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 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.

$100,000 Fantasy Garage Challenge: Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame

Let's start off with the cars my family needs:

2014 Mazda6:

This very nearly was a 2010 Mazda6.  I love my current daily driver car.  It has plenty of power, plenty of room for 4 adults on long trips, handles amazingly well, looks nice, and is generally very satisfying to drive in almost any circumstance.  However, the rules state you have to have one brand new car, and after thinking long and hard, I decided my daily driver would be the best choice to select a brand new vehicle.  The main reason for the upgrade is that the brand new Mazda6 looks nice, has plenty of interior room, has plenty of power, and handles just as well as my 2010...but with the SkyActiv technology, its gas mileage improves by nearly 30%.  To have a non-hybrid family sports sedan that gets 38 mpg highway is very exciting to me, because I am not a fan of the massive batteries necessary for hybrids: the environmental impact of creating, storing, and disposing of the battery pack really bothers me, and I don't like the idea of having to spend several thousand dollars to replace the batteries to keep the car in less than 10 years.

So this will be my daily driver.

$100,000 Fantasy Garage Challenge: Big Chris

I added an extra level of requirement to my fantasy garage - I had to be able to find my vehicles within 100 miles, or at least have them delivered here if new.  I did this because we as a family are indeed in the market for two new(er) vehicles.  Without exaggeration I added 2.5 quarts of oil to my wife's '96 Civic last night (yes, it sounded like a tractor prior to this) and have added 6 quarts in the last 6000 miles.  That's on top of what was put in at the oil change.  And my 2001 Dodge Caravan needs all new suspension (yes, all of it), brakes, tires, and has an AC condensor that is going to grenade at any moment leaving me stranded somewhere.

2010 Subaru Forester - $15,000 - These are readily available at this price, and I'm kinda in the market for one as we write this. I want something that will get through the Minnesota winters.  Something I can throw junk in the back of.  Something that will house my growing son for some time to come.  Something I'll be able to drive for a long time, and something I won't be completley bored with.  I think this will do all that and then some.  And it gets better gas mileage than my current van.

$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.

Great Cars of Egypt Revisited

Thanks to the wonders of the 3G cellular revolution, I am now able to surf the Interwebs from "the field"; the archaeological field, that is. As I type this, I am sitting in a dig house in the Fayum Depression of Egypt working on an archaeological project. The last time I was here in Egypt was 2003, well before Car Lust launched. And, as the world watched last year, Egypt threw off the shackles of the Mubarak administration, which had ruled Egypt for some 30 years and ushered in, for better or worse, a new and more democratic era of government. Sadly, we've also watched a number of demonstrations that have occasionally turned violent, but I suppose that might be expected in a country that has rarely known any sort of real democracy.

But hey, this isn't a post about politics, it's a post about cars. As regular readers may be aware, a couple of years ago I composed a post for this blog on the Great Cars of Egypt. Most Americans wouldn't be aware of the sorts of automobiles running around on the highways and biways of many developing-world countries, and I thought the introduction might be of some interest. Besides, having spent quite a bit of time here, I had a certain fondness for many of the models. Were they "great" cars? Well, as I noted then:

True, in some absolute sense they aren't what one would call spectacular. . . .And perhaps quality- and performance-wise, they aren't exactly world-class; though as we have seen, in their day, many of these were considered more than adequate and in some cases exceptional. . .Automobiles are very expensive purchases for most [Egyptians], and many rely on them for their very livelihood. Combined with the generally poor roads in a lot of areas, you really want a vehicle that is simple, has abundant (and therefore, inexpensive) spare parts, are relatively easy for the owner to fix, and can operate on a variety of roads. They're not glamorous or trendy, but by and large they get the job done, if not exactly in comfort or safety.

1991/1992 Ford F-150 "Nite"

While on vacation in California in July/August, 2012, I saw this pristine 20-year-old Ford F-150 Nite. It was a rare Styleside model, short wheelbase. Luckily I had the camera with me.

Obviously somebody else appreciates them, as few classic trucks look like this. It looked 100% stock and brand new... even the reflective stripes were shiny and working. And inside the rear wheel well, do we see any dirt? I don't.

Seeing this pristine beauty appear out of nowhere brought back a lot of memories and was the inspiration for this post. I mean... the truck looked as new as the one I had driven back in 1990. Its perfect, reflective black sheen and multi-hued tape stripe made it stand out even among the brand new cars.

It brought back many other memories as well.