Car Lust

Some Cars Just Should NOT Have 4 Doors

"You're travelling through another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. At the signpost up ahead, your next stop... the twilight zone." --Rod Serling

Yes, folks, some cars just should not be 4-doors. A lot of folks felt this way when the Dodge Charger was reintroduced in the 2006 model year, but we did get used to it. For the most part. I know the cops sure did.

And usually, if a car has a back seat, I'd like back doors there. I learned my lesson in a 2-door Chevette about leaning forward to let folks in the back.

But there are some cars that no amount of time will ever pass to let them be. They are surely from, or should go to, the twilight zone.

1972-1976 Volkswagen SP2

While searching images for the Buick Centurion / LeSabre post, I stumbled on this car by accident. I had never heard of an SP2... and now I'd love to have one.

But I'd probably have a better chance of going to Mars than getting one. Only 670 of them left their home in Brazil, and none of them ever came to the United States as new cars.

That racy bodywork included a rear-mounted engine under a hatchback lift gate. Not an easy trick to design, I'm sure. And it's got to be safe... look at all that front crush space. The only styling reservation I might have is that I think a little more time should have been spent on the grille-less front end... though it does grow on one after a while. And just imagine some rallye or fog lights there.

An SP2 is stunning to look at, even 40+ years later. The long hood/short trunklid styling screams Italiano! As well it should, since the SP2's designers included Jose Vicente Martins, Jorge Oba, and Marcio Piancastelli, who studied under the great Luigi Segre at Carrozzeria Ghia. Its cabin appointments were also first class for the time, and the rear engine area shows engineering packaging of sheer genius.

$100,000 Challenge, Take 2: Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame's Max Cars Edition

After reading Chris Hafner's post, I realized that if I hadn't gone so Mazda-heavy, I could have gotten some great 20- and 30-year-old cars in my garage.

I wanted to try again, with a fresh slate.  I hope you'll indulge me, and I hope you even find it entertaining.

But I've got to change the rules, slightly.  I'll still have limitations, because limitations help channel and inspire creativity.

First change: no "car currently on sale" requirement.  All cars need to be 20 to 30 years old.  Maybe 15, at most.  The point is to get cars that are old enough to be great value, but not so old as to be "classic".  The point is to catch cars near the bottom part of the trough, where the value has declined as much as possible, but not to the point where the value starts to rebound from rarity/coolness.

Second change: I have to have exactly 20 cars.  No more, no less.  The point is to see how close I can get to the $100k total without going over, for exactly 20 cars.

Third change: All car prices will be according to the NADA "clean retail" price, but here's the twist: if you can manage to find a 20-year-old car in "clean retail" condition, it won't really be ready to go.  The coolant system will be having problems, or it will consume oil as lustily as Vikings drank mead, or the paint will be starting to flake off, or a few minor rust points, or the alignment will be horribly off, or...you get the picture.  A 20-year-old car that wasn't lovingly restored to new condition is going to have some issues.  So right off the bat, I will budget $2000 per car to get it up to speed.  That might go to a tune-up, or a paint job, or a replacement door + paint, or an alignment, or a new radiator, etc.  That might be an underestimation, but we are starting with a "clean retail" example, so I think an average of $2000 will work.

That leaves me with $60,000 to get 20 cars.  So I'm looking for cars I can get for averaging just about $3000 each.

That's the rules I have.  Let's see what I come up with.

$100,000 Fantasy Garage Challenge: Chris Hafner

When Cookie the Dog's Owner proposed the $100K Fantasy Garage challenge, I was immediately intrigued. Who among us has not dreamed about which cars we'd purchase if only we had the funds available? This challenge is a license to mentally catalog our old and new favorites, weigh pros and cons, and show our tastes and brand loyalties through the creation of a carefully curated collection.

The genius in this challenge is the $100K value limit. Without that, we wouldn't have anything to keep us tied to reality. After all, why add a Mazda to your list when you could add a Maybach? Why add a CRX when you could add an FXX? But the $100K limit, combined with the requirement to include one brand new car, is almost perfect. A cool hundred grand sounds like a lot of money, but it doesn't go as far as one might imagine. I could easily concoct a scenario in which two very nice but still fairly ordinary vehicles consume the whole budget, so turning this into a true fantasy garage requires some creativity.

I chose to put my own spin on this challenge by laying out a series of tasks that I want the cars in my garage to fulfill, and then picking the cars I thought would best fill those roles. This required a lot of revision, as I shifted resources from one bucket to the next, and leaves me without some of my all-time favorites (omitting the Porsche 928, E28 BMW M5, and GMC Typhoon was pretty painful). Overall, though, I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Since in some cases I'm linking off to listings on Craigslist and eBay there's a chance that those links will be dead fairly quickly. My apologies for that, but I'll try to capture some of the pertinent details in the text so that the story doesn't suffer too much.

Test Drive--2013 Kia Rio

The week of Thanksgiving, my oldest son emerged unhurt from a rather severe accident which destroyed the car he was driving. Regular Car Lust readers probably recognized that unfortunate car as the third generation Hyundai Accent I wrote a "test drive" post about back in the summer of 2009. The car we've replaced it with is a Kia Rio, the platform-mate of the new (as of 2011) fourth generation Accent.

It turns out that in the space of four model years, the term "base trim level" has acquired a rather more expansive meaning than it once had.

January 14 Weekly Open Thread--Complete the following sentence: "Chevy runs _________."

As usual, this is your place for all discussions automotive. I have a couple of items to get the conversational juices going.

First off, in the news last week, it was reported that GM is retiring its "Chevy Runs Deep" tagline in favor of a more "global" slogan: "Find New Roads." In a discussion thread over at TTAC, where the columnists were never impressed with the whole "Runs Deep" thing in the first place, commenters proposed alternatives ranging from snarky ("Find New Management") to serious ("Work or Play, It’s Your Chevrolet"). That last one's pretty good; I think it beats the snot out of "Find New Roads." Any GM slogan ideas from you, the Car Lust readership?

Speaking of Chevys running,...

1987 Nissan Sentra Sport Coupe

I've been wanting to write about this car for a while, so I finally pulled out an old photo album, copied the prints, and went to work.

And this is why: When I worked at the Nissan plant here in Tennessee (Where they now build the Leaf), they had a very affordable Lease Car Program. A version of it still survives. Any full-time Nissan employee, after 8 months of employment, was eligible for the program. The only requirement? You had to have a driver's license; your previous driving record was of no concern.

You could order any Nissan vehicle that was sold in the US and wait about three months for its arrival. The Infinity Division had not yet been born while I was there; I don't know if they are available now or not. But a stripped Sentra could be had back then for as little as $88 a month, and a 300ZX Turbo was, if memory serves, around $270. The BIG NEWS was that insurance was included, with a $250 deductable.

So for a whopping sum of approximately $185 a month, I had the unlimited use of this custom-ordered Sentra Sport Coupe SE. I had seen a prototype/early production model in the plant's Quality Assurance Department for whatever reason (They were never built in Tennessee), and immediately had to have one. The car you see here is the first white Sport Coupe delivered in Tennessee, or so I was told.

2002-2005 Honda Civic Si (EP3)

(Submitted by Car Lust reader and commenter Tigerstrypes)

 

While Hondas have not been super-influential to me, I gotta admit that I liked them. I drew their sleek 2-door CG-series Accords and EK9 Civic hatchbacks (both 6th-gen models from their respective models) in my school notebooks from time to time. They were just great-looking cars.

When the 7th-gen Civics rolled in, it took me awhile to get used to the coupe and sedan’s cleaner, sanitary lines. OK, it didn’t take that long. Then I saw the hatch. I was blown away! If the coupe and sedan were evolutionary, the hatch was definitely revolutionary.

"In Praise Of The Hated GM Small Cars Week:" The Vert-A-Pac Auto Carrier

The Chevrolet Vega may have been a perfect storm, an epic in the annals of failure, but there was one element of the Vega project that was more or less a complete success: the innovative "Vert-A-Pac" railroad car used to transport the Vega.

"In Praise Of The Hated GM Small Cars Week:" 1986 Fiero 2M4

You know, any used car can be good or bad. And people sometimes ask, "What's a good used car?" Well, I think that depends on lots of things... first, how good the car was when new, and second, how the previous owner(s) maintained the thing.

The best used GM car I ever had was a red 1986 Pontiac Fiero 2M4. Of course, "2M4" means "2-passenger, Mid-engine, 4-cylinder." It was four years old when I got it, had 40,000 miles, I gave $4,000 for it, and it had four new tires.

The car had cost the seller about $12,000 when new, so I figured if they had already lost twice what I was paying for the car, plus the price of 4 new tires, I was coming out ahead.

I went from a 1984 GMC ½ ton full size pickup to a Fiero because I wanted to feel "sporty." I was also a "Returning to college student," and every hundred dollars counted. So not only did the car get considerably better mileage than the pickup, it was also easier to park in those tiny campus spaces.

The 2M4 also came along as I started working on the Road Test Magazine show. That was a fun time, and the red and white license plate matched the car perfectly.

History repeated itself when I got the Miata 6 years ago, but that time I kept the pickup.

The best thing about any Fiero, in my opinion? The styling. So much so that it served well as an image car while I worked on the show. Heck, Reeves Callaway liked it... so I suppose that was good enough for me.