Car Lust

1957 Chevrolets

The 1955-57 "Tri-Five" or "shoebox" Chevrolets are among the most recognizable of all classic cars. The 1957 iteration, with its tail-finned rear quarter panels and available powerful small-block V-8, is probably the single best-known and loved American car of all time. 

Go to any old-car show or cruise-in anywhere on the North American continent this summer and I guarantee there will be at least one '57 Chevy on display--probably two or three. Whether meticulously restored to car-show perfection, or tricked out with side pipes and slotted mags and a jacked-up rear end, any '57 you see in these circumstances will be an obvious source of joy for its owner and an object of affection and wonder to those who gather around it. Even non-pistonheads love the '57 Chevy. My wife, who is as far from a "car person" as one can be and still have a driver's license, remembers kissing her father's red hardtop goodbye when he traded it in.

How beloved are these cars? There is an urban legend that claims that after the newly-styled '58 Chevrolets were introduced, a renegade group of GM employees continued building unauthorized copies of the '57s in a secret factory for another ten years out of sheer unadulterated car lust. That didn't really happen, at least not the way legend has it, but if you want a new 1957-design Chevrolet Bel Air with all zeroes on the odometer, you can get one--there is enough demand for them that exact replicas are being manufactured today, some using NOS parts for that extra measure of authenticity.

Personally, I just don't get what all the fuss is about.

RIP, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, because it's gone under-reported by the news media, but we lost both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett yesterday. While their families, fans, and the rest of the entertainment world will miss Jackson and Fawcett, we won't be dwelling on their lives or their influence in this space beyond offering our condolences--no doubt a disappointment to those who come to Car Lust for comprehensive hard-news and entertainment coverage. No, we'll be doing something almost as important--focusing on their impact on the world of vehicle advertising.

Of course, their impact in the world of car commercials was vanishingly small compared to a car commercial regular like Ricardo Montalban, but I did find a few commercials to share.

1986-1989 Honda Accord

Every so often, an automaker has a special run in which it can seemingly do nothing wrong; great car follows great car, and seemingly every product it touches turns to gold. I would argue that GM had a run like that in the 1960s, followed by Mercedes-Benz in the 1970s, Honda in the 1980s, BMW in the 1990s, and Toyota in this decade. These are the stretches in which a run of great cars builds the brand's reputation and a core of loyal customers that continue to buy over the following decades; in other words, the exact opposite of what GM did from 1975-1985.

Besides the great cars, I find these runs of success so compelling because they illustrate just how deceptively simple making great cars can be. These manufacturers didn't succeed because of fancy new technologies, splashy styling, or unnecessary gimmicks; they succeeded because they delivered original, attractive, cars that last and are fun to drive. Honda is the ultimate example here; once just a respected small automaker, Honda became a global powerhouse by executing the fundamentals flawlessly in the 1980s.

There's something special, just innately right about Honda cars in the mid-to-late 1980s; a purity of styling and engineering that took simple, unpretentious cars and lifted them into genius. I'm focusing on the Accord here, and Cookie the Dog's Owner previously waxed eloquent about his 1985 Honda CRX, and Rob the SVX Guy has done the same for his 1989 Honda Prelude Si, but much of what made these cars great go for the entire 1980s Honda lineup--the Civic, Prelude, Accord, and even the first Acura Integra and Legend.

Great Commercials--Mister Ed for the Studebaker Lark

I am just barely old enough to remember Mister Ed being on TV in prime time.  One thing I didn't appreciate until many years later was that Studebaker was the show's prime sponsor from 1961 through 1963. (I was a toddler in 1962-63, so cut me a little slack please.) The sponsorship included a product placement deal: Mister Ed's family, the Posts, drove a Lark convertible, and their nosy neighbors the Addisons had a swank Avanti in their driveway.

In this commercial, Wilbur Post (played by Alan Young) and Mister Ed (voiced by old-time cowboy star Allan "Rocky" Lane) took a break from the wacky situations and madcap hijinks of the show to shoulder the important burden of convincing the audience to buy Studebaker Larks:

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.

1986-1991 Pontiac Grand Am SE

It may sound odd today, in a world in which the Pontiac Grand Am is considered dull rental-car fodder, but there was a time in the mid-1980s when the Grand Am was a stylish, desirable car--even, in fact, a semi-credible American response to European sports sedans like the BMW 3-series and Mercedes-Benz 190E. I'll pause for a moment to allow the cognitive dissonance to clear. Still with me? Good.

When the Grand Am debuted in 1985, its clean good looks, rorty V-6, and sprightly personality overshadowed both its Grand Am ancestor (an incredibly ungainly clone of the lovely 1973 Oldsmobile Cutlass) and its Buick Somerset and Oldsmobile Calais stablemates. The motoring press sat up and took notice; the attention turned to outright praise when the sporty SE trim arrived in 1986, followed by a turbo in 1987 and the 16-valve Quad 4 engine in 1989.

The Grand Am may not look like much today, but in the mid-1980s, it was sensation. Most American automakers had begun to downsize their cars by 1985, but compared to the sleek, smooth, and aerodynamic Europeans, many American cars of the time were bulky, over-styled, uninspired, square-edged dinosaurs. Many had proportions and baroque styling right out of the 1970s and were slathered with intricate filigree and acres of chrome, imitation wood, and vinyl. With the exception of the Ford Taurus and Thunderbird, contemporary domestic cars just didn't capture the purpose or purity of line of the European cars.

German Engineering

German culture has traditionally prized technology and craftsmanship, and engineering is a highly respected profession in that country. German machinery, optics, and cameras have long had an enviable reputation.

During World War II, Germany deployed many technically advanced weapons, including the impressive (but militarily dubious) V-2 ballistic missile. After the war, German rocket scientists who had built the V-2 worked in the American space program. The most famous of them, Wehrner Von Braun, was a prominent public advocate of manned spaceflight. His ideas were featured in an influential series of magazine articles in Collier's Weekly in 1952-54; lavishly illustrated by artists such as Chesley Bonestell, the articles helped build enthusiasm for space flight--and built up the popular conception of the German engineer as an ultra-competent perfectionist.

It was about this time that Volkswagen was first breaking in to the U.S. market with the Type 1 "Beetle." The Beetle wasn't fast, or powerful, or particularly stylish, but it did have an advantage in build quality. Volkswagen made a point of bringing attention to the quality and reliability of its products, attributing it to its German engineering. The classic 1960s print ad at the top of this post is but one small example.

The German engineering meme has been used to sell a lot of Volkswagens--even those that weren't engineered in Germany!--and Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, and Porsche have also based much of their appeal on the idea that their cars, like VWs, were engineered by Germans.

What if you're trying to sell a car, and you're not German? Can you perhaps still take advantage of this meme?

Great Commercials--KONISHIKI for the Daihatsu Move

Today we're going to look at some Japanese home market commercials featuring American-born sumo wrestler "KONISHIKI" (he is required to spell his Japanese name in all-caps Romanji by sumo wrestling's governing body) pitching the Daihatsu Move kei car. Our first example is KONISHIKI and Daihatsu's homage to disco:

1958 Edsel

We recently celebrated Epic Fail Week Week and a Couple Days Fortnight here at Car Lust, our tribute to vehicles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) that, for whatever reason, failed miserably on the roads and in the marketplace. In all that celebration of failure, we failed (get it?) to mention the big one, the one everybody's heard of, the one the Washington Post called "the most colossal, stupendous and legendary blunder in the history of American marketing," the Alpha Dog, Queen Mother, and Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of Epic Automotive Fail.

You know exactly what car I'm talking about.

1969-1973 Dodge Polara

Updated--new text under videos. This week, which began as innocently as any other, has turned decidedly bizarre--Car Lust has been overrun with a series of paeans to strange, floaty, oversized, underpowered 1970s American cars. In the context of Cookie the Dog's Owner's father's* Ford LTD and Rob the SVX Guy's Mercury Grand Marquis, Rich Menga's "Free Spirit" Buick Century looks downright Lilliputian. In what other context would that be true? Brace yourselves--I can promise that Friday's subject won't be any smaller or more demure.

I think this week's inadvertent theme is wildly compelling, which shouldn't come as any surprise considering my embarrassing predilection for such 1970s anti-heroes as the Impala, Gran Fury, Monaco, and Continental Mk. V. Since I'd like to keep this compelling string of leviathan lusts rolling, I'm going to take this opportunity to honor one of the greatest full-size American cars ever made--the 1969-1973 Dodge Polara. This isn't the Polara's first appearance in Car Lust--you may remember that an immaculate 1972 Polara 440 Interceptor was a narrow runner-up in our $25,000 Challenge.