Project Cars--You Get to Vote on "Hold 'em or Fold 'em"

Mr_Shiftright

Yes but it wasn't successful because it only told you where you had BEEN....

lokki

I always wanted one of these when I lived in Japan.

Seems like something that you could work on... anyone know about parts availability... and what other engines/transmissions would drop in it?

68 Datsun Roadster

Mr_Shiftright

Neat little car...basically a Japanese copy of an MGB.

Problem is, they aren't worth very much, so doing a restoration, or finishing one in this case, is going to be a losing proposition....but maybe fun if you don't mind spending twice what the car is worth.

Or, just go buy one for $8,000 totally pristine.

As for other engines, my choice would be a Mazda rotary and 5-speed. Small engine but more guts than that little 1.6. Or you can hotrod the 1.6 like the Datsun 510 sedan racers do.

Datsun also made a 2000 cc version of this car but it was a somewhat troublesome engine, so you need to be careful. Same prices apply.

fintail

De-finned

lilengineerboy

Parts availability for Datsun 2000s is pretty good, relatively speaking. The 1600 is the same car with the 1.6l 4, I believe. As far as engines that "drop in," I would go with the 1.6 and the 2.0. As far as what might fit in there with using a kit or welding new mountings, I would think the F20C (Honda S2000) and SR20DE/DET (90s Nissan SE-R/NX2000/Infinity G20/JDM Silvia) would be good possibilities. All of these engines would require a considerable amount of wiring/electrical work since they are computer controlled. You could also use stand-alone DIY fuel injection or engine control computer, but that would turn things into a gi-normous project. It looks like fixing whats there would take a while as it is :P
Google Datsun 2000.

andre1969

Interesting...as ridiculed as the '59 Caddy has been for its monstrous tailfins, I think it looks worse with them shaved off. That's a pretty good case for the fact that many of these late 50's cars were a more cohesive design than we give them credit for. As awful as those fins may have seemed, the '59 Cadillac needs them to complete the design.

Now maybe they could have toned them down a bit, but a car like that still needs some uplift at the rear. Downward sloping fins just don't look right on a car. Unless you want to call those little blades on the back of cars like the 70's Electra, 98's, Caddies, etc fins (I don't)

lokki

Thanks all... my interest isn't really in a Datsun 2000 per se as in a sports car project car to play with in the garage - but nothing too complicated.

My real love is Alfa ( I owned a couple of Spiders back in the mid 70's - a Giulia Spider and a 74 Spider ). However
the sophistication needed to replace those 2nd gear syncros et al is going to cost too much.

So I figure the Datsun would be something that I could hack about in without worrying about destroying anything beautiful or valuable. I wouldn't attempt to even make it close to original. Nice bucket seats out of a junkyard car; aftermarket cheap steering wheel, etc.

I briefly met a guy who put a rotary in an MG Midget... fun car..
I LIKE that idea

Now to start practicing the hard part: "Oh darling, dearest..."

fintail

I think it looks much worse as well. I don't know why someone would do that, maybe it was to make the car look less dated by 61 or when the fins were becoming passe?

I bet it would be expensive to fix it, too, and it would never be right. These cars were designed to wear the fins, removing them takes some balance out of the design.

I have also seen de-finned examples of 57 Eldo coupes (not the Brougham), the one with those odd fins and the kind of rounded rear end.

Mr_Shiftright

Well you know how I feel about '59 Caddies...I think the whole car is a mess so no matter WHAT you do to it you aren't going to improve it...fins on, fins off, higher, lower, black, white, chrome, no chrome, it doesn't matter. The car is not very attractive to my eye. The lines are all wrong, and it is bulky, clumsy and, to beat my usual dead horse -- "chaotic". The car makes no sense.

You have to remember, it is the car's very "craziness" and absurdity that makes it so popular. It is the Anna Nicole Smith of automobiles.

RE: Datsun 1600/2000 -- you should seriously consider the Rotary engine swap. You don't need to mess with computers, the engine is small and easy to fit (I think you can even buy a plastic duplicate of the engine to move around by hand so that you can create your mounts, fitments, etc.). And you can use the excellent Mazda 5 speed and have a driveshaft end machined to mate up to the Datsun. A rotary crate engine is not very expensive and in that little car it will put the fear of god into most sports cars of that era. You probably even have room for that nice little Mazda AC compressor if you live in an extremely warm climate.

lemko

Ugh, that poor '59 looks like an amputee. I recall seeing a 1958 Cadillac Sixty Special shorn of its fins at Hershey about 15 years ago. It didn't look as bad as that '59, but it still didn't look right. The back end looked more like a 1954 Packard as a result.

Mr_Shiftright

Yeah, with the fins gone it looks like it's about to break in half or something. The tail end is already too heavy so it needs that "upkick" to relieve all that weight way down low I think. Now it looks like a hippo from a Disney movie. Here's a rare case where I vote for fins!

The 63-64 Caddy solved the fin problem quite nicely I thought and cleaned up the whole car.

andre1969

is that in 1959 they started really sloping off the trunklids on GM cars. If you shaved the fins down on those cars, you end up with something akin to the bustleback 1980-85 Seville, or that typical 70's car look where the trunk slopes downward, or an exaggerated version of that 60's "coke-bottle" look, at least the part where the rear deck sloped down.

However, the bustleback Seville ended up being controversial, and those 60's and 70's cars tended to have beltlines that kicked up before sloping off in the rear, so the whole thing flowed in a more integrated fashion. But seeing a 50's car, which usually had a ruler-straight beltline right back to the C-pillar, suddenly droop off at the back, just doesn't look right.

You could get away with it better on a '58 Cadillac, because their rear decks were more level. I'd imagine that those '57 Eldos with the rounded off rear-ends looked odd without fins, though.

I think the best looking 1959 Caddy was that year's Eldorado Brougham. It had more chiseled, angular lines and an overall look that seemed to form the inspiration for the clean '61-62 Caddies. But you had to pay $13K+ for it, a pretty hefty price considering a Series 62 hardtop sedan started around $5100 and a Sedan DeVille based around $5500.

lokki

"I think the best looking 1959 Caddy was that year's Eldorado Brougham....But you had to pay $13K+ for it..."

What cost $13000 in 1958 would cost $89911.86 in 2006 according to this inflation calculator

Interesting - I guess that Caddy was having trouble moving into the realm of upper-end luxury cars, even then...

But then, I don't know what else might have even approached $13 K in those days.

There's a nice selection of cars for $90K now days !

Mr_Shiftright

You could have bought a Mercedes Gullwing for less than $13,000.....about $11,5K I think. Or a 300D 4-door convertible for around $13K

fintail

You could have bought a few Bugattis/Duesies/K series MB etc for that money, too.

Or probably in many areas, a small house.

andre1969

Or probably in many areas, a small house.

Heck, this old farmhouse, two doors down from me, sold for about $12,000 back in 1958. It's currently on the market for something like $450K, and at this point is probably a teardown special. Most of the value is in the land. The current owner bought it 2 years ago for $470K, with the intent to tear it down and build "luxury homes" (most likely translation: McMansions). The county put a squash on that, so they tried putting it on the market in August for $599K, but it's still sitting there, empty.

It's amazing to think that in 1958, an Eldorado Brougham cost about the same as this house! But then, at the time, land around here was practically worthless.

Just as $12-13K would translate to a ~$90K car, I'd imagine there are still plenty of places in the United States where you could get a decent house for $90K.

fintail

Interesting use of "classic" (andre-mobile, too)

fintail

Yeah and there were likely many places at that time where 13K could have bought a couple of houses.

Some cars would have fared better than real estate, some not.

I'll have to find the exact numbers, but I have an article on a couple of plundered/"liberated" K series MB (a 540 and a 770 IIRC) bringing about $2500 apiece ca. 1957. Good investment.

fintail

Not a horrible looking barge...kind of a bad color though

benjaminh

On ebay, looks to be in tip top shape. Nice photos. Currently 11k. Built the year I was born. The most like a "sports" car the 98 ever got to be, I guess:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1964-98-CUSTOM-SPORTS-COUPE-345HP-STARFIRE-33K-RA- RE_W0QQitemZ260087218555QQihZ016QQcategoryZ6407QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZView- Item

Mr_Shiftright

Hmmm...I think this Olds may have been misreprented. I don't believe it is really a "Starfire" model, hence somebody might make the mistake of bidding on a Starfire (which is worth considerably more than a plain "98")...at any rate, at $12,000 the seller has hit a huge home run on this car. I can't believe he hasn't dropped the reserve!

fintail

Decent looking fuselage

Mercedes wannabe

Mr_Shiftright

Audi 100LS is a very nice car to drive, but very troublesome...FWD I think or did I make that up?

I had one a long time ago, and really liked it. I was very impressed with it.

boomchek

You guys have some neat barges down in WA for sale. Most of the old stuff up here is rusted out, or just not taken care of.

lilengineerboy

I am surprised something like that isn't listed on AudiFans or the Vortex classifieds. I have realized knowing where to advertise a car has a big role in how much you are going to get for it.
One of my friends in HS had one of those. I scored a bunch of points with her father for jump starting the car one rainy day and knowing the battery is under the back seat.
I believe it was similar to a VW Passat (or Quantum or Dasher or whatever the big VW was in 1972).

andre1969

Oh wow, that looks like my first car! Except that mine was just a base Malibu, and not a Malibu Classic. Looks like the same color, too.

Kinda funny that the seller is trying to play up 30,000 units as "rare". IIRC, they actually sold about 70,000 Malibu coupes that year, but ~30K were base models, ~30K were Malibu Classics, and ~10K were Malibu Classic Landaus.

I remember, as a kid, my Mom was a bit envious of the real estate agent that was listing our house, because he had a Malibu Classic, while we just had the Malibu. The reason? Mom really liked that stand-up hood ornament! :surprise:

I never really cared for the front-end of the '80 Malibu. It was too pretentious IMO, whereas the '78-79 had a sportier looking grille. I always liked the taillights of the '80, though.

So would would realistically be a fair price for something like this? Maybe $3K if it's really nice? Seeing something like that gives me a nice trip down memory lane, but in a way where I'd rather just visit for a spell, rather than move back in!

hpmctorque

"...FWD I think or did I make that up?"

Yup, FWD, which in the early '70s was not common in the U.S.
My next store neighbor owned one of these, and it looked really sharp. The troublesome nature of these cars wasn't immediately known.

Mr_Shiftright

They overheated a lot, the 100LS. But it was a great cruiser and really went well in the snow. Very comfy car, I really like it much more than I thought I would.

Today they are absolutely worthless....probably the most worthless car in existence, next to maybe an Austin Marina or a Yugo.

oregonboy

Yes, FWD. I had a buddy that had one. I remember he spun it coming back from a XC ski trip. Oddly. it's not difficult to spin a FWD on snow; I did it once in my Saab. I have a vague memory that the LS-100 may have had inboard brakes???

The Craigslist Audi appears to be an automatic and has a vinyl top (yuk), no thanks!

james

Mr_Shiftright

YES! Inboard brakes, but fortunately, accessible ones...unlike the Jaguar XJ6 where you have to drop the entire (as in "entire") rear axle assembly to change out the rotors (swell, just swell).

My best Colorado snow car was an Olds Toronado with studded snows...that sucker would go until a wall of snow built up in front of it and stopped it. That was a great car. I beat the stuffing out of it too.

fintail

Another cheapish big cruiser

fintail

Yeah I thought the price on that one was a bit out of line, too.

andre1969

I kinda like that '63 Dodge. They were homely looking, but I still think they're cool. Toned down considerably for the '62 model. I think that most of the people who like this generation actually PREFER the '62 for its outlandishness, but I like the later models better.

In fact, I think these '62-65 "fullsize"/intermediates are one of the rare examples of a car that gets better looking with each subsequent facelift.

fintail

The '62s were the cars seen in 'It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World', right?

andre1969

Yeah, as I recall, there were some '62 Dodges in that movie. Here's one going airborne...


Been ages since I've seen that movie all the way through. I'm kinda in the mood to now.

lokki

1950 Pontiac Silver Streak

I posted a picture of one of these as a mystery car the other day. This car's sister is still doing taxi duty in Cuba.

Worth the money as a project? Well, i HAD been thinking of going into the Cuban taxi business when Castro dies, so who knows?

lokki

7 1 Porsche 911 T Only $5,000

lokki

Worth $23500?

All of the hard stuff is done, all that it needs is engine wiring and interior installation. I have all the parts it needs, only labor is left.


link title

lilengineerboy

A 911 T is a lot of $$$ for 130hp. I also think they had different suspension (initially at least) than the "S" did, which seems to be all around a sweeter ride.

Mr_Shiftright

911T---pile of junk. Parts car. You can buy a really nice 911T for $15,000, without a question mark engine and rust. Some sellers are really delusional.

'64 Vette---you know, I'd let him finish the job and charge me the extra $4,000 to do it. That way I get to drive a finished car around before I buy it.

Price of Vettes depends heavily on quality of the restoration, condition of the frame and fiberglass, and matching #s or not. Is it worth $23,500? Maybe, maybe not. This is car one would have to eyeball before making any decision.

If #s match, body is really sturdy and crack-free, frame has no rust...yeah, it's probably worth it.

qbrozen

"all the hard stuff is done" .... like????

maybe something is wrong with me, but I find wiring a whole car quite hard ... at least time consuming.

fintail

I also remember the police cars, like the one Spencer Tracy drives in the movie. Odd looking things. I wonder if any used in the movie had 413s...I think those could be ordered then.

fintail

It looks sound...but I bet a really nice one doesn't bring much more than 10-12K or so...so it would have to be a DIY.

texases

One sure sign of problems - how many names has the big Audi had? 100 begat 5000 begat 100/200 begat A6... I may have forgotten one or two.

lilengineerboy

It goes in cycles, we went from the Beetle to the Rabbit to the Golf and now we are back to the Rabbit.

It seemed like VAG renamed their offerings to match the names in the rest of the world, then started to change them back to being American names. The Dasher and the Quantum were always the Passat elsewhere, as was the Golf. The Vanagon was always the Transporter, etc.

qbrozen

a weak POS '87 Chevy V8 in a rusted out '66 Ford truck ... for how much???

Does anyone else here remember an action-based short-lived cartoon .. i think called M.A.S.K .... ummm... mobile armored something or other ... anyway, this first pic dragged that cartoon immediately out of the murky depths of my memory (although I believe the car in the cartoon was supposed to be an IROC): '86 Daytona

qbrozen

hahahahahahahaha...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.A.S.K.

that's more info than I could ever want. now to find some pics.

texases

Very true. However, the big Audi had both a real (for the early ones) and imagined (the 60 Minutes-hyped 'unintended acceleration') trail of problems. It seems that some of the name changes were to conceal the past, like with some of the domestic brands' name changes of the last 20 years. The latest A6 generation appears to be well past that.

andre1969

Yeah, I can see the similarity to that M.A.S.K. car:


If you draw a Camaro sloppy enough, or make a sloppy enough model of one, it does look a lot like a Daytona. In fact, there's even a car in the "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" videogame that's supposed to look like a Daytona, but at some angles it looks like a Camaro. And for some odd reason, in that game they make it an excellent off-roader! :confuse: Probably a much better off-roader than a real-life Daytona or Camaro!

qbrozen

that's a perfect shot!

yup ... just lined them up on my screen next to each other and it is the spittin' image.