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

imidazol97 · August 2021

benjaminh said:

Pillared sedan. Factory air. Power windows.

What is the pull knob on the bottom of the dash left, below the ignition switch and to the left
of the turn signal knob. It looks like an add on by the way it's coming out through a
chrome holder that screw onto the bottom lip of the dash.
Overdrive knob? Car has an automatic transmission.

sda · August 2021

Does anyone recall why Ford placed the ignition switch to the left of the steering wheel? My 62 Galaxie was that way. I believe they moved it to the right of the steering wheel in 63.

uplanderguy · August 2021

Ford still had a manual choke, at least on our old '62 Fairlane six with 3-speed. In later years I found that peculiar; even Studebaker sixes had an automatic choke by that time.

What was a bit odder in my mind than the ignition on the left, is how Ford did two shafts down from the steering wheel. I'm thinking '61 or '62 was the last year of that.

kyfdx · August 2021

imidazol97 said:

benjaminh said:

Pillared sedan. Factory air. Power windows.

What is the pull knob on the bottom of the dash left, below the ignition switch and to the left
of the turn signal knob. It looks like an add on by the way it's coming out through a
chrome holder that screw onto the bottom lip of the dash.
Overdrive knob? Car has an automatic transmission.

I always think manual choke, when I see a pull knob like that.

uplanderguy · August 2021

RE.: Full-size GM coupe rooflines--not sure I expressed this well, but the Grand Ville, Ninety-Eight, and Electra coupes had rooflines more similar to the Chevy--vertical B-pillar and large quarter windows that did not go down.

Oh--the Impala Custom Coupe had no additional trim inside or out from other Impalas, except from '71 on, you got wheel opening moldings standard on the Custom Coupe that were optional on all other Impalas. The 'Custom' only indicated the formal top.

We bought a '74 Impala Sport Coupe. Very traditional styling. In '75 I'd have looked for one but they didn't appear much, at least at my hometown dealer, by then. I like this brochure one, although don't like the optional skirts:

benjaminh · August 2021

I got to talk to the old guy who owned this car. He got it when he was just 19 in 1970 for just $900 iirc, and it's been his pride and joy since it seems like. He says the car still drives and shifts great. He keeps it in top operating condition, and recently turned down an offer of $40k for it.

stickguy · August 2021

Nice Goat.

explorerx4 · August 2021

Not sure if there was a Hurst edition back then, but it sure looks the part.

benjaminh · August 2021

Yes, you can see the Hurst badge on the back trunk. The performance upgrades were a John DeLorean thing, weren't they?

stickguy · August 2021

He might have added the badge.

benjaminh · August 2021

He said the car was original.

stickguy · August 2021

Doesn’t mean somebody didn’t add a badge back then.

benjaminh · August 2021

This Mercury wagon was for sale by the older couple you can see in the background. They were the second owners, and the wagon with the cyclops speedometer was $17,900 obo iirc. It has 170k miles. They said the engine ran great and was smooth and powerful. It had always been regularly maintained and repaired, they said. Price seemed a bit steep to me, but maybe I'm out of touch. If it is in good shape mechanically, I guess it's a lot of car for the money. It has a 2-way tailgate, which is a feature I like. Seemed a bit smaller than some LTD wagons I'd seen from the early 70s....?

explorerx4 · August 2021

Cool looking wagon. I noticed they added a 3 gauge module to the lower left of the dashboard.

benjaminh · August 2021

imidazol97 said:

What is the pull knob on the bottom of the dash left, below the ignition switch and to the left
of the turn signal knob. It looks like an add on by the way it's coming out through a
chrome holder that screw onto the bottom lip of the dash.
Overdrive knob? Car has an automatic transmission.

Zooming in on the original photo that pull knob says "Rear Speaker" on it. I downrezzed it before, but here's the picture in a higher resolution version, and maybe you'll be able to see that if you open it in a new tab and zoom in.

ab348 · August 2021

uplanderguy said:

What was a bit odder in my mind than the ignition on the left, is how Ford did two shafts down from the steering wheel. I'm thinking '61 or '62 was the last year of that.

I believe '62. One of my pet peeves. Could never understand how anyone at Ford thought that was acceptable.

sda · August 2021

explorerx4 said:
Cool looking wagon. I noticed they added a 3 gauge module to the lower left of the dashboard.

It also has the wrong wiper arms. Those on it look like they came off a Fairmont or other fox body.

sda · August 2021

ab348 said:

uplanderguy said:

What was a bit odder in my mind than the ignition on the left, is how Ford did two shafts down from the steering wheel. I'm thinking '61 or '62 was the last year of that.
I believe '62. One of my pet peeves. Could never understand how anyone at Ford thought that was acceptable.

Perhaps that arrangement was easier to service and repair? Certainly not a tidy look.

texases · August 2021

Those arms can wear out over time...or just fall off. I lost one driving through a snow storm (drivers side, of course) and spun out on the freeway as I tried to pull over to the shoulder. No harm done, luckily, swapped the one good arm over and kept going.

imidazol97 · August 2021

sda said:
Does anyone recall why Ford placed the ignition switch to the left of the steering wheel? My 62 Galaxie was that way. I believe they moved it to the right of the steering wheel in 63.

Was it because the lighter was on the right side of the dash. That left a slot on the left side.

benjaminh said:

imidazol97 said:

What is the pull knob on the bottom of the dash left, below the ignition switch and to the left
of the turn signal knob. It looks like an add on by the way it's coming out through a
chrome holder that screw onto the bottom lip of the dash.
Overdrive knob? Car has an automatic transmission.
Zooming in on the original photo that pull knob says "Rear Speaker" on it. I downrezzed it before, but here's the picture in a higher resolution version, and maybe you'll be able to see that if you open it in a new tab and zoom in.

THanks. I thought it said "rear." But I couldn't make out the lower word.

@kyfdx
I believe our 1960 Ford with a 6-cylinder engine had a manual choke, while the V8s had an
automatic choke.

benjaminh · August 2021

fintail · August 2021

Back in the day, few in western WA ordered AC in a non-lux car. I remember my dad's Horizon didn't have AC, none of his 60s Fords had it, although I know the Tempo and S10 Blazer did, and of course my mom's T-Bird. I've heard my grandpa's 65 and 71 Chryslers lacked it as well.

Almost nobody had AC in a house either - that's changing fast, as the summers there are a lot hotter than decades ago.

When the fintail was introduced, MBs didn't have an option for factory AC - always dealer-installed.

andre1969 said:
Back in college I knew a guy with an '87-91 style Civic. It didn't have a/c, which I thought was a bit odd, but he was a recent transplant from Washington State, near Seattle I think. I also had a friend who got a '90 Plymouth Horizon, brand new, and it didn't have a/c. I remember him saying something like "There's only three days out of the year you need a/c in this area!"

Of course, back in those days, we were in our late teens and early 20's, and I'm convinced we had a higher tolerance for wild temperature swings when we were younger. I don't know that I'd be able to tolerate a car without a/c for very long, nowadays. Admittedly, the a/c doesn't work in my convertible or the 5th Ave, and the DeSoto doesn't have it. But I also don't drive those cars in brutally hot weather, either. And in situations where there's a car show during hot weather, I'm usually on the field in the morning, and driving home in the evening, so I'm not driving during the hottest part of the day.

sda · August 2021

I grew up primarily in the south in St Petersburg, FL and New Orleans, LA until I was 15 and we moved to England and France for a couple of years. Our house in FL only had one window type unit AC in the living room and was rarely used. Our house in New Orleans had central air but it was often broken and dad said we were fine without it, though it would eventually get repaired. We were so accustomed to the heat it didn’t seem to be a big deal. Today, that would be harsh reality.

tjc78 · August 2021

My AC hasn’t been off since before Memorial Day.

benjaminh · August 2021

uplanderguy · August 2021

My first new car, a 1981 Monte Carlo with posi and V8, had no air....and I didn't order it. My parents didn't have A/C in a car until their 1984 Monte Carlo. It was not unusual at my hometown Chevy dealer for Impalas in stock to not have A/C--into the eighties. NW PA.

I couldn't live without it now.

My parents never did have A/C in their house.

sda · August 2021

For fun I was browsing the Old Car Brochure site. Looking at the 62 Ford full size brochure, my first car was a 62 Galaxie Club sedan in Ming Green, I discovered the trunk on that car was 28 cu ft! It didn't seem that large as it was fairly shallow in depth. The 292 V8 was 170hp/gross. A real hot rod. At least it had the 3 sp manual and not the 2sp FordOMatic.

andre1969 · August 2021

Dumb question...where is the spare tire on a Ford Maverick? It's just stored in the trunk, off to the passenger side, correct? I mean, it's not actually under the trunk floor, like on a Dart/Valiant, or your typical modern FWD car, is it?

Reason I'm asking, is I was watching an old "Barnaby Jones" episode the other night, and Jed Clampett was looking through the trunk of a Ford Maverick. They showed him going through the motions of accessing a spare tire under a cover, and at one point, in a close-up, it looked like he was actually lifting a cover.

My first thought was wait, that CAN'T be right?! As small as these cars are, I can't see any way there would be enough room to have the spare AND the gas tank in that space under the trunk floor. The Dart and Valiant got away with it because they had more rear overhang, and even then the spare tire well and gas tank overlapped. The gas tank has a scalloped-out spot in the top so that it can fit around the spare tire well. And modern cars can do it, even with a short overhang, because they put the gas tank under the back seat. But I don't see any way they could try that trick on a Maverick.

Having the spare under the floor mat like they did on the Dart and Valiant was a nice feature for the most part, except that it made the trunk really shallow. If I still had a Dart to take to car shows, I'd have to downsize my beer cooler! Or keep it in the back seat. Although, even as is, I have to position it just right in the 5th Ave, and my '76 LeMans, and put a towel over it because if it shifts in the slightest, it will rub up against the underside of the trunk.

Oh, as for '62 Fords, a guy at work bought a '62 Galaxie 4-door sedan, back around 2008. I remember it being light green. It had the 292 and a 2-speed automatic. He didn't keep it long, though. He got bored with cars really fast, and soon sold it, and bought one of those '60's Volvos that looks a bit like a 2/3 scale '55 Chrysler. Amazon, I think it was called? It was a wagon, and a beige color. I don't know how long he kept it, as he moved to a new project at work soon after.

I'd be a bit suspect of that 28 cubic foot trunk volume, but who knows? Those Fords did have a lot of lateral space, even if they were shallow. I remember Consumer Reports mentioning that an early 60's Ford (forget the year, but I'm thinking '61 or '62) had more rear seat legroom than a Cadillac!

sda · August 2021

I think it was an error, probably more around 20-21 cu/ft. The 292 didn't like to rev, though it had a nice sound overall. It was fairly economical but hardly quick. At least I can claim my first car had a V8!

I found this picture that contradicts the brochure as well. The brochure said the 292 was 170hp, this shows 160hp. Perhaps there were different versions? My 62 with the 292 did not have that sticker on the air cleaner.

ab348 · August 2021

The Maverick spare was indeed on the right side of the trunk floor:

Underneath the mat was the infamous Ford "drop-in" fuel tank, the top surface of which acted as the trunk floor. Safety first!

sda · August 2021

ab348 said:
The Maverick spare was indeed on the right side of the trunk floor:

Underneath the mat was the infamous Ford "drop-in" fuel tank, the top surface of which acted as the trunk floor. Safety first!

Ford was good at that. But then again, GM with the saddle bag gas tanks on the 73-87 trucks.

explorerx4 · August 2021

One of the biggest problems was where the fuel filler was located on may cars of that era.

ab348 · August 2021

sda said:

ab348 said:
The Maverick spare was indeed on the right side of the trunk floor:

Underneath the mat was the infamous Ford "drop-in" fuel tank, the top surface of which acted as the trunk floor. Safety first!
Ford was good at that. But then again, GM with the saddle bag gas tanks on the 73-87 trucks.

The designers probably thought that was an upgrade from having it behind the seatback inside the truck cab.

texases · August 2021

While many GM cars had the gas filler behind the license plate, the gas tank was mounted below the trunk. Ford's drop in tanks turned into gas gushers into the trunk when rear ended, when the filler pipe frequently gave way. This didn't happen with the GM setup.

explorerx4 · August 2021

@texeaes,
Connecticut closed all their tolls because a GM wagon got hit in the back, it burst into flames and the family inside burned to death. It could have been the same result another brand.

texases · August 2021

Absolutely, but Ford's design made that problem more common. Rear end any car hard enough and fire will happen.

uplanderguy · August 2021

Going from memory here (not good, I know), but I think the 'sidesaddle' tanks on the GM pickups were only when you got the optional auxiliary tank.

texases · August 2021

There was also a controversy with those side saddle tanks when a law firm made a video of them exploding in a test crash. Visible in the video were the hobby rocket engines used to ignite the gas. Ooops!

correction, it was NBC that faked the crash, not a law firm:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-02-10-mn-1335-story.html

andre1969 · August 2021

Actually, did the Maverick have a drop-in fuel tank? For some reason I'm thinking it was the first of the unitized Fords that moved away from it? I think the Mustang got rid of it for '71, and the Torino/Montego went body-on-frame for '72, so that took care of that.

Oh, and yeah, GM's downsized '78+ intermediates were also implicated in a few fiery deaths from rear-enders. I can even remember, as a kid, seeing a chain reaction rear-ender, where one of the cars was a '78-79 Malibu, and I can remember it leaking fuel.

I seem to recall that the incident that raised eyebrows on the GM design was a 1980 Malibu sedan in Texas. It stalled out on a lonely country road, towards dusk. The driver, a woman, got out of the car, but left her two small children in the back seat where they were sleeping. Along came a stake truck that plowed into it at fairly high speed, sent it airborne, spinning it 180 degrees, and it burst into flames. The two children were burned alive.

Then there was an instance of a 1983 Cutlass Cruiser that was stopped at a toll booth. Someone ran into it, supposedly at highway speed from what I recall, and it blew up.

One thing I can't remember...when GM downsized their intermediates, did the get rid of the most rearward crossmember of the frame, figuring the rear bumper was enough for support? It's been awhile since I've been underneath any of my cars, but I seem to recall that on my '76 LeMans, there is a crossmember at the very back of the frame. My '89 Gran Fury copcar was unitized, but still had sub-frames, and I'm pretty sure it had a crossmember back there, too.

With GM's saddle-tank trucks, again I'm just going from memory here, and I've noticed my memory ain't what it used to be.

But I seem to recall that the crash that caused all the sensation with that one involved a Chevy Citation blowing through a stop sign at 73 mph and t-boning a Chevy pickup on the driver's side, right at the saddle tank. At 73 mph, I'd imagine the driver was probably dead before it blew up.

I'm not sure, but i think the fuel tank was outside the frame rail, whether you got a single tank of dual tanks. I remember Granddad's '76 GMC crew cab had two twenty-gallon tanks, one on each side. That little bit of knowledge actually left me stranded once, because I just presumed that his '85 Silverado also had two twenty-gallon tanks. One day in the late 80s, I had driven it to college, and on the way home, on an up-grade, it suddenly stalled out, and wouldn't re-start. I knew about how many miles it had gone since its last fill up, so I figured there was no way in hell I ran out of gas. It had died a few hundred feet from a Shell station. I ran down there, where they had a tow truck driver on duty, and asked them to come tow it. It was on a fairly busy road, rush hour was starting up, and it was creating a traffic jam. So, the tow truck driver comes up, but before he hooks up, he says, "are you sure it's not out of gas?" Then he flipped the switch on the dash, it started drawing from the other tank, and it fired right up. I felt like an idiot!

When I got home, I mentioned to granddad what happened, and said something like "damn that truck gets lousy mileage, going through a 20 gallon tank like that!" He looked at me like I was an idiot and said "It has 16 gallon tanks, not 20." D'oh!

So I guess it was just the larger crew-cab trucks that got twin 20-gallon tanks? Or maybe they had changed the standard between '76 and '85? Anyway, I think if you only got a single tank, it was larger, and on the driver's side, but still mounted outside of the frame rail.

I'm fuzzy on the timeframe now, but I do remember GM sending my grandparents (it was just Grandmom by this time though) a voucher, where if they traded the truck on a new GM vehicle within a certain amount of time, they'd get an extra $2,000 on top of the trade, I think it was. The offer dropped to $1000 after a certain time threshold, and then to $500, and then went away. At the time though, there wasn't anything GM was building that really enticed us to trade in an otherwise perfectly good truck. And none of us felt particularly unsafe driving it.

In later years, I heard that police departments tried to file lawsuits against Ford for the Crown Victoria. Apparently, they were starting to blow up when rear-ended. Those vertical gas tanks that allowed for the deep well trunk, were getting pinched between the trunk well and rear axle and breaching, IIRC. Anyway, the truth came out that it was cops who had people pulled over on the side of a highway that were dying. They'd be sitting in the car, and get rear-ended at 70+ mph by some distracted driver, and the car would blow up. So it wasn't exactly gentle taps like what you saw in the movies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngtALzDAIcU

texases · August 2021

I think you're right about the Maverick tank, it doesn't have the rim at the top for 'drop in' attachment; it has the rim around the middle, and photos show it held on by straps, so it's not a drop in.

explorerx4 · August 2021

I was thinking of that 1983 incident. I remember when it happened.

andre1969 · August 2021

One thing I notice about that Maverick is that, while the tank might be strapped under the car rather than a part of the trunk floor, that exposed filler tube that runs from behind the license plate down into the gas tank still probably isn't a good thing. Seems to me that it could be ripped loose fairly easily, and allow some fuel spillage into the car. With all the cars I've owned that you fuel from the rear, the filler tube itself is also under the trunk.

But, nobody ever went after the Maverick with high profile lawsuits as far as I know, so I guess they did the job for the most part!

As for drop-in gas tanks, didn't some of the unitized Lincolns in the 60's use them as well? I seem to recall reading some incident where a top Ford executive was rear-ended in one, and the tank breached and it caught on fire, but he was able to get out of the car alive.

explorerx4 · August 2021

How do you know if the problem was the drop in tank or the center fill?

texases · August 2021

On the early Mustangs it's both. There's a rubber hose in the trunk connecting the fill pipe to the drop in tank, so much of any crash would disconnect the tank from the fill pipe, allowing gas to flow directly into the trunk.

ab348 · August 2021

I think part of the issue with the drop-in Ford tanks was that given the propensity for water leaks into the trunk, the top of the tank could rust and weaken prematurely, and also that the design was prone to puncture by items in the trunk. I also remember something about the sealer used around the flange where it met the rest of the trunk floor causing corrosion there too.

The center filler is always a problem. I remember in the mid-70s being on vacation and spending the night in Brewer, ME. We went out to get dinner and witnessed a '71-'71 Charger get rear-ended at a stoplight, probably at 30 to 40MPH. Gas just spewed out from under the car and made a small lake on the road. I was amazed it didn't ignite.

uplanderguy · August 2021

I can't recall fire hazard discussion about the '78 and later GM intermediates, although I do remember a TV segment that showed a tire and wheel coming off the rear and part of the axle coming off. I'm pretty sure the video was set up to show this as the TV network couldn't get a car to do it on its own.

I do remember the Crown Victoria fire stories. Supposedly other vehicles weren't doing the same, although at that point, most other police vehicles were probably SUV's.

ab348 · August 2021

uplanderguy said:
I can't recall fire hazard discussion about the '78 and later GM intermediates, although I do remember a TV segment that showed a tire and wheel coming off the rear and part of the axle coming off. I'm pretty sure the video was set up to show this as the TV network couldn't get a car to do it on its own.

Yes, there was a big recall in the early/mid-'80s of the downsized A-body cars for rear axle shafts that departed from the vehicle. It always amazes me when a component that has been in use for decades with little issue gets redesigned by a new engineer and has a catastrophic failure point built in.

sda · August 2021

ab348 said:

uplanderguy said:
I can't recall fire hazard discussion about the '78 and later GM intermediates, although I do remember a TV segment that showed a tire and wheel coming off the rear and part of the axle coming off. I'm pretty sure the video was set up to show this as the TV network couldn't get a car to do it on its own.
Yes, there was a big recall in the early/mid-'80s of the downsized A-body cars for rear axle shafts that departed from the vehicle. It always amazes me when a component that has been in use for decades with little issue gets redesigned by a new engineer and has a catastrophic failure point built in.

To save a few pennies, weight or both and yet…false economy and egg on face.

uplanderguy · August 2021

Yeah, the '78 midsize GM's had some boneheaded 'new ideas', but I still say they are the last GM cars I liked a lot. Really, looked and felt like a shrunken big car, and I mean that in a good way, LOL.

ab348 · August 2021

The design team took management's directives to save weight and reduce component cost a little too far. If they had either kept the TH350 transmission in them or at least designed the TH200 to be somewhat more robust, not gone with such an undersized rear axle, and allowed the rear windows in at least some configurations to roll down they would have been pretty good.

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

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