Car Lust

"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.

8/6/12 Open Thread - 2001 Dodge Caravan - 250k is a lot of miles!

 

I don't know that it qualifies as a historic day in automotive history, but certainly historic in my automotive history.  Considering the rough life this van had before I got it, it truly is amazing that it has made it this far!

 

 

What is your mileage story?  400k in your old Merc diesel?  65k with the top down in your convertable?  You squeezed 125K out of a Chevy Vega?  (we won't believe you...)

 

Other posts related to this van:

2001 Dodge Caravan Headlight Lens Restoration -Worked better on the van than my wife's '96 Civic.

Working on our own junk - The most comments of any post I've made (thus far).

 

--Big Chris

Our Cars--Mom's 1996 Buick Century

Submitted by Car Lust reader and commenter Al Sapp

*Author's note: In order to fully understand this post, it's worth noting that, at the time of writing, I’m 14.

When we think about the 1982-1996 Buick Century, not that we do often, we often think of the driver's age being somewhere between 76 and dead. And you'd be right. My mother bought this prosthetic limb beige Light Sand Rift Metallic '96 Century from a 94 year old family friend back in 2007. She was looking to replace her trusty but unneeded 1997 Dodge Caravan SWB. My brother and I had aged to the point where a minivan just wasn't necessary.

When she came into possession of the Buick, it had something like 38k on the odometer. Without sounding cliché, it was only ever driven to church on Sundays.

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!

 

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Great Commercials/Our Cars--"Connections"

The first time I saw this commercial, my first thought was, "Toyota's ad agency filmed an 'Our Cars' post."

The DeSoto Adventurer I -- My Favorite Show Car of All Time

Regardless of having been associated with great car designs and car designers all of my life, my favorite show car of all time has to be the 1953 DeSoto Adventurer I. My father designed it in 1952 as the Director of Advanced Styling for Chrysler Corporation.

Father actually started the design at our home in Birmingham, Michigan, with scale drawings and then modeled the 1/4 scale adaptation in clay in his office "back room" along with one of his favorite modelers, Ron Martin. Ron was the son of my father's clay modeler at GM Styling, George Martin, when Father was the Chief Designer of Pontiac from 1936 through 1938. Ron also brought the first use of fiberglass casting to Chrysler Styling, and the Adventurer model was the first to be cast in fiberglass and shipped to Ghia in Italy for the full size show car to be developed. Prior to that the scale models were cast in plaster and always subject to cracking of the beautiful finishes.

100,000

Dad and I were in the "Battleship," the grey '76 Ford LTD, somewhere on I-76--I don't remember where we were headed. For the last couple of miles, Dad had been paying very close attention to the instrument panel. "Instrument panel" is kind of too strong a term for what the LTD had: a CinemaScope wide-screen speedometer, a gas gauge, and a bunch of dummy lights, none of which were lit up. The engine sounded normal, the car was tracking straight and true, but Dad was very intently focused on something. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "Just hold on."

He started slowing and pulling off into the median, extremely attentive to his speed and rate of deceleration. He came to a precise stop and pointed at the odometer, a very satisfied look on his face.

"00000.0", it read. All zeroes.

At Dad's insistence, we got out and stood in front of the car and shook hands, a modest ceremony to commemorate what was, at that time, something of an accomplishment: getting a 1970s Detroit car to hold together for 100,000 miles.

A sunny day and a strange love affair

It seems that spring may actually be here in southern Minnesota.  A few weeks early, but I’m certainly not complaining.  With spring comes annual rituals – spring cleaning, fertilizing the grass (not quite yet though), putting out the lawn furniture, and getting engines you’ve stored all winter back into running condition.

I have a love/hate relationship with working on vehicles.  I grew up as a shop rat, learning much from my motorcycle mechanic father.  For him, working on cycles has always been a passion that earned him money.  For me it has always been a necessity to save me money.  I’m competent at it, but I just don’t enjoy it (be it cars or cycles).

I’ve never been in the position to have a project vehicle.  Everything I have owned in life I’ve needed as my basic mode of transportation, or I didn’t have the cash to work on the secondary vehicle while trying to keep the primary one running.  Somehow I find myself at that intersection of life again.

With the weather being so nice today, I went to the garage where I store my ’82 Honda Goldwing and my ’88 Chevy S-10 (4x4 4.3L Tahoe package with topper).  Neither would start.  The cycle has had the trickle charger on the battery for the winter, and yet it just barely creaked when I tried to turn it over, and then stopped.  Battery.  Sigh.  Since the cycle saves me quite a bit on gas during the summer I’m sure I’ll break even through replacing it, but not really what I was hoping for.

Our Cars Week: "1998 Camaro V6"

(Submitted by Car Lust reader "Sir Danley" [Name withheld to protect the innocent])

"Don't feel bad if the car you'd like to write about isn't a supercar; most of us find everyday cars as interesting, or potentially even more interesting, than exotic hardware." --Lindsay Jacobson, Car Lust Editor

...I learned a gigantic amount of the above by driving an '86 Lotus Esprit for a few years; turns out, no one cares if you're driving a twenty year old, Torrid-sized Toyota MR2. This is especially true when most modern, midsized sedans can eclipse it in performance. Only the most knowledgeable nerds will swoon over that car, dumber girls won't notice you're driving in anything special, and the smart girls just think you're overcompensating.

None of which mattered to me; for less than the price of a new Chevy Aveo (and with just as much Giugiaro style), I enjoyed sublimely weighted steering thanks to the MR configuration, a peaky engine of modest HP, and unloaded it before any major bills really came pouring in.

Driving a three-foot-tall black Esprit in Southern California practically camouflages you as a pavement onramp, and I got near zero compliments on the car, ever.  Aside from Roger Moore era James Bond fans and F1 fanatics, a mid-'80s Lotus Esprit is about as utterly un-relatable as a car can get.

…So heavens no, I won’t talk about that.

Our Cars Week: "My Car Lust: Mom's 1972 VW Bug"

(Submitted by Car Lust Reader and commenter Kenny Heggem)

I really don't know what it is exactly. It could be a semblance of different reasons... but I have been obsessing over wanting an early 1970's VW Beetle. A standard little Beetle. Not a Super Beetle, just the standard non-McPherson strut style, flat dash "Bug."

It is likely the nostalgia. Mom had divorced recently, when I was 11. She needed a car, and bought an orange and primer 1972 Bug.

Takes me back a to a time of struggles, but keeping our heads up high. Living on spaghetti every night and struggling to buy school clothes, while Dad partied with arm candy and eating expensive sushi power lunches.