The Rare Rides Pristine Vintage Toyota Precedent (RRPVTP) was set a few weeks ago, when we featured a Tercel 4WD Wagon. Then, Matthew Guy happened to present the redesigned 1990 Toyota 4Runner in his Ace of Base segment. This seemed a very timely coincidence, as a few days before we’d received a Rare Rides tip from commenter StephenT: a 4Runner of the first generation, lovingly maintained and for sale in Alabama.
You don’t see them like this very often.
When the Picture Time post for the Villager Nautica went up on these pages last year, the idea for this particular edition of Buy/Drive/Burn was already on my mind. In fact, in the big list of trios I keep for this series, this one has always been at the top of the list.
The year is 1994, and you’ve got a luxury minivan to set alight.
Back in May of 2017, we showcased our first Suzuki(s) in a mixed Crapwagon Collection not often seen in the wild. Suzuki was our discussion once more when we featured a kei trucklet called the Mighty Boy.
Now we talk Suzuki once again, with a Works version of the Alto.
Yesterday, the B&B collectively lit up the Buy/Drive/Burn article regarding $45,000 coupes in praise of the V8-powered 2018 Mustang GT. While munching on all the delicious clicks, I thought about the QOTD published back in December 2017. In that post, I asked you, our dear readers, to rank all seven generations of the Chevrolet Corvette. See where this is going?
Today we want to know where you rank all six generations of the Ford Mustang. Line up your ponies!
It is impossible to ignore the present pattern in the Buy/Drive/Burn series. We’ve had three entries in the series so far, two of which have been coupe-focused. In today’s fourth edition, we talk coupes again and sort out some questions of arson from B&B commenter Dal20402. He suggested today’s modern, rear-drive sports coupe lineup in the QOTD post where we introduced the rules for this series.
The coupe category spans three continents, each with its own idea of what a rear-drive coupe should be. Which one will burn?
Silver on the outside, and multi-shaded maroon on the inside, this Porsche 959 is the most expensive car we’ve featured in the Rare Rides series to date. What do you get for $1.25 million dollars, aside from service visits costing $100,000?
As you prepare to sell off your mixed security holdings, let’s find out.
We’ve had more BMWs featured on Rare Rides than any other marque. Aside from the BMW-powered Vixen motor home and the Alpina B7S, there was the Freeclimber, the mid-engine supercar flop called the M1, and the first experiment in the cabriolet Z category, the Z1.
Let’s see what happens when BMW makes a car eight times better than the Z1.
(Read More…)
Italian design firm Zagato has a way with making things red and black — and extra angular. Why, just look at what they did to a standard Nissan Leopard in turning it into the Stelvio. And while the Stelvio’s integrated fender mirrors and overall level of crazy isn’t to everyone’s taste, general favor has always fallen upon Alfa Romeo’s ’90s Zagato model, the SZ.
Come and have a look.
In my QOTD post two weeks ago, I asked you to share the story of the most unreliable vehicle you’d ever owned. Most of you were quick to point out that I should’ve turned that into several different Questions of the Day, so you could specify different types of unreliable vehicles. The sheer number of comments (over 240 of them) showed me that the B&B love to share a bad story.
I see no reason not to return to form this week, and ask you about your worst childhood automotive memory. Mine involved a GMC Safari — in a situation which was nowhere near as decadent as above.
Our previous entry into Buy/Drive/Burn asked which brougham personal luxury coupe you’d choose from the Big Three for the 1980 model year. Today we’ve got a different Big Three — two Germans and a Swede. (Read ground rules here.)
All of them offered luxury wagons with all-wheel drive around the turn of the century, and we hone in on 2004 today. Which one will you drive up to the Alps and then set on fire?
(Read More…)
There’s always big money in the collector car market. Auction houses like Mecum and Barrett-Jackson simply roll the shiny and tempting classic metal (like that Purp Drank Impala SS) across their blocks. The old folks (or their buying representatives) in the audience quickly and happily shill out huge sums for the privilege of adding a pretty and desirable machine of yesteryear to their collection.
Let’s see if we can’t predict the not-so-old vehicles that will appear on these illustrious auction blocks in the future.
Time for the third entry into the sub-class of vehicles from the 1980s that I call Tall Import Wagons. The first was a light blue Nissan Stanza, known as “Multi” up north in Canada. Then, a similarly blue Colt Vista showed us what Dodge could do when it swapped the emblems on a Mitsubishi.
Today, a third competitor takes center stage: the Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon.
Today’s post serves as a couple of milestones at TTAC (for me, anyway); 200 articles written, and a year of Rare Rides. Since I did not plan this in any way or think about it in advance, I thought we might make this post a bit special. Bringing us back to the very first Rare Rides entry of one year ago, we have another concept car Ghia designed for Ford which never saw the production green light.
Presenting the 1983 Lincoln Quicksilver.
(TTAC Hot Takes are video roundup posts which will occur whenever we can get Michael Accardi into hair and makeup. These posts are a mandate of our VerticalScope overlords, who are fascinated with the new video medium of YouTube. Watch our other videos here.)
There are incentives and grid girls this week, but only one of those things isn’t banned. Michael has more info:
We’ve had a couple of Renaults featured on Rare Rides previously. Starting out gently with the Kenosha, Wisconsin-built Alliance GTA, we kicked it up a notch with Renault’s second generation 5 GT Turbo.
But that hatchback was sort of a pretender using the 5 Turbo name. Let’s look at the original one, which was altogether more serious. (Read More…)
Recent Comments