Car Lust

Feb. 13 Weekly Open Thread

Here at the Car Lust Supper Club Lounge & Coffee Shoppe out on old US 39 west of Hafner Road, we serve steaks, chicken, coffee, cocktails, and conversation. (We also stock washer fluid and 10W-30 in the gift shop.) It's the place to talk about whatever's on your mind.

If you're looking for a discussion-starter, there's this collection of old iron:

How many can you identify?

--Cookie the Dog's Owner

(Illustration from the "Restaurants" postcard collection at Lileks.com.)

Our Cars Week: "1998 Camaro V6"

(Submitted by Car Lust reader "Sir Danley" [Name withheld to protect the innocent])

"Don't feel bad if the car you'd like to write about isn't a supercar; most of us find everyday cars as interesting, or potentially even more interesting, than exotic hardware." --Lindsay Jacobson, Car Lust Editor

...I learned a gigantic amount of the above by driving an '86 Lotus Esprit for a few years; turns out, no one cares if you're driving a twenty year old, Torrid-sized Toyota MR2. This is especially true when most modern, midsized sedans can eclipse it in performance. Only the most knowledgeable nerds will swoon over that car, dumber girls won't notice you're driving in anything special, and the smart girls just think you're overcompensating.

None of which mattered to me; for less than the price of a new Chevy Aveo (and with just as much Giugiaro style), I enjoyed sublimely weighted steering thanks to the MR configuration, a peaky engine of modest HP, and unloaded it before any major bills really came pouring in.

Driving a three-foot-tall black Esprit in Southern California practically camouflages you as a pavement onramp, and I got near zero compliments on the car, ever.  Aside from Roger Moore era James Bond fans and F1 fanatics, a mid-'80s Lotus Esprit is about as utterly un-relatable as a car can get.

…So heavens no, I won’t talk about that.

Our Cars Week: "My Car Lust: Mom's 1972 VW Bug"

(Submitted by Car Lust Reader and commenter Kenny Heggem)

I really don't know what it is exactly. It could be a semblance of different reasons... but I have been obsessing over wanting an early 1970's VW Beetle. A standard little Beetle. Not a Super Beetle, just the standard non-McPherson strut style, flat dash "Bug."

It is likely the nostalgia. Mom had divorced recently, when I was 11. She needed a car, and bought an orange and primer 1972 Bug.

Takes me back a to a time of struggles, but keeping our heads up high. Living on spaghetti every night and struggling to buy school clothes, while Dad partied with arm candy and eating expensive sushi power lunches.

February 6 Weekly Open Thread: "The Winter We Didn't Have"

The Winter of 2011-2012 may go down in the record books as one of the mildest ones ever, at least in many parts of the USA. The folks around Denver may not agree with that right now, but I'm sure the ski lift operators there are happy.

But here in Nashville, flowers and bushes are blooming weeks ahead of normal, and temperatures are near record highs. TDOT has only salted/treated our roads once, and even that was a false alarm.

Today (February 3rd), I changed the oil in the Tribute as the outside thermometer read 63 balmy degrees. We were only 300 miles from oil change time, and I wanted to catch a nice day for the job instead of the $6-a-quart oil pouring out of the containers like molasses.

So, has this warmer weather helped you with any car repairs or maintenance? Maybe a tune-up? Can you keep it washed like you want?

And of course, this Weekly Open Thread is the place for any randon chatter about cars, trucks, motorcycles, streetcars, submarines... ok, maybe not submarines. But then again, why not?

Also here at Car Lust, we're in the middle of our latest "Our Cars Week," and we'll have a fresh post tomorrow. The reader submissions have been superb, and we hope to do this again soon.

--That Car Guy (Chuck)

Image Credit: I took the buttercups picture on February 3rd. Normally these flowers are barely coming out of the ground right now. Mom planted these flowers many years ago and as she said, they have bloomed where they were planted.

Our Cars Week: "My Most Fun Junky Car"

The most fun junky car I ever had was a (originally) gold-colored 1972 Chevy Vega Kammback wagon. Cookie The Dog's Owner's Monza wagon was probably a cream puff compared to this thing, but I had more wrench turnin', parts pickin', shade tree mechanicin' fun on this little car than I ever had on any other vehicle I've owned.

The car was eight years old when I bought it in 1980, so it was tired already. I was a poor college guy, and wanted away from our gas-thirsty, full-size, hard-to-drive (And park!) 1968 Ford Ranger pickup. And hey, what's sexier than the lines of a '72 Vega station wagon?

I had already owned a red '72 Vega Hatchback as my first car, so I kinda already knew my way around these things. We found this Kammback on a used car lot, paid $700 plus tax, tags, title, and license, and immediately went to work. First to go was the cheezy purple rear window tint.

Our Cars Week: "The Ford Mustang: Can you go home again?"

(Submitted by Car Lust reader and Carspotting: Auto Archeology Editor Michael E. Gouge)

For my fellow car lovers, there is no need to explain the bond a 16-year-old has with his first car. Mine was a 1966 Mustang in Nightmist Blue, and it opened up a world of freedom, of escapism, of pleasure in the sound of an engine purring along an open road. In other words, this angst-filled teenager discovered a home, a sanctuary, in a Mustang.  Three decades hence, that old pony car--along with my youth and a new-found euphoria for the open road--are but memories.

Our Cars Week: "Saab 9000 Aero"

(Submitted by Car Lust reader Julian Santa-Rita)

I have been naming my cars since my first one. Each is its own personality to me. My first was a grey Volvo 240 with velour seats, and I named it " Nigel." Later a 1986 RX-7 I named "Chu-Chu Rocket" passed through my hands. There was a Subaru GL called "Roo-Badoo" and a MKII Jetta who was renamed loads of "happy expletives," depending on whether one or both of us was in a saucy mood that particular moment.

But it took me almost a year to understand my Saab 9000 Aero well enough to finally give it the pet name "E.M.," which was shorthand for "Executive Missile." The relationship began as I left college to move to my new home 1,000 miles away, and I needed to replace the "expletive" Jetta. My father brought me to see this somewhat awkward silver Saab which I’d never even heard of before and I’d certainly never seen one in person. Someone had traded it in on a Subaru WRX.

Our Cars Week: "Oh Camry, My Camry"

(Submitted by Car Lust Reader Karen K from New Haven)

 

"OH, CAMRY, MY CAMRY"

Bruises bashed into my head
From banging on the ceiling
Of my pirhouetting car
As it was sent a-reeling,
Into the woods
Down in the ditch,
I sort of had this feeling
That if I lived to tell the tale,
I’d spend some months a-healing.

January 30 Weekly Open Thread: "Our Cars Week"

Well, here we go folks, with another Car Lust "Our Cars Week." We have guest writers from all over the planet contributing their personal vehicles for us to embrace, along with a familiar face or two.

Here are a few images from some previous "Our Cars" articles. This week has some nice ones as well, and with the volume of excellent submissions, we may even go longer... possibly even into a fortnight.

 

 

 

 

 

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.