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Comments
I had a '55 Dodge Hemi, low mileage car, automatic, that I drove in the lat 1970s. It was a real dog I have to say.
Certainly today you can't price a '55 Dodge or Plymouth with a '55 Chevy, so the collector car market recognizes the difference as well I think.
One problem is that stick shift 50s Chrysler Dodge Plymouth cars were pretty rare. Another was that the build quality was bad.
GM cars were just so much sexier. Chrysler really didn't shine again until the late 60s IMO. Their image that they pushed was "engineering", not sex. Like we kids cared.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
The Car That Wouldn't Die !
Which one did you have, the 2-bbl or 4-bbl? The 2-bbl put out 183 hp, while the 4-bbl put out 193. There was also a cheaper, poly-head version of the 270 that put out 175 hp.
Any one of them would be a dog compared to what came later in the 50's, 60's, and early 70's, but by 1955 standards they were probably competent.
And compared to its closest competition, a 1955-56 Mercury or Pontiac, I'd say a Dodge was definitely the sexiest! Pontiac was still trying to shake off its car-for-retired-doctors image, which it really wouldn't be successful at until 1957. How were Mercurys regarded in 1955-56? I always thought that Mercury pretty much peaked with the youth crowd around 1949-51, but started getting increasingly dowdy and conservative after that.
Hell, even John-Boy had a Model A, so that thing might not even be suitable for the Waltons! Wasn't there also something about these things that made it hard to drive them up a steep hill? Like a gravity-fed fuel line, which would often mean you had to drive up a steep hill in reverse if you got low on fuel? Or was that just a myth?
It's cute, quaint, and nostalgic, but not my thing I guess.
I have read that many times. I believe it is a fact.
Probably the nicest one out there and still not worth 22.5
This Vette could be OK It's hard to tell if the pictures are crappy or if the car is rough
I'm glad it's street legal I was worried it might be too radical
I wish that there were more details but this looks decent for the money
How much is this worth?
How much would you offer?
This could be good but better pics needed
Just too much work for a Bicayne 4 door
It has a salvage title due to a damaged seat
This would be worth 750 if the tranny didn't slip
Indignant seller What does he think he has in his motorless Y88 Trans Am?
The Prelude, depending on the miles, might be a bargain, despite the faded, poor-quality repaint. It is, after all, an "S".
A good year for the Chevy Biscane, but as you said, to far gone. WAY to much rust.
james
One of the project managers here at work used to have a 1987 Electra Estate wagon, which he towed with, and he needed to replace the tranny. I think it was close to $3,000, but he had the dealer do it, and I think they put in a new one, not rebuilt.
I've never driven a 190, so I really have no idea if it would be a nice driver or not. I just like the IDEA of a small, 6-cyl, 5-spd Mercedes.
james
Re the discussion of tranny rebuilds, the price of automatic transmission rebuilds seems to have exploded. It seems like any rebuild is 2 grand or more. I guess someone that knows what they're doing could get a junkyard tranny for 4 or 500 and get the Caprice going again, but then I'd only pay a couple hundred for that privilege.
One other incident I forgot about was the tranny in my friend's 1998 Tracker. It went bad at around 92,000 miles. The dealer got conveniently vague and quoted anywhere between $1000-3000. They weren't giving me a warm, fuzzy feeling, so I called around and found a 1996 Sidekick in the junkyard with 55,000 miles. I think we got the tranny for around $680 and it was just under $400 to have it installed, at a place just down the street from the junkyard.
A couple years ago, I asked the guy at the local tranny shop, the one that rebuilt my Newport and services the trannies on my cars nowadays, how much a rebuilt one one of those simple 3-speed torqueflites or hydramatics would be these days. He said around $850, but I guess it could easily be $1000 by now. But, those types of transmissions have gone the way of the albatross, so they're not going to help the majority of cars out there nowadays.
I think that Caprice is the type of car where if I already owned it, liked it alot, and it was in really good shape, and then the tranny crapped out, I might be tempted to blow $2K on another transmission for it. But I'm not gonna pay $750 for one that comes pre-blown! :surprise:
If it was a 5-speed 2.5 diesel people would be fighting over it.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '98 Alfa 156 2.0TS; '08 Maser QP; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '11 Mini Cooper S
If one wants a good 80s Mercedes, those two I mentioned are probably the best in terms of ease of maintenance and longevity.
Like fintail, I thought the head gasket issue was related to the four cylinder gasoline engines in the 190, and not the 2.6 six. I remember that in a message some time ago you warned that the 190s (presumably the 2.3, 2.6, and 2.2 diesel) had a lot of issues and, therefore, weren't very good cars. I, perhaps erroneously, believed that while the 190 2.6 may hardly be a paragon of reliability, that being the sturdy I-6, it at least didn't have the head gasket weakness.
But the 190 2.6 is still plagued with all kinds of issues; however head gaskets is NOT one of them apparently.
This model in general had a very bad debut and I don't think it ever recovered.
The 2.3-16 however, has some collectibility, with its Cosworth-developed cylinder head and good performance for its day (0-60 in 7,5 seconds, no great shakes in 2007)
But I wouldn't take a 190 2.3 if you gave it to me.
Really, only a chronological and dated repair record would convince me...like ROs dated from 1971 to 1985, with 37,000 miles recorded, and then nothing, with expired 1985 tags on the car AND 4 flat tires and plenty of dust and clean like new brake and gas pedals, interior, etc. But a car that was registered for 37 years, driven 1000 miles a year, and needs restoration? Not bloody likely.
That's sort of along the lines of the life my '57 DeSoto lived. It was bought new by a salesman who travelled alot, then he traded it on a new '59 Pontiac. The second owners bought it and used it as their daily transportation up through 1966, when they bought a used '64 Catalina. The wife liked the DeSoto so much though, that they decided to hang onto it and use it as a spare car. Also, the husband worked about 2 miles from home, so it really didn't get that many miles on it even when it was their only car.
Sometime in the early 70's, the odometer cable broke, around the 55,000 mile mark. And the older the car got, the less it got driven. Once they started getting up in years, they decided it was time to get rid of it. None of their kids wanted it, so they decided to put it up for sale. And damn if the kids and grandkids didn't start whining about them getting rid of the car once they got serious about selling it! Still, none of them wanted to actually TAKE the car!
I have no idea how many miles it really has. I did get the speedometer cable fixed in 1992, and it lasted a couple months, broke again, and I just left it alone. If I was to take a wild guess, I'd say maybe 65-70,000 miles? The tires weren't flat but they were pretty dry-rotted. And one of them was an ancient wide whitewall that had been re-treaded and had an innertube in it!
Do tires have a date stamp or code anywhere on them? I still have that old tire. Back in 1993 I had new tires put on it, and the mechanic held that one tire aside, telling me it looked so old that it could have been one of the car's original tires.
When I bought my '67 Catalina convertible, the salesman tried to tell me it only had 44,000 miles on it. But then why, pray tell, did it have a rebuilt engine and transmission? Now, the engine was built up a bit, with a 4-bbl carb on it, and supposedly a hotter cam and blueprinted, so I guess it's possible that the previous owner just wanted to hop it up. The salesman also said to look at the pedals, and how little wear was on them. I still wasn't buying it. But the car ran good and looked good, and was reasonably priced. Also came with a couple boxes full of old parts, including the original 2-bbl carb and intake manifold. Also included in those parts was the original, well-worn brake pedal! Oops!
Odometer now reads about 55,000 miles. As far as I'm concerned, it's 155K. Never believed that "low mileage" claim for a minute...but I still wanted the car!
They do now. There's usually a small flat oval somewhere near the bead with a day-of-the-year and year number (14607 is the 146th day of 2007) recessed into the flat.
"Do tires have a date stamp or code anywhere on them?
They do now. There's usually a small flat oval somewhere near the bead with a day-of-the-year and year number (14607 is the 146th day of 2007) recessed into the flat......"
That is terribly wrong!!
Every tire sold in the US has to have a serial number on it. The number will be located very near the letters "DOT" and will be located near the bead. The number is only required to be on one side - and until recently that location was such that it usually wound up being on the inboards side.
The number is 10 to 12 digits long with both letters and numbers.
The pattern is:
First 2 digits: A code for the plant of manufacture You can find this on lists on the internet.
Second 2 digits: A code for the tire size This varies a bit, but there are lists, and I've never seen any of these lists published on the internet.
Next 3 or 4 digits: A code for the type of tire as assigned by the tire manufacturer. I've never seen any of this published by anybody anywhere.
Last 3 or 4 digits: A code for the date of manufacture in a week/week/year or a week/week/year/year format. Between 1999 and 2000, the code changed from 3 digits to 4 digits, so during that timeframe you will see both types. So a "429" would be manufactured in the 42nd week of 1999 (or 1989, or 1979). A "3405" would be the 34th week of 2005.
It's made by Goodyear, and has "Custom SuperCushion" written on it in an italic font. Also has these diamond shapes molded into the rubber, with "3T" inside a couple of them.
There's a number by the bead, both sides of the tire: 213790-8
There's also another number, on the blackwall side of the tire, which is worn, but appears to be: 5LOC309
Are any of those numbers decipherable?
The first part is probably the mold drawing number and the dash 8 probably means the tire came out of the 8th mold produced from that drawing
"......There's also another number, on the blackwall side of the tire, which is worn, but appears to be: 5LOC309....."
If the letters "DOT" do not appear on the tire, then this tire was produced before the regulation was enacted. If so, then this number is probably the serial number of the tire, and your best bet to get it deciphered is to find someone who has a code breaker for Goodyear tires produced in that era.
That'd be a good wagon though, for someone who needs the utility. Those Matadors were sort of upright and boxy compared to equivalent Ford, GM, and Mopar intermediates, which might not have been so great for cutting-edge style, but gave them a definite advantage in passenger and cargo volume. In fact, they even compared favorably to the downsized '77 GM and '79 Ford full-sized wagons.
They were marketed as intermediates, but once the EPA started publishing interior volumes in 1978, the Matador wagon and sedan were actually classified as full-sized cars. That says something about their space efficiency for the time. Cars like the '78 Monaco/Coronet and LTD-II/Cougar, while every bit as bulky, were still classified as intermediates. GM had downsized their intermediates for '78, but their '73-77 models were a bit smaller than Ford/GM rivals, so they would've most likely been classified as intermediates by EPA standards, as well.
GM gets credited for starting the trend toward smaller big cars with the downsized '77 Impala and such, cars that offered full-sized interior room in a package the same size or smaller as existing intermediates. However, I guess you could argue that AMC had been making that kind of car all along, in the Matador.