My stash of old car magazines fell off the shelf in the craziness of re-arranging my office. It’s not very large, but time always stops when I open a C/D from 1963, 1967 or 1971. In just a few minutes, I encountered dozens of cars I’d like to find for CC. Some of them I’m sure I will eventually; others not too likely. A Glas 1700 GT? I had zero memory of that being imported to the US, and I tend to not forget obscurities like that. Here’s a few quick ones; if you like, we’ll do it again sometime. (Read More…)

At TTAC we take the “fair and balanced” slogan seriously; just not necessarily in any given post. I do tend to go a bit off the deep end, especially after a long week. We’ve had three small cars and one big one this week; the Camaro is in a special category of its own. So we need some serious counterbalancing at the last minute, lest we offend some of our more “big iron” oriented readers (it seems like I’ve managed to offend pretty much every camp this week). Folks; CC is meant (hopefully) to have a modicum of entertainment value, so don’t take anything I say too seriously, ever. Here’s my peace offering: an ex-military machine with a cryptic symbol on the door. Does anyone know what it stands for? Are chicks attracted to it? (Read More…)

[Tongue partially planted in cheek]

What is the source of American men’s latent and easily provoked disdain for the French (and their cars)? Umm, it doesn’t exactly take a study to prove what what we secretly suspect and obviously are a wee bit uncomfortable with: they’re having more sex than us. Yet they drive small, weird underpowered weenie-mobiles. Well, guys, it seems to be working for them. (Read More…)

I’ve just returned from one of the most fruitful CC hunting trips ever; nabbed some awesome vintage finds. But I’m always scanning the road for anything of interest, increasing the likelihood that I’ll eventually rear-end someone. Would anyone else find interest in these three cars parked by the U of O? But repeated patterns like this somehow grab me: same maker, similar vintage, all of them spoiled. Am I losing it? My wife wants to know, because she has her doubts. (Read More…)

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As we reported earlier, TTAC is a subscriber to Morgan and Co.’s industry sales statistics. This means that current and detailed stats going back to 1993 are available to us, and we’re going to figure out the best way to share them with you. Like most things in life, there are pros and cons. The detail and amount of information is staggering, but it’s very affordable to us. It will save us time we don’t have to pore over numbers from manufacturers and compile them. But we also have to accept the segment categories as Morgan compiles them, and as you’ll see, there are times that doesn’t always jibe with how we intuitively categorize cars. Frankly, that’s getting harder to do all the time anyway: is the Flex a mini van or a crossover? Morgan sends us Excel spreadsheets and some basic charts. They’re not exactly exciting to look at, which is why we often succumb to spicing up these sales snapshots with a bit of eye candy. We’re going to be playing with different ways to present this stuff, so please let us know what works better, or not. I know you will anyway. (Read More…)

Enough with these pathetic little Briggs and Stratton powered sidewalk toys like the Rabbit and Starlet! We need us a real car to counterbalance that axis of Cozy Coupes. Hell, this Imperial weighs a half a ton more than both of them together. Its 7.2 liter engine is almost three times as big as their egg beaters combined. And its got enough torque to twist those little tin cans into shreds. This baby rocks, even if it is to a song that abruptly played out the year of its birth. Yes, this Imperial was born under a bad sign: the crescent moon. And it marks the end of the road for Chrysler’s pride and joy, save some pathetic efforts to revive it. But Chrysler’s loss is our gain today, because it isn’t every day we stumble onto one of these bitchin’ waterfall-grilled monstrosities with big twin exhausts to rumble our memories and fantasies far away to another time and place… (Read More…)

ADAC is who responds to essentially every automotive Panne (breakdown) in Germany. And with the Germanic proclivity for thorough record keeping, they have kept them all, and analyzed them more thoroughly than any of Freud’s patients ever were. Did your mother have a flat in 1983? ADAC knows. And they’ve been using it to publish annual best and worst reliability rankings since 1978. If you caught the Toyota Starlet CC, you’ll know that it was the queen of the ADAC numbers, and the bane of Mercedes and the other (once) proud builders of  the world’s most presumably durable iron. Since ADAC doesn’t have an easy way to see all thirty year’s worth of the good and naughty, my Germanic side kicked in and I spent a chunk of last night transcribing them unto a spreadsheet, because…well, that’s just how Germanic I am. (Read More…)

Is this the most reliable car ever built? There are at least two very different but highly reliable  sources that suggest it may well be. One is of course its owner. And as we know all too well, one car does not make a proper sample size. But the other source does: ADAC: it has a virtual monopoly on responding to any and all breakdowns in Germany, sort of an Uber-AAA. Starting in 1978, in classic Germanic fashion, it fastidiously compiled Pannenstatistik on every Panne that ever stopped a car in the Vaterland. And the results? Let’s just say that at a time when Mercedes was considered the paragon of unstoppable German solidity and reliability, the Starlet smashed right through that reputation and drove the big-wigs in Stuttgart bonkers. (Read More…)

Update: It’s obvious I’m confusing as many or more folks with this post as I am enlightening some. As an addicted Economist reader, I enjoy unraveling the myths and stereotypes that Europeans pay $30k for a basic Ford Focus or pay $9 for a gallon of gas. We do, if we go there with our dollars. They don’t. The information below is intended as a set of tools to better understand the issues, but will not explain them all perfectly. I’ve run out of time to respond to comments, so I hope this helps. Or pick up an Economist :)

European new car prices can be as confusing to us Yanks as ordering from a menu in Latvia. We’re always hearing about tiny $29k econoboxes and the like. List prices are typically converted to US dollars, and the results can be very misleading. MSRPs are assumed to be more solid than ours. And the 19% VAT (value added tax) is not factored in. The result often is an assumption that European car manufacturers are getting ginormous prices for their little hatchbacks. Lets pull back the curtain of confusion and seek some truth. Like the Audi A3 shown above: if you factor in purchasing power parity, remove the (included) 19% tax, and factor in the 29% discount being offered, the equivalent US price is: $12,353. Allow me to explain: (Read More…)

With all the now-distant brouhaha over the VW – Porsche tie up, it’s easy to forget that they started out as kissing cousins siblings, in more ways than one.

Recent comments on today’s Japan’s C4C program post and 487 billion similar web posts since Al Gore invented the internet make it clear that there is a lingering misunderstanding about the import of US cars to Japan. Specifically, that Japan has managed to stave off a tsunami of Chevy Cavaliers and all the other wonderful American cars that the rest off the world has been snapping up by the imposition of certain restrictions, barriers or other obstacles. It’s way time to shed a bit of light on the Toyota Cavalier and this subject of great import. (Read More…)

Despite everything we tell our kids, sometimes procrastinating and prevaricating actually pays off. Like this photograph, for instance. I’ve been wanting to do a Rabbit/Golf CC focusing on its role in succeeding the Beetle ever since I started this series, but the cars I kept finding weren’t genuine early (’75-’76) versions. So I just kept pushing it off. Then one day on our daily walk: bingo! A superb red specimen, exactly like the first Golf I ever drove. I shot its profile first, than moved  to shoot it from the front quarter (above), and just as I was about to push the trigger, I realized there was a red Beetle in the background. Kazaam! It doesn’t get better than this if you want to tell the story of how VW replaced the Beetle with the Golf, especially considering how much dithering and just plain luck played into its birth and existence. It also perfectly captures the day I stepped out of my ’64 Bug and drove a new ’75 Rabbit; I couldn’t have staged it better. Children: there are times when dithering and dumb luck trumps all the (business) plans in the world. (Read More…)

Well, its been raining a lot, so its time to move inside. Anyway, you guys keep nailing the outdoor clues so maybe this will slow you down a bit. Probably not. You certainly didn’t waste any time fixing the make and model of the Chevy pickup, and Jimal led the parade. Congratulations and good luck.

If the stereotypical driver of a red Grand Am is a blond beautician who lives in a trailer with an unemployed boyfriend sporting a mullet, what is the stereotypical profession of the drivers of Sunfire and Cavalier coupes? Hint: what’s that behind the fence? (Read More…)