Y’all know that the NSF Racing 1962 Plymouth took the top prize at the Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons last month, but some of you may be wondering how the Fury managed to beat out the Sputnik ’86 Nissan Stanza wagon (441 laps) or the Speedycop and the Gang of Outlaws Parnelli Jones Galaxie (243 laps) for the Index of Effluency. Clearly, I have failed in expressing just how unspeakably terrible this car really is, and thus what a monumental achievement its 218 laps around the Carolina Motorsports Park road course really was. Read More >

Malaise Era Molester Vans are rarely worth sparing from The Crusher’s jaws these days, what with steel prices stoking The Crusher’s hunger to insatiable levels, particularly when they’re on the rusty side. However, when that van is a ’78 Dodge Tradesman with a factory-installed 318 and floor-shifted overdrive 4-speed, things might be different. We hope. 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 return from Summersville, WV, to Mill Creek, where I had, um, left my computer behind in a roadside restaurant.]

At breakfast I plan the day. Or at least attempt to. The judge doesn’t want to spend all day in the car. He wants to do some hiking. I know a good hike to a series of waterfalls along the route. I’ve also always had a thing for trains and there’s a state park not far off our route that operates narrow gauge logging locomotives. They have a Heisler and a Climax, but mostly run Shays. All three types of steam locomotives have unconventional running gear that I’d love to observe in operation. I call Cass Scenic Railroad State Park and find that trains leave at 9:30, noon, and 2:30. The first is too early, the last possibly too late. So we’ll aim for noon.

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Alright, so we’ve gone to South America (Argentina,  Brazil), Africa (Libya) and Asia (North Korea). It’s now time to visit Europe, and why not start with Spain, a perilous but fascinating place at the moment.

If you can’t wait for the next update and want to know all about car sales in 154 countries around the planet, simply go here. Es mi blog y es impresionante, sí señor! Read More >

These days, we’ve got endless choices in plush, comfy trucks. Back when my 1966 Dodge A100 project van was built, the top trim level of the A100 was the Sportsman Custom, and that was one of your few luxury-truck choices at the time. Naturally, I insisted on a Sportsman Custom when I went shopping for a vintage flat-nose van. With the Sportsman Custom, you got such creature comforts as ashtrays, an AM radio, and— best of all— a steel step that popped out when you opened the side doors. The one on my van wasn’t exactly working when I bought it, but some bashing with a sledgehammer careful adjustment and hosing down with Liquid Wrench judicious lubrication fixed it right up! Read More >

Cadillac’s peak as a build-quality leader and dominant luxury marque probably came earlier than the late 1960s— let’s say 1956— but the perception that GM’s flagship brand was losing ground started sometime soon after the first of the front-wheel-drive Eldorados hit the scene. By the late 1970s, The General was all about faux-metal emblems in cursive script and Beadazzler-applied plastic heraldic crests stuck all over Caddies. Read More >

Carly Simon was right: When it comes to automobiles, these are the good old days. Don’t know which car to buy? No problem. Simply throw a dart at the listing of mass-market new cars for sale in the United States, purchase that car, and you can be more or less assured that you will experience 100,000 miles — or more! — of low-hassle, low-cost operation. The consumer expects that every car on the market is reliable, reasonably comfortable, and extremely safe by historical standards, and those expectations are met by everyone from Kia to Rolls-Royce. It’s a great time to be a new-car buyer, but there’s never been a worse time to be an automotive “journalist”.

Fifty years ago, a chummy cadre of insiders with million-strong captive print audiences lined up at an invitation-only perpetual buffet of manufacturer-paid perks and privileges. Today there are hundreds of media outlets, major blogs, and video producers all fighting for an ever-declining number of eyeballs, press cars, and wheel time. The journos of the Nixon era faced a delicious choice: either recommend 50,000-mile-life-expectancy garbage to the American driver and reap the considerable financial rewards for doing so, or fill up the poison pen and textually molest a lineup of sitting ducks like the Pinto, Vega, and Renault Le Car — while still making that bank. Their successors have a tougher job: explain the ever-shrinking differences between a vast array of perfectly competent automobiles in a manner which will generate “unique clicks” and repeat readership without burning too many personal and professional bridges. Get it wrong, and you’re history.

Scott Burgess got it wrong, but his mistake wasn’t an excess of ethics.

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W.B. writes:

Sajeev,

My ’05 Ranger 4wd w/5spd manual (35K on the odometer) does something strange indeed when I get ready to drive after it’s been parked for several hours. With the parking brake off, I shift to first and lightly engage the clutch. The truck strains against some kind of resistance, as if there were something obstructing the tires or as if I were starting on an incline. Neither of these are ever the case. With a little more gas and a little more clutch engaged, the truck “breaks free” with a loud “clunk,” and then drives normally afterward.

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Before GM delivered a one-two-three punch to Cadillac’s image with the Seville, V8-6-4 engine, and Cimarron, the first of the front-wheel-drive Eldorados attained some sort of zenith for strip-club-owner-grade, ridiculous-yet-awesome Detroit Iron. Here’s a ’68 Eldo that will never drive the Las Vegas Strip again. Read More >

When shopping for a car to thrash all weekend long on a hairy road course, most of us don’t consider the Nissan Prairie. Why not? The Team Sputnik ’86 Stanza Wagon proved at last month’s Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons that you don’t need an RX-7 or E30 to do well in low-buck endurance racing. Read More >

The Denver MCA boasts something that most museums don’t have: a 1968 Chevrolet Chevelle parked on its nose outside the building. I’ve been trying to shoot a worthwhile photograph of this fine sculpture by Gonzalo Lebrija, entitled Entre La Vida y La Muerte, but I just don’t have the boss camera skilz to do it justice. Fortunately, I know a guy who does. Read More >

Really cheap, low-optioned Detroit cars haven’t done well for decades, but that didn’t stop Chrysler from following up the super-downscale Omni America with the car advertised as “the lowest priced car on the market available with a standard driver’s-side airbag.” Apparently, no 1991 Plymouth Sundance Americas made it out of the showrooms. Well, none except for this example that managed to dodge The Crusher’s jaws for two full decades before its final tow into a Denver self-service wrecking yard. Read More >

I do a lot of air traveling in my role as Chief Justice of the LeMons Supreme Court, which means I spend a lot of time at Shadow Government World Headquarters, aka Denver International Airport. My ride was coming to get me in a late-model Subaru Outback, i.e. the type of vehicle driven by approximately 70% of Colorado drivers… but this traveler climbed into an early, no-frills Ford Falcon. Yes, I was envious. Read More >

Ronald writes:

Hi Sajeev,

Just about 2 years ago, the steering rack failed on my 1996 Lexus SC400 at 132,000 miles. Reconditioned rack #1 went bad in 3 weeks, and replaced with another. Reconditioned rack #2 also failed in about 2 months, and was replaced with a brand new rack.

Every time I got the car back, the steering feel was horrible even though they claimed they did an alignment (which they ended up doing every time I returned with the car). The last straw came when I was driving up a freeway entry ramp that had the pavement scraped in vertical lines, and the steering felt like a snake undulating left and right. Pissed, I finally took it to a Lexus shop where they performed an alignment and the car seemed to handle better. While satisfactory, it still was not the same as before the rack went bad. However, 2 weeks later the steering wheel was cocked to the left and the car was out of alignment. It went in yet again for an alignment at an independent shop and everything seemed fine – it was done better than by Lexus. Now two weeks after the latest alignment the steering wheel is cocked to the right and I’m beginning to feel the snake undulations again. What is throwing the car out of alignment? I live in Tampa, and the roads where I travel are in good condition, no potholes, I’m not running into curbs, and my wife doesn’t drive the car.

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We all remember the Starion, with its TURBO badging on everything from the seat belts to the door handles, but who among us can recall ever having seen the other 80s hot-rod Mitsubishi in the wild? Read More >