Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based on (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test. Please don’t spoil the outcome, if you know it (the suspense has been building for over 30 years).

Was a car ever born with the odds so stacked against it? Its name is defined as “a small gnome held to be responsible for malfunction of equipment”. Its design was penned on an air-sickness bag during a (bumpy?) flight. It carries almost 60% of its weight over the front wheels despite being RWD. Its steering has six turns lock to lock. And it looks exactly like what it is: a perfectly normal-looking sedan that had its rear end amputated by a cleaver. The Gremlin would have had to create a pretty major malfunction in my PC (and C/D’s typewriters) for it not to end dead last.

Let’s get one thing straight: There are very few inanimate objects which inspire my personal appreciation, respect, and interest as much as the 2010 Toyota Prius does. It’s a happy faced, slick, aerodynamically-optimized, practical, comfortable and dead-reliable vehicle which exists for the sole purpose of letting concerned Americans feel like they are making a small but genuine difference in their efforts to reduce their consumption of the world’s finite resources.

Did I hear someone ask “How about more capsule reviews such as a 1930 Ford Model A where 0-60 is measured with an hourglass?” At Curbside Classic we aim to please; I’m on it. And although I didn’t rustle up a Model A within 24 hours, I came pretty close: a 1936 Plymouth. The only problem is that the Plymouth never did make it to sixty.

This week we are looking for two answers. One, the make and year of the featured car (the seats are not original, don’t let that throw you). Two, what does this picture foretell about tomorrow’s Curbside Classic? Good luck!

Good morning class, and welcome to GM’s Deadly Sins 101. In this seminar we will review and analyze some of the most critical blunders GM made over the decades, focusing on the ill-conceived, unreliable, ugly, and just plain mediocre products that destroyed the company. I struggled mightily with the decision as to the first example, given all the boners available to me. But here it is, GM’s Deadly Sin #1: The 1986 Buick Riviera.

Out of adversity arises creativity. Alec Issigonis’ brilliant Mini was conceived in the depths of the oil import embargo brought on by the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. Just like our energy crises gave birth to the Chevette and the Cavalier. Ok, no more GM references. This is the Mini’s fiftieth birthday, and it deserves our undivided adulation. Well, at least from a safe distance, anyway.

GM gave us some genuine peak experiences before its long fall. Their post-war summit was the mid sixties. Its stock hit $358 (adjusted) in 1965, and profits crested in 1966 with $15 billion (adjusted). What about the best year for its cars? That would have to be 1963, with the trio of Corvette Sting Ray, Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick Riviera. And which one gets the nod as number one? I can’t decide. But this Riviera happened to be sitting along the road on the way home from the lumber yard, so the decision was made for me.

How do you write an obituary for an entity that’s been dead for seventeen years? Like that high-school biology frog-leg experiment, GM’s twitching since 1992 was due to externally administered stimuli. Yes, I would have much preferred to write GM’s obit in ‘92. Back then, the guilty party was merely GM’s brain-dead management. It would have been easy just to rag on about all the lame cars they built. But it’s become a lot more complicated and uglier. Now we all have blood (and red ink) on our hands. And it’s not going to wash out easily.

Curbside Classics is all about serendipity. Good thing too, because how else would I be inspired to write 800 words about the Pontiac Trans Sport? And I don’t just mean stumbling across this bizarre Transvertible. Well, yes, that was good. But I also needed a regular Trans Sport to complement this flight of fancy. Easy, and boring enough. But take a look at the paperback tucked into the dash: John Steinbeck’s “The Wayward Bus”. Two for Two.

Here’s a genuine milestone car. This Mercedes W108 began the lineage of modern S Series cars, which took its maker to the pinnacle of the global luxury sedan market. In the US, it single handedly broke the backs of Cadillac and Lincoln. A youthful ride in one left me permanently altered. And it all started with this somewhat modest but exquisite 250S. A couple of more milestones: this is the first Curbside Classic car owned by a TTAC reader, and it marks my two-hundredth car deemed interesting enough to photograph. Oh, and this is CC number thirteen. Many milestones indeed.

After all the interest in identifying the old Mazda junkyard pickup last week, we’re going to start a regular contest, called Curbside Classic Preview Contest. You’ll get a snippet of the upcoming CC feature. No prizes yet, but we’re working on that. On your mark . . .

The Federal Reserve Bank is spending your (and your great-grandkids’) money in lots of creative ways these days. But some minuscule portions of it go to boring humdrum stating-the obvious analyses like this report, “From tailfins to hybrids: “How Detroit lost its dominance in the U.S. auto market.” Well, boring, perhaps to the well-informed B&B here at TTAC, if they’ve kept up on their assigned reading. If not, and a very thorough (but not overly long-winded) analysis is your cup of tea, read away. If you want the Cliff-Notes version, make the jump here:

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Can anyone recognize this junkyard find?

I apologize. The pictures of this beautiful Manta are crap. I let myself get carried away. Hanging around with that pugnacious little Fiat 850 infected me with a burning desire to catch an Opel: Chrysler-Fiat-Opel, the new Holy Trinity. Part of me knew better; I had enough on my plate already. And I haven’t seen an Opel in Eugene in ages. But my desire was downright Napoleonic. As is the result.