Car Lust

End of the (Econo)Line: The Ford E-Series van

When word came down a couple of months ago that Ford was discontinuing its venerable Econoline van -- known since 2001 as simply the E-Series -- the news was greeted with consternation and dismay by large swaths of the American public. Newspapers carried the story on Page 1 and the airwaves were filled with vitriol at Ford's unfortunate decision and high-minded praise for a vehicle that has been a crucial part of the American road for over 50 years -- not to mention the best-selling full-sized van since 1982. Indeed, the reaction was so strong that we here at Car Lust simply had to finally take notice and deliver a post to you, the CarLusting public, commenting on the unfortunate demise of this mainstay of automotive Americana.

Okay, I made most of that up. There wasn't much reaction at all and, for what it's worth, I found all of 3 news stories regarding the decision, none more than a few paragraphs long. True, full-sized vans don't generally get that much attention anymore, certainly not since the minivan made its appearance and caused us all to bemoan (or celebrate) the day when we became minivan-driving-soccer-moms/dads, or when the SUV started grabbing a significant market share leading to all sorts of smackdown by partisans on either side.

It doesn't get many props, the humble cargo van, but chances are you've either used one or depended on one at some point, probably recently, and often never even noticed it. They're a staple of commercial fleets for hauling cargo, for use as mobile workshops by all manner of craftsmen, and have been a staple of various organizations for hauling people around. But now, as it is about to fade into memory let's take a few minutes to, well, notice it for once.

Our Cars Week: (Not) My 1975 AMC Hornet

I've been meaning to do a post on my old Hornet for a while now, but never managed to figure out a good way to, well, properly Lust after it without sounding silly. As much as I adore a lot of '70s cars (and loathe others), I could never quite work up a decent angle to express my affection for this particular car and its brethren. I mean, with certain quite notable exceptions it was, in my view, a perfectly unexceptional automobile by nearly any standard: like most American cars of that decade it wasn't terribly reliable, wasn't very comfortable, had entirely forgettable performance characteristics, it's styling was at best meh, and despite its quite exceptional heritage (tenuous though the automotive genetics may be) even I don't find them all that memorable.

Oh, but I adored my Hornet. Well, strike that: despite the fact that I consider it as "mine" it never really was; it was the family car. But I managed to adopt it for a couple of years and it carried me on any number of high school and college-age adventures (though sadly very few of the amorous variety) and our parting, as the photo shows, left me quite despondent.

1978: It Was a Very Good Bad Odd Year

Ah yes, 1978. The year I obtained my driver's license and truly began my driving odyssey. I would imagine most people have a certain amount of nostalgia for their 16th year: the music, the TV shows, the fashions, and of course the cars. Okay, I admit that there are probably better years for fond automotive recollections. 1969, for example. Or 1962. Heck, even 1991 was pretty good, comparatively speaking. But no, 1978 is not generally considered the apogee of American (or anyone else's, probably) car design and implementation.

OTOH, much like I argued in that 1991 post, 1978 was, to my mind at least, one of those interesting years where much in the culture at large was changing from that which defined one decade -- in this case, The '70s -- to the next. And, as usual, 1978 is kind of an arbitrary year to hang a post off of; 1977 or 1979 probably would have worked just as well. But as I say, 1978 has some personal connections and I've always been rather fond of that year. A lot of neat stuff was going on and the cars reflect that. One cultural transformation in particular, music, was also ending one era and starting another, and contemplating that one eventually led me to this post. So bear with me, gentle reader, as I indulge myself in a bit of nostalgia for a bygone era that was, well, a little bit weird. . . . .

December 26 Weekly Open Thread

This week we have a video on a "time capsule" car, of a sort. I stumbled upon Rachel and her 1964 Mercury Comet Caliente through various and sundry links while looking into true time capsules -- namely this list of 10 Incredible Time Capsules first posted a couple of years ago. Anyway, here's Rachel from 2009:

Great Cars of Death II: Henry's* Revenge

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, an engine backfired! A car door slammed. The chauffer cursed. Suddenly, an inappropriately named Chrysler product appeared on the horizon.

It was. . . .a Car Lust Halloween.

Once again we venture forth onto the darkened moors where hounds are heard to bay in the moonlight, where the ever-present low fog curls and wraps around the darkened manor house left silent by years of abandonment and neglect, and where ordinary, average automobiles are mysteriously transformed from, well, ordinary, average automobiles into. . .Agents of Death. [cue spooky music]

Unlike last year's installment, this year I shall examine only a single notorious example of our motoring history that was, by an unfortunate twist of fate, associated with tragedy -- this time by both accident and design. Keep in mind, of course, that we're talking about real death here, not the cartoon variety; and while many of these vehicles have been turned into almost side-show attractions for the morbidly curious, it pays to remind oneself that very real tragedies are associated with these cars. It might not be pretty, but it's a part of our common automotive history.

Warning: One vaguely potentially disturbing photograph below, just as a head's up. Nothing too drastic, but I thought I should mention that.

So click on through. . . if you dare. . . .

* Ford, that is.

The New Hudsons are here!

Yes sir, I was going past my local dealership and saw the brand new for '53 Hudson Jet sitting in the showroom! So enthused was I that I turned around and went back to have a look. Yessirree, this new Hudson seems to me like a new kind of car in the low-price field, with performance, luxury, and safety comparable only to the equally fabulous Hudson Hornet. How can they offer such a car at such a low price? In the past, you could get these advantages in varying degrees in different makes of cars, but now they seem to be available, along with a new low price, and fuel economy in this one car.

Really, such an exciting new motor car only seems possible due to Hudson's unique "Step-Down" design which creates the lowest center of gravity among American cars. It hugs the road more tightly and rides more steadily than anything else on the market. And that is why the new Hudson Jet, together with its super-compression 6-cylinder engine that provides unusual gas mileage with a high power-to-weight ratio, provides complete comfort for six passengers in the most luxurious interior seen in a low-priced car.

No, I can't wait to drive this new kind of car tomorrow. . .it's sure to be a thrill I've never had before!

Yes, that is mostly ad copy I pilfered from a 1953 ad for the new Hudson Jet which was earlier featured right here at Car Lust, but I really did drive past a showroom and see it sitting in the window along with a couple of new cars, as the photo to the right shows. And it's for sale. Since the Jet has already been written about here, this won't add anything new to Cookie's excellent post and is mainly an exercise in relating the odd and unusual Car Lust karma that seems to follow us contributors around once we start getting keyed into weird and whacky cars.

October 24 Weekly Open Thread: Yet another list

Last week brought us the Top Ten Movie Cars of all time, which was actually a fascinating exercise in long-term memory reconstruction ("Did I even see that movie?").

This week: Popular Mechanics has their list of 8 hot used car deals. Among the entries are some just brimming with Car Lusty goodness:

-- The Ferrari 308/328 from 1975 to 1989 ("It's a midengine Ferrari for the price of a family sedan. Even if the Ferrari is slower in a straight line. . .")

-- BMW 3-Series 1984-1991 ("Good at everything, from long trips and grocery runs to track days.")

-- Cadillac STS 1992-1997 ("The line 'Hey, baby, wanna see my front-drive Cadillac?' is as appealing to the opposite sex as 'My new dentures fit perfectly!')

The main sticking point on most of them is that they're cheap for a reason: the repair and maintenance costs will undoubtedly more than make up for the supposed savings in the purchase price. Not much sense in paying more for a new fuel pump than you did for the car, IMO. But hey, it's Car Lust so practicality comes in second, right? Right? Bueller? Bueller?

I'm reasonably certain we can come up with some more (I'd be rather more keen to snag a 928 m'self). And as usual, post anything else you want in here that's vaguely car-related.

Credit: The Magnum, P.I. shot comes from MauiShirts.com though it can be found all over the Webs.

Weekly Open Thread: Top 10 Movie Cars?

Popular Mechanics has its list of the Top 10 Movie Cars of All Time. In order, they are:

10. James Bond's 1964 Aston-Martin DB-5 [edited] from Goldfinger
9. James Bond's 1975 Lotus Esprit Series 1 from The Spy Who Loved Me
8. The 1977 Pontiac Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit
7. A 1932 Ford Coupe from American Graffiti
6. Marty McFly's 1981 DeLorean from Back to the Future
5. Steve McQueen's 1968 Mustang GT 390 from Bullitt
4. The 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T from Vanishing Point
3. The 1973 XB GT Ford Falcon from Mad Max
2. Batman's Batmobile/Tumbler from Batman Begins
1. A 1970 Dodge Charger from The Fast and the Furious

Apart from the obvious absurdity of not including the actual Best Bond Car Ever, a few on that list have made it to the heights of being blogged about here. I'm not sure if I'd include the Batmobile as it's not even a production car but, eh, whatever. I can think of a few obvious Car Lusty ones, such as the Pacer from Wayne's World, Flounder's brother's '64 Lincoln Continental from Animal House, Jake and Elwood Blues' '74 Dodge Monaco, and the '58 Plymouth Fury from Christine. There are some others that made their name on TV before hitting the movies (e.g., Starsky's Torino) but those were made more famous initially on the small screen, so I don't really count those. I feel certain we can come up with a few more.

Credits: The Pacer photo comes from OnScreenCars.com.

1991: It Was a Very Good Year

Another in our occasional looks back upon particular years and what sorts of cars were being sold and driven on the highways and byways of this great country of ours. We've already had a look at 1962 with its long, low and sleek sedans (finally minus the fins) and the last of the classic '50s-era Corvettes; 1957 and its eponymous Chevy, a couple of Toyotas, and lots of well, low, long and decidedly un-sleek (IMO) big ol' American sedans (avec fins, of course); 1969 and the plethora of bad-ass muscle cars, locking steering columns, and a funny 2-seater from AMC; and we shan't forget poor, misunderstood 1974 whence came the double-nickel speed limit, Vegas and a new, smaller Mustang II, and the era of paint-on performance.

So where does 1991 fit in and why bother highlighting it? I like to think of the early 1990s as something of a pivot point in American culture, including the cars, and 1991 seems like a good place to start. . .not coincidentally because we are now 20 years hence and quite a few 20-year anniversaries are taking place. For a number of reasons, 1991 seems to me to have been the year when "The '90s" really started, although admittedly there are a couple of earlier events that I also think of as uniquely characterizing that decade; more on those later.

The cars seemed to be emerging from a somewhat lackluster 1980s when US manufacturers were only just beginning to find their footing vis a vis the Japanese. For a time in the 1980s it seemed as if the Japanese were going to take over the world let alone the automobile market -- their own bubble collapse largely took care of that -- and the Big Three were struggling to catch up in quality, reliability and performance nearly across the board. By the '90s (and even the late '80s to be honest), some new models had appeared that seemed to signal a new era for domestics. . .and truth be told even the Japanese started to change direction somewhat with some of their models. So maybe 1991 isn't all that great but hopefully I shall convince you that it was still a Very Good Year.

Cars... for men?

Like the new(ish) Leaf commercial, there are a couple of other spots out now that struck me as both having a common theme (if not product) that brings up a topic I've contemplated for quite a while but could never quite figure out an angle by which to approach it. By "angle" I mean a way I could get it past the editors and not get slammed in the comments for being a VILE SEXIST PIG.

Err, anyway. I thought these two ads make for an interesting contrast in how each attempts to associate men with cars and also the particular male idiom each shoots for. The first goes with more of a modern man, maybe even a "metrosexual", while the second goes the "retrosexual" route. And they're both taking something of a bold non-feminine (though not anti-feminine) stance: We're selling to Men. Competing versions of Men, but Men nonetheless. They both say something about what society is going through at the moment, at least as far as pop culture is concerned, and I think it's worthwhile to look at it from our own little Car Lusty angle.

Do they work? Are they infuriating? You be the judge. 

The Plymouth Prowler

Excuse me? This blog has been in existence for over four years and still no Prowler? Ye gods, how could we have been so remiss in our duties to avoid mention of one of the biggest bombs in recent memory? Or perhaps that's not strictly true. . . .while the Prowler has had its fair share of ridicule and wasn't terribly commercially successful, it did grab a lot of attention at the time and arguably led to something of a renaissance in vintage/retro designs     both within Chrysler and outside of it. On top of that, despite whatever shortcomings it may have had, at least it was interesting; a totally new (albeit old) design from an American manufacturer that could not be mistaken for anything else on the road. In addition, it utilized a number of advanced production techniques and materials and was designed to minimize weight for both performance and fuel efficiency. And, truth be told, it really wasn't a bad car.

Practical? No. Wildly impractical? Well. . . .not really. Lustworthy? Definitely.

August 1 Weekly Open Thread: Great Cars of Song Video!

Gary Numan's Cars. The Cars. ZZ Top's Eliminator. Little Red Corvette (yeah, yeah, I know. . . .)Tawny Kitaen on that Jaguar. And who can forget the Beastie Boys' takeoff on '70s cop shows, Sabotage, complete with bushy mustaches and big, boxy Fords? Not to mention I Can't Drive 55!

MTV is 30 today and although the "M" has largely ceased standing for 'music' these days, a lot of us old enough to remember the days before you could watch music have fond memories of those early days of music "videos". There were some car-themed videos, but most of them revolved around hot babes and weird hair. The ZZ Top car -- a chopped '33 Ford -- was probably the most famous and actually had something of a starring role in those series of videos; otherwise the cars tended to play supporting roles largely there only to showcase, well, the hot babes. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot of them, especially from more recent years.

So let us raise a glass to big hair and synthesizers, get yer Kajagoogoo and Wang Chung on (and white half-sleeved Miami Vice jackets!), and harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear when a Flock of Seagulls was something other than a group of birds.

And here's the ZZ Top video that started the Eliminator series:

Credits: The Hot For Teacher car is some the Van Halen News Desk.

2011 Mustangs Northwest show

Technically the Mustangs Northwest 31st Annual Mustang Roundup and All-Ford Picnic. This is the second year I put my Mustang II in the show, and while there I checked out some of the weird and wonderful Ford products that people show up in. Yes, much of it is dedicated to the classic Mustangs of the '60s (and the more recent very high-performance incarnations), but there are also a few rarer models, especially on the second day when anything related to Ford can be parked and shown.

Sadly, as you can see from the photo at right, this year the weather didn't exactly cooperate (that's a line of Focuses -- Foci? -- by the way). Generally speaking, summer in the Seattle area begins a little after the 4th of July and nearly any weekend from early July through most of September has a high probability of being sunny and warm or at least not rainy. Not this year. While the rest of the country has been baking since May or thereabouts, we have had exactly 78 minutes so far this year where the temperature has been above 80. So, basically, the weather sucked. It rained nearly all day both days of the show (the judged Mustangs were there on Saturday, all others on Sunday) so much time was spent sitting under trees or canopies for those with foresight. Hence, the turnout was not as great as one might expect, although only a couple of the judged cars didn't show up.

Be that as it may, your humble correspondent searched the grounds for weird and whacky Fords that might be of interest in the Car Lust universe. All photos courtest of me.

The Car of The Year 2000?

"What is that?"

"It's name is the Pussycar Automodule." 

"I must be dreaming. . . ."

With apologies to Albert R. Broccoli (and Sean Connery), when this car first crossed the desk here at the Ministry of Silly Cars we (well, mostly I) immediately determined that it would make a marvelous followon post to La Femme, if for no other reason than it is ripe for an amazing array of double entendres, perhaps even eclipsing the potential of the Wienermobile. However, seeing as this is a family blog, I shall attempt to make it through this post with a PG rating. Probably.

Oh, errr, it may help you to get through this by pronouncing it, alà Sean Connery, "Poosey-car".

All-American Week: 1968-69 AMX

Yes, that's two -- count 'em -- TWO All-American red, white, and blue muscle cars this week. Probably not surprising since AMC did stand for AMERICAN Motors Corp. Since we've already had a nicely detailed post on the AMX itself, I shan't go into much detail on the this particular variation.

As noted earlier, AMC wasn't much known for performance cars, but they were probably positioned quite well to capitalize on the craze. The classic muscle car -- probably epitomized (IMO) by the Dodge Dart 413 and the 1968 Road Runner -- was a smaller, less expensive model that could be had for cheap and outfitted with gobs of power by young gearheads everywhere. And AMC was known primarily for smaller budget cars. They certainly had their advantages: physics being what it is, power-to-weight ratios rule and a smaller car can go faster with less power than bigger, heavier and more muscular-looking cars. How to get your smaller car noticed in a sea of big bruisers? Why, give it a wild paint job!

The Lunar Rover

One horsepower.

Glorified lawn chairs for seats.

Total weight: Less than 500 pounds.

No protection from the elements. 

Approximate cost per vehicle: $9.5 million.

Total distance traveled: About 56 miles.

But, oh, what miles they were.

Often described as a "spacecraft on wheels" the Lunar Rover -- technically the 'Lunar Roving Vehicle" or LRV -- may not be the most performance-oriented vehicle we here at Car Lust have ever featured (even by our standards) and it's certainly not much of a looker, but in terms of what it actually did -- and where it did it -- I daresay it's probably the most innovative vehicle to have ever graced these pages. Though it has been referred to as a glorified golf cart, it was anything but. It was designed to operate safely and reliably in one of the harshest climates known to man and be able to perform an act of origami just to fit on the landing vehicle. And it wasn't ever supposed to be built.

Ford Granada

The primary reason I take pen keyboard in hand to laud this car is that -- apart from having a probably unhealthy obsession with later-1970s cars -- I saw a beautifully preserved example of one of these over the weekend (shown). I thought at the time and I still think that it was, or at least could be, quite a handsome car. True, it had several of the gaudy features that people tend to hate about this period -- opera windows and a huge chrome grille -- but if you step back and take in the whole thing, I think one can usefully view it as a nicely proportioned American sedan. And despite being the butt of many jokes nowadays, for a time it was Ford's biggest seller and filled an important market niche.

This won't be a long detailed post on the history and development of the model -- all of those gory details were admirably summarized by our own Chuck Lynch for its sibling, the Lincoln Versailles -- but I hope to at least make the case that the Granada, and its Mercury stablemate the Monarch, were actually pretty good cars for the time and ought to get a little more respect than they ordinarily do.

The Starsky Torino

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: I was a Starsky and Hutch fanatic, at least as much as a teenager could be at the time. I had to have Starsky's blue Adidas sneakers. And I had to have his cardigan (yes, I even wore it to school a few times; you may pelt me with rotten fruit and call me a geek if you like, I don't care). As luck would have it, I also had dark bushy hair like Starsky so I readily identified with the character. I loved the show. It was must-see-TV for my young self. My dad had a slightly different view and mostly just referred to them as "those two hamburgers." But I still planted myself in front of the tube every week and reveled in one of the first TV cop buddy series. 

The car, of course, was almost a star of the show unto itself, and I was a fan of that, too. Here at Car Lust, we've already looked at the Gran Torino on which it was based as part of our "Poseur Muscle Car" series. As hashed out in the comments to that post, by that time the Torino wasn't really even thought of much as a "muscle car" (not that much of anything was after '74 or so), and had entered the realm of Personal Luxury Cars that Ford and others were calling their mid-sized coupes. I would say it was probably the antics (and sound effects) of the fictional "Striped Tomato" that created the impression of a good old fashioned muscle car chasing bad guys through the streets of Los Angeles Bay City, CA.

Willys Jeep Wagon and Jeepster: The first SUVs

Love 'em or hate 'em, the SUV is a part of the automotive landscape. I suppose if one were to poll the general public about what they considered to be the first SUV, I'd guess most would probably name  either the Ford Explorer or perhaps the Jeep Cherokee as the first really modern iteration of the vehicle. The more gear-headed among us might cite the International Travelall and the kooksters (or at least those willing to grab whatever comes up in Google) might even toss out the El Kineno for consideration.

"Origins" questions are always tricky, largely because most objects, unlike Athena, don't spring into being fully formed from someone's head; they usually have antecedents that have a few attributes that seem to define a particular class of object. Like the minivan, you can dig back into automotive history and find something someone built that was meant to look or function like its modern equivalent, but I think you really need to take a car's overall influence into account. A one-off that didn't sell well and nobody copied doesn't seem to me to really count as being The First of a particular class. I think if you look at what constitutes the modern notion of a "sport utility vehicle" you have to include the following attributes: a truck chassis, at least a double-row of seats in an enclosed cabin, and primarily marketed as a personal transportation vehicle for the general public.

Taken together, I hereby posit that pride of place as The First SUV goes to Willys-Overland. In the late 1940s, they came out with a wagon-ish version of their famous Jeep that was directly aimed at a consumer rather than commercial market: The Jeep Station Wagon. Besides being a consumer vehicle, it seems to me to also have those key attributes that anyone today would recognize as An SUV. Later, they even tried to broaden the reach of this new class they had invented and, arguably, produced the first crossover SUV, the Jeepster. 

The One That Got Away

unrequited: unre·quited adj. Not reciprocated or returned in kind; (w/ love) love that is not openly reciprocated or understood as such, even though reciprocation is usually deeply desired.

Today we digress a bit from our usual automotive schtick and, in honor of Valentine's Day, talk a little bit about our lost loves, specifically, the unrequited variety. Most of us have some familiarity with that sort--some of us more than others, sad to say--and we've suffered through the pangs of regret when it slips away. Should we have done something differently? Did we not say the right things? Should we have  moved in quickly and damn the consequences? And then there are the what-ifs: Would it have ended badly after a short romance? Would we have gone on to a lifetime filled with joy? Heck, maybe at the time our objet 'amour seemed beyond reach, either emotionally or perhaps financially.

Either way, it's that uncertainty surrounding the one that got away that tends to nag at you for a long time afterwards. They become something almost angelic, stuck up on a pedestal where we imagine everything would have worked out to our eternal happiness and joy with nary a dark cloud on the horizon to blemish the blazing sun in our own personal firmament. Yeah, we know it probably wouldn't have worked out perfectly, but with plenty of rose-colored glasses to go around, we all can sit around and wonder "What if. ..."

Mine was about 28 when I first saw her ...