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.

$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.

Car Lust Classic: "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.

Click here to read the rest of the original post by Michael, and to leave your comments.

Wheaton, Illinois, August 17, 2012

My friend Walter Lundby came upon a car show in Wheaton, Illinois last Friday, and got a few pictures with his cellphone.  Here's some of what he saw.

1972 Pontiac GTO Wagon

My brother contributor Big Chris went to his local county fair and came upon what appears to be one of the rarest muscle cars in the civilized world: a 1972 Pontiac GTO station wagon.

Red, White, and Blue: a Car Lust Retrospective

Buick "Free Spirit" Indy 500 Pace Car Replicas

Original post by Rich Menga

The '75 Century pace car replica ... is a rolling American flag. It brazenly displayed its red and blue placards (yes, placards, not decals) along with the hawk image seen on its hood and front quarter. And trust me, there was no way you could mistake this for anything but a Buick, especially considering there was a giant “BUICK” on the top of the nose and the rear quarter and the trunk lid. (And you thought the Pontiac “screaming chicken” Trans Am hood image was huge.. ha! These graphics covered the whole car.)

 

The "Spirit of America" Chevrolets

Original post by That Car Guy

...in 1974, a couple of years ahead of schedule and maybe to boost sales, Chevrolet sold a really nice trim package on their El Camino, Impala, Nova, and Vega models. Some dealers may have added this trim to other Chevy car and truck models as well. The outsides were painted white with red and blue stripes, and sported "Spirit of America" emblems; the insides had white seats, red carpeting, and black dashboards. Looks like they had some nice wheels, too. They were not featured in the sales brochures that year, and getting detailed information on all of them is a bit tricky.

 

1969 AMC Hurst SC/Rambler

Original Post by Cookie the Dog's Owner

The final touch was a deafening (but patriotic) graphics treatment, which came in two variations, known as the "A" and "B" schemes. The A scheme had giant flag-red panels running down the sides from headlight to tail-light, and flag-blue racing stripes on the roof and decklid. The B scheme was slightly--I repeat, slightly--less in your face, with a pair of red and blue stripes on the lower sides in place of the A scheme's single big fat red one. Both As and Bs had a giant flag-blue arrow on the hood pointing at the cold air intake so the cold air wouldn't get lost on its way to the engine. The intake itself was helpfully labeled "AIR" in capital letters, lest someone mistake it for a deflector-shield emitter or a mail slot or some such. The engine displacement was announced in screaming red letters in a white band which cut across the arrow.

 

 

1968-69 AMX

Original post by Anthony Cagle

Yes, that's two -- count 'em -- TWO All-American red, white, and blue muscle cars.... Probably not surprising since AMC did stand for AMERICAN Motors Corp....AMC wasn't much known for performance cars, but they were probably positioned quite well to capitalize on the craze. The classic muscle car -- probably epitomized (IMO) by the Dodge Dart 413 and the 1968 Road Runner -- was a smaller, less expensive model that could be had for cheap and outfitted with gobs of power by young gearheads everywhere. And AMC was known primarily for smaller budget cars. They certainly had their advantages: physics being what it is, power-to-weight ratios rule and a smaller car can go faster with less power than bigger, heavier and more muscular-looking cars. How to get your smaller car noticed in a sea of big bruisers? Why, give it a wild paint job!

 

To read and comment on the original posts, click the links in the titles above.

Great (?) Moments in Badge Engineering

"Badge engineering" occurs when an automobile manufacturer sells what amounts to the same car under two different brand names.  It's not to be confused with "platform sharing," where two or more different cars share some or all of their basic engineering. To illustrate the distinction with an example: the first-generation Chrysler minivans shared the K-cars' platform, but a Plymouth Voyager was a completely different vehicle from the Plymouth Reliant--that's platform sharing.  On the other hand, the Reliant and its Dodge Aries counterpart were identical in all but minor decorative touches--that's badge engineering.

Economically, it makes sense to use as many common components as possible across multiple product lines, and carmakers have been doing this ever since Benz & Company Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik started offering two model lines way back in eighteen-ninety-something. Platform sharing is so common we almost don't notice it anymore, and VW is taking the concept a step further by developing a "construction set" platform that all of its vehicles will eventually share. 

The problem arises when the manufacturer gets too focused on keeping costs down (or too lazy, take your pick) and shares more than drivetrain components or platforms between cars. Share too much, like, say, all of the outer body sheetmetal, and soon what are allegedly "different" cars become indistinguishable, whether viewed from twenty yards away or from the front left seat. We look down on the practice today as the bane of automotive variety, but the first recorded instance of automotive badge engineering was actually welcomed by consumers.

The First Special Edition Mustang

I was cashing a check at the bank recently, and the friendly teller lady had a picture of her '66 Mustang right there. I knew we had cars in common and that car obviously meant a lot to her, so I asked her about it. She proudly told me it was a "High Country" Mustang; a car that I had never heard of.

There were people in line behind me, so I got all of the information from her that I could as quickly as I could. She motioned to the extra fender badge, and I smiled and acted like I knew what she was talking about.

But later I talked with a bud of mine who has owned several Mustangs and taken them down to their last lock washer. He hadn't heard of them either... so then I didn't feel so bad.

Carroll Shelby 1923-2012: A Life Well Lived

There are few people in the automotive industry that are favorites both in the world at large and here in our little corner of the Interwebs devoted to wonderful and, well, not-so-wonderful cars. We here at Car Lust join many in mourning the passing of one of the true giants of the motoring world, Carroll Shelby. From the Cobra to LeMans to the Mustang GT 350/500 (both classic and modern) to the humble Dodge Omni GLH-S, Shelby created performance and excitement out of many a humble automobile and gave the masses not only some really great cars that they could actually own, but an inspiring story of a depression-era Texan who went on to make a name for himself in the automotive world through hard work and dogged determination -- cliché perhaps, but true.

For a far better retrospective on Shelby's life and times than I could possibly provide, see this piece over at Autoweek:

“He is a visionary in many ways, and a doer. He's an idea man—Carroll gets great ideas—and he does not like details. He doesn't like an office. He's not interested in sitting around on a day-to-day basis. He wants another challenge, to move on to something exciting. That's part of the fun of working for him, it'll always be moving, nothing stagnant. There's a feeling of fun, also a respect for the accomplishments of the man.

“He is an entrepreneur who borders on the con man—he is a legitimate con man. You have to be in this business. It's the old American success story. When he gets knocked down—like with the chicken business [which was hit with a poultry disease]—he's flat, he gets back up.”

We've devoted several posts here to models designed, modified, or inspired by Shelby, some deservedly famous, others not so much, but still interesting. This week we'll be re-running several of our old posts in tribute to the man and his creations. And below the fold on this post, our own Virgil Exner contributes his thoughts  on Mr. Shelby.

Requiescat in Pace, Mr. Shelby; would that we all lived our lives as fully and with as much gusto as you did.

--Anthony Cagle

Breaking News... Pontiac Is Coming BACK!

GM is on a comeback, folks. They almost pulled the sheet over this mega company a couple of years ago, but now there's revitalization and growth. Even the empty GM Assembly Plant near me in Spring Hill, Tennessee, formerly known as the Saturn plant, is revving up to build the Chevy Equinox (The Saturn VUE and Chevy Traverse have previously been built there), as well as a vehicle that hasn't been announced yet.

But the excitement about the return of Pontiac is overwhelming. And though this bombshell has not been announced publicly yet, I recently had the chance to talk with an "insider/consultant" from the plant that wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons... let's call him "Mr. X." The information he gave me was surprising to say the least, and the plan is so simple that it just seems so "right."

All I can say about him is that he's British, and it reflects in his words. And for what it's worth, "CL" is/are my initials, and does not stand for "Car Lust," though I guess it could. So after a while (And a few beers!), our conversation soon turned into something of an interview; this is pretty much how it went:

CL: Wait a minute... I am both shocked and amazed. GM is bringing back Pontiac!?!?