was called...basically, the Loewy coupes that would become the Hawk a few years later.
GM rarely forged the way into new territory back in those days. However, what they'd usually do is go in after others had gone before, and do it better. Or, so their marketing would have us believe.
I think 1965 was the last year, though, where so much would be so new, all at once. The market was just becoming too fragmented. Once upon a time, there were just "standard" sized cars. But now we had full-size, midsize, compact, ponycars based on compacts, personal luxury coupes, etc. And the market would only become more fragmented as years went by. Plus, they started dragging out the design cycles longer.
The 1965 GM full-size design would last through 1970, although it saw a heavy restyle for 1967 and 1969. Mopar's 1965 design lasted through 1968, with a heavy restyle for 1967. Ford also managed to stretch their '65 style out through '68.
Then, GM's next full-size design lasted from 1971-76, with less change than the '65-70 had seen. And their next design, new for 1977, would last in its basic form all the way through 1996! While the 1991 Caprice looked radically different, it was basically just a new body dropped down on the old 1977 frame.
I think 1977 also serves as a significant year, ushering in a wave of downsizing, and where GM was suddenly leading, and in a big way. But even here, it's not like the Big Three would issue competing designs all in the same year. GM downsized their big cars for 1977, and it took Ford/Mopar 2 years to follow. When it comes to midsized cars, it's more muddled. GM issued downsized midsizers for 1978. Ford and Mopar took what had been compacts, and started marketing them as midsized cars. For example, the 1980 Granada/Monarch was advertised as Ford's "midsized" car, even if the "compact Fairmont/Zephyr were actually roomier inside. And at Mopar, the Diplomat/LeBaron were the "midsized" cars, while the virtually identical Aspen/Volare were the "compact" cars.
I guess as fragmented as the market is nowadays, plus the longer product lifecycles, we'll never see a repeat of the magic that happened in 1955, 56, 65, or even, gasp, 1977!
It's not all bad, at least cars don't look dated so quickly anymore.
That's true. If anything, with cars getting taller, stubbier, and with less glass area, they're making the older cars look MORE modern, in my eye at least.
I think another thing that kills the magic these days is that with the internet, all the spy photos in the buff rags, etc, we often see the new cars a couple years before they hit the streets. And the concepts are more radical looking than the watered-down actuality. So, once it's actually on the market, it already seems like it's been out a few years.
It's hard to stay excited about anything new, anymore, unless it is some kind of semi-exotic or higher. Even with hyped cars like the Camaro....it was cool when I saw my first one, but now I will barely look. I drove by the local MB dealer today, they had maybe 6 new E-class...wasn't enough for me to really even slow down.
Yeah, I think they might have gone a little too far with cost-cutting on the '78 intermediates. First thing that pops into my mind is the stationary rear door windows on the 4-door sedans and wagons. I guess by that time we were used to coupes with stationary rear windows, but doing that to a 4-door was just pushing it. And I think they went too far with those undersized 200 Chevy and 196 Buick V-6es. I mean, I had an '80 Malibu with a 229 V-6 and an '82 Cutlass Supreme with a 231, and I shudder when I think that there were SLOWER engines in these types of cars!
I always wondered what it would've been like if GM had downsized the cars, but kept the same engine sizes? IIRC, you could get a 350 in a Malibu in 1978-79. I've heard that it was only offered in the '79 wagon, but then I've also heard that it could be had across the board, I guess if you had enough clout and could pull the right strings. And you could get an Olds 350 in the Cutlass Supreme coupe, but only in the Hurst model I think. But just imagine if you could still get 400's, 454's, and 455's in these cars? Those things would have been terrors on the streets back then!
> I mean, I had an '80 Malibu with a 229 V-6 and an '82 Cutlass Supreme with a 231, and I shudder when I think that there were SLOWER engines in these types of cars!
Was part of the problem the EPA requirements at the time and trying to maintain good gas mileage while cutting those awful pollutants that were going to cause global cooling and an impending Ice Age!
They used long axle ratios to try to maintain better gas mileage and that really hurt acceleration. I remember thinking how my 1980 Cutlass with a 260 V8 was a real disappointment on the acceleration end and made very little gain in gas mileage for it. My previous car was a 350 Quadrajet Cutlass Supreme Coupe.
This example I saw Saturday was a little earlier, but it's a 289 that I'd had in a Mustang pulling a full-sized Ford. I can't believe it was very peppy. A little motor in a big car for gas mileage.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Did they still have individual Olds/Buick/Chevy 350's in 78? I know GM got into all kinds of legal hassles when they started inserting Chevy 350's into Olds (Chevymobiles) in the mid seventies and thought the 350 went generic soon thereafter based I think on the Chevy unit?
65...yep, another good year that "cleaned up" a lot of cars, especially the incredible awkwardness of 1963 models. The Chevy, the Buick Riviera, the '65 Poncho, even the rather nicely done Studebaker Gran Tourismo (if only on a Studebaker budget)...all good. And lets' not forget the very handsome 1965 Corvair, which even today, takes the prize for the best looking 4-door American hardtop ever designed.
1977 is, to me, if anything, an act of desperation with no heritage. Nothing interests me in American styling from 1972 up to about 1985.
Yeah, all four 350's were still around in 1978, although that would be the last year for the Pontiac 350. The Buick and Olds 350 lasted through 1980 (1985 for the Olds Diesel 350).
The Olds 350 was the cleanest running of them, so it got substituted for the Buick and Pontiac engines in California and some other areas with stricter emissions, such as some high altitude areas. The Chevy 350 wasn't as clean, but clean enough I guess. And for whatever reason, Olds gave the Cutlass first priority for the Olds 350 in 1977, so when they started running out, they'd substitute other 350's in the Delta and 98. Another problem, although it probably wasn't viewed as one at first, was that the Cutlass was wildly popular in 1977. While downsized big cars cannibalized some sales of the older midsize models at Chevy/Pontiac/Buick, the Cutlass went on to sell even MORE cars in 1977!
GM probably wouldn't have been sued over that engine swap thing, if it wasn't for their advertising. Chevy, Buick, and Pontiac didn't mention their engines in their advertising, but Olds specifically touted the superiority of their "Rocket" V-8, and a lot of people bought their Deltas and 98s based on that, and were understandably miffed when they discovered they got stuck with a Chevy engine.
Oh, as for the Cutlass Supreme with the 350, I found some interesting tidbits on it. Turns out it was just 1979, the Hurst/Olds W30 model. There was some kind of EPA loophole where if that engine/tranny combo was certified for any production model that year, then it could be used in any other car, provided they built less than 2500. Well, that 350 engine was used in the Delta, 98, and California versions of the Catalina/Bonneville, LeSabre, and Electra. So they were able to stuff it in the Cutlass, and ran off 2,499 copies. Or so says Wikipedia.
Purely from the standpoint of styling 1957 was an even better year for Chrysler Corp who managed to outdo the big boys and make the best looking Detroiters of '57, '58 and '59 (damning w faint praise?)
OTOH the MoPar. styling started to go downhill in 1960 and by the time GM and Ford were starting to get their act together in '61, ChryCo was making the ugliest cars ever seen anywhere at anytime.>
('61 Plymouths looked even worse!) :surprise: :sick:
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
Is that some kind of Canadian/export model? By and large, the 1961 Dodges weren't really ugly, and probably the most conventional Mopars out there that year; the only really odd thing being the reverse-slant tailfin. But even there, I think the reverse slant fin ties in rather well with the downward crease in the front fender...
My mechanic recently got ahold of a 1961 Plymouth that has 1959 Chevy taillights grafted on. Believe it or not, it's actually a big improvement!