I’m a university student completing their honours degree in screen production. My project for this year is making a short drama/comedy about a young man and his car (surprise, surprise!), so I’m looking for old, tidy cars with character.
My search has come down to a yellow 1983 Volvo 244 GL 3sp auto, offered to me for $500AUD with no registration – the pictures I’ve been given shows a very straight, tidy old brick, but it could respond well to a good polish. The bad? The car has been sitting around for at least a few months (could even be closer to a year…), which causes worries. I’m told it drove quite well before it was put away and the owners in question are quite mechanically minded and love their bricks, so I’m lead to believe it will be a good car. However, if I buy this car and it doesn’t work, suddenly I’m out of money and I don’t have a car for my film. So is there anything I should be wary of and check to ensure clean health? Any brick nuts want to chime either?
For you brick nuts, it’s an ’83 244 GL with the B23 and the 3 speed automatic. It’s done 280,000 kilometres/170k miles. I’m from Australia so I’m sure someone will school me on how we got the better bricks and USDM got shafted or something along those lines!
Speedy response would be lovely before I loose my money! (Read More…)
Remember the Tata Nano? It is the world’s cheapest car and we reviewed it earlier here. Neither does Jay Leno need any introduction. The host of the Tonight Show has gone ahead and added the Tata Nano to his garage. Jay already has more than 100 cars and 90 motorcycles in his garage. Leno also writes for The Sunday Times and will soon be giving his opinion on the Nano. The Tata Nano he has bought could have been gifted by Tata Motors for obvious reason. It is the top end model sporting fancy accessories, such as alloy wheels . (Read More…)
Listening to the news from Europe, one thinks that there is chaos in the streets of Europe. Not yet. But Europeans are clearing room for chaos by buying fewer cars. 1,017,912 new passenger cars were registered in the EU, or 6.9 percent less than in the same month of 2011. Four months into the year, new registrations in the EU were 7.5 percent lower than a year earlier, the European manufacturers association ACEA reports. (Read More…)
Tomorrow, Thursday morning, GM will most likely announce that the new Opel Astra will be built at the Ellesmere Port plant near Liverpool, and no longer in Germany. This ends weeks of hard-nosed gamesmanship, where one plant was played against the other. (Read More…)
This morning I had the honor of naming my new *grandson at his bris. That means that I’m old enough to remember when 15 inch wheels were considered large.
Our own Michael Karesh will be testing out Nissan’s new Altima this week. This is the car that Nissan is hoping will take the Altima from its current second place slot in the mid-size segment and up to the top of the pile. In lieu of Michael’s take, there are a few factors that are worth looking at.
It was 1972, 40 years ago, when BMW did something that many would later imitate: Much to the chagrin of its own engineers, who were convinced they already had the hottest cars imaginable, and that to touch them meant to desecrate their creations, BMW decided to put the tuners out of business, and created the M series.
Even as GM abandons Facebook advertising because of a poor ROI, Ford is going full steam ahead with Facebook spending and including more “sponsored stories” – i.e. cheesy advertorial content – as part of their “accelerated” spending. The problem is that it doesn’t work.
It seems odd to me that some old Japanese cars are becoming collectible. Some cars are understandable like Toyota 2000gt, 240z, RX3, etc. It seems that rarity plays a huge role in what people consider collectible. A good example is a Toyota Cressida Wagon. Its not a sports car, its not attractive but it some how has some pizazz. I do not foresee many American Classics from the mid 70’s becoming collectible. There will be a few but it seems like people love Datsun, Toyota and Mazda’s from that era. Even low mile Subaru’s are become collectible. Has the world gone mad? (Read More…)
While GM is withdrawing from Facebook advertising, over in Europe, Opel does the opposite: Opel spent untold budget amounts to hire Orlando Higginbottom, better known as Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs. The hot UK producer, remixer and DJ was hired to flog … clicks to Facebook. (Read More…)
The Time Machine Dilemma works like this: your time machine lands on Auto Row in some past decade, and you have enough cash to buy a certain iconic car of that era. Do you buy the iconic car, or do you hoof it to some other dealership, perhaps saving enough money to buy (gold, Microsoft stock, first-edition Philip K Dick hardbacks)? We’ve done this exercise with miserable econoboxes of 1986, a broad spectrum of 1973 machinery, and today the time machine will be hurtling to an even earlier decade. (Read More…)
Like many politicians during their recreational moments, cars can make some unique and funny noises once they experience the stresses of the open road.
Some of them are quite normal such as the ‘vroom’ of the engine. The ‘roar’ of the tire, and the ‘squeaky squeaky’ of a worn suspension over a series of bumps.
But what about the ‘clunk’ of loose steering components? Or the metallic ‘clanging’ of a brake system well past it’s maintenance time?
The majority of drivers simply like to delay the inevitable.
Happy 28th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg. Your baby is about to go public, but GM still had to rain on your parade by pulling their advertising from Facebook because GM ad men didn’t think it was effective.
James writes:
The 
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