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I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today! (Archived)
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Ebay Vega
Multiple air-fresheners in the pics; never a good sign.
http://forum.atlasrr.com/discussion/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=51388
"What is the "Vert-a-pact" option (VK5)?
In short, it added parts to the cars so they could be shipped, by rail, packed vertically, to save space.
The vert-a-pac rail cars required that the cars be able to be driven on and driven off with no mechanical work needed. This drive-on/drive-off requirement was difficult to meet because all liquids had to be aboard, so the VK5 RPO was created. Modifications included:
- a baffle in the oil pan to prevent flooding the forward cylinders with oil. - off-center filler caps on the battery. - a plug in the fuel-tank vent line. - an overflow hose from the float bowl to the charcoal canister. - tilting the windshield-washer bottle 45 degrees. - plastic spacers between the splash pans and the engine to reinforce the motor mounts."
Seems like a lot of work and room for error by the unloader/dealer at the point of delivery.
Here's a bunch of Caddys for you
Saw some good cars too - everything from Ford T (I think that passed us in New Hampshire) to a number of 50's/60's classics plus I got one morning at the Owls Head museum, which was great - they had an auction there a couple of days earlier and some of the cars that had been sold were still there awaiting collection etc, so that was great fun..
As I said though I saw more rare cars (to me) just by driving around - bear in mind I virtually never see Acura/Infinity/Geo/Scion/Saturn, etc... Also you have whole ranges of cars we never see - like that massive Saab thing, the 9-7X, which is unknown in Europe.
The hire car we started with was a Hyundai Accent, thanks to a mix-up with Avis who tried to tell me that was the medium category car when it was really too small for us, and a grade lower than we paid for. Also gutless - it is not possible to drive that thing with Automatic transmission and air-con - there was no power left to move the thing... My 1.2 diesel turbo Corsa at home (manual transmission) even when I turn on the air-con, is a lot faster thanks to the turbo.. Anyway, I managed to damage the Hyundai when I ploughed into a curb while parking it in the Acadia National Park and gashed the sidewall of the tyre.. It only had a space saver, and good old Avis didn't want us to get the tyre replaced, but instead we had to drive all the way to their nearest office - Portland airport - where they swapped us from the sublime to the ridiculous - we got a Dodge Charger... That was certainly bigger,although I got the impression they gave us it because nobody else wanted it, thanks to a great dent in the drivers side doors... Also it had a terrible noise coming from the diff, which rumbled merrily through what had suddenly become quite narrow roads - plus it seemed to be more than a little thirsty. Amazingly we found the boot/trunk was no bigger really than on the Hyundai, thanks to wheel arches the size of a small house, but we lumbered around the country, till we got back to Logan airport. I never realised how much you need those big parking spaces you have marked out everywhere, and I appreciate this is still not as big as many of the everyday cars of the past, or most trucks and People Carriers now..
We really wanted something about half way between the two cars, and if I'd had any choice in each transaction we would have got a better deal... Great fun driving on your roads though - you've even got a few roundabouts in New Hampshire, at least, to make us feel homesick .
Wonderful trip, and such a friendly place everywhere we went - even if the £/$ rate made us feel a little impoverished...(still it's better than the £/euro would have been)
The 9-7 X is virtually unknown here, too. That's what happens when GM meddles :sick:
I'll be on the other side of the pond next month (although not in the UK), and I know I'll be going nuts at all of the weird-to-me vehicles in everyday traffic.
I still have random turn signal failures though...I am just living with it. I think I need valve seals or some kind of adjustment soon, too.
glad you enjoyed your visit, other than the rental car situation.
went to the avis site and they only list 1 vehicle in each category.
usually i use hertz. have had pretty good luck(no problems) with them.
i feel you were mistreated and i will not do business with avis.
over here, it can be somewhat unpleasant but, the 'squeaky wheel gets the grease'.
when you said 'Ford T', you didn't mean you got passed by a 'Model T'?
1. Don't drive it, ever
2. Spend $1.50 a mile to drive it
3. Have 40 owners, each one giving up after a year.
They are in this respect like Ferrari, which are also typically low mileage cars. Other low milers typically are Viper and to some extent Corvette, Lambo, Maserati, etc.
The exception in the "exotics" would be Porsche, for which it is not usual for me to see 200K ++ cars all the time.
Yes, we do have roundabouts in NH, in fact we're getting more of them as traffic engineers discover they're safer than normal intersections with lights. We call 'em "rotaries".
I'll have to catch up with you when we get to your side of the pond. :shades:
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
You make an interesting distinction between pre-war and post-war. Could it be that pre-WWII, and maybe until, say, the early '50s the relative price and cost-to-own differentials between a RR versus more common luxury sedans, such as Cadillac, Lincoln, Packard, Mercedes or Jaguar, was less than it is today? What I'm suggesting is that instead of costing five or six times as much per mile to drive a RR compared to a lesser luxury car, maybe in the '20s, '30s, '40s and early '50s it might have been three times as expensive. That would still have made driving a RR very expensive, but less prohibitive than now, even for people of means. Just thinking out loud here. Maybe the cost differential hasn't expanded.
You wrote, "The exception in the 'exotics' would be Porsche, for which it is not usual for me to see 200K ++ cars all the time." I think you meant "not unusual."
If that's the case, is it because Porsches are much more enjoyable to drive and to live with day-to-day than the other exotics?
I rented a Viper once for five hours, and after a couple of hours I had had enough. The experience was fun, but I'd never own one, no matter how much money I had. I imagine a Corvette, especially a base model with automatic, would be a better daily driver, or even occasional driver, than a Viper, but I'm thinking that a Porsche would trump the Corvette for this purpose.
Yes, the Porsche 911 is a lot more comfortable, reliable and durable than other "exotics" and this is probably why they build up such high mileages. Before the 911 got into water-cooling (996) AWD and all the other gadgetry, a 911 was not an expensive car to maintain--presuming you didn't blow it up by being careless or negligent of course. If you add in durability as part of "cost to own" I'd even venture that an 80s Porsche 911 is cheaper to run than an 80s C4 Corvette. Corvettes of that era age in dog years.
Modern Corvettes are pretty comfy to drive, especially with the automatic, which many of them come with.
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
I saw something else odd today...a C126, probably a 560SEC - with a bra. Those accessories for period MB are pretty unusual.
Bill
Oh cool, I'm not the only one then. I never really liked the early Vega either...front-end just looked too, well, petite. Athough I'll say they did a good job tying in the family resemblance to the Camaro, but honestly, I never liked the early 2nd-gen Camaros that much, either.
I think part of it is that I just prefer a grille that fills out the front of a car more fully, and the early 70's Camaros and Vegas really didn't do that. The big bumpers and more raked-back front-ends made the cars look more beefy and muscular IMO.
When I was a kid, I really liked the Chevy Monza. For Christmas 1979 I got a Matchbox racecar track, and I remember one of the cars being a blue Chevy Monza. Forget what the other one was...probably something generic like a Porsche :P (actually I think it was a 911) Well, Mom was in the market for a new car around that time, and the Monza was one of the cars she mentioned. Just being a 9 year old kid, I made the association to the toy car on my racecar track, and was thinking cool, Mom's getting a racecar!
I still think they're cool looking cars, but just too small for my tastes.
I don't think I have ever seen so many 300SLs in one place (there was also another in the parking garage), and the prewar MBs were mouthwatering. Lots of other good stuff that I can't even begin to mention.
Also saw some other goodies on the road and in the garage - Sunbeam Tiger, MB W111 cabrio and 108 sedan, 113 SL, a couple of C126, pre-facelift W210 E55, 56 Nomad, 57 Pontiac, ca. 64 Stingray, non-rodded 37 Ford coupe, a few 30s RR and Bentley, MGBGT and TC, and others.
That's cool I would have thought the same way!
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
In the spring of 1982, just as I was ready to graduate HS, my dad found for me a '79 Pontiac Sunbird coupe. This one was beige, with beige vinyl interior, 2.5L "Iron Duke" 4-cylinder engine and a 4-speed manual transmission. No A/C (hey it was California and I lived just a few miles from the beach!), and, IIRC, an AM/FM radio (no cassette). I can't remember if it had a tilt steering wheel or not.
The good news was that it had less than 12K on the clock. I think we bought it for something like $3800.
I added quite a few modifications to that car after I bought it ... a Kraco AM / FM / Cassette player, with two box speakers mounted on the small rear parcel shelf. Not one, but two sets of fog lights (hey, there were 4 mounting holes under the bumper, so why not use them?) - one set was amber, the other white. My cousin and I cut a hole in the roof and added a sunroof to it. It wasn't an awful car to drive.
10 months later, I moved to Phoenix to attend college. Vinyl seats and no A/C in the 100+ degree weather just wasn't fun, so I was able to convince my parents to invest in a set of real sheepskin seat covers. That, plus having the windows down and sunroof open, mitigated most of the heat related issues. For me.
The car, however, didn't seem to like the hot weather all that much, and refused to start. Not all the time, mind you, just enough that it was a crapshoot every time I got behind the wheel. Wouldn't turn over, just a "click". Aggravating. I never figured out what it was.
Then, I had a lady make a left turn in front of me, which wiped out the front end and, as it turned out, caused more damage than I realized. Drove an '80 Mercury Lynx as the rental replacement.
After getting the car back, I started having lots of mechanical issues. The heater core needed to be replaced. I couldn't always get the car into reverse. Discovered that one (or more) of the motor mounts had been broken in the accident and the engine was listing to the side -- just enough to tweak the transmission. Replaced the motor mounts, but still struggled getting the car into reverse.
I drove it to California and back on spring break once. Took a classmate of mine with me on the way out, and my sister and a friend of hers came back to Phoenix with us. About 30 miles west of Phoenix, the right rear tire tread separated from the belt and made the most godawful noise you ever heard. I'm just glad I didn't lose control. Had to limp into Buckeye and get the tire replaced.
One morning, about 3 months before graduating, I had made an appointment to have the transmission looked at. On the way to the mechanic, I was in the slow (right) lane of a multi-lane boulevard. I looked over my left shoulder to check the lane next to me so I could change lanes; unfortunately, the car in front of me slowed to turn right into a parking lot. I was halfway between lanes when I hit her. Right front corner of the car was a mess. I think she had a dented bumper.
Insurance company totaled it out and I got a check for $2000. I think the ol' girl had around 50K on it at the time.
It wasn't a bad car, but the reliability issues - and my relative brokeness - made it frustrating to own. After graduation I bought a Honda Accord, and it took me many years to trust American manufacturers again.
....but that price is, like, sham-WOW.
last sunday i saw a white 59 caddy convertible, all shined up older couple in it, pulling away from a light.
compared to the more modern cars around it, that thing looked like it was from another planet!
same day, a red with white top 67/68 mustang convertible.
they were definitely on the throttle, probably returning from the mustang show i thought about going to that day.
the tuesday before, some guys torched a nissan right outside of work, so i lost my enthusiasm to take the mustang out.
i waxed it, filled the tank, put the cover on it, and dropped the insurance until next year some time.
I think the last year Pontiac used that powerful SD455 was 1974, when it had something like 315 hp. For 1975, I think the 455 only came in one flavor, 200 hp. And for '76 it was around 200-205. For 1977, Pontiac's biggest engine was a 400. It had 180 hp in tamer cars like the LeMans, Grand Prix, Catalina, and Bonneville, or 200 in the Trans Am and Can Am.
ok
better
2 door sedan?
how about a merc?
http://www.golsn.com/listings/automotive/cars-trucks/1030966.html
In fairness, our only previous experiences in America have both been with Alamo, who have, I'm told, a poor reputation, and both times the car they gave us was perfect...
I've never used Hertz, other than renting a Transit van from them once, years ago.
And yes, I did mean a Model T - although by "passed" I meant we were going one way and he was going the other - even in America I don't drive that slowly...
(In fairness, given our history, it's hard to find many places anywhere in the world where the British haven't shelled the town, sunk the fleet or bombed the place)
With regard to 'rotaries', we found that generally traffic seems so slow everywhere in towns, mainly because you have so many light controlled junctions with traffic turning across - it seemed to take ages to get across a little town with about four blocks. The open road, by contrast is so much faster than here, mainly because you generally have more room, although some of the lanes down to the coast in Maine are certainly narrow like our country roads, and too close for that Dodge...There are a few grass verges in Penobscott Bay that have a stripe down them now...