As the 1966 Dodge A100 Hell Project progresses (slowly), I’m finally at the point at which T-shirts and towels draped over the trashed seats— nuked by over a decade of outdoor storage in the Colorado sun— no longer cut it. It’s time to fix ’em up! Read More >

[In this part of my West Virginia road trip five years in the making with my best friend, both of our fathers, and two RX-8s we complete our drive together.]

After lunch I’m compelled to revisit the crash site, dragging the others along. I take the car through the curve, keeping the speed under 40 to avoid any chance of a repeat. What would be more embarrassing than wrecking an already wrecked car? Doing so in the same exact place. At 38 the curve is easily navigated, leading me to wonder how fast my father entered it. In his defense, it’s now much warmer so the tires have more grip.

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Beto writes:

Sajeev,

I been reading TTAC for about a year and really enjoy your column, it’s very informative and fun. I live in Houston and I really enjoy cars. I am still young, not rich, I don’t know much about repairing vehicles, but I would like to learn and make it a hobby.

I am would like to purchase an “older cool vehicle” that I can ride around on the weekends and I would be able to work on it myself, something not expensive and easy to keep up with. I am not looking a long project car that would be sitting on jacks in my garage for years, but something that it’s already running, or just needs a few parts to make it run and more importantly that I can learn to work on it. I would like to spend less than $5K on the car itself, and I am very open to all kinds of vehicles. I really would like an old roaster or small sport car, but I like older trucks too. Whatever the vehicle it is, I think it’s time to start getting my hands greasy.

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Going to the wrecking yard on a grim, rainy day somehow makes all the junked custom vans seem even more depressing than usual. How much work went into that mural? Read More >

When you have a problem, there usually is no shortage of well-meant advice. When it emerged that power shortage is the biggest problem of the quake- and tsunami-stricken Japanese auto industry, or the Japanese industry as whole, good advice came pouring in. It ranged from “why don’t they just park an aircraft carrier by the dock” to “what’s wrong with using generators?” What’s wrong with them? Read More >

This weekend, Kamil Kaluski’s CarGuyDad blog featured a first drive of the refreshed Acura TL. Nothing new there, right? The introductory event was in Hollywood. The guests were flown in, shown a bit of the ol’ high life, and sent out for a day of road drives and parking-lot semi-autocrossing. Again, nothing new. This is all standard fare for press-preview events. Every working autojourno could sleepwalk through such an event, and most of them do.

There was no sleepwalking at this Acura event, however, because there were no working journalists. In fact, the people evaluating the less beaky, greatly more tasteful 2012 Acura TL on this particular press event weren’t members of the press at all. They were Acura owners.

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While the large numbers of Scouts on the extremely urban and snow-free Island That Time Forgot never made sense to me, it’s no surprise that the tough little International Harvester trucks still roam Colorado in large numbers. Still, with so many Scouts, some are going to end up facing The Crusher, and that’s what’s happened to this battered ’70. Read More >

Steve writes:

Hi Sajeev,

For those of us who have entered the OnStar “Push On” contest that is giving away 10 GM vehicles of the winner’s choice and who feel lucky (yeah, right), we have a potential problem.  You get a GM vehicle of your choice and $25K to cover taxes, delivery, dealer prep, added dealer markup (in the spirit of the GTO, G8, Camaro…don’t put it past them), etc.

Here are the choices and my first thoughts:

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The A100 Hell Project really isn’t very hellish, since the van is rust-free and still has most of its tough-to-find trim parts. However, the list of really irritating minor problems that must be solved to bring a project vehicle up to real-world-enjoyable status is always long. One of the most maddening was the busted window latch on one of the right-side windows. Chrysler changed the design on this latch— which probably cost about 14 cents per unit new— in the late 1960s, which means they’re very rare in junkyards, and nobody seems to be selling them on eBay. Snow and rain were getting in, the window clattered while driving, and anyone who wanted to rummage in the van for crack-exchangeable valuables could reach right in and pop the side door lock. What to do? Read More >

Dan writes:

Sajeev,

I don’t know if this adds up to material for one of your columns but here you go if you want it. I am shopping for a new WRX wagon.  These are pretty rare around here, hunted to extinction.  I’ve been checking around and the number in inventory at the typical dealership is between zero and two.  The local dealership wants to charge me MSRP, as well they might, but they have a new narrative to go with this: the factory was shut down in Fuji and there’s going to be a gap in deliveries.  Is this hooey?

Sajeev Answers: Read More >

After Yemen last weekend, it is now Official Sales Data Week, where we explore a country that has the great idea to give us access to actual sales data, and therefore saves me from looking on YouTube for hours on end in the hope of figuring out a rough sales ranking…

This week we are going to freezing Russia to find out whether Lada models still have the stranglehold over the market they enjoyed in the time of the USSR.

Now if Russian cars scare you (yes, they do that to some people, especially those who saw the Moscow car chase in The Bourne Supremacy) but you are keen to find out which cars are the best sellers in 153 other countries around the planet, simply go here. It’s my blog and comrade, I swear you will love it. Read More >

For several years in the middle part of the 1980s, lowered minitrucks with pastel graphics and booming sound systems were extremely popular. Then, without warning, just about every last one of them disappeared. Where did they go? We can’t say, but we’re pleased to announce that Team Licensed To Ill has brought the custom minitruck back… and thrashed it all weekend at the Sears Pointless 24 Hours of LeMons. Read More >

I ended up with a copy of Sammy Hagar’s memoir as reading material for my last air-travel adventure, and found it quite entertaining (in spite of the tedious anti-David Lee Roth/Van Halen brothers diatribes). His tales of being the son of Fontana’s town drunk are worth reading, but the only real shocker came when Hagar describes the car he bought in 1973 with the first real money advanced to Montrose. You’ll never guess what type of vehicle the Red Rocker bought with his first rockstar-grade paycheck! Read More >

I’ve been driving the A100 Hell Project around with its horrible-at-best Carter BBD carburetor (which Chrysler almost certainly chose because it was 18 cents cheaper than a Holley), and every time it stumbles, refuses to idle, or performs any of the standard repertoire of BBD tricks, I swear to myself that I’m going to go to fuel injection real soon. That process began weekend before last, when I grabbed the intake and throttle body off an ’89 Dodge van. Read More >

Even though I still think the Achieva was saddled with the very lamest car name of all time— what ether-huffing focus group OK’d that abomination?— the SCX was actually quite quick for its time, and incredibly quick for a marque that appealed primarily to octogenarians too frugal to spring for a Buick. They were fairly rare to begin with, and this is the first SCX I’ve ever spotted in a self-service wrecking yard. Read More >