When we last reported on the saga of the 2005 Ford GT that was stolen in June during a home burglary in Rancho Santa Fe, California, all that had been found of the supercar were some chopped up parts, with no chassis or drivetrain in site. That soon changed. Read More >
We all wish some things could last forever: a sports team’s winning streak, the love of a soul mate, or perhaps the still-kinda-futuristic look of the Lincoln Mark VIII. Aside from showing how every post-Mark VIII Lincoln’s style has been a step in the wrong direction, this car helped “mainstream” design elements (tiny HID headlights, super curvy side contours, etc) while keeping the basic, timeless goodness of American car proportioning. If I didn’t already drink my own design Kool-Aid, the regular stream of compliments from by-standers certainly didn’t help.
The good? A Mark VIII’s bi-plane dashboard made of a blizzard of decadently padded vinyl and rubber coated (like an Audi) hard plastics. The bad? That dated, cheap looking driver’s side airbag. Read More >
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and you need something to drive to Burning Man, you’ll find that the glue-a-bunch-of-stuff-all-over-a-random-vehicle art-car approach will let your ride fit in just as effortlessly on the playa as the soccer mom’s Voyager blends in at the mall parking lot. I’m not against art cars (I consider my 1965 Impala Hell Project to be an art car at heart), but I prefer the approach of the artists who built such fine machines as the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir or the street-driven Denver Pirate Ship to the type who feels contempt for the canvas disappearing beneath their hot-glue gun. Anyway, the upshot of the large number of Bay Area art-car types who glue 10,000 plastic army men or Lucky Lager caps all over their cars is that many of them wind up in self-service wrecking yards. Here’s a Toyota Master Ace aka Toyota Space Cruiser aka Toyota Van that I spotted last weekend at an East Bay self-serve yard. Read More >
Edit: Now with updated graph
So, what the heck does a manufacturer mean when they offer a ‘Sport Suspension’ and is it something you actually want? While I haven’t examined every version available, themes have carried through various makes/models, so what follows are safe generalizations. I even throw in a dyno chart!
How long does the typical Toyota Cressida last? Based on my recent surge in wrecking-yard Cressida sightings (this ’92, this ’84, this ’89, and this ’80) after decades of the Cressida being a once-every-six-months junkyard catch, I’m going to say that your typical Cressida lasts about 25 years, give or take a half-decade. Part of this longevity is due to the fact that few Cressidas are driven by leadfooted hoons (and those few have all had manual-trans swaps done by drifter types) and part is due to Toyota’s frighteningly good engineering and build quality during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Here’s a California Cressida that just made it to the quarter-century mark before its last owner gave up on it. Read More >
C.K. writes:
Dear Sajeev Mehta-
First the buttering up – have enjoyed your columns for quite sometime and glad to see a fellow Houstonian have success in the auto journalistic field. Writing you for some vehicle advice and to tell you my own quirky story. And sorry in advance, the email got kind of long. No worries if you want to skim! Read More >
Remember the Mitsubishi Sigma? Nobody does! It was a semi-oddball four-door hardtop version of the Galant that was sold in the United States just for the 1989 and 1990 model years, and I believe this car— which I spotted at a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard over the weekend— is the first one I’ve ever seen in person. Read More >
Joe writes:
Dear Sajeev,
It was a mild winter here in Minnesota, so it promises to be an early spring. And with spring comes the promise of new automotive projects. Right now we are in the pre-spring thinking and planning stages. Attached is a photo of my possible project. Some background would be helpful. Read More >
The next stories I’m going to relate weren’t actually borne from performance-oriented driving impressions I might have otherwise gathered and formulated based on my British Car wheel time. Therefore, I couldn’t rightly include them in my last entry. Worthy of recall they are, nevertheless—especially because they are firsts that I haven’t since repeated, fortunately. Read More >
I was in my old East Bay stomping grounds last weekend, to drive the Scion FR-S (review coming soon) and watch the Oakland A’s beat up the hapless Red Sox. I also spotted one of the greatest motor vehicles in history while driving down High Street on the way to The Island That Rust Forgot. It featured the letters “UFO” across a vaguely tailgate-ish rear body panel. I’ve puzzled out the type of vehicle it’s based on. Can you? Read More >
The very first car in my Down On The Street series was a Cadillac Cimarron d’Oro. That was 2007, and I didn’t see another Cimarron d’Oro until last weekend, when I spotted this car in an Oakland self-service wrecking yard. Read More >
Lynn writes:
Hi Sajeev,
I enjoy your columns for their history and technology surprises of what might be wrong. Two history questions: Read More >
Sometimes we work too hard for success. We listen to others, constructive criticism or not, doing our best to make a change for the better. But are we really accomplishing that? I’ve always wondered if the ends justify the means. Not for me at CCS in Detroit: after trying to change myself to fit a certain mold and failing, I realized I’m totally okay with (most) everything I do. On or off the vellum.
I wonder if vehicles like the Infiniti JX are the byproduct of a design studio trying too hard to address criticisms. Or maybe this is just a common case of “over-styling” a vehicle. Either way, here we are.
I’ve been maintaining an unhealthy obsession the Mitsubishi Cordia for a while now, but what about the hatchback Cordia’s sedan sibling, the Tredia? Very, very few Tredias made it into the United States, and I thought I’d never see one in a wrecking yard… but look at what I just found in California! Read More >
After sharing with you a couple of world updates (Top 150 best-selling models in June 2012 and our monthly World Roundup for July 2012), its is with a solemn tone that I announce to you that today is a special day.
Today I am launching the Africa Project, to try and bring African countries to a similar level of data and car sales information as the rest of the world.
If you live in Africa or have data on any African country please be sure to comment on this post and I will get in touch with you directly.
Recent Comments