This previously published article appears courtesy of my local regular print publication, the North Shore News.
Some dear friends of ours have a pair of twin boys that are just entering their latter teens. I have seen them grow from precocious eleven-year-old scamps to lofty, sullen, intimidating goons. Actually, just joking, they’re both about as sullen and intimidating as a basket-full of labrador retriever puppies.
However, they’re allowed to drive now. Eeep! Read More >
We saw an ’83 Pulsar not long ago, but it wasn’t until later in the 80s that Nissan’s semi-sporty commuter got really weird. Yes, interchangeable rear body panels! Read More >
Like most car guys, Wayne Cooper always had one particular “must have” car on his wish list. Most guys have familiar names like Corvettes, Challengers, or Mustangs on their lists.
Not Wayne. His all time chart topping car was a 1979 Lincoln Mark V (Collector Series). Read More >
Journalism profs would admonish us for “burying the lede”, or hiding the most important information way down in the story, rather than putting it at the front where it’s easily accessible. Amy Chozick of the New York Times put that gem at the very end of her article on how General Motors is hiring consultants from MTV, including Ross Martin, quoted above, to help their brand connect with young people. Mr. Martin, take your own advice.
During my last trip to California, I found this ’80 Celica coupe and this ’81 Celica liftback side-by-side at an Oakland self-service yard. A few rows away was another Celica. Apparently the old 22R-powered Celicas aren’t worth enough to keep on the street. Read More >
Everybody has a favorite car in his or her dreams, but Jim Adams has a favorite big block engine to add to his dreams. Read More >
Looking for a way to stop the chronic bleeding of money at it notoriously loss-making Opel division, GM has been crunching numbers to see what it would cost to close one of its European plants. Bad news for GM stockholders: Relief won’t come cheap, and it won’t come soon. Read More >
I once had a vehicle that sat on my lot for over 9 months. It wasn’t anything too bad. A 1998 Plymouth Grand Voyager in the tannest shade of brown. But no one wanted the thing.
I couldn’t figure it out. Did it have too many miles on it? Did brown all of a sudden become the new purple, orange or lime green? It did have four doors instead of the three door minivan albatrosses that were common during the pre-Y2k era. But I couldn’t get so much as a nibble on it for months on end.
Denial can be a hard pill to cough up. Lo and behold, this is what I figured out.
I just spent two weeks on vacation in Vietnam, and my pre-trip expectations of seeing fleets of left-behind-by-the-French Peugeots, left-behind-by-the-Americans Falcons, and left-behind-by-the-Soviets GAZs turned out to be ridiculously inaccurate. I saw a few old cars (more on that later), but most of the cars in Vietnam are boring late-model rides like Kia Rios and Toyota Innovas. However, I did see quite a few conspicuous-consumption statusmobiles in Saigon and Hanoi; the grumbling old-time revolutionary veterans no doubt refer to the current Hanoi leadership as CINOs. Here’s an example I spotted near St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. Read More >
Did any of the Afghani Mujahideen drive Datsun pickups to battle after the Soviets invaded? Probably, but the Toyota Hilux got all the press. For the same reason today, Malaise Era Toyota pickups tend to be kept alive, while their Datsun, Mazda (via Ford), and Isuzu (via Chevy) counterparts get crushed when they finally suffer some problem that costs more than $200 to fix. I’ve been seeing a steady stream of these Datsuns in junkyard for 20 years now, and here’s the latest one. Read More >
The early-90s Escort GT was a decently fast car for its day, but Escorts were always such disposable cars that you seldom see any of these semi-goofy-looking GTs these days, on the street or in the junkyard. Here’s an example that I found in a Denver self-service yard last week. Read More >
Over the past few weeks, I have taken you on trips to exotic and mysterious Eritrea, Chile, Georgia and Myanmar. The last 3 are only because of you because I have decided to now only take you to where you asked to go. And today we are going to Bolivia, simply because lilpoindexter asked for it.
If you are already South America’ed out after Chile, that’s ok because I have prepared 159 additional countries for you to explore in my blog. So don’t be shy and click away! Adelante!
Now to make this hard for me, once again you have chosen a country with no official sales data available.
Nice. Thanks for that. Oh wait…
Confused in South Bend writes:
Hi, Sajeev….
I am the owner of 2003 M-B C240 base, with the Bi-Xenon headlights. Recently, one of the headlights has developed an issue….in cold weather, it does not work.
Went to my German car specialist, who wasn’t so special on this issue. No problem, he said, replace the bulb. $160 later, still had the problem. OK, negotiated for him to give me a credit on the next fix.
Researched on the web, purchased a used Ballast. Mr. German car specialist looked at the part, scratched his head and said, “I don’t know what this part is.” Mercedes dealer says, spend about $900 for an entirely new headlight assembly.
I know that Mercedes engineers think money grows on trees….but $900 to fix a balky headlight? Come on… Read More >
Darcy Snider inherited a fair amount of money from his grandmother, but he doubts very much that she would appreciate how he spent her hard-earned cash.
Darcy is a hardcore car guy. His natural instinct kicked in and he invested in this rare 1984 W-40 Hurst Olds. Read More >
Keeping track of American-market versions of the Corolla got difficult in the early 1980s, because you had the rear-drive E70 Corolla, and then you had the unrelated front-wheel-drive Corolla Tercel. Here’s an example of a “real” Corolla that I spotted at a Denver self-service yard last week. Read More >
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