@pip-bip and Ed Whitacre thought late 2000s Cadillacs looked like old-fashioned choo-choo trains

@Krusty-Walnut
I remember driving brand new Land Cruisers 30 years ago...they were better than the 45 Series before them. And that wasn't hard. Even less hard will be every rubber bush in the truck posted....

A driving experience that should get you comp time in purgatory for some sins big enough to be really fun. In its defense, though, when this car came out, a lot of companies were betting on diesels for the US market (even BMW got in on the act, albeit with a turbo that spiced things up a bit) as people looked apprehensively to a future of expensive and at times hard-to-get fuel.

Then OPEC decided to bicker among themselves in various ways (most notably, Iraq decided to conquer Iran and neither side achieved much except a lengthy blood-soaked stalemate) rather than continue hoovering our wallets, so in the mid-80s, oil prices descended to a long low plateau. Car makers then mostly hung up this particular hairshirt.

Here's a modern story on driving a Chevette diesel (tl;dr: like driving a regular Chevette, only with more time to savor the experience). The upside of anhedonia: even with automatic transmission, they saw high-thirties MPG in thick city traffic, and an easy 40+ with some hope of hypermiling well into the 50s at illegal-when-new modern freeway speeds (which, yes, it will eventually reach and sustain).

Fascinating. Weird.

(I can't buy it. For one, it's missing a roof.)

@Roundbadge Those are really cool, I would assume pretty rare now.

@atfsgeoff no idea. buy it and flip it 😛

@pip-bip 56mpg highway as I recall, the most fuel efficient car on the market at the time, and one of the cheapest (like $800 more than a Yugo, but even closer than that, since no dealers actually stocked base Yugos)

@beefchips It's not bad, I might look at the other options. I do that stuff for a living so I could just replace the decals.

I like it, but I don't love it.

@pip-bip I’ve actually seen a black or grey Alliance convertible street parked about three blocks from my house on multiple occasions within the past year. The area they park in is largely rented houses rather than owner-occupied…which would lead me to believe the owner is driving it because it still works and they can’t afford anything else.

@pip-bip lot of effort went into not succeeding with this project. the number of doors isn't blasphemous to my god, but the forehead above the windshield is.

@pip-bip

[pours out one for 505Turbeaux/Tim]

He has the most OPPO job ever now, I think.

@Taylor-Martin said in Fox body breadvan:

Secondly, damn I kinda want it.

I've wanted a Foxbody ute or wagon for my entire driving life now....

Fairmont wagons are nearly impossible to find, but not as impossible as the Ford Durango

8ffa849c-3581-4c89-9a88-646fcadd667d-image.png

@pip-bip It's not even off the boat yet for them. Pretty ballsy.

@pip-bip Hahahahaha no

@Genesis_Haysenhox Yes. I can't remember if it was here or in the old site, but I posted a yellow one I spotted around town a while back.

@KAC Yeah, sadly with 3 days left that can go a lot higher.

@vondon302 very curious to know too.

@hotwheelsandfriedchicken It's not exactly rare and unfortunately I don't have any pictures, but adjacent to my grandpa's old farm in Indiana was a muscle car graveyard deep in a forest. A 70 and 71 Challenger, a 66 Mustang, a 1971 Super Bee, and other stuff my 10 year old self couldn't identify. When I was 15 we came back with one of the neighbors and pulled out the Mustang and Challengers, but I don't know what happened to the rest.

This is when we pulled the Mustang.img_1_1644946339371.jpg

@pip-bip no, also no, and another no.

@pip-bip If you look at it as essentially a new car, the price is excellent for something that could probably outlast every 2022 model being built right now (if the number of 10+ year old Crown Vic police cars and taxis I still see running around are an indication, along with the Town Car airport livery vehicles). However, I would be highly, highly suspect of brakes and every seal and gasket, I'd bet it would turn into the Exxon Valdez if you started trying to actually use it

@pip-bip
I've driven a 205 that looked just like this, two doors, white paint and all.
Sadly it had gone 160,000 km and felt it. No rust which was a surprise.

@pip-bip
Instability... everywhere.

@pip-bip That's pretty frickin' cool!

@pip-bip
When original paint is the most positive thing one can say about a car...

@pip-bip My dad had one of those from 93-96. They were not good cars when they were new. Interesting, but a pretty terrible car. Clumsy handling, a wet noodle for a chassis, all the cowl shake over the smallest imperfections in the road, a Fischer-price like interior (but less durable), a comically bad top mechanism and so very slow. An NA Miata is a vastly superior car in every possible way.

@pip-bip A wagoneer was the first car I ever drove. It was a much earlier model though. My mom operated the pedals, and I did the steering. Obviously a 6 year old is going to take a 4 wheel drive off-road so I steered us off our dirt road, and onto the slight incline next to the road, then bumped one tire down into the intake hole for the culvert under the road for the big bump.
Looking back that was not good for the suspension at all, but I think I can blame my mom since she was the one keeping her foot on the gas.

@fintail yeah, this one is pretty toasted, but as soon as I saw it, I thought of you. I knew your dad had a '60 wagon in a lower trim level, but figured it was probably a 4 door.
Love the design of this two door wagon!

@pip-bip Honestly, if something like this is available next summer when I'm actually ready to shop for a car, I would have to at least check it out. If it really is mechanically sorted out but just dirty and scruffy, that would suit me fine. And yeah, it may end up being a disaster, but when you're old and stuck in some plastic self-driving monstrosity, do you really want to tell the story of the old Alfa you almost bought? Or the sure-to-be countless stories of the Alfa you once owned?

@pip-bip Hey, that's not too far from me. Well beyond this thing's range though. Not that it drives currently anyways.

@pip-bip
That price is insane...

Imagine asking that sort of coin for a local 40 year old L200....even if you couldfind one !

@pip-bip Wow! Absolutely beautiful.

@pip-bip Well, at least it still has SUs on it...

@pip-bip I want to get one of those, put a Daimler 2.5 v-8 in it and tell people it is a Mopar prototype for a gas crisis Barracuda.

1966-Plymouth-Barracuda-american-classics--Car-101503913-c4c02b093b9e04980c24d46918c98496.jpg

@vondon302
alt text

@cé-hé-sin
Ye', you see the occasional Renault 5 here in the U.K., saw one the other day in fact.
Just that getting a more period correct car as a donor to restore this one makes more sense really.

@italia minor details

@pip-bip 34f97e2f-d083-4170-88dd-59a5da166c4c-image.png

@pip-bip this car raises a lot of flags for a Datsun enthusiast. Zero chassis photos, vin doesn’t match model year, zero interior photos, lots of body customization, I can go on but unless they get more photos that’s a $5,000 car or less.

@pip-bip @Qaaaaa I mean the floors in my Jaguar aren’t a great deal better. I had the passenger side floor pan replaced at great expense. And just discovered the other day the drivers side is much worse than when I checked it last.

@pip-bip When cars still had character. Gorgeous.

@pip-bip My grandmother had a Mustang II Ghia, not sure the year, but it did have the V8, so that dates it a bit, since they didn't offer one at first. She still talks about it as one of her favorite cars - but, it replaced a Maverick, was itself replaced by a Tempo, and she's got an Avalon now, so, gives you an idea of where the bar's been set.

@pip-bip Just saw a red one yesterday. On the side of a garage of course.

@silentbutnotreallydeadly You can buy a base model Tacoma for about that. Heck, even SR5 V6 in 2wd.

@pip-bip wikipedian_protester.png

@pip-bip It's the Rally edition, with the 60 hp engine instead of the base 52 hp engine. The car is only 2000 pounds, but that's still not much if you are going to try to navigate modern American traffic. That 2000 pound weight also mean no crash structure at all.

Maybe you get this to take to shows on weekends, but anybody over 50 will look at it and shudder. The Chevette was GM's attempt to prove to Americans how much better the Japanese compact cars were.

@pip-bip

@pip-bip These are the kinds of cars I would want to save, LOL

@pip-bip Prepro might have better QC than production.

I have a 1981 Consumer Guide car book that reviewed dozens of new cars. They tested a TR7 or TR8, I forget which, but I remember their summary: "There may always be an England, but if our test car is any indication, there might not always be a British motor industry" - prescient words, as it is virtually all foreign owned now.

@silentbutnotreallydeadly It mostly goes over them but you don't feel them since it's sprung like a sofa.

@pip-bip said in hour rule:

@silentbutnotreallydeadly would be worth it today.

We were 17 years old at the time. They'd have been long dead by the time we'd turned 19!

I've always loved these.

@pip-bip said in late night oppo:

https://barnfinds.com/turn-key-survivor-1968-mercury-cougar/

That's a beautiful Cougar. All of the hard to find/expensive stuff is there too. Mechanical is easy on a Cougar, body/interior is tough.

@pip-bip
That thing and a coupé have as much in common as does a yacht and a butterfly.

@pip-bip That is...yeah.

Here's something I spotted locally.

IMG_1806.jpeg