Car Lust

MG MGB Series

Writing Car Lust posts is a privilege, especially when they bring back memories of vehicles I have either personally owned or that have been in the family. Such is the case of a 1973 terracotta-colored MGB that my sister had for a few years until her family outgrew the car, which didn't take a lot of outgrowing to do.

What attracted us to the MGB was that, as small as it was, the car was larger than a Triumph Spitfire or MG Midget. I wanted a Spitfire at the time, but this wasn't going to be my car. I believe this is the only picture of "our" MG that we have left. That's Snoopy right behind it, and my first car, a 1972 Vega :( .

My favorite MGB eccentricity was its three windshield wipers. The windscreen was low and wide, and two wipers just weren't up to the job. Only American MGBs had three wipers; all others had two. One night I got caught in a thunderstorm in the canvas-roofed car, and those wipers gave their all to let me see. I was minoring in Aerospace Technology at the time, and driving the roadster was not unlike flying a Cessna 150, except that no pilot is stupid enough to fly a 150 in a thunderstorm.

The best memories I have of the car are during the week I got to take it off to college. People actually lined up to get a ride around the block in it, including some attractive ladies. Oh, if I could only go back and do that day again. ...

Test Drive--Mercedes-Benz CL600 V-12 Biturbo

(Chris: We still have a few Pontiac pieces to run this week to close out our RIP Pontiac theme, but this was just too good to wait.)

"You're probably the only guy I'm ever going to let drive this thing," Nick said as he handed me the key. 

The Mercedes-Benz CL600 sat there like a panther, the glossy black paint and tinted windows exuding a very refined, distinctive, upscale air of pure predatory menace. I slipped into the driver's seat and started the V-12. The tach needle jumped as I cranked it, then settled down to idle speed, but the engine itself was awfully quiet. Too quiet, as they say in those old adventure movies. The driver's seat was upholstered in phenomenally comfortable leather, facing an instrument panel which was both logical and elegant in its design. The wood on the steering wheel and around the shifter was polished to a level of shine that rivals the finer grades of telescope mirror.

I had never before driven a car with this many cylinders, or this many digits in the sticker price, so I was careful at first. I put it in gear and eased it through the parking lot to the street. I stopped at the end of the restaurant driveway, made sure that there was no traffic, and turned left.

Before me was a stretch of concrete unsullied by other traffic or the presence of the local constabulary. At that moment, I was overcome by the spirit of pure boyish mischief and floored it.

I'm not quite sure how to describe what came next.

Ford Ranger

The story of the Ford Ranger compact pickup trucks may be the best example of automotive evolution, not revolution, in the American automotive market. Now, more than 26 years into production, a few of the parts and pieces on these trucks have never changed.

While most of us think of a Ranger as a small domestic pickup truck, the name has appeared on other Ford Motor Company products. The name first appeared in 1950 on a Ford Panel Truck with extra windows and a conversion to four-wheel-drive by Marmon-Herrington--a vehicle that could be considered one of the first SUVs. The Ranger name made a brief detour away from the truck world in making an appearance as an Edsel model. In 1965, the Ranger name returned to the Ford truck line as the top trim level of the full-size Ford pickup. The name carried on until 1982 when the XLT became the top of the line. Unheard-of truck luxuries like carpet and nice seats were part of the Ranger package.

Development of the compact Ranger pickup began in 1976, and the truck debuted in mid-1982 as a 1983 model, replacing the Mazda-built Ford Courier. Ford would later return the favor; the Mazda B-series compact pickups are based on the Ranger.

Original Ranger engines included a 2.0-liter, 72-horsepower four-cylinder, a 2.3-liter, 86-horsepower four-cylinder, a 2.2-liter, 59-horsepower diesel four-cylinder, and a 2.8-liter, 115-horsepower V-6. The Ranger shared similar styling and engineering features, including Ford's twin I-beam front suspension, with its larger F-150 sibling. In 1986, the SuperCab and Ranger GT models appeared. The Ford Bronco II was based on this Ranger.

Revolutionary Efficiency

(Note from Chris: We're very proud to welcome Virgil Exner Jr. as an official Car Lust contributor. Mr. Exner is of course the son of famous designer Virgil Exner of Forward Look fame, and a distinguished automotive designer in his own right. He previously contributed a rebuttal to Cookie the Dog's Owner's original Stutz Blackhawk piece.)

Hello Car Lust readers, I'm very happy to be aboard as a contributor to the blog and hope you will enjoy my input.

My wife and I recently returned from a short vacation in St. Martin in the Caribbean, and I had an opportunity to rent a virtually new India-produced Hyundai i-10 four-door hatchback. It had all of the accessories as our 2008 two-door Ford Focus, and both of us thought it was really great. It got 27 mpg for more than 200 miles around that hilly and traffic-jammed island and drove and handled just as well as the Focus. Our Focus gets 19 mpg in more favorable traffic and on flatter roads. I thought the Hyundai would make the Focus feel heavy when we returned to our car, and it did.

Requiem for a Dakota

Every car owner, sooner or later, reaches a point with their vehicles where they have to make a decision: Do you cough up thousands of dollars to keep your car going, or do you just take it out back, shoot it, and get a new one?  When faced with this decision, a number of issues come into play:

• How good a vehicle can I get for the repair price? Will it run better than the one I have?
• How long until the next big repair?
• Does the vehicle meet my needs well enough to justify putting money into it?
• How much do I like the vehicle?

Today, on my way to work, my 1993 Dodge Dakota made a noise from the transmission area that convinced me to pull over and get towed back home. After a little bit of troubleshooting, I figured out what the problem was--the overdrive was shot. 

At first, I flirted with the idea of fixing the overdrive myself. I read the Chilton manual's procedure on removing the transmission. I searched online for the service manual for my Torqueflite-inspired A500 transmission, then pored over its 94 pages intently, searching for hope. It turns out that, on the A500, the main transmission is a separate unit from the overdrive module; consequently, the worst that I would have to do is replace the overdrive module.

1972 Harley-Davidson 125cc Rapido

Ah, our first street-legal vehicle ... that life-changing moment when freedom from family finally becomes possible. In 1971 Tennessee, it could happen when you were at least 14 years old, got your parents' signatures, had a motor-driven cycle with 5 brake horsepower or less, could see, paid $6, and rode within a 7-mile radius of your home during daytime hours. 

I had the luxury of learning to drive a tractor at 6, a car around 8, all on our farm. We had bicycles, a mini-bike, and a go-kart, so going to a slightly larger motorbike was not a problem. But, unfortunately, choosing one was. Honda was breaking ground with its fantastic line of bikes, and I saw their reliability and features through my friends. I wanted a blue 1972 Honda CL100, a dual-purpose on/off-road bike that sadly is not made anymore. However, my father was writing the check, and he wanted  *American* - a Harley-Davidson.

Anything sold by Harley-Davidson under 500cc was built by Aermacchi in Italy, but my father could not grasp that concept because the bikes had "Harley-Davidson" written on them. He grew up in The Great Depression, was still fighting World War II, and simply would not give his money to the Japanese, though the only two new cars he ever bought were German Volkswagen Beetles--in fact, he bought the third VW ever sold in Nashville. We had a great family friend, the late Bill Abernathy, who had just purchased the first 1972 model Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide 1200 sold in Tennessee, so it was deemed by the powers that be that I would have the first 1972 H-D 125cc Rapido sold here (Do we see a pattern forming?).

The "T"-Body Cars: Chevrolet Chevette and Pontiac T1000

As you all very well know, General Motors and other car companies use an alphabet letter to denote a body style, usually used by two or more divisions. When the unreliability of the "H"-body Vega became obvious, GM went looking globally to replace the Vega by rebadging a "T"-body from elsewhere in the world. First built in Brazil in 1974, the "T" car was eventually made as the Vauxhall Chevette, Opel Kadett, Isuzu Gemini, and Holden Gemini. It was also called the Pontiac Acadian in Canada. Briefy, it was even made as a pickup truck, the Chevy 500.

Launched by the Chevrolet Division in 1976 as the Chevette and in 1981 as Pontiac's T1000, this is a truly "love-it-or-hate-it" car. I bought this then-new 1978 model for reliable transportation and easy campus parking, as well as something to remember my 21st birthday by. Originally available in America only as a 2-door, "Rally" and "Woody" packages were also offered. A 4-door came along in 1978, and those two trim packages were dropped. All were hatchbacks. There was a station wagon that was never available here, but I think it would have been a hit at that time. In 1978, the Pinto and Monza wagons were still available and selling strong--though their days were ultimately numbered.

Our Cars--1975 Chevy Impala

Not wanting to miss out on the big car nostalgia, I'll wow you with tales of one of the greatest beasts to ever cruise the open road. I first received my 4-door 1975 Chevy Impala when I was still in high school, but it had always been in the family. The car originally was my great grandmother's, but she had wanted a smaller and newer car (a Ford Taurus was her choice), and my family needed something to replace our dying Pontiac Ventura.

When we got the car, I was not yet of driving age, but I had already begun to love cars. The first week we got it, my dad and I took it to my grandfather's automotive shop and proceeded to give it a tune-up, some top-end work (head work, rings, pistons etc.), removal of all things limiting horsepower, and then added air shocks to the rear-end. It also got new brakes and a free-flowing exhaust. It went from Granny's grocery-getter to a pretty wicked towing machine in just one short weekend. We figured that 350 V-8 put out roughly 275 horsepower when we were all done with it. Not a ton of power, but a huge upgrade over the estimated 145 horsepower it sported when stock, and enough to get the barge really moving when you wanted it to.

When we got the Impala, it didn't have a ton of miles on it, something like 45K, in spite of it being 13 years old at that point. It had always lived in a garage and had always been well-maintained. And it was an awesome color--burnt orange. You couldn't miss this thing going down the road; it was huge and orange. And it didn't have a ding, dent, or rust spot on it. By the time I got it in 1991, there were a few surface rust spots; and when we got rid of it in 1995 we were thankful the car was burnt orange so it was less obvious that the rust spots outnumbered the paint spots.

And when I say this car was huge, I'm not kidding. I used to tell my friends it was as large as a Suburban. They didn't believe me. So I parked next to one one day, and we got out and measured.  My car was a mere 1/2 inch shorter. And as Rob wrote in the Mercury article, when people saw it coming, they got out of the way.

Buick "Free Spirit" Indy 500 Pace Car Replicas

Submitted by Rich Menga

Many moons ago I asked my father what car he missed the most out of all he’s ever owned. While not particularly a car guy, he did own some pretty decent rides of the day (including a late 1960s Pontiac Firebird, an early 1970s Dodge Challenger, and an early 1970s Oldsmobile Cutlass S to name a few). He thought about the question for a moment, then looked at me and said …

“The pace car.“

I was 15 years old at the time I heard that answer.

I replied, “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

The Pace Car was a 1975 Buick “Free Spirit” Century Custom Series Indianapolis 500 Pace Car replica. Pop and I never referred to it as The Buick or The Century. It was always The Pace Car.

I thought to myself, “Okay, how hard could it be to find this car?” Let’s just say it took me seventeen years to find one. More on that later.

Our Cars--1978 Mercury Marquis Brougham Sedan

Cookie's post on the LTD inspired me to write about my own experiences with a similar beast:  A 1978 Mercury Marquis Brougham Sedan, pictured below. 

 I originally purchased it for $300 when gas was $0.98 cents per gallon, purely because it had working air conditioning. That summer was extremely hot and humid, and my other cars (a 1968 Charger and a 1997 Neon) lacked that feature. I had the room for it, so why not? Over the course of owning it for a year and a half, I learned a lot about how people give you a lot of respect when you are driving a gigantic, rusty battletank with dings, rust, and missing hubcaps. Merging onto the freeway was like the parting of the red seas; everyone saw me coming and seemed to think, "Oh crap, this guy doesn't care at all! Get out of the way!" Then again, perhaps it was my sticker. My Uncle works for Raytheon, a missile defense company, and he'd given me a sticker that adorned my rear bumper. It read, "Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle: Discriminate and Destroy."