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

Michaell

1988?

I was into 4-wheeling with my cousins, and was ready to start a family, so I was looking at 4-door SUVs. There were not that many choices on the market at that time, and we chose the less expensive of the two.

Isuzu Trooper - demo with, I think, 4000-5000 miles. Paid something like $17K before TT&L.

It was slow, but fairly capable. And huge inside.

If I had the chance to go back 30 years and have a do-over, I'd probably try to find a sport sedan of some sort. We did test drive the Renault Medallion, but that may have been a lucky break to skip it.

texases

M6 for sure. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.  If it was 4WD I’d get a Jeep Cherokee with the 6 and the best drivetrain and suspension. 

Michaell

texases said:

M6 for sure. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.  If it was 4WD I’d get a Jeep Cherokee with the 6 and the best drivetrain and suspension. 

My cousin and her husband had one of those, with the straight six (177 HP!). Quick, but a bit cramped inside. The trooper was a lot slower, but more useful.

stickguy

My BIL had a Trooper II back in that time frame. White, 5 speed. I liked it. bolt upright, very practical. I drove it once, and yes with the 4 cyl engine, not much performance. But I think it would go anywhere.

kyfdx

berri said:

IIRC the Toyota Cressida was RWD and competed with the RWD Datsun Maxima of that era?

BMW 6 series is kind of complicated I think. Kind of like a Bavarian French or Italian equivalent - just kidding (sort of) !

I think Maximas were FWD, starting in 1985. My uncle had an '87 Maxima wagon. Pretty cool ride, for it's day.

Michaell

stickguy said:

My BIL had a Trooper II back in that time frame. White, 5 speed. I liked it. bolt upright, very practical. I drove it once, and yes with the 4 cyl engine, not much performance. But I think it would go anywhere.

I learned it wouldn't go quite anywhere. There were some trails that were too steep for it to traverse.

omarman

In the Lexus era it's sometimes easy to forget just how popular the Toyota Cressida was by the late 80's. Writers who praised the Cressida were wondering, "Hard to say where Toyota will be able to go from here with their Lexus division..."

Some '89 Cressida reviewers stated that its 3.0 six was so smooth that they, "accidently tried to start it while it was already running" more than once!

I even found something on wiki just today which stated, "At its peak, the Cressida was so popular in the Middle East that almost every five in 10 cars was a Cressida." Half of all cars in the entire Middle East? Hmm.

Even taking all the hyperbole with a grain of salt, I'll go along with the earlier post that the 80's were a "golden age" for Japan Inc and Toyota in particular.

omarman

Michaell said:

1988?

I was into 4-wheeling with my cousins, and was ready to start a family, so I was looking at 4-door SUVs. There were not that many choices on the market at that time, and we chose the less expensive of the two.

Isuzu Trooper - demo with, I think, 4000-5000 miles. Paid something like $17K before TT&L.

It was slow, but fairly capable. And huge inside.

If I had the chance to go back 30 years and have a do-over, I'd probably try to find a sport sedan of some sort. We did test drive the Renault Medallion, but that may have been a lucky break to skip it.

When you were shopping the Trooper what was the other 4-door SUV that you looked at? Was it the Cherokee? Seems like 1990 or so was when the market for 4-door SUVs really opened up.

stickguy

the first Maximas were still RWD. I believe they were initially labelled as 810/Maxima.

uplanderguy

Wife took this pic on I-270 north and east of Columbus yesterday, while I was driving.

Went smartly down the road, kept up with modern iron, and the driver drove with his left hand and had his right arm draped over the bench seat. Been awhile since I've seen that.

I thought it was a '55 but someone on Facebook said they thought it was a '54. Early fifties Caddys all look similar to me, until '57.

Guy who lived behind us when I was a kid had a creamy white '56 Sixty Special, with gold nameplates and gold accents on the wheels too. It was older, for me to remember it. He towed a small trailer behind it. It still looked nice. I know it was a '56 because on the instrument panel, above the glovebox, it had in script, "Nineteen fifty-six", LOL.

tjc78

Great color on the Caddy.

uplanderguy

Car shows are fun, but I like seeing old iron on the road. This was taken around 9 a.m. yesterday morning, a Saturday, but still...this road is big and busy. I'd have been a wreck driving that on that road.

Michaell

omarman said:

Michaell said:

1988?

I was into 4-wheeling with my cousins, and was ready to start a family, so I was looking at 4-door SUVs. There were not that many choices on the market at that time, and we chose the less expensive of the two.

Isuzu Trooper - demo with, I think, 4000-5000 miles. Paid something like $17K before TT&L.

It was slow, but fairly capable. And huge inside.

If I had the chance to go back 30 years and have a do-over, I'd probably try to find a sport sedan of some sort. We did test drive the Renault Medallion, but that may have been a lucky break to skip it.

When you were shopping the Trooper what was the other 4-door SUV that you looked at? Was it the Cherokee? Seems like 1990 or so was when the market for 4-door SUVs really opened up.

Yep, the original Cherokee was the other 4 door SUV. But, at $22-24k it was too expensive for us.

Everything else at the time was 2 door:

Pathfinder
4Runner
Bronco II
S-10 Blazer

roadburner

berri said:

BMW 6 series is kind of complicated I think. Kind of like a Bavarian French or Italian equivalent - just kidding (sort of) !

Complicated? Seriously? Considering the fact that I was the East Coast Tech Advisor in the early '90s that's news to me; what internet myth site did you find that on? An E24 6er is the same under the skin as an E12 or E28(depending on the year)- and they are dead easy to service/repair. The S38 Motorsport motor in the M6 uses the M30 block with beefed-up internals. The valve adjustments are a bit more fiddly on an S38 but that's compensated in large part by the fact that adjustment is not required as often.
The only E24 caveats worth mentioning are that they are more susceptible to rust and-on the M6-the timing chain should be replaced every 100k miles.
My fiendishly complex 1988 M6 needed a water pump, some P/S hoses, and a hydraulic pressure switch during my term of ownership, with my only regret being the fact that I sold it. I'd buy another E24-635CSi or M6-in a heartbeat- and easily maintain it almost entirely myself.

Mr_Shiftright

fintail said:

In 1988, houses in this area that were 100K can easily be 1MM now.

Cars aren't so bad. Let's take that 560SEC - maybe 75K then. A nicely loaded S560 coupe today is maybe 150K. Of course, one can argue the new ones aren't as special.

Look at the bright side.

1988 Mercedes 560SEC in 1988 = $75,000

1988 Mercedes 560SEC in 2018 = $5,000.

That's a $70,000 discount just for waiting! Adjusted for inflation, that's a $148K discount.

fintail

If you drove it constantly, yeah. A hermetically sealed SEC would get you at least half your money back, anyway I don't want one with 250K+ miles on it. I don't think many cars from that era are worth more than original MSRP, even if not adjusted for inflation. Ferraris and high zoot Porsches etc were 6 figures even then.

The housing thing will never be repeated, a few generations got incredibly lucky here.

Mr_Shiftright said:

Look at the bright side.

1988 Mercedes 560SEC in 1988 = $75,000

1988 Mercedes 560SEC in 2018 = $5,000.

That's a $70,000 discount just for waiting! Adjusted for inflation, that's a $148K discount.

fintail

Nice colors. Yeah, that's a 54, 55s had kind of a loop to the side chrome trim. I've seen the funny 56 interior decoration, too - one has to wonder why they did that.

uplanderguy said:

Wife took this pic on I-270 north and east of Columbus yesterday, while I was driving.


Guy who lived behind us when I was a kid had a creamy white '56 Sixty Special, with gold nameplates and gold accents on the wheels too. It was older, for me to remember it. He towed a small trailer behind it. It still looked nice. I know it was a '56 because on the instrument panel, above the glovebox, it had in script, "Nineteen fifty-six", LOL.

fintail

For MY 81, they were badged both Datsun/Nissan and 810/Maxima. Not confusing:

stickguy said:

the first Maximas were still RWD. I believe they were initially labelled as 810/Maxima.

stickguy

I remember when they were trying to rebrand and transitioning from one name to the other, gradually. I recall thinking at the time it was odd to toss away the brand recognition.

Mr_Shiftright

Not really Stick. In most of the world, by the time of the name change in 1981 at any rate, they were already "Nissan". The name shift was actually pretty clever in that sense, in terms of a global strategy, rather than just catering to the preferences of the American market. Nissan was the parent company, "Datsun" was more preferred in America, to distance Nissan from the memories of WW II.

fintail

I like the Datsun name. I know I have read about it returning to some markets. The name to me speaks to cheap and cheerful wacky styled 70s cars, 510s, and Z-cars. Nissan makes me think of aggressively driven Altimas and Maximas.

ab348

Nissan makes me think of bland appliance cars, some with extremely goofy styling and all with components that have had every fraction of a cent of cost taken out of them. Just not a good brand image in my mind.

Of course, Datsun to me means cars that rust out in just a couple of years up here and the infamous Atomic Cockroach styling of the 1970s, so not a winner there either.

roadburner

The only recent Nissans that interest me at all are the 370Z and the now departed Xterra.

xwesx

fintail said:

In 1988 my interest was moving from these:



To these:



As I was 11

I kind of want a vintage BMX again (one identical to that photo, that was the dream bike), although I'd never ride it, they are just cool, and now quite collectible.

Fin, you made me crack up laughing when I scrolled down to this post! Funny enough, I do still have my BMX bike from this era. I received mine for my sixth birthday. While similar to that blue one you posted (except red/silver), I was nowhere near cool enough to warrant the plastic spoke wheels! While I would have loved them back then, I'm glad I did not have those after about thirty years of storage. I don't think they would have weathered the time nearly as well as steel spokes.

Both of my children took their turns at it, and now both are riding full-size bikes. I guess it will just have to bide its time to grandchildren?!

uplanderguy

I can't say if it was the most-recent model or an older one, but one Pathfinder I couldn't stand the looks of, was the one that just seemed to have random, squarish, 3D lumps just here and there, LOL. Old-skool guy here for sure, but as someone who used to post here would say, '80's and '90's Asian cars looked "insectoid" to me.

andre1969

berri said:

Second half of the Sixties and early 70's were interesting car pricing. Chrysler Newport's and special edition Olds or Mercury were often not much different on the sticker than a Caprice or LTD. Of course the latter were usually more duded up at that window sticker, while the former often offered an upscale drive train and suspension.

I think a lot of car prices stood pat for awhile, even from the late 50's to the late 60's. For instance, my Granddad bought a brand new '57 Ford Fairlane 500, then a 61 Galaxie 500, and finally a '63 Mercury Monterey. They were all around $3500 out the door...4-door hardtops, automatic, power steering/brakes, radio, heater, etc, but crank windows and no a/c. I know the '57 had the optional "big" V-8...312? Not sure about the '61; probably a 352 but not sure which version. The '63 Monterey came standard with a 250 hp 390-2bbl, so that might have been enough engine for him.

I think a '57 New Yorker base priced around $4250 for a 4-door sedan. By 1967, I think it was still around $4200-4300. A '57 Coupe DeVille started at $5048, and by '67 it had risen to $5392...about a 7% increase. Now, in my mind, I always tended to think of a '67 New Yorker as lower in prestige than a '57, but perhaps the general public didn't? I think for me, the problem is that a '67 New Yorker rides the same wheelbase as a Newport...with Oldsmobile, Buick, and even Pontiac, the more prestigious cars rode a longer wheelbase. Now, the Newport/New Yorker was a very roomy car, and probably gave up very little, if any interior volume to an Electra/Ninety Eight. But instead of some of the New Yorker's prestige rubbing off on the Newport, I guess my mind processes it the other way around...the Newport cheapens the New Yorker.

Yet, a '57 Windsor is on the same 126" wheelbase as a New Yorker, so don't try to read too much into my logic, I guess!

andre1969

roadburner said:

The only recent Nissans that interest me at all are the 370Z and the now departed Xterra.

A good friend of mine bought a new Xterra in 2006. Now that they're discontinued, he's trying to hold onto it as long as he can. I think it has around 175,000 miles on it now. Still runs fine, although he had some very expensive catalytic converter work recently.

I went with him last summer to the dealer when he dropped it off for servicing, and we walked around the sales lot. I showed him the Rogue, which is what I think Nissan wants to trick you into believing replaced the Xterra. I can't post here what he actually said when he saw it, because the Edmund's moderators would get on me, but needless to say, he wasn't impressed. So, he's thinking when the time does finally come, he might get a Pathfinder. But even there, he's not overly bowled over with them.

I'm sure going from the Xterra to the Rogue, he'd suffer something similar to the "big block withdrawal" a lot of cops had in the late 70's and early 80's, when the big-block mastodons were replaced with choked down 350/351/360 engines, and soon after even many of those were deemed too big.

I looked up the 0-60 time on a Rogue, and I think it's good for around 9 seconds. Once upon a time, that would've been decent. I'm not sure what the Xterra is good for, maybe 7.5 or so? You wouldn't think 1.5 seconds would make *that* much difference, but it does once you get used to it. Heck, I suffer from a little bit of power withdrawal when I drive the '03 Regal I inherited from my Dad, instead of my Ram Hemi. And I'd imagine there's less than a second difference in their 0-60 time. Where the Regal feels really bad is highway speeds, when you need to gun it to pass a slower car and such.

kyfdx

uplanderguy said:

I can't say if it was the most-recent model or an older one, but one Pathfinder I couldn't stand the looks of, was the one that just seemed to have random, squarish, 3D lumps just here and there, LOL. Old-skool guy here for sure, but as someone who used to post here would say, '80's and '90's Asian cars looked "insectoid" to me.

Like this?


I had a '95. Very cool in theory.. not that entertaining to drive.

fintail

To me, all of the old Pathfinders are truck-like, and inoffensive. The newest version of the model, now relegated to being an AWD minivan with conventional doors, is the least appealing. The dopey anthropomorphic styling of so many cars from that region in recent years is worse than the 70s wacko era.

uplanderguy said:

I can't say if it was the most-recent model or an older one, but one Pathfinder I couldn't stand the looks of, was the one that just seemed to have random, squarish, 3D lumps just here and there, LOL. Old-skool guy here for sure, but as someone who used to post here would say, '80's and '90's Asian cars looked "insectoid" to me.

fintail

I think the quality versions of the mag wheels were fiberglass rather than straight plastic - not sure if it would make a difference after 30 years in storage. A bike of that vintage in good condition is a minor collectible now. I am sure it will survive long enough for grandkids - as I have a younger brother, there was no hope in any of my bikes surviving.

xwesx said:

Fin, you made me crack up laughing when I scrolled down to this post! Funny enough, I do still have my BMX bike from this era. I received mine for my sixth birthday. While similar to that blue one you posted (except red/silver), I was nowhere near cool enough to warrant the plastic spoke wheels! While I would have loved them back then, I'm glad I did not have those after about thirty years of storage. I don't think they would have weathered the time nearly as well as steel spokes.

Both of my children took their turns at it, and now both are riding full-size bikes. I guess it will just have to bide its time to grandchildren?!

fintail

Was inflation that low, or was volume so high on these cars that price increases could be marginal? Come to think of it, I think housing prices, at least locally, didn't go wild during that period either. As the late 60s were the zenith of the working/middle class in the US, these prices are related.

I think the NYer might have lost a little prestige over time, as to the untrained eye, it was probably very similar to a value-oriented Newport in styling as well. I like to think that's how my grandpa saw his cars - "just like a New Yorker, I mean, look at it!"

andre1969 said:

I think a '57 New Yorker base priced around $4250 for a 4-door sedan. By 1967, I think it was still around $4200-4300. A '57 Coupe DeVille started at $5048, and by '67 it had risen to $5392...about a 7% increase. Now, in my mind, I always tended to think of a '67 New Yorker as lower in prestige than a '57, but perhaps the general public didn't? I think for me, the problem is that a '67 New Yorker rides the same wheelbase as a Newport...with Oldsmobile, Buick, and even Pontiac, the more prestigious cars rode a longer wheelbase. Now, the Newport/New Yorker was a very roomy car, and probably gave up very little, if any interior volume to an Electra/Ninety Eight. But instead of some of the New Yorker's prestige rubbing off on the Newport, I guess my mind processes it the other way around...the Newport cheapens the New Yorker.

Yet, a '57 Windsor is on the same 126" wheelbase as a New Yorker, so don't try to read too much into my logic, I guess!

berri

Fin - I'm dating myself, but when I was young the premier bike brand was Schwinn (or however you spell it). There were some other brands, but if you didn't have the dough you usually just got a bike from Sears or someplace. In my case it was Montgomery (Monkey) Wards (and it actually was a pretty good and reliable middleweight bicycle). Then just like Detroit cars in those days, you duded it up with accessories

berri

Andre - I never understood why Chrysler wanted to get into Plymouth's business or vice versa, nor the same within the other auto manufacturers. My guess is it was driven by volume since the different divisions of GM et. al. competed with each other even within the parent corporation, and dealers never turned down potential added volume and promotion opportunities.

berri

Was inflation that low, or was volume so high on these cars that price increases could be marginal?
I think in general there was far less speculation and financial synthetics back then. It is difficult to actually prove one way or another, but my gut thinks that has increased all this volatility. In all fairness though, there is a counter belief that these financial actions keep supply in the marketplace.

stickguy

I’m too old for the bmx fad (and never understood how anyone rode them places). My day, it as a Schwinn 10 speed road bike usually. But yes hustled my parents out of a Raleigh record. Put a ton of miles on that baby.

uplanderguy

I have zero experience with the vehicle, but what I thought was an interesting styling job on a smallish (for the time) SUV was when they added four doors to an S10 Blazer/S15Jimmy (was the Jimmy five better than the S10? That always struck me).

In profile, the thing looked just like the two-door!

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1991-chevrolet-s-10-blazer-four-door-you-cant-blame-a-guy-for-trying/

uplanderguy

I think this is the Xterra I mean:

http://momentcar.com/nissan/2006/nissan-xterra/

Michaell

uplanderguy said:

I have zero experience with the vehicle, but what I thought was an interesting styling job on a smallish (for the time) SUV was when they added four doors to an S10 Blazer/S15Jimmy (was the Jimmy five better than the S10? That always struck me).

In profile, the thing looked just like the two-door!

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1991-chevrolet-s-10-blazer-four-door-you-cant-blame-a-guy-for-trying/

Good article - and, all those models were released after we bought the Trooper.

We ditched it a few years later when Gulf War I started and gas rocketed to $1.50/gal (!!!). Was costing us $30 to fill up the Trooper. We sold it privately for something around $8800 and bought a Mazda Protege. Now that, was a nice car.

roadburner

kyfdx said:

uplanderguy said:

I can't say if it was the most-recent model or an older one, but one Pathfinder I couldn't stand the looks of, was the one that just seemed to have random, squarish, 3D lumps just here and there, LOL. Old-skool guy here for sure, but as someone who used to post here would say, '80's and '90's Asian cars looked "insectoid" to me.

Like this?


I had a '95. Very cool in theory.. not that entertaining to drive.

I liked our '93 SE just fine; I wanted something that could carry us through just about anything. When I bought the Wrangler as a parade car I fully intended to flip it after the election- but as it turned out the whole family really liked it so I sold the Pathfinder instead. Good thing too, as the Wrangler is being pressed into parade duty one final time...

roadburner

berri said:

Fin - I'm dating myself, but when I was young the premier bike brand was Schwinn (or however you spell it). There were some other brands, but if you didn't have the dough you usually just got a bike from Sears or someplace. In my case it was Montgomery (Monkey) Wards (and it actually was a pretty good and reliable middleweight bicycle). Then just like Detroit cars in those days, you duded it up with accessories

I bought a new Raleigh Grand Prix back in 1973. Even then Schwinn was considered a top quality bike, but the Grand Prix won me over with an attractive price as well as a beautiful design. I had a local bicycle shop restore it in 2015. I still love to ride it:

fintail

By "my day", Schwinn were large bikes for adults - the days of the Stingray and such were long past. The Schwinn dealer in my town also sold a few BMX brands though, which helped keep it it afloat. I never had a traditional 10+ speed thin/racing tire bike, I went from BMX to a mountain bike, and I still prefer the thicker knobby tires.

I remember a friend of the family had (what seemed like) a big Schwinn fixed gear balloon tire cruiser bike, kind of a 1980s version of a 1950s bike. I remember they'd let me take it out whenever I visited, and it was interesting to me, with its very soft ride, and seat with springs. It was quite heavy, but you weren't jumping curbs with something like this. It also had a bell, which I used frequently.

berri said:

Fin - I'm dating myself, but when I was young the premier bike brand was Schwinn (or however you spell it). There were some other brands, but if you didn't have the dough you usually just got a bike from Sears or someplace. In my case it was Montgomery (Monkey) Wards (and it actually was a pretty good and reliable middleweight bicycle). Then just like Detroit cars in those days, you duded it up with accessories

fintail

Speaks to how time flies that a preserved one of those is now remarkable. They were quite common here back in the day.

My dad had an 85 S10 Blazer, I am pretty sure it was a 2.8, but as it has been so long, I might be wrong. Brown inside and out, not the highest build or material quality, but I don't remember it ever breaking down outright.

uplanderguy said:

I have zero experience with the vehicle, but what I thought was an interesting styling job on a smallish (for the time) SUV was when they added four doors to an S10 Blazer/S15Jimmy (was the Jimmy five better than the S10? That always struck me).

In profile, the thing looked just like the two-door!

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1991-chevrolet-s-10-blazer-four-door-you-cant-blame-a-guy-for-trying/

ab348

uplanderguy said:

I think this is the Xterra I mean:

http://momentcar.com/nissan/2006/nissan-xterra/

"From the people who brought you the Juke, we present...."

ab348

uplanderguy said:

I have zero experience with the vehicle, but what I thought was an interesting styling job on a smallish (for the time) SUV was when they added four doors to an S10 Blazer/S15Jimmy (was the Jimmy five better than the S10? That always struck me).

In profile, the thing looked just like the two-door!

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1991-chevrolet-s-10-blazer-four-door-you-cant-blame-a-guy-for-trying/

Living here for 20 years now my neighbor at the end of the street makes an interesting case study. His house backs onto the golf course I was a member of for 7-8 years before I moved here and every time I played I would walk past the back of his house and think "This guy has all the toys". I would see a speedboat on a trailer, an early-80s Cadillac Seville that looked mint, a Ford Bronco (late '70s style), and an early square-rigger Panther LTD wagon. I would often see him outside on weekends doing property work and it seemed every time he was using a different piece of power equipment.

When I bought my place the wagon was gone, replaced with a refreshed aero LTD sedan, but the other stuff remained. I saw that he drove the Bronco every day and the LTD was his wife's car. The Bronco got a lot of use and after a few years here I could see that it was getting tatty. Early 2000s it went away for a while and I assumed it was gone, but then it came back with fresh paint and body work and a rather rowdy-sounding exhaust system - he had had dumped a bunch of money into it. He kept it for another few years and drove it every day but as I learned later once gas prices started to spike after Katrina it got too expensive (he told me he had the engine rebuilt and hopped-up so it guzzled gas) and he sold it. He replaced it with a 2-door mid-2000s Blazer. He's still driving it today. Apparently the family liked it so much that when his older son started to drive and got a job, he saved his pennies and bought an identical one except for color, so now there are two of them there. They don't strike me as appealing vehicles, but whatever.

BTW: the boat/trailer went away after never apparently being used, the Seville (a diesel!) took up residence in the garage for years until one day it was flatbedded out of there, and his wife drove a series of Chevys (Lumina, early 2000s Impala, late 2000s Impala) after the LTD departed. These days I no longer think he has all the toys.

andre1969

fintail said:

Was inflation that low, or was volume so high on these cars that price increases could be marginal? Come to think of it, I think housing prices, at least locally, didn't go wild during that period either. As the late 60s were the zenith of the working/middle class in the US, these prices are related.

I think the NYer might have lost a little prestige over time, as to the untrained eye, it was probably very similar to a value-oriented Newport in styling as well. I like to think that's how my grandpa saw his cars - "just like a New Yorker, I mean, look at it!"

According to online calculators, cumulative inflation from 1957-67 was around 19%. In contrast, that Coupe DeVille I referenced went up around 7% in the same timeframe.

With Chrysler, at least, I think getting rid of DeSoto, as well as switching to corporate engines might have helped with economies of scale. In 1957 for example, they had a flathead 6 for Plymouths and Dodges. I think it was the same unit, but it put out 132 hp in Plymouths and 138 in Dodges. Then there was the Plymouth poly-head V-8 (277/301), the Dodge Poly-head (325), the DeSoto Hemi (341/345), the Chrysler Poly-head (354), a Hemi-head version of the 354 used as an option in the Dodge D-500, and finally the Chrysler 392 Hemi.

By 1967, engines were consolidated down to the Slant Six (170/225), the smallblock wedge-head (273, also known as the LA...I think the 318 version of the LA came out for '68), the 318 poly-head (which debuted in the '57 Fury, also known as the "A" engine or the "wide-block", because at a quick glance it looked as big as a big block), and then finally the big-block 383/440 Wedge and 426 Hemi engines.

Switching to corporate transmissions early on probably helped, as well. While GM was still messing around with its PowerGlide, DynaFlow, the old 4-speed Hydramatic, and the "slim jim", Chrysler had pretty much just gone to the Torqueflite, just with varying degrees of beefiness. GM started catching on, once they started using the various versions of the Turbo Hydramatic (THM350/400).

Getting rid of DeSoto probably helped too, especially once Chrysler volume by itself started exceeding what DeSoto/Chrysler volume combined had been, back in the older days.

omarman

Eh all the bike talk brings back some fuzzy memories. "Fuzzy" as in hazy... cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

I recall a Schwinn bike shop on Union St in Nerk during the Krate bike era where I recall seeing pictures of - but not the actual "Grape Krate" stingray bike - at the shop.

I really wanted a Grape Krate but still have never seen one in person-to-krate speak.

Raleigh was another great bike and I recall looking at a catalog for a bike they had called the Chopper. A very cool but non-stingray bike. I'm going to google a pic for that one.

edit: that didn't take long! Here's the Raleigh Chopper II. I saw it in a '74ish catalog, but I don't know if that's the same year as the one in this pic:

roadburner

Raleigh Choppers are much like the Schwinn Krates; originals are sought after and collectable.

uplanderguy

RE.: Car prices and inflation--I remember new Impala Sport Coupes, whitewalls, wheelcovers, AM radio, V8, AT, PS, PB stickering for around $3,500-$3,600 from 1967 through '70 (I wasn't looking at them before that, LOL). There was a big price increase with the new, larger '71's--what was $3,600 in '70 became $3,900 for '71. But boy, the big jump in car prices in my memory was in the mid-and-late seventies--say, '75 through '79. First $5K Chevy I saw (outside of Corvette) was a '70 Caprice and first $10K Chevy I saw was a '79 Caprice.

explorerx4

I watched a documentary yesterday 'McLaren', about Bruce McLaren.
Some great old snippets of races, interviews and pictures.
He was quite a racer and innovator.

PF_Flyer

Why it's fun to watch movies made in the 70's