Car Lust

1971-1973 Buick Centurion vs. 1971-1973 Buick LeSabre

"Uh-LLLLadies... and... Gen-tle-men! On the left, weighing 4,329 lbs. and standing 54 inches in height with a wheelbase of 124 inches, we have the 1973 Buick Centurion. And on the right, also weighing 4,329 lbs. and standing 54 inches and with a wheelbase of 124 inches, we have the 1973 Buick LeSabre."

"So, from the Car Lust home office here in the great United States of America..."

"... Uh-Let's get ready to rum-bullllllll!"

Quite a while back in a discussion here at Car Lust, we swapped stories comparing the similarities and differences of Buick's Wildcat/Centurion vs. their LeSabre. If memory serves, the outcome more or less stated that the Wildcat/Centurion was Buick's "sporty" full-sized car while the LeSabre was the more practical one. Of course, the Electra 225, Buick's flagship luxury model, had enough differences to not be included in the discussion.

$100,000 Fantasy Garage Challenge: That Car Guy

Let's see... a hundred grand for garage toys. Where to start?

How about our brand new vehicle first. For that, I'd get a 2-door Jeep Wrangler Sport, which is their base model. And from their somewhat limited palette, I'd get this color called Commando Green, which looks somewhat military to me.

I built and priced one; they come standard with tilt, cruise, traction control, steering wheel-mounted audio controls, fog lamps, a 285-hp V-6, a 6-speed manual, and more. Oh yeah, it also has 4WD standard... a Jeep without 4WD? Heresy!

The only options I'd want are air conditioning and a hard top; soft tops are just way too noisy on the highway. Its Grand Retail Total, minus shipping, is $24,085. Not bad.

Why get a Jeep? Well, I've always liked them, they make great service vehicles, if you get stuck it's your fault, and despite new model year updates, I think we know pretty much what the next one will look like.

Car (Truck) Disgust: 2002 Lincoln Blackwood

We here at Car Lust haven't done a "Car Disgust" post in a while. That's because these posts are usually reserved for the most vile aberrations of automotive expression, the lowest of the low, cars that either have the soul of the devil, or maybe no soul at all.

Car Disgust also includes vehicles so poorly designed or rebadged that the public takes one look, and either laughs histerically, runs away from them, or shrieks in terror en masse. Or worse, we aren't affected at all.

And I think we have one here today folks, that fits many of the requirements of true Car Truck Disgust.

So if I may, to get this post rolling, a little history first. At about the turn of the 21st century, the "Bling" movement was coming into vogue. Some requirements to be in this crowd were that your vehicle had to have huge-diameter (Dubs or larger) shiny wheels that attracted both attention and thieves, tons of chrome and/or gold trim, and all passengers were customarily attired in white wife beaters, excessive jewelry, and droopy trousers. The automotive term "grilles" took on a whole new meaning as well.

To cash in on some of this blingness, Lincoln took one look at this trend, took their F-150 pickup, and tried to turn it into an instant "Blingmobile." But despite a blingafied effort, I think their attempt of puttin' da 'Wood in da 'hood was epic fail.

January 21 Weekly Open Thread: "The Beast"

About this time every four years in our Nation's capital, we get to see an amazing spectacle. That's right, we get to see live on TV the car we citizens provide to transport and protect our President.

"The Beast" will make its second inaugurational appearance today. And regardless of our political views, any inauguration is a time to relax and enjoy the peaceful transition of power that our country uniquely provides.

Some insiders say that this car is more truck than anything else. I don't believe it's a crossover though. And it definitely was not built for good gas mileage. It, in itself, is an ambassador to the world, as every other Presidential transport, including Air Force One, has been.

Test Drive--2013 Chrysler 300

Can a handsome young man with a fondness for light, agile cars and manual transmissions find happiness, or at least contentment, behind the wheel of a luxury battlecruiser with a slushbox? Or is the very proposition madness?

January 7 Weekly Open Thread: Please Bring Back Opera Windows

A few weeks ago, December 10 to be exact, fellow Car Lust contributor Anthony Cagle helped introduce us to "The Lincoln Motor Company." A couple of commenters, yours truly included, suggested that Lincoln return to a 1970s Detroit styling icon, the opera window(s). This design element might help that "budding" company set itself apart from the rest of automobilia with perhaps a touch of class from a bygone era... just as their ads suggest.

From a Mustang II Ghia to a Cadillac Sedan de Ville and most everywhere in between, opera windows, along with padded vinyl roofs, upright hood ornaments, and wide bodyside mouldings were a staple of style. Some of them were done well, and others... weren't.

Presenting a few cars in their resplendent glory to whet one's appetite for the good old days:

The 2012 Nashville British Car Club Show

Call this a hat trick if you will. The 2010 and 2011 Nashville British Car Club Shows have been featured here at Car Lust, so now we complete the trilogy with the October 13, 2012 presentation, which included the Sunbeam Alpine Invasion.

The weather for each of these three shows was simply superb... dry October days with temperatures in the low 80s. Quite the contrast from the damp country that built these magnificent automotive specimens, which may explain why many of them are here in the first place.

2010 and 2011 brought a multitude of Triumphs, MGs, Jaguars, and the like. They were lined in rows that seemed almost endless. And there were a number of those roadsters at the 2012 show, but this year seemed to be devoted to the rarest of the species. And that's what we'll concentrate on here... so let's start with the really rare:

Studebaker Drivers Club Ohio Chapter Meet, Tallmadge, Ohio, August 25, 2012

I spent several hours wandering around the Studebaker Drivers Club meet in Tallmadge, just east of Akron, on Saturday, August 25 and came away with a pocket full of dead NiCad batteries and an SD card full of photos. Here's some of what I saw:

1979-1983 Datsun 280ZX•280ZX Turbo (S130 Series)

(Submitted by Car Lust reader and commenter Tigerstrypes) 

 

It’s not a pure sports car. We know. We always knew. We get it. Get over it.

Now that we got that out of the way…

Car Lust has talked about 280ZXs before, focusing on how AWESOME the commercials are (I’ll never look at Steve Wozniak the same way ever again). Yet a formal post has never been made. Reading the comment sections show the same polarizing views on the cars found in just about every place Z-dom is celebrated. Yet it at least does state the important fact that it did perform rather well against the competition. The Turbos were the fastest Japanese imports in the American market. Early 280ZX Turbos kicked its contemporary rivals’ butts, a list that include the Corvette, all the pony-cars, and the likes of the Porsche 924, Ferrari 308, and Jaguar XJ-S in non-cornering tests. Not bad for non-intercooled machinery, eh?

America's Car Museum: Car Lust Edition

Yesterday I popped in to see the newly-opened LeMay Car Museum -- technically the LeMay - America's Car Museum -- for a much-too-short hour and a half (I snuck out of a niece-in-law's high school graduation ceremony at the adjacent Tacoma Dome. . .don't tell!). I've never actually been to a car museum so it was an entirely new experience for me. The Museum just opened this month and it's really quite a wonder for these parts given that we have no domestic automotive industry to garner history from, at least directly. But we are home to Harold and Nancy LeMay who acquired a truly astounding collection of automobiles. From the above-linked web site:

Harold and Nancy LeMay amassed the largest privately owned collection of automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, other vehicles and related memorabilia in the world.

At its peak, the LeMay Collection numbered in excess of 3,000 vehicles and thousands of artifacts and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest privately owned collection in the world; impressive if accomplished by a King, but jaw dropping, awesome when accomplished by a local businessman from Tacoma, Washington.

As with most high-end collectors, most of the cars are, well, high end collector cars: gleaming jewels of spotless chrome and deep, rich paint, shined to mirror-like perfection and lit to enhance their beauty. They're not all owned by the LeMays; there's a permanent collection and several 'galleries', if you will, of donated collections and sets of related cars on loan from individuals. Definitely worth a trip for the auto history enthusiast.

Sadly, no mint-condition Pacers I'm afraid.

Still, there were a few specimens that we've covered here and a couple that will no doubt be covered in the future. Here are a few snapshots for some of the more Lustable items.