Car Lust

May 29 Weekend Open Thread

I have been sadly remiss in posting open threads lately, but if anybody wants to discuss anything generally automotive-related this weekend, this is the place to do it.

I do have one suggested topic, and it relates to Anthony Cagle's comment in our our Pontiac Round Table:

"I hope the Solstice, G8, and the recent GTO stay around or come back in some form or other."

That received some follow-up comments from our readership, and I think it's an interesting topic to discuss. The demise of a brand does not mean that all of its models will automatically disappear. Which of the models from the brands currently slated to disappear would you like to see retained--and why and how would you like to see it happen? My thoughts after the jump.

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1974: It Was A Very Bad Year

The 1962 and 1969 model years have been covered here at Car Lust as very good years. Well, not every year is that good. Unfortunately, 1974 was one of those years.

Like every year, most 1974 models came out in the previous calendar year. So what I refer to here as 1974 may actually cover two or three model years, from the introduction of the '74 models in 1973 to the '75 models that came out in the 1974  calendar year. So picking an exact model year for cars may be impossible; there are too many blurred lines.

So back we go to calendar years 1973 and 1974 to cover all of the 1974 models... maybe even a '75 model or two. We had the first Arab Oil Embargo, the Energy Crisis, gasoline shortages, and, dare I say, the national 55 Mile Per Hour Speed Limit. Our president, Richard Nixon, had to resign. The Vietnam War wasn't quite over yet. In Sept.1973, Rolling Stone wrote the first story about Disco music, and on Feb. 8, 1974, we abandoned Skylab.

Diplomatic Immunity

To someone such as myself from Northeast Ohio (land of the vinyl-roofed Oldsmobile and the beige minivan), Miami Beach is another automotive universe. I saw things on my business trip there in April that you just don't see in Youngstown or Cleveland: so many Bimmers, Porsches, and high-end Mercs that I stopped paying attention to them; four-door Buicks Maseratis stacked up three deep in the hotel driveway for valet parking; V-12 Ferraris sharing the side streets with tricked-out Chevy Caprices on twenty-inch DUB wheels; even a Harley with underbody lights and a subwoofer.

Even among the palm trees, stretch limos, and aggressively customized tint-windowed Escalades of this tropical crazy car heaven, this little red thing stood out as unique:

In fact, I am reasonably certain that it's the only one of its kind in the United States.

Alpine-Renault A110

When I think of French cars, I think of many things--funky durability, quirky comfort, even slightly odd performance. In every case, the distinctive Gallic eccentricity baked into French cars gives them an extra flavor that I find delicious. Like an aged Roquefort bleu cheese, French cars have a strong flavor and are certainly an acquired taste; but after you are accustomed to the flavor, everything else tastes bland.

By those standards, the Alpine-Renault could be considered stunningly conventional. It is sleek and elegant; hunchbacked profiles and awkward angles are notably absent. The A110's one possible quirk is its rear-engined layout, but given the fact that the car is a contemporary of the Porsche 911, that barely qualifies.

If I'm belaboring the point here, it's because I want to be completely clear--unlike so many Gallic classics, the Alpine-Renault A110 isn't special because it's French, it's special because it's one of the great cars of all time. The A110 matches strong performance with drop-dead gorgeous looks and, most compellingly, legendary status in the motorsports world for its dominance in international rallying. This is not just another case where I'm featuring a weird car because I'm off my rocker.

The Batmobile (1966)

"Quick, Robin, to the Batpoles!" Whoosh!  "Atomic batteries to power... turbines to speed". The hidden cave door drops, a sign falls, and it's 14 miles to Gotham City. "Da da da da da da da da da... 'BATMAN'!"

There have been "Batman" cartoons and comic books and TV shows and movies, but the one vehicle that carried the Dynamic Duo and won the popularity vote is George Barris' 1966 TV Batmobile. Originally a car show concept car, a 1955 Lincoln Futura was the donor vehicle for the Batmobile.

There would be 3 more copies later, built from fiberglass molds onto stretched Ford Galaxie frames for public displays and such. Ghia of Italy built the Futura; it was used in "It Started With A Kiss" with Debbie Reynolds and Glenn Ford.

The Futura was sold to Mr. Barris for the whopping sum of one dollar, since Ford had no use for it and was storing it at Mr. Barris' shop anyway. The 21-day conversion included enlarging the tailfins, black paint, red trim, red flashing lights, new headlight fins, and new Bat-trim.

1969: It Was A Very Good Year!

Just as in music, or movies, there are landmark years in cars as well. Fellow Car Lust Contributor Anthony Cagle already described why 1962 was such a good year, and in so doing may have helped inspire the rest of us to write a series of posts on some very good (and probably some bad) calendar and model years for our beloved vehicles. One of my favorite years for cars, both now and at the time, is 1969. Right on!

Personally, I don't care if a car was a '69 model or made any time during that calendar year, anything that has a "69" on it is good enough for me. Differences between most 1967 and 1968 models were minimal--look for the addition of side marker lights, new grilles, and taillights, and that's usually about it. But most '69 models had all-new sheet metal and bumpers, creating a pleasant, rounded look that may never be seen again.

Why 1969? Well, to me, vehicular-wise anyway, it all seemed to come together that year--we had it all, big cars, mid-sized cars, little cars, fast cars, economy cars, sports cars, convertibles, station wagons (for The Brady Bunch), motorcycles, and pickup trucks that were manly and rough as they should be, gol-blame it. Big cars were big, and little cars like the VW Beetle were common and accepted. We had vans, box vans, step vans, at least one minivan, and some vans had raiseable roofs to become campers, perfect for a Love-In, and were quite the scene at Woodstock. "Flower Power"-painted hippies' rides were hip, taking you to the Peace Rally in style. Car/vehicle/cult movies of '69 included Easy Rider, The Italian Job, and On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

On top of that, we saw the cancellation of "Star Trek," inaugurated Richard Nixon, and, oh yeah, we landed on the moon. "Ground control to Major Tom!"

Round Table--Pontiac Post-Mortem

I'm sure you've all noticed that what was meant to be a week-long tribute to Pontiac following the news of its demise has turned into something much longer and more drawn-out than intended. So, as our grand finale wrapping up the topic, we've all put together our thoughts on the passing of Pontiac.

Anthony Cagle:

My own experience is limited, although I have always rather favored the brand. The first car I remember as a child was my parents' maroon 2-door Catalina. I vaguely remember taking trips in it down to Alabama from Wisconsin during the summer. We'd leave at like 4 a.m. and drive all day to get there. I think that was the car I crawled into as a young lad and removed the parking brake and let the damn thing roll backwards down the driveway. I still have nightmares in which I am trying to mash down brake pedals on cars trying to get them to stop. There's at least one driving around Seattle (parked, actually, I don't know if I've ever seen it moving) and I have visions of getting into it and applying the brakes to a full stop just as a cathartic way to assuage the terrors of my youth.

The funny thing about my parents and the Catalina is that they never owned another Pontiac again (though they kept buying GM products), but that was the only car they ever talked about. They would always say, "Remember that old Pontiac we had? What a great car that was."

I always preferred the Trans Am and Firebird to the Camaro myself. That probably started with the Bandit edition because I really loved the way that car looked. It always seemed a bit more younger/sportier and maybe a bit more upscale than the Camaro, though this may be projection on my part ("*I* like it, so it must be more sophisticated"). And I remember liking the whole "Wide Track" ad campaign. To be honest, that was about the only generation I really liked of the T/A. The follow-on seemed a bit too contrived to me, and the earlier versions just lacked any real styling. Give me a black '76 with that enormous, ridiculous screaming chicken, and I would never need another car.

 

 

1989 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am 20th Anniversary

Over the last year of increasingly dire news coming out of Detroit, it has become trendy to dismiss General Motors as a company operating without inspiration--a bland, risk-averse company in difficult financial straits because it has been building bland, risk-averse cars since 1975. It's an easy stereotype, but, like most stereotypes, it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. For one thing, GM has built genuinely innovative and risky vehicles--it's just that most were also fatally flawed (among them the Pontiac Fiero, Chevrolet Citation, Cosworth Vega, Pontiac Aztek ...). And there have also been some truly world-class cars; unfortunately, they are tainted by the company's public failures. Not even the bright light of the Cadillac Seville STS could escape the abject black hole of awfulness created by the Cadillac Cimarron (excuse me, Cimarron by Cadillac).

But even more than the noble failures and the legitimate stars, the truest evidence of GM's inspiration comes in its spurts of odd, unexpected greatness. Every so often GM puts out products so weird and fantastic that they must have horrified the company's stifling layers of bureaucracy. I can't help imagining a team of wild-eyed enthusiasts caged up within the corporate monolith who periodically escape and produce irrationally fun cars before their masters track them down and sedate them.

For a 15-year stretch, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, these fanatics used the black magic of turbocharging to energize GM's ubiquitous but dull pushrod 3.8-liter and 4.3-liter V-6s. And likewise, those newly swaggering engines served as the smoking and bubbling chemical elixir that morphed the stolid, soft, Dr. Jekyll vehicles of the GM lineup (Buck Regal, Chevy S-10) into the wild, animalistic Mr. Hydes (Buick GNX, GMC Syclone/Typhoon). From the original Buick Regal Turbo through to the Grand National and GNX, and finally to the Syclone/Typhoon, the formula of a turbo V-6 and some subtle tweaks turned completely ordinary cars into wonderfully unlikely Ferrari-killers.

Car Lust Classic--Volkswagen Squareback

Originally posted by Chris Hafner on Aug. 29, 2007

There's no particularly good reason to love Volkswagen Squarebacks. Their styling was dated even when they were new several decades ago, and they have more than a passing resemblance to the punch-line East German Trabant of the Iron Curtain era. Squarebacks were fundamentally Volkswagen Beetles under the skin, which means even when new, they were incredibly slow, horribly noisy, and absurdly dated.

So why do I want one so much?

My uncle, a slightly daft individual who used to ice-race perfectly good Volkswagen Rabbits--is probably to blame here. Whenever I visited him as a child to gape in awe at his model car collection, or peruse his car magazines, I would encounter in front of his house twin Volkswagen Squarebacks, both in some moderate state of disrepair. Somehow that led to this deep-seated passion.

Who can explain the nuances of the child's mind? Or, to be more descriptive of my current mindset, a childish mind?

Read the rest of this post, its comments, and post your own comment here.

Who can explain the nuances of the child's mind? Or, to be more descriptive of my current mindset, a childish mind?

Pontiac 6000STE

I have absolutely no idea what to make of the Pontiac 6000STE. At its heart, it is simply a Chevrolet Celebrity clone; which itself was an outgrowth of the much-maligned Chevrolet Citation. I have already described the misery inflicted upon my car enthusiast father by the 6000STE's A-body sibling, the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. I can't imagine a less promising foundation for a sports sedan than that.

And yet ... and yet, there was a period of time in the early 1980s when the 6000STE was regarded by the leading automotive journalists as the finest sports sedan in America. Like the Cadillac CTS-V today, the 6000STE was considered GM's credible BMW imitator, a world-class sports sedan that melded American attitude with European driving dynamics.

In fact Car and Driver named the 6000STE one of the 10 Best Cars of 1983. The rest of the list was made up of such luminaries as the Porsche 944, Mk. I Volkswagen GTI, Toyota Supra, Honda Accord, Ford Mustang, Mazda RX-7, Mercedes-Benz 380SEL, Chevrolet Caprice (the revolutionary downsized version), and, um, the AMC/Renault Alliance. Hey, nobody's perfect. The point is, C&D thought the 6000STE was one of the best cars in the world; it made a list that included no BMWs, a list from which C&D reluctantly bumped the excellent Porsche 928.