Car Lust

Great (???) Commercials--Trabant 601

Our subject for today is a thirty-second commercial for the Trabant 601 which appeared on East German television around 1969.

Daihatsu Naked

Today's topic of interest is one of those fascinating little kei cars found in the Japanese home market. A kei car cannot exceed certain exterior dimensions, and is limited to a 660cc motor of no more than 64 HP. A car which observes these limitations is easier to register under Japanese law and qualifies for favorable tax and insurance treatment.

Our subject was produced by Toyota subsidiary Daihatsu from 2000 to 2004, and is a variation on the 5th-generation Mira 5-door hatchback. It has a squared-off shape, and the many "industrial" details like the chiseled character lines on the doors, the "bolt heads" on the bumper and nosepiece, and the exposed door hinges, give it a "techno" or "futuristic" feeling. If they'd had four-passenger economy cars in Blade Runner, they might've looked like this little fella.

The name of this delightful little car? We'll get to that in a minute.

1985 Honda Civic CRX

Perfect.

If I had to describe my blue 1985 Civic CRX in one word, that would be it.

I bought it sight-unseen from a dealer my father knew. I took delivery one Saturday morning and drove to my parents' house to show it to Mom and my sister, taking the shortcut through the park so I could play with my new toy on the twisty part in the gorge between the old mill and the goldfish pond.

By the time I got to the house, I was thinking to myself, "This is perfect!  It's like Honda read my mind. Someone finally built the car I've always wanted!"

That CRX was perfect. Completely, absolutely perfect. The most perfect car I had ever owned, driven, ridden in, or even looked at from ten yards away.

Let me explain what made it so perfect.

Quantum of Annoyance--When Product Placement Goes Horribly Wrong

My wife and I watched the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace a week or so ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. As you might guess from my frequent references to Bond, I am a fan of the franchise--and while I occasionally miss the humor and campiness of the Roger Moore movies, I overwhelmingly approve of the franchise reboot. The series badly needed more realistic villains and a darker, more dangerous Bond, and the last two movies have delivered.

As good as Quantum of Solace was, though, all of its goodness was nearly unraveled by Ford's product placement whitewash. It didn't start out badly--the movie began with a thrilling car chase that featured Bond piloting a gorgeous Aston Martin. Even setting aside from Bond's history with the marque, Aston Martin is the perfect Bond car--muscular, debonair, slightly threatening, and thoroughly English. Aside from the fact that the company is owned by Ford, of course. (EDIT: Partially owned by Ford, that is. Ford sold all but a small stake last year. Thanks to the commenters for reminding me--I thought Ford still had a bigger stake.)

Likewise, I could buy that Bond would drive a Land Rover--it is a believable Bond vehicle, especially for off-road situations. Again, Land Rover is a Ford property. I even enjoyed the novelty of seeing a motorcycle chasing down an electric subcompact--a electric subcompact Ford Ka, naturally. 

Mercury Marauder

The images that leap to mind when most people hear the words "muscle car" are generally not "business suit" or "family man" or "middle manager". The association is generally more along the lines of "t-shirt" or "gearhead" or "line worker." It makes sense, as the classic muscle car era is usually assigned to the time between the introduction of the GTO in 1964 and somewhere in the early 1970s when the last of the great big block, high compression V-8s rolled off the assembly line.

Like the GTO, most classic muscle cars followed a familiar pattern: take a cheap base model coupe, strip it down to its essentials, squeeze in as big an engine as possible, and make enough aftermarket performance parts to allow the average mechanically inclined 20-something to turn it into a quarter-mile monster.

But when the concept of the muscle car began to take shape in the late '50s (some would argue earlier; these 'origins' discussions can be tricky), it had much different connotations. Power went with luxury, and was only rightfully available to those who could afford both. Before Goats and Judges and Chargers and Super Sports prowled the streets, the kings of the power hill were 300s, Galaxies, and Impalas: big, heavy 4-door sedans with options and comfort galore. To drive one of these meant you'd made it; you could afford not only power but all of the high-end doodads that manufacturers had to offer. Power and prestige went hand in hand. Yes, before those miserable upstarts came along, the Big Cars ruled the power roost and everybody knew it.

But alas, physics being what it is, power-to-weight ratios eventually won the day and the big luxurious muscle cars largely went the way of the dodo. Almost. Throughout the years, at least one manufacturer kept the old concept alive, if only in short bursts. And so I give you the Mercury Marauder: the thinking man's muscle car.

1977 Pontiac Trans Am SE

Sally Field: "Does this thing move?"
Burt Reynolds: "Oh, yeah."

---

Like Smokey and the Bandit, the movie that made it famous, the 1977 Pontiac Trans Am is easy to dismiss as a buffoonish, overblown mockery of a once-great art form. Certainly both the movie and the muscle car are obvious, gauche, and deeply imbued with the cheesiness characteristic of the 1970s. Personally, I think that is at the root of their appeal.

Last year I wrote a series of posts on Poseur Muscle Cars, honoring such punchless extroverts as the Ford Mustang II, Chevy Monte Carlo SS, Dodge Magnum XE, Ford Gran Torino, and Spirit-based AMC AMX. The '77 Trans Am would seem like an obvious candidate for Poseur Muscle Car (dis)honor--after all, as the Trans Am's horsepower ratings sagged in the mid-1970s, the body kits and graphics kept getting flashier and gaudier to compensate.

The difference? The Trans Am was the real thing--the car most of those poseur muscle cars wanted to be when they grew up. Compared to its contemporaries, the Trans Am was still a potent car. Relatively speaking, it still brought the thunder.