Car Lust

1985: It Was a Very Good Year!

It was "Morning in America," a time when men were real men, women were real women, and hair was real big. Ronald Reagan had just been sworn in for his second term after winning one of the most lopsided Presidential elections in American history. and the "national malaise" of just a few years before had been replaced by a mood of confident optimism. Technology was on the march: personal computers now had floppy drives and 12 MHz processors, fully-functional mobile phones were down to the size of a box of Girl Scout cookies, and used DeLoreans were being retrofitted with aftermarket flux capacitors. On the big screen, besides the one with the time machine, we had Out of Africa and Witness and The Breakfast Club and Rambo: First Blood Part II. On the small screen, you had The Cosby Show and Hill Street Blues and MacGyver.

On the radio was Springsteen, Madonna--this was way before Nirvana--there was U2, and Blondie, and music still on MTV. The cars then were old school, and you might think them uncool, but this post will be occupied with cars of Nineteen Eighty-Five.

Chevrolet: 100 Years Deep

Today is the exact 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chevrolet Motor Car Company by race car driver and engineer Louis Chevrolet, former GM executive William Crapo "Billy" Durant, and investors William Little and Edwin R. Campbell. This seems an appropriate time for a little reflection:

Great (But Frustrating) Commercials: Nissan Leaf

I almost never watch commercials anymore. Most of my video is of the streaming variety, either through Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, or YouTube. When I do take advantage of broadcast or cable TV, it's usually captured on my Tivo, where I can fast-forward through commercials. On the rare occasion when I'm watching live TV (usually sports), I'm often with friends and don't pay much attention to commercial blather. In the vanishingly rare cases when I'm watching live TV and aren't talking during the commercials, I'm usually mentally tuned out because most commercials are either obvious or annoying or both. This explains why, in true Car Lust style, I just recently viewed and am just now writing up an advertisement that originally aired three months ago.

Over the weekend, this Nissan Leaf commercial caught me in one of those few moments when both my television and my brain were tuned in, and I thought it was stunningly well-executed. It was frustrating, for reasons I'll get into after the video and the jump, but very well-done.

The Unkillable Toyota Camry

You may recall that we at Car Lust once named the 1990-1994 Toyota Camry as the most boring car in the world--not because we thought it was a bad car, but because its ubiquity, and metronomic dependability deprived it of the character that defined the generally less-well-engineered cars for which we lust. To quote:

"It is a mark of my irrationality that I would prefer something like a Fiat Spider to a Camry. In every quantifiable way, the Camry is superior. Actually, it's crushingly superior. But there's nothing rational about Car Lust. Every fiber of my being longs for a Fiat Spider. Every fiber of my being rebels at the Camry."

Among Camrys, the 1996-2001 generation is easily my least favorite. Camrys before 1996 and after 2001 were at least pleasingly attractive in a highly anonymous way, but this generation always struck me as unnecessarily ugly and undesirable. The scowling face, but unlovely profile, the pinched rear tailights--I find this car vastly less attractive than the lovely 1994-1997 Honda Accord or even many of the traditional "ugly car" punching bags such as the Gremlin, Pacer, or Maverick. This Camry didn't perform particularly well, it wasn't particularly nice to drive, and it really had nothing else other than value and size to set itself apart.

Given that, envision my disappointment when I discovered that the full-size car we had rented for our Maui vacation was a thoroughly disheveled 2000 Toyota Camry with 135,000 miles on the clock and about three times as much abuse as you'd normally expect given that figure.

We had received an amazing rate from this local rental agency, so I had assumed we'd be dealing with older rental cars--but this Camry was a bit more woebegone than I had expected. The front and rear clips showed evidence of repeated accidents, the steering wheel made strange noises when turned, the exhaust smoked at start-up, the hood was bowed up slightly, the trunk latch mechanism failed halfway through our trip, and the drivetrain made all kinds of strange sounds. To add insult to injury, it smelled of mildew and its gas tank was almost bone dry.

Car Disgust: 1978 Chevrolet Monza S and Monza Estate Wagon

Dear readers, "Viva Las Vega" Week has presented most of our opinions of the Chevy Vega. As mentioned, early models rusted before they were sold, and the engines warped and smoked. Squeaks and rattles were common. Rapid-paced factory build quality sucked. The "Car Of The Year" quickly became the car of "Oh, Dear!"

Chevy improved the car, especially for the 1976 model year, but it was way too little, way too late. They had a disaster on their hands, and they knew it. New bodies placed on the "H" platform and new engines were the only salvations, or at least that seemed to be the plan at the time.

But one little-known fact is that even after Chevy quietly killed the Vega in 1977, it still lingered on for a while as the Monza S and Monza Estate Wagon. These Monzas are not to be confused with the swoopy Monza 2+2 hatchback and Monza Towne Coupe formal sedan; no, the Monza S was pure Vega, but with the Monza's header (grille), nameplates, steering wheel, and, well, that's about it. It was offered as a price-leader for the Monza line, and all of the Vega sheet metal, engines, and major interior pieces remained. Just who did they think they were fooling?

The Chevrolet Vega--What Went Wrong?

The Vega sure looked like a winner.

"Chevy's New Little Car" was the brainchild of one of the most successful executives in the automobile industry. It had an advanced overhead-cam engine employing the latest in cutting-edge materials science. It was built in the most highly automated assembly plant in the Western hemisphere, at a breathtaking pace of more than 100 cars per hour.

The reviews in the buff books were uniformly positive, if not downright glowing. Road Test called it "innovative." Car and Driver said it "provides an excellent combination of performance and economy," proclaiming it "one of the finest-looking compact sedans in the world," and "a car for all occasions." Road & Track was no less impressed, declaring the Vega to be "the best handling passenger car ever built in America." Mechanics Illustrated agreed, describing the handling as "excellent, quick, and sure." Motor Trend called the stripped-down base model "a magnificent automobile in its own right without any options at all" (!) and named the Vega its "Car of the Year" for 1971 and 1973.

The public seemed to agree. The Vega was one of the best-selling cars in America for most of its production run, with a total of nearly two million units out the door over seven model years. If you also count the badge-engineered Pontac Astre and the Monza/Sunbird/Starfire/Skyhawk quartet that shared the same platform, the grand total is probably well over three million.

So why, then, is the Chevrolet Vega remembered today as a colossal, unmitigated disaster?

Our Cars--Transitioning to a 2010 Chevy Cobalt

Submitted by Collin Pillars

Recently, I received a new car from my family, replacing my 1991 Honda Accord. It was a 2010 Chevy Cobalt, mostly similar to the '09 model previously discussed here. Since this post isn't much about the new car, I'll leave my description of the Cobalt to a mile-long comment I left a few weeks ago.

The Cobalt is an XFE LS coupe, meaning that it's the base model with air conditioning. It's a perfectly competent car and gets good mileage (37.6 MPG on the last tank of gas, most of it interstate driving), but it's not an inspiring one. The powertrain is surprisingly nice (even if the noises coming from it are generally unpleasant), the shifter is in my opinion excellent, and the engine is peppy, though the extra tall gears for the XFE package are noticeable (as is the "shift" light), especially with the A/C on.

The ride is comfortable (if a bit heavy on road noise and a bit of rattling), but if I had designed the Cobalt, the springs would be stiffer. The handling is a bit soft, especially noticeable at higher speeds. I hate the electric power steering, but it's really not all that bad, just entirely devoid of road feel; I'd rather it not have power steering at all. The brakes are non-antilock, taking 146 feet to stop from 60-0, as opposed to 139 feet for a 2007 Silverado half-ton. That said, they do the job well enough, so long as you don't lock them up. Most of the poor braking performance probably has to do with the low-resistance and, thus, low grip tires, which are less than confidence-inspiring in rain. In summary, the driving experience is adequate but not especially fun, though fun is of course extractable given a heavy enough right foot and disregard for the law (which I generally avoid).

Our Cars--2004 Suzuki Forenza

Submitted by Tommy's Dad

The Topaz was dying. I wasn't particularly happy or unhappy about that fact, but there just wasn't any getting around it. Though when designed it was a particularly dim bulb in a generally dark age for domestic compact cars, my Mercury Topaz had served me through a year of high school, four years of college, and almost another year beyond that. It had been cheap to run and maintain, reliable (only two major breakdowns in almost six years, both cooling related), and I didn't really feel bad about beating the hell out of it driving down the dirt roads to my parent's house where I was stuck post-college/pre-decent-job.

But the Topaz's steering and suspension were becoming increasingly problematic, the rear bumper didn't hang level anymore, and most problematic of all, the automatic seatbelt motors were gumming up from the fine desert dust, causing them to seize and jam both on opening and on closing into the “belted” position. With not a single used belt motor around at any junkyard, shop, or anywhere else in reach, new motors were going to cost a cool $300 each. For a car worth maybe $500 at best, it was time to move on.

So, enter the Suzuki Forenza. New for 2004 and packing a generous amount of standard equipment, the Forenza was supposedly part of Suzuki's plan to introduce a number of new models in the U.S. and significantly increase its market share (think Hyundai of the last few years). Of course, hindsight has shown that to be spectacularly wishful thinking, especially as Suzuki is all but dead here in the U.S.

Besides, the truth is that the Forenza wasn't even a Suzuki to begin with; it was originally a Daewoo. But after Daewoo gave up the ghost in the U.S., corporate owner GM took the car and rebadged it as a Suzuki to sell in the U.S. The Forenza was designed by Pininfarina (or at least the child of a Pininfarina designer, for a grade-school “draw your first car” project), so curiously the end result Forenza was a real “world car”: designed by an Italian studio, made by a Korean subsidiary of a U.S. corporation, and then sold in the U.S. under a Japanese brand. Oh, right, and there's a certain British connection as well. ...

Mediocrity

This is a gag, I think . . . I hope  . . .

Actually, it's part of a Subaru marketing campaign--which doesn't make it any less amusing, or  (unfortunately) any less true.

--Cookie the Dog's Owner

Imagineering a Chevrolet Citation Group B Rally Car

This post is your opportunity to illustrate what you think a Group B rally version of the Chevrolet Citation might have looked like. If you're one of the three people in the world who has the combination of graphical talent and a mentality demented enough to share my curiosity about the subject, please submit your work to carlustinfo@amazon.com.

A week or so ago I was sitting in a drive-through, just whiling away the minutes waiting to be served, when I saw a Chevrolet Citation motor slowly by. For most people this would mark the end of what would make a particularly uninteresting story, but as you may have noticed I'm a little different. My name is Chris Hafner, and I'm a confirmed Citation devotee. As a result, I noticed that the gold Citation that drove by was in absolutely immaculate, showroom-fresh condition, and I instantly fell in love.

  Things like this happen to me all the time--I see a weird car on the street, I lust madly for it, and I forget about it when the next one rolls by. This time, however, I made the mistake of telling some friends about the absolutely radiant Citation that had captured my heart. The result was a not-inconsiderable amount of ribbing for even daring to think of a Citation in an object of lust. Even this isn't that remarkable, though; I take a lot of abuse for my car tastes, and almost all of it is completely justifiable.

There was one strange comment, though; one friend suggested that if I was so in love with blocky hatchbacks that I should shift my affection to the Lancia Delta Integrale. Now, I have no shortage of lust for the Delta Integrale; it's both one of the great unobtainable performance cars of the 1980s and the basis for one of the most legendary rally cars of all time. But the suggestion that I prefer the Delta to a Citation struck me as odd; it's a bit like telling a friend who is in the mood for Taco Bell that he should fly to San Diego for some gourmet shrimp fajitas, or like telling a Pontiac Fiero owner that he should own a Ferrari GTO instead.