As a former Metro owner— about ten years ago, I found a low-mile ’96 Metro with four-cylinder and automatic for a scrap-value price and couldn’t say no to the deal— I’ve always sort of liked Suzuki’s little no-lux gas miserwagen. It takes a special Metro for me to include it in this series, however; we’ve seen this ’90 Metro El Camino, this electric-powered ’95 Metro, and this ’91 Suzuki Swift so far, plus this bonus Honda CBR1000-powered LeMons race-winning Metro, and now I’ve found one of the very rare Metro convertibles at a California self-service wrecking yard. (Read More…)

Yaw A. writes:

Hey Sajeev,

It’s the dude whose mom had the sludged RX300 a while back. Thanks for publishing that. I have another question/update.

Someone hit mom in the RX300 about 2 weeks ago. She is fine but the car needs about $5000 in work. My dad has a 2003 M45 that has been sitting in the driveway for at least a year now that is not running (you can’t make this up). Rather than fix the M45, he bought an old Altima V6. If you are confused so far don’t worry, I am too.

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Mildred Lambrecht and her son Mark. circa 1953

As our esteemed colleague Mr. Baruth pointed out, it’s not every day that you can buy dealer fresh 50 year old Chevys, referring to the upcoming auction of over 500 cars owned by Ray P. Lambrecht, now 95 years old, who with his wife Mildred and a single mechanic ran Lambrecht Chevrolet, a small rural dealership in Pierce, Nebraska from 1946 to 1996. The collection includes a startling number of new old stock cars, time-capsules that were never sold or registered as well as trade ins that Lambrecht and his Mildred decided to keep. Though it’s not on the scale of Barney Pollard’s massive inventory, I suspect that in time, as with former Pollard cars, the provenance of being a “Lambrecht Chevy” will be a factor in those cars’ collector value. A number of comments to Jack’s post wondered what the story was behind the collection. Fortunately, the auction description at VanDerBrink’s Auctions website was written by the Lambrechts’ own daughter, Jeannie Lambrecht Stillwell, who gives the human side to the Lambrecht Chevys:

The Man Behind the Legend
The Story of Ray P. Lambrecht and Lambrecht Chevrolet Company
by Jeannie Lambrecht Stillwell

Urban legends speak of a former Midwest Chevy dealer with a collection of hundreds of vehicles hidden away in a rural setting. Rumors abound regarding this man and the mystery of that collection. The man behind that legend is my father, Ray P. Lambrecht. Dad owned and operated Lambrecht Chevrolet Company from 1946 until 1996, selling new Chevrolets to multiple generations of families all over the Midwest and beyond. This is his story. (Read More…)

Volkswagen’s  R&D chief Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg is cautiously optimistic about the use of carbon fiber technologies in volume cars. Said Hackenberg today in Wolfsburg: (Read More…)

Hackenberg hints on future cars, with the members of the social media in rapt attention

Volkswagen plans to use the 0.8 liter diesel  hybrid drivetrain from its futuristic, ultra-efficient and ultra-expensive  (no pricing announced) XL1 two-seater in a future regular small car, Volkswagen’s R&D Chief Ulrich Hackenberg said today in an interview in Wolfsburg’s Autostadt. Said Hackenberg: (Read More…)

Hackenberg talks to reporters from SAE Magazine and Fortune …

“It is good for the future of diesel in the USA that  a domestic producer also uses a diesel engine,” said Volkswagen’s R&D Chief Dr. Ulrich Hackenberg today.  “If the volume of diesel engines is increasing, then it makes sense to produce diesel engines in the U.S.A. That would be great for us and the customer,” Hackenberg said. (Read More…)

People that don’t live in the Detroit area often assume that car shows and similar events in the region are all focused on American iron and Detroit muscle. The fact is that car guys in Detroit are pretty much like car guys everywhere and most can appreciate all automotive excellence. That’s true within the auto industry as well. Engineers and designers working for GM, Ford and Chrysler have respect for the work of their colleagues both across town and across the oceans. The earliest expression of Cadillac’s brand identifying “Art & Science” styling theme was the Evoq roadster concept, designed by Kip Wasenko, now retired from GM Design. The first time that I met Kip was when I pulled up next to his Ferrari Dino on north Woodward a few days before the Woodward Dream Cruise.

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Just as Mercedes prepares to do away with one historic nameplate, it appears to be reviving another. The flagship of the next-generation S-Class range will wear the Pullman badge.

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Despite being one of the most antiquated vehicles in Renault’s lineup (at least from a technology standpoint), the Dacia Duster is still its most popular. Through the first 5 months of the year, the Duster sold 155,729 units in Europe, besting the Clio (139,397 units) Megane (133,116 units) and Sandero (124,918).

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Central to the tone of Jack Baruth’s lovely father-and-son 911 vignette is the concept of the Forever Car. It’s a nice thought – the machine acting as fossilizing amber, perfectly capturing a fleeting memory such that it lasts an eternity.

This idea is, to me, an entirely rational way to explain the presence of a theoretical soul in something that is composed of nothing more than steel, glass, rubber and leather. Cars don’t have souls, they develop them through experience – the transference of an emotion felt behind the wheel. It doesn’t have to be a 911 either, even the humblest old Volvo shoebox absorbs a personality as it slots into the background in slide after slide of family vacation pictures.

And then, you find yourself browsing craigslist and seeing a well-preserved you-name-it and thinking, “I could make that mine. I could share that with my children, and they would understand, and when I am dead and gone, they would explain it to their kids, and they would know.”

It’s a nice thought, the Forever Car. It perfectly encapsulates the human need for lasting possessions, of the art scrawled on the cave wall that says, “I was here.” One’s all-too-brief lifetime becomes a link in a chain that’ll stretch out over the years; less an ownership cycle than the work of a custodian/curator.

Well hurry up then. The last Forever Cars have already been built. (Read More…)

Next up on the CVT’s hit list is this Honda Civic. Honda’s Tetsuo Iwamura confirmed that the Civic will get an all-new Earth Dreams powertrain, featuring direct injection and a CVT transmission, within the next couple years.

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How’d you like to buy a new Chevrolet? A real Chevrolet. Not a Daewoo. Not a New GM assemblage of lowest-bidder Chinese electronics and focus-grouped inoffensiveness. A brand-new Chevrolet from the time when Chevrolet ruled the world with a cast-iron fist. A brand-new 1958 Chevrolet. With four miles on the odometer.

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For an extra $550, Mercedes-Benz owners will now be able to enjoy the latest in LED lighting technology, now that a customed LED-illuminated Mercedes logo is available as an option. The logo will stay lit for 40 seconds while the car is unlocked and for five seconds while the doors are open. US regulations prohibit it being illuminated while the vehicle is in motion. Expect this to be very popular with C250 owners, much like the infamous “Bentley grille” was with base-trim Chrysler 300 models in the middle of the last decade.

The Consulier was a two-thousand-pound, turbo-Chrysler-four-powered attempt to build a truly modern sporting automobile. Warren Mosler, its designer, once famously offered $25,000 to anybody who could beat the Consulier around a racetrack with a street car. Depending on how you read the events that then transpired, he was either vindicated or soundly beaten.

Regardless, due to Mr. Mosler’s withdrawal from the car biz, there are now some Consuliers for sale.

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I have a confession to make. In the wee hours, while my wife and children sleep, I often start my computer and do what I many men do when they finally have a moment of privacy at the end of a long day, I Google myself. Much to my surprise, it turns out that there are more Thomas Kreutzers in the world than I ever imagined. One of my namesake is a real estate agent in Kokomo Indiana while another is a member of a German world championship darts team. One Thomas Kreutzer is a community minded plumbing contractor in Woodbridge, VA and yet another, who lives in Florida, runs a video production company. However, the be all end all of Thomas Kreutzers, it seems to me, is in Germany and, like yours truly, he just happens to have a special interest in often derided small car. Creepy, huh? (Read More…)