Car Lust

Everyday Iron--Dodge Power Wagon

Forget wimpy truck-ettes like the Ford F-150 or Dodge Ram. You want a truck? This thing is a truck.

 

July 13 Weekly Open Thread

As always, this is the thread for open reader discussion of any relevant topic. Don't feel limited by the suggested topics!

Suggested topics:

- As many of us hoped, the Pontiac G8 will live on as a Chevrolet Caprice. It seems a slightly weird fit as a Caprice instead of an Impala SS, but the important thing is that one of the best GM cars around will still be available.

From that same article, another piece of good news--the lustable Cadillac CTS wagon may be available in hot-rod -V trim. Whoo hoo! There is some bad news, though; the burly Camaro Z/28 might be toast. Even there, though, there's some good news, as the surviving regular V-6 Camaro might actually be the better car.

--Chris H.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture--Plymouth Voyager

On the rare and unfortunate occasion that one thinks of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, one usually tends to think of the slow, ponderous pace of the film, the drawn out periods showing nothing but blue clouds, the soundtrack periodically intruding with the mechanical whine of a power drill. Of course, all of this was meant to frame the riveting conflict between V'Ger the Nomadic Space Probe and the intrepid disco-tastic spandex-clad crew of the USS Enterprise.

But what was V'Ger? Of course, we had to sit through hour after interminable hour of slow-motion special effects and stilted dialog, revealing at the end of the movie that it was some hokey 20th century space probe called "Voyager 6," followed by a highly uncomfortable make-out scene involving a bald woman and a guy who would eventually play a reverend on TV--precisely the sort of predictable plot development you would expect out of a movie like this. But happily there's one quote that sums the whole thing up:

V'Ger is that which seeks the creator.

In all seriousness, though, what could be more ponderous and produce more blue smoke than Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Well, in the spirit of the original movie, let's take an extended, unnecessary, and highly unwelcome diversion, shall we?

If Car Lust wrote Star Trek scripts ...

As David Colborne noted this morning, we're going to be geeking out in the next week and featuring a string of cars with highly pun-ny Star Trek associations. As odd as this theme is, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. After all, our baked-in Trekkie leanings were on full display in the Ricardo Montalban and Chrysler Cordoba posts; one of my favorite pieces of content ever featured on Car Lust is the USS Cordoba video from the latter piece. Besides, Car Lust tends to manifest itself as vehicle lust--is there any vehicle more sublimely lustable than the original USS Enterprise?

We had a lot of fun tying these cars to Star Trek movies, and so in the process of unveiling our subjects for the next week I'd like to share our thought process on Star Trek movies, Car Lust-style.

Now, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that the cross-section of humanity that both reads Car Lust and appreciates Star Trek puns consists of roughly 11 people. For the rest of our readership, the sane folks, I'd recommend skipping the rest of this post and its baked-in geekness.

This bizarre but compelling Star Trek-themed Enterprise Rent-a-Car image comes from Upgrade Travel Better.com. Oh, and just for the heck of it, here's the USS Cordoba video again.

Star Trek Cars--An Introduction

As some of you have undoubtedly noticed by now, we are a little theme-happy here at Car Lust. The reason, of course, is quite simple: Laziness. See, the trouble with writing about random cars all of the time is that you eventually run out of cars to write about. By introducing themes, it helps us focus our energies on cars that we may have otherwise missed, cars that ordinarily wouldn't warrant a Car Lust of their own. Thus, you end up with themes like Inappropriately Named Chrysler Products, our slow and ponderous funeral dirge through Pontiac, Epic Fail Epoch, Saratoga-Class Week, Crackerjack Box Week, and so on. Without these themes, we'd almost never have an excuse to dig into the merits of GM's T-Series, which, frankly, would be inexcusable.

This brings us to our latest theme. Inspired by the ongoing success of the newest Star Trek movie, we here have decided to engage full speed ahead into Star Trek cars. Now, were other blogs to engage in a Star Trek-themed cavalcade through automotive history, they might be inclined to write about fast, futuristic cars, ones that make you wish you had inertial dampeners or some sort of electromagnetic shield in front of them to keep out stray micrometeorites. We, however, are not other blogs. No, when we write about Star Trek cars, we use the opportunity to engage in a pun-ishing exercise in automotive pun-ditry. Such is our way.

With that in mind, we shall choose a car that we feel best reflects each Star Trek movie and pun-p you full of automotive wisdom and wit. Why? Simple--logic. The needs of the punny outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

You're the one.

July 4 Weekend Open Thread

I'm out on vacation until Tuesday morning, so here's the open thread for the holiday weekend. The usual rules apply.

Possible topic for July 4:

What car would George Washington drive? Thomas Jefferson? John Adams? Benedict Arnold?

--Chris H.

1957 Chevrolets

The 1955-57 "Tri-Five" or "shoebox" Chevrolets are among the most recognizable of all classic cars. The 1957 iteration, with its tail-finned rear quarter panels and available powerful small-block V-8, is probably the single best-known and loved American car of all time. 

Go to any old-car show or cruise-in anywhere on the North American continent this summer and I guarantee there will be at least one '57 Chevy on display--probably two or three. Whether meticulously restored to car-show perfection, or tricked out with side pipes and slotted mags and a jacked-up rear end, any '57 you see in these circumstances will be an obvious source of joy for its owner and an object of affection and wonder to those who gather around it. Even non-pistonheads love the '57 Chevy. My wife, who is as far from a "car person" as one can be and still have a driver's license, remembers kissing her father's red hardtop goodbye when he traded it in.

How beloved are these cars? There is an urban legend that claims that after the newly-styled '58 Chevrolets were introduced, a renegade group of GM employees continued building unauthorized copies of the '57s in a secret factory for another ten years out of sheer unadulterated car lust. That didn't really happen, at least not the way legend has it, but if you want a new 1957-design Chevrolet Bel Air with all zeroes on the odometer, you can get one--there is enough demand for them that exact replicas are being manufactured today, some using NOS parts for that extra measure of authenticity.

Personally, I just don't get what all the fuss is about.

RIP, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, because it's gone under-reported by the news media, but we lost both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett yesterday. While their families, fans, and the rest of the entertainment world will miss Jackson and Fawcett, we won't be dwelling on their lives or their influence in this space beyond offering our condolences--no doubt a disappointment to those who come to Car Lust for comprehensive hard-news and entertainment coverage. No, we'll be doing something almost as important--focusing on their impact on the world of vehicle advertising.

Of course, their impact in the world of car commercials was vanishingly small compared to a car commercial regular like Ricardo Montalban, but I did find a few commercials to share.

1986-1989 Honda Accord

Every so often, an automaker has a special run in which it can seemingly do nothing wrong; great car follows great car, and seemingly every product it touches turns to gold. I would argue that GM had a run like that in the 1960s, followed by Mercedes-Benz in the 1970s, Honda in the 1980s, BMW in the 1990s, and Toyota in this decade. These are the stretches in which a run of great cars builds the brand's reputation and a core of loyal customers that continue to buy over the following decades; in other words, the exact opposite of what GM did from 1975-1985.

Besides the great cars, I find these runs of success so compelling because they illustrate just how deceptively simple making great cars can be. These manufacturers didn't succeed because of fancy new technologies, splashy styling, or unnecessary gimmicks; they succeeded because they delivered original, attractive, cars that last and are fun to drive. Honda is the ultimate example here; once just a respected small automaker, Honda became a global powerhouse by executing the fundamentals flawlessly in the 1980s.

There's something special, just innately right about Honda cars in the mid-to-late 1980s; a purity of styling and engineering that took simple, unpretentious cars and lifted them into genius. I'm focusing on the Accord here, and Cookie the Dog's Owner previously waxed eloquent about his 1985 Honda CRX, and Rob the SVX Guy has done the same for his 1989 Honda Prelude Si, but much of what made these cars great go for the entire 1980s Honda lineup--the Civic, Prelude, Accord, and even the first Acura Integra and Legend.

Temptation

A reader sent me an e-mail this morning asking if I would be interested in buying his Saab 900 SPG, which is enough impetus to trigger my "buy! buy! buy!" impulse. As I usually do when I'm the throes of heavy temptation, I then proceeded to splash gasoline all over the open flame.

I generally try to avoid the Saab Network's excellent classified section, simply because after about five minutes there I find myself ready to sell my internal organs to buy all of the tasty late-model Saabs on offer there. My venturing into the TSN classifieds is like a gambling addict breezing into Las Vegas with a full wallet and the intention just to watch a poker tournament or two.

6/22/09 Weekly Open Thread

As always, this is your thread to do with as you will--within reason, of course!

Father's Day Round Table

One might reasonably argue that we here at Car Lust do not really write about cars as much as we write about ourselves; the cars are simply a vehicle (pun intended) allowing us to tell a story of how we view ourselves, our friends and family, and society generally. We're mostly average folks with an interest in offbeat automobiles, much like the readers who come here to read our missives to cars gone by. Hardly anyone will ever drive a Lamborghini, but everyone and his brother either had a Ford Pinto or knew someone who did. As Chris put it so aptly regarding the Ford Pinto:

Somewhere, three decades ago, a designer proudly unveiled it to the bosses at Ford; workers spent their waking hours building it. Young families bought Pintos, showed Pintos off to their friends, washed Pintos in their driveways, drove their babies home from the hospital in Pintos. Some of you drove Pintos; some of your parents or grandparents drove Pintos. Pintos were on TV, in movies, in magazines and newspapers. The Pinto is part of the fabric of our history.

Since the child is father (or mother) to the man (or woman), it makes sense for us to look back at our formative years to examine where our attitudes, likes, and dislikes for particular cars comes from.  Setting aside the debate over the accuracy of the stereotype, fathers tend to be associated with the family car far more than mothers are. Most of us have fond (or otherwise) memories of going down to the car dealers with dad to get a new car for the family, driving it home, and then watching as it is shown off to all the other dads in the neighborhood, usually with the hood up and everyone making comments about horsepower, transmission ratios, etc., whether they know what any of it means or not.

Some of the most endearing posts and comments I've read on this blog are memories of dads and cars. And so we have convened another Car Lust Round Table™ to share. Included are reminiscences by Car Lust bloggers as well as links and quotes to some of our favorite posts and comments, all in honor of Dad for this Father's Day.

MG MGB Series

Writing Car Lust posts is a privilege, especially when they bring back memories of vehicles I have either personally owned or that have been in the family. Such is the case of a 1973 terracotta-colored MGB that my sister had for a few years until her family outgrew the car, which didn't take a lot of outgrowing to do.

What attracted us to the MGB was that, as small as it was, the car was larger than a Triumph Spitfire or MG Midget. I wanted a Spitfire at the time, but this wasn't going to be my car. I believe this is the only picture of "our" MG that we have left. That's Snoopy right behind it, and my first car, a 1972 Vega :( .

My favorite MGB eccentricity was its three windshield wipers. The windscreen was low and wide, and two wipers just weren't up to the job. Only American MGBs had three wipers; all others had two. One night I got caught in a thunderstorm in the canvas-roofed car, and those wipers gave their all to let me see. I was minoring in Aerospace Technology at the time, and driving the roadster was not unlike flying a Cessna 150, except that no pilot is stupid enough to fly a 150 in a thunderstorm.

The best memories I have of the car are during the week I got to take it off to college. People actually lined up to get a ride around the block in it, including some attractive ladies. Oh, if I could only go back and do that day again. ...

Daihatsu Rocky

It was the dawn of the present-day SUVs, say around 1990. The huge Chevy Suburban and Blazer had been with us for some time, but they hadn't yet crossed over into the auto-buying mainstream. The Ford Explorer and Mazda Navajo were brand new. The word "craze" did not apply to the old behemoths, but when mid-sized SUVs like the Explorer debuted, their sales took off like rockets.

At the same time, the Suzuki Samurai was on the outs because, like Mayberry's Otis Campbell, it had a reputation for being a little "tipsy." Yet there seemed to be a market for a compact SUV, especially for thrifty folks like yours truly.

Enter Daihatsu. The name "Daihatsu" is a combination of the first kanji for "Osaka", and the first kanji of the word "engine manufacturer." When put together, they are pronounced "dai hatsu." With only two vehicles in its American lineup (1988-1992), Daihatsu struggled to keep up with the established brands. The company only offered the compact Charade and Rocky. The Charade was a car, and a bit plain at best. The Rocky was a small SUV that, had it been a bit more refined, could have been a big hit in our market. Comparing the Rocky to the more-familiar Samurai just seems natural here.

The Munster Koach and the Drag-u-la

 Two hilarious monster-themed TV shows, The Addams Family and The Munsters, premiered and expired the same two weeks of the same two years in 1964-1966. Both were in black and white. Each had their audience, and you were either a Munsters fan or an Addams Family fan, or both. I liked them both, but I guess I was more of a Munsters fan, primarily because they had The Munster Koach.

George Barris is a genius. He created custom cars like the Batmobile, Monkeemobile, and The Beverly Hillbillies' truck; if a studio wanted a cool custom vehicle for a TV show or movie, Barris Kustom Cars was the place to call. Barris was also wise enough to retain ownership rights to some of his vehicles and just rented them to the studios, guaranteeing him rights for displays, models, and other rewards.

Saab 9-3 Viggen

I'm currently wrapped in denial. Actually, avoidance might be closer to the mark, but either way I'm currently not in a good mental state. For the past two decades Saab has been my favorite automaker because it so enthusiastically embraced three of my favorite automotive attributes: an individualistic philosophy, the magic of turbocharging, and characteristically hunchbacked profiles. The result? Magic, in the form of magnificently funky and atypically useful sporty cars like the Sonett, 99, 900, and 9000. Long-time readers may remember that the 1986 Saab 900 SPG is my personal Car Lust high-water mark.

Now, of course, Saab's future is in doubt. After two decades of generally benevolent General Motors ownership, Saab is up for sale. Over the last few months, I have been generally and perhaps unrealistically optimistic that Saab would land on its feet, perhaps with an owner that would give it both ample funding and a license to regain its uniquely Swedish mojo. Now, though, I'm no longer as sanguine.

Saabs United is all over the story, and its reporting describes the three bidders currently in the running for Saab. From a car-development perspective, the best scenario is probably a purchase by Koenigsegg, the Swedish supercar manufacturer. Based on the latest news, Koenigsegg and Norwegian investors are reportedly Saab's "preferred candidate." But it's not as if Koenigsegg has an easy road ahead of it. The other two parties are less-well-known, and regardless of who wins, what does it mean to Saab's future if venture capitalists take over?

Anyway, this is where my avoidance comes in. While I am cautiously optimistic about the Koenigsegg group, that optimism does not prevent me from being terrified that Saab will either disappear entirely or simply lose any semblance of relevance. The whole experience reminds me far too much of losing my beloved Seattle Supersonics last year, and I'm not sure my psyche could handle the slow, protracted loss of Saab as well.

So, in an attempt to sooth my jangled nerves while this story unfolds, I'd like to honor the impending end of Saab's stint as a GM subsidiary by featuring my favorite Saab made under the GM banner--the 9-3 Viggen.

Tata Nano

You knew this was coming. Is it gutless? You betcha. Is it cheap? Of course--it's designed to be the cheapest production car on the planet. Does it prove, like so many before it, that necessity truly is the mother of invention? Absolutely. 

So, Car Lust material? Well, yeah. I mean, c'mon - it even comes in hot pink! How lusty is that?

But wait - it gets better. As numerous news outlets are pointing out, Tata is planning on bringing this little bastion of affordable motoring to the United States. Naturally, this begs the question--will it follow the path laid down by the VW Beetle, burrowing a place into our automotive hearts, or will it simply rust out of our consciousness like the Citroen 2CV?

1992-1998 Oldsmobile Achieva

If there were ever an entirely inexplicable, odd, unusual and unexpected object of Car Lust, it would be . . .the Rampage! But a close second (third, fourth, or fifth, really, given the people around here) is my uncanny BLOARC* for the Oldsmobile Achieva.

No, I don't understand it. The car has no personal meaning to me; I never owned one, nobody I know ever owned one, and I'm not sure I'd ever really want to own one. By most measures it was neither a particularly good or bad car, certainly nothing that would make any normal person sit up and  take notice. No major reliability issues, not an exceptional performer, but not an underpowered weenie-mobile either. It looked a little odd and the name is kinda flaky.

But I love it still. And that is no doubt due to its rather unique styling. "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion" as Francis Bacon said, and there is strangeness in the Achieva's looks. It doesn't really look like anything else and that appeals to me.

In a way, it's somewhat akin to the Honey Badger: You may not want one yourself, but they look interesting and you're just glad to know that such a creature exists. 

 * Bizarre Love Of A Random Car

6/8/09 Weekly Open Thread

As always, this is the thread in which Car Lust readers can comment and discuss any topic they like, as long as things remain civil. Make the conversation what you want to make it.

Possible topics:
- GM sold off Hummer and Saturn last week; Hummer to a Chinese company, and Saturn to motorsports and dealership magnate Roger Penske. Never bet against Penske, but it will be, um, interesting to see how a dealer-owned car company operates, especially since it doesn't plan on manufacturing its own vehicles.

- The sun is out in Seattle, and I'm getting sailboat lust. Just as I would love to have a 90-car garage filled with an array of automotive detritus, so too am I lusting after a private dock stocked with a Laser, a Catalina 22, a Hobie Cat, and, oh, something along the lines of a Beneteau 40. Maybe a few powerboats and a jet ski, as well, along with a Jeep Grand Wagoneer as a tow vehicle.

Of course, I should probably learn to sail first. Does anybody else out there have sailboat lust they would like to share?

--Chris H.

1962 Rambler American 400 Convertible

UPDATE: Reader Paul Perkins Photoshopped my car show pictures and improved the image quality.  Thanks, Paul!

I don't remember ever seeing a Rambler American before. Nobody in our extended family drove a Rambler. The only Ramblers I specifically remember from childhood had right-hand drive and were used by mail carriers. Government-issue fleet vehicles are not exactly the stuff of pistonhead passion!

So, when I saw this nicely-restored little '62 Rambler at the Cleveland Auto Show--in the old-school exhibit hall, of course--I was a little surprised by my reaction.

I wanted to take the darned thing home with me.