Back in September, I wrote about my search for a 1990s Japanese luxury car as a daily driver, with the Infiniti Q45, Lexus LS400, and Acura RL as the main contenders. Five months later, I’ve made my choice. Read More >
Find Editorials by Category:
Category: Editorials
The Corolla and the Civic get all the attention when we think about the Japanese subcompacts that put the fear into Detroit during the final years of the Malaise Era, but we mustn’t forget Nissan’s replacement for the rear-drive Datsun 210: the Sentra. You don’t see many early Sentras in junkyards these days; they haven’t been a common sight in The Crusher’s waiting room for a decade or so. Here’s one that I spotted in California earlier this month. Read More >
After seeing today’s Junkyard Find ’75 Vega, the members of the Vega Jihad are doubtless pounding out 10,000-word screeds about The Greatest Car Ever Made (never underestimate the suspension of disbelief required to be a member of the Vega Jihad), and I’m sure that the Cosworth Vega will be mentioned numerous times during said screeds. That’s why it’s fortunate that I have a bonus Junkyard Find today, a genuine, one-of-3,508-made junked Cosworth Vega, which TTAC reader and historically accurate 80s minitruck road racer Jesse Cortez found and photographed at a Northern California wrecking yard. Read More >
The first-gen Hyundai Excel is extremely rare junkyard find, with most Excels having been crushed before they hit ten years old. The story of the Chevy Vega is similar, though most Vegas survived a bit longer than Excels did. I hadn’t seen a Vega in a junkyard for at least a decade (not counting Pontiac-badged Vega wagons) when I found this reasonably solid example at a California self-service yard a couple weeks back. Read More >
Jeff writes:
Hi Sajeev:
I enjoy your articles advising people on what cars to buy or avoid. I have a bit of a different problem.
My mother recently passed away, and I inherited her 1989 Corolla down in Florida. She bought it used down there, it has a little over 100,000 miles on it. The car is absolutely mint, as you could imagine for a Florida car. It runs great, the AC works well, and the body and paint are in excellent condition, as is the interior – it has been kept out of the sun. Even the engine is in great condition – all the anodized parts still look as new. Plus, it doesn’t even leak. It has had regular maintenance, belts, hoses and fluids changed. Read More >
Based on a Speed:Sport:Life article. Several TTAC readers have pointed out in the past that the “dollar theory” of tire traction fails to account for dynamic weight loads, so consider that pointed out up front — JB
It seems like yesterday, as the man sang, but it was long ago. In April of 2008 I ordered a new Audi S5 in a rather unique color — the “Lime Green” used by Porsche in 1973 and referred to as “Lime Green” and “Viper Green”. Not “Signal Green”, mind you: that’s a different color, with more blue, and less cheer, in the mix. The car arrived in September of 2008. I drove it for two years and 38,000 miles before selling it for approximately five grand more than “regular” S5s were fetching.
The Corona was the first Toyota car to appear in large numbers on American streets, starting in the mid-to-late 1960s. By the middle of the 1980s, just about all the boxy early Coronas were gone; they rusted quickly in non-bone-dry regions and weren’t enough loved elsewhere to be kept alive. My very first car was a ’69 Corona sedan, so I had a bit of a nostalgic twinge when I spotted this ’70 hardtop coupe in a California self-serve wrecking yard. Read More >
Over the last few weeks, we have travelled to Germany, Czech Republic, Oman and Israel. Today we are stopping in Belarus, part of the USSR until 1990 and home to just under 10 million inhabitants.
Now if Cold War reminiscence, endless forests and Orthodoxy are not really your thing – well that’s not my business hey but I’ve got you covered: I have prepared 159 additional countries for you to visit in my blog, so don’t be shy and click away!
It took a while for Belarus to get rid of Russian influence but this year the best-selling car in the country is not Russian…
All the details after the jump…
It only had 65,000 miles. A 2002 Mazda Millenia—my personal favorite of the Japanese near-luxury cars of that era. I am an automotive enthusiast, but much like others here at TTAC, it’s not in the standard sense. I’m the kind of guy who gets a rise out of seeing a purple Suzuki X90 on the road. I would take an Alfa 159 over nearly any other car on the planet today (If I could get one in America), just because I want to park it in my driveway and lick it all over. I value cars with character, unique vehicles with stories behind them, cars that represent value, have faults, and ultimately are fun or interesting.
So now you may understand why the Millenia was my preferred pseudo luxury ride of the turn of the, uh, Millenium. Mazda built a car that had some of the trademarks of Japanese luxo-sedan comfort and quality, and true to form, made sure they paid homage to their own tradition of senseless eccentricity (Miller cycle V6), of course at the expense of reliability. But fear not…this car had character, low miles, a nice interior and was stupid cheap. Read More >
Long-time TTACers know that it’s usually possible to request your humble author as an instructor at any TrackDAZE event. If you secretly want to beat me up, and you’re too lazy to drive to central Ohio, this can be a good way to save yourself a trip. I will be attending several of their 2012 events with my anything but trusty Boxster Anniversary Edition and/or my Plymouth Neon racer.
This year, however, the nice people at TrackDAZE have a new option for instruction, and it’s an even better idea than letting me boss you and your triple-supercharged Corvette Z07 around VIR.
John writes:
Hey Sajeev,
Since you requested goofy questions for Piston Slap, I’ve got one:
A friend of mine told me that her dad had a Subaru (I don’t know what particular model). He had one of the tires blow out, and even though he knew he should either replace all four tires, or have the new one shaved down to match the other three, he decided to risk it and just use the one new tire as is. Consequently, the all wheel drive system got messed up due to the ever so slight mismatch in tire diameters. Is this for real? I’ve never heard anything like that before. Read More >
This article appeared in S:S:L in April of 2009, so adjust comments regarding the “current” Honda and Acura lineup appropriately, thanks! — JB
I remember the event as if it were yesterday, although in fact it was twenty-six years ago. My relentless, Rommel-esque campaign to get my mother into a 1983 Honda Civic 1500S had very nearly reached a successful conclusion. For months I had worked tirelessly to steer Mom towards a Honda dealership for our new “family car”, always with the ostensible and sensible goal of purchasing the $6,995 1500GL wagon. Once we were inside the doors of the dealership — doors I had personally darkened many a time before then, since it was only a four-mile walk each way from my house — it would be a simple matter of bait-and-switching her away from the wagon and into a bright red 1500S hatchback. I’d walked to the showroom the day before and verified the presence of one, priced at a compelling $6,495.
As fate would have it, however, the red 1500S had sold, leaving just a black one available. (The 1983 Civic 1500S, the only Civic of that generation to carry the “S” tag, was available in just two colors: black and red.) No matter: we’d take it. In just a few nearly tearful moments, I convinced her that the 141-inch long, two-door hatchback was an ideal car for a single mother and two growing boys. The sales manager, displaying the utterly despicable greed that is still a hallmark of Honda dealers today, allowed us to buy the car at sticker. Providing, that is, we would pay an additional $349 for a two-speaker cassette player and $99 for a useless tape stripe.
That Civic was a truly great car. Economical, quick enough, sporty-looking, bulletproof, fun. It certainly would have lasted my mother a decade or more, had she not been struck just two years after the purchase by a drunk driver in a Cadillac deVille. The impact put parts of the back seat into the front seats. Hondas were not terribly crash-safe in those days.
Still, the ’83 Civic was the best Civic in history up to that point. The ’84 “breadvan” Civic was better. Much better. The Civic that followed was even better, and so on, until we reached the point of the 1999 Civic Si coupe, widely acclaimed as nearly everyone’s favorite Civic. And then a funny thing happened.
Back in August of 2010, I had the chance to drive a Tesla Roadster. Since the Model X debuted yesterday, I thought I’d re-visit the original Roadster. It was a lot of fun to drive. Here’s my original review. Thanks to Peter W J Miller for the photography.
Green cars are not supposed to be like this. They’re for hairshirt wearing, bike path populating hippies who are obsessed with how few miles their produce has traveled and whether their child’s Kindergarten is LEED Certified Gold for eco-friendliness. The Tesla Roadster, is not this. It has as much in common with other green vehicles as zero calorie cola does with an all-night cocaine binge.
Originally published in Speed:Sport:Life April, 2010 — JB
Imagine that you’re an alien. Not an undocumented immigrant, mind you, but a genuine, green-tentacle-and-glass-helmet monstrosity of a visitor from beyond the stars. While your fellow aliens examine the defense systems of Earth (not so hot) and the intelligence of the population (somewhat simian), you attempt to reconcile all the written history you can find with the evidence before your massive, bloodshot, singular eye. You are particularly interested in the history and psychology behind the local transportation devices, known as “cars”, “whips”, “hogs”, or “causes for divorce”.
Most of what you’ve learned is pretty common-sense stuff, even for an alien. There’s a problem, however, and you have, after some months of study, come to call it “The Grand National Problem”. You’ve used your indistinguishable-from-magic science to read everything in the vast record-keeping halls of General Motors. You know from the documentation that the vast majority of Buick Regals produced during the Eighties were chrome-laden, velour-lined “Custom” and “Limited” models. It’s as plain as the order codes on all the old Selectric-typed order forms.
The easy answer to this question is everyone one of them- from the tranny guy, to the engine rebuild guy, to the auto body technician and all the other restoration people along the path to a completed project. But which one of these trades will figure most prominently into the final equation for you? Read More >
Recent Comments