Between the old-timey 2002 and the hugely influential E30, there was the E21. Over in Yurp, BMW shoppers could buy 315s and 316s and 323s and I don’t know what all, but here in North America we know the E21 almost exclusively via the good old 320i. The 2002 overlapped E21 production by a couple of years; likewise, BMW showrooms in 1983 held the final examples of the 320i side-by-side with the brand-new E30-platform 318i. Here’s an example of one of those end-times E21s, spotted last week in a Denver self-service wrecking yard. Read More >

When you see an immaculate 1974 Valiant four door sedan at a car show, one thing is very clear: There is a story behind this car.

Few people would restore one of these dependable Mopar compacts from the 70s unless there was a good reason. Read More >

In the first chapter, we watched how BMW’s in-house motorsports department morphed into a separate company, that soon made its own cars. 16 years later ….

In 1988, the BMW M5 saw its second generation. The straight-six was pumped up to 3.8 liters, its power rose to 340 hp. Read More >

The Chrysler New Yorker has been a constant in the Junkyard Find series, from this genuinely luxurious ’64 to this Slant Six-powered New Yorker-ized Dodge Diplomat. The most recent New Yorker used the good-looking but shoddy LH Platform, but between the Diplomat and the LH were the K-Car-based New Yorkers. By 1989, the K platform had been stretched out, huge contracts with the largest diamond-tucked velour upholstery company Chrysler could find had been written up, and truckloads of “crystal pentastar” hood ornaments and steering-wheel emblems were being unloaded at Chrysler assembly plants. Read More >

Mother’s Day last weekend got me to thinking about the first car ride I ever took: a cruise home from the hospital in my parents’ 1956 Olds 88. Thing is, that car got destroyed by a combination of Minnesota rust and Minnesota deer a few months later and I don’t remember it. My first identifiable car memory involves crawling around on the slippery blue vinyl back seat (without benefit of baby seat or even seat belts) of my dad’s late-60s company car: a 1967 Ford Custom 500 sedan with three-on-the-floor and overdrive. What’s yours? Read More >

You know what’s wrong with this country nowadays? You can’t buy a light pickup truck made by a company so agricultural that a piece of farm equipment is in its very name! That all ended in 1980, when the last pickup rolled off the strike-ridden IHC assembly line. The outdoorsy Scout is still a common sight here in Colorado (on the street as well as in the junkyards), but quite a few of the Scout’s big brothers are still punching the clock as work trucks. Here’s one that made it to the second decade of the 21st century before getting used up. Read More >

Yesterday, we introduced you to a matte-black LFA and a baby-blue sticker that led us to the car’s owner.  There was another sticker on that car. A round red one. If the global automotive industry should copy anything from Japan immediately and now, then it’s that round sticker.

Eons before social networks came upon us, the automotive industry became obsessed with maintaining customer relationships, creating traffic and maintaining customer loyalty in showrooms and service departments. Bazillions have been spent for that effort. Millions of them went into my pocket, which, years after leaving the lucrative business, still enables me to work for TTAC and not go hungry. The ingenious Japanese solved it all with that sticker. Read More >

Giving gifts to 24 Hours of LeMons judges in order to ensure smooth turning of the gears of justice has been a tradition for several many years now. While jugs of quality booze remain the most common judicial bribe, keeping my liver at least semi-functional mandates that most of that stuff get passed on to track workers. Not so with bribes involving weird toy cars, however; I’ve got quite a collection of such gifts on my office bookshelves now. While I prize my Leyland P76, Nissan Prairie, and Impala Hell Project diorama, the car that now sits in the place of honor on my desk is one that I received from a Denver racer who couldn’t wait for the B.F.E. GP next month and came by Chez Murilee with this lovely Detroito-Tokyo icon of the early 1990s. Read More >

James writes:

Hi Sajeev,

I’m a university student completing their honours degree in screen production. My project for this year is making a short drama/comedy about a young man and his car (surprise, surprise!), so I’m looking for old, tidy cars with character.

My search has come down to a yellow 1983 Volvo 244 GL 3sp auto, offered to me for $500AUD with no registration – the pictures I’ve been given shows a very straight, tidy old brick, but it could respond well to a good polish. The bad? The car has been sitting around for at least a few months (could even be closer to a year…), which causes worries. I’m told it drove quite well before it was put away and the owners in question are quite mechanically minded and love their bricks, so I’m lead to believe it will be a good car. However, if I buy this car and it doesn’t work, suddenly I’m out of money and I don’t have a car for my film. So is there anything I should be wary of and check to ensure clean health? Any brick nuts want to chime either?

For you brick nuts, it’s an ’83 244 GL with the B23 and the 3 speed automatic. It’s done 280,000 kilometres/170k miles. I’m from Australia so I’m sure someone will school me on how we got the better bricks and USDM got shafted or something along those lines!

Speedy response would be lovely before I loose my money! Read More >

It was 1972, 40 years ago, when BMW did something that many would later imitate: Much to the chagrin of its own engineers, who were convinced they already had the hottest cars imaginable, and that to touch them meant to desecrate their creations, BMW decided to put the tuners out of business, and created the M series.

Allegedly, the M stood for “Motorsport.”

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Even as GM abandons Facebook advertising because of a poor ROI, Ford is going full steam ahead with Facebook spending and including more “sponsored stories” – i.e. cheesy advertorial content – as part of their “accelerated” spending. The problem is that it doesn’t work.

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Clint writes:

It seems odd to me that some old Japanese cars are becoming collectible. Some cars are understandable like Toyota 2000gt, 240z, RX3, etc. It seems that rarity plays a huge role in what people consider collectible. A good example is a Toyota Cressida Wagon. Its not a sports car, its not attractive but it some how has some pizazz. I do not foresee many American Classics from the mid 70’s becoming collectible. There will be a few but it seems like people love Datsun, Toyota and Mazda’s from that era. Even low mile Subaru’s are become collectible. Has the world gone mad? Read More >

The Time Machine Dilemma works like this: your time machine lands on Auto Row in some past decade, and you have enough cash to buy a certain iconic car of that era. Do you buy the iconic car, or do you hoof it to some other dealership, perhaps saving enough money to buy (gold, Microsoft stock, first-edition Philip K Dick hardbacks)? We’ve done this exercise with miserable econoboxes of 1986, a broad spectrum of 1973 machinery, and today the time machine will be hurtling to an even earlier decade. Read More >

Happy 28th birthday, Mark Zuckerberg. Your baby is about to go public, but GM still had to rain on your parade by pulling their advertising from Facebook because GM ad men didn’t think it was effective.

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Car sales in China have become headline material the world over. However, numbers are often reported without checking, and even more often reported erroneously. Yesterday, we were tracking two reports  of Chinese car sales, January-April. One set of data was from China’s official manufacturer association CAAM, the other from Reuters.  They did not quite match. A day later, the confusion is even bigger. Read More >