Mystery car pix

fintail

I will pick off the wackily cool 60 Dodge(maybe a HT) that appears to be driving by. Looks like something Ward Cleaver would have driven for a season.

andys120

I wasn't a fan of the 1960 Dodges when they were around but now I enjoy seeing them.
The styling really emphasizes the fins giving the car a really Futuristic look.

The passing car in the pic must be a four door h/t. The 2dr had a different C-post>

berri

60-62 Mopars can certainly be topics of conversation, This one looks like "meet George Jetson" ...and his transport. But I agree that they are interesting because you don't see many and they are certainly unique. This one looks like a top of the line model because I believe there was a lower line Phoenix that was a "relatively" bit more subdued.

lostwrench1

1960 Dodge Polara.
I'll take it. Where do I sign?

omarman

I like the dark blue Mystery Corvette on the right. Those are not hubcaps! And Chevy didn't offer the knock off wheels until the next gen Sting Ray years. The side cove is body color with no bright trim around it. The inner side cove trim is not the unique 1961 "grill" type. And no trunk irons visible so scratch 1958. So my guess is '59 or '60 Corvette. With some interesting mystery wheels!

andys120

omarman said:

I like the dark blue Mystery Corvette on the right. Those are not hubcaps! And Chevy didn't offer the knock off wheels until the next gen Sting Ray years. The side cove is body color with no bright trim around it. The inner side cove trim is not the unique 1961 "grill" type. And no trunk irons visible so scratch 1958. So my guess is '59 or '60 Corvette. With some interesting mystery wheels!

A good analysis Omarman. From that angle, I don't think there's any way of telling if it's a '59 or '60. The lack of cove trim is perplexing, that was eliminated on the last C1 (1962 MY).
Perhaps the owner of the black car had seen the new '62s and liked it and had his removed.

The wire wheels are unusual but not unheard of. The 1961 'Vette in TVs Route 66 wore
a set of wire wheels with knockoff spinners>



Two outfits Dayton and Kelsey Hayes made wires for various 1950s/60s cars which were actually standard on certain models (1953-54 Buick Skylark, Caddy Eldorado) and optional on others. They were expensive and not often seen back in the day but they seem to be on a lot of restored cars.

Besides being heavy and requiring mods to the wheel hubs, wires were marginal for cars with big torque-y V8s. At Shelby American they quickly found out that the Dunlop wires on Cobras wouldn't do for cars in racing trim.

The Corvette on the left has fake wire trim rigs fitted on with white wall tires. The white car is a '53/'54. These had 6 cylinder power and Powerglide automatics but are lumped in with the '55-'62 as C1 models.
That has never seemed right to me but that's how they are classified.

bhill2

Has it struck anyone else that with 3 C1 Corvettes in that picture the first four responses were about the Dodge across the street?

fintail

I've seen more C1s than I can count, but a 60 Dodge 4 door HT is a bizarrely cool hen's tooth.

berri

I wish they would start a cable channel with old shows like Route 66 or 77 Sunset Strip. Neat old cars and they actually had show writers who could write without having to rely on extreme situations.

ab348

I know a lot of the online streaming TV services like Roku and Amazon Prime have some of those old series. I thought there was such a cable channel in the USA already? I seem to recall @andre1969 mentioning something like that.

andys120

I watch Route 66 on Amazon Prime. Do you know there's almost 30 episodes in the first season alone?

fintail

I have an app on my fire stick called Tubi that has a lot of old shows. It has commercials, but to make it free, I can deal. It has the entire series of Dennis the Menace.

stickguy

speaking of fire stick, my son is home so he just finished helping me set up the one I got for Christmas. Currently watching the first episode of Grand Tour!

andys120

stickguy

well, it is a Suzuki that we don't get here, but probably should! Do they still use the Samuri name?

thebean

Suzuki Jimny?

andys120

thebean said:

Suzuki Jimny?

Yup, it's the 2019 Suzuki Jimny. Apparently a superb rock climber but not so hot on highways. NSH.

andys120

texases

1972 Buick GS 455 Stage 1?

berri

Nice car

omarman

Very nice but not a stage 1.

imidazol97

I saw a Buick just like that at an area car show two summers ago. The seats were white and were not in best of shape, but it would be welcome in my garage.

andys120

texases said:

1972 Buick GS 455 Stage 1?

It's a '72 Buick GS 350. I owned a 1970 Pontiac GTO 'vert that was a similar color but it was a repaintfrom the original color. Buick called it Fire Orange. It's not the sort of color you usually associate with Buicks but, hey, it was the 70s. I miss the variety and drama of colors like that.

The wheels are stamped steel Magnum 500s which were optional on a wide variety of sporty cars.

andys120

stickguy

Olds silhouette. Mid 2000s someplace. Before the reverse nose job (extended beak). I saw the Saturn version of this last week. That must be a rare bird.

ab348

Someone who works at a business down the street from me drives a Saturn Relay van. I see it there every day.

fintail

Some kind of badge on the fender, maybe 100th anniversary or something.

kyfdx

Dustbuster

texases

Dustbuster mk. 2, that is. Here's the original, the naming is more obvious:

stickguy

nah, the dustbuster was the first generation from the early 90's. My neighbor had one of them. and odd, plastic beast.

kyfdx

In the early '90s, I was driving through the Smoky Mountains on I-40, from Tennessee to North Carolina. In a Porsche 911, doing 80 mph in a 55 mph. It's pretty curvy through the mountains, with a few tunnels.

Dustbuster passed me, doing about 90... on a curve.. completely over on the suspension stops. Scary.

andys120

I saw a Pontiac Montana the other day. It reminded me that once there were a number of GM-badged Minivans and not a lot of survivors. I think the Buick was called a Terranza. There was a post-Dustbuster Chevy, I've forgotten the model name.

BTW-the Silhouette is 2004 MY.

berri

What I never understood is how Ford, for years America's wagon master, totally blew it in minivans. Kind of like Sears blowing the Internet despite its catalog expertise.

Mr_Shiftright

Well they did score big with Explorer.

ab348

berri said:

What I never understood is how Ford, for years America's wagon master, totally blew it in minivans. Kind of like Sears blowing the Internet despite its catalog expertise.

The odd thing was that up here at least, Sears did a good job 12-15 years ago with online ordering. They were the first place I used and trusted to order stuff online. Real time size/colour inventory and the like, worked great. Then a year or two before they went bust they changed it to something utterly unusable.

bhill2

berri said:

What I never understood is how Ford, for years America's wagon master, totally blew it in minivans. Kind of like Sears blowing the Internet despite its catalog expertise.

Lee Iacocca championed the idea of a minivan when he was at Ford, but Henry the Deuce got into a snit and fired him. So he went over to Chrysler and developed it for them. The rest is history.

fintail

Aerostar was too tall and trucky for the market at the time I think, was allowed to wither on the vine. Windstar, well, you barely even see those on the road anymore, and after that it was too late.

berri said:

What I never understood is how Ford, for years America's wagon master, totally blew it in minivans. Kind of like Sears blowing the Internet despite its catalog expertise.

stickguy

Same with Chevy. Astro was a truck, then they went weird.

bhill2

Ford and GM stumbled for the same reason. The demand for the Chrysler vans exploded right out of the gate. Ford and GM rushed to get to the market and share in the feeding frenzy but had no suitable platform, so they tried to do it off an existing platform. Didn't work.

omarman

Maybe the smartest move by Iacocca was to buy Jeep which is still a great seller for FCA now and previously for Chrysler Group, DCX, Chrysler Corporation, AMC, Kaiser and Willys-Overland in Toledo.

But even a popular long-lived vehicle can't keep a sinking boat floating for long. Ford and GM had record profits in the 80's without a viable minivan or the Jeep nameplate either. Published examples:

For all of 1988, GM said it earned $4.86 billion, or $7.17 per share, up 37% from 1987 earnings of $3.55 billion, or $5.03 a share. GM's previous annual earnings record was $4.5 billion in 1984.

The Ford Motor Company today reported a profit of $4.6 billion for 1987, an increase of 39.4 percent from $3.3 billion in 1986 and the best earnings ever for an automobile company.

andys120

kyfdx

andys120 said:

1989 Lotus Elan?

andys120

kyfdx said:

andys120 said:

1989 Lotus Elan?

You're off by a coupla yrs but I don't think they changed much, it's a 1991 Lotus Elan M100., powered by an Isuzu twin-cam four. Only 559 were sold in the US, possibly because it had the misfortune of being introduced around the same time as the
Mazda Miata MX5 which was cheaper, had styling that aped the original 1960s Elan, and was driven by the rear wheels as per sports car orthodoxy.

The FWD M100 supposedly drove quite well for a FWD design (the only FWD Lotus ever). I have a half baked theory as to why this could be so. Lightweight FWDs like the M100, Mini-Cooper, VW GTI etc. can be fun to drive because there just isn't much weight to mess up the cornering but once you get to more than 2 liters there's enough poundage in the front to induce a lot of push (understeer) in hard cornering.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :@

kyfdx

In 1991, when I had a 911, a customer on my route had an Elan. I thought it was an '89 model, but I could be wrong.
He had owned an original Elan, and said the handling on the new one was amazing, considering the FWD. He was of the opinion that Lotus could suspension-tune, anything.

However, he may have been wrong, or over-confident, as soon after, he slid off a country road, [non-permissible content removed]-end first, and did over $20K damage.

It was definitely a striking automobile, for the time.

texases

As in, striking a tree?

fintail

I see an Elan of that era now and then, seems most of them around here are yellow.

kyfdx

fintail said:

I see an Elan of that era now and then, seems most of them around here are yellow.

My customer's car was white

omarman

Lotus tree?

Mr_Shiftright

andys120 said:

kyfdx said:

andys120 said:

1989 Lotus Elan?

You're off by a coupla yrs but I don't think they changed much, it's a 1991 Lotus Elan M100., powered by an Isuzu twin-cam four. Only 559 were sold in the US, possibly because it had the misfortune of being introduced around the same time as the
Mazda Miata MX5 which was cheaper, had styling that aped the original 1960s Elan, and was driven by the rear wheels as per sports car orthodoxy.

The FWD M100 supposedly drove quite well for a FWD design (the only FWD Lotus ever). I have a half baked theory as to why this could be so. Lightweight FWDs like the M100, Mini-Cooper, VW GTI etc. can be fun to drive because there just isn't much weight to mess up the cornering but once you get to more than 2 liters there's enough poundage in the front to induce a lot of push (understeer) in hard cornering.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. :@

That's pretty sound as a theory but you forgot the part about a light front end on a FWD contributing to vicious torque steer--especially on older FWD cars. Not sure how that guy ended up backwards--maybe he let up on the gas when he should have romped on it?

magnette

That new Suzuki Jimny is getting a really good press here - there is apparently a waiting list of a couple of years at the moment - we have a Suzuki dealers a few miles away and I noticed a demonstrator on the forecourt when we drove past a week or so ago.

The old version is of course from a much earlier time and there are still a lot of those around. Small Suzukis are actually quite sensible for our country roads being narrow, good ground clearance and tough enough to cope with our now badly maintained roads. If we ever move away from London - it will happen one day if the country ever regains its sanity (no sign of that lately) and a little Jimny or similar as a runabout in say Devon or somewhere else with winding lanes would be great.