Why is a soon-to-be success story gathering dust at TATA dealers across India? Much like the initial growing pains of the Ford Model T, the $2000 Nano currently lies on waiting lists. Given the lopsided supply/demand and construction conflagrations with the government, I reckon enterprising Indians are flipping the Nanos living in parking lot limbo for profit. Still, my precious few moments sitting in somebody’s dusty Nano left me impressed. Not because it was a perfect machine: I saw automotive history in the making.

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TTAC Commentator Episode19 writes:

I have a 2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer LT 4×4 with less than 134,000 miles. It has been a great vehicle – a dozen trips around the country, suburban family driving, and daily commuting – with the only real mechanical issue being a replaced fuel pump at about 70,000 miles. Now I have two conditions that I wonder if the best and brightest can help diagnose.

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Welcome to the Thursday edition of Curbside Classics. Tuesdays is for the big winners (and losers), the exceptional, the unexpected. Thursday will be for the more modest and prosaic finds. Any car a quarter century old or more still plying the streets of Eugene is worthy of our respect. Along with a helping of disdain, as needed. The 1959 Chevy Curbside Classic ignited lingering embers of the old Chevy vs. Ford (and Mopar) wars. My apologies to the younger readers who are probably bored to tears over this. I promise I’ve got something much newer and more voluptuous next Tuesday. But no less than geeber asked if a ’59 Ford could be the subject of the next CC. Be careful what you wish for, Fordophiles, because what I find sitting on the street is what you get. So here it is: a delectable Courier wagon. Now let the debate begin: was the ’59 Ford better looking than the Chevy?

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John writes:

Stop me and if you’ve already addressed this: but I can’t find it on TTAC. Could you describe to the pros of spending the extra coin for aftermarket coilovers rather than just buying stiffer springs?

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Geography aside, Eugene, Oregon, is about as far away from Detroit as you can get. The biggest industry in that sleepy town on the banks of the Willamette is education, not auto manufacturing. You’re more likely to see dreadlocks at a typical Eugene business than a hard hat. In fact, perhaps the only thing Eugene and Detroit have in common is a decaying urban core, although in Eugene that core is spanned by about six city blocks. With today’s launch of the Arcimoto Pulse, however, Eugene took what local politicians describe as a first step towards challenging to Detroit’s automaking dominance. And if they are to be believed, and Arcimoto’s three-wheeled Pulse EV is the future of the American mobility, suffice it to say that nobody saw it coming.

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Rob writes:

I am a regular reader, and now I need some advice.  I have a 2000 Volvo S40 Turbo, with 106,000 miles.  Recently when I’m on the highway and go to increase speed the car vibrates really bad.  It will cruise with no problem, but the moment you try to pick up speed the vibration starts and continues till you let off the accelerator.

Another thing, I am living in Western KY [ED: sounds painful] and I have not even seen a Volvo dealer ship in this area.  So if anybody knows of an independent mechanic I would appreciate it.

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Look at the picture above. Now pretend it’s your rearview mirror. That giant set of batwings is right behind you and gaining; now it pulls into the fast lane. A couple of teenagers grin as they zip by you ass-backwards at seventy miles an hour. The front grille of the ’59 Chevy slowly recedes in the distance ahead. If you spent any time on the roads of Cincinnati around 1969, this may well have happened to you.

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John writes:

My mom’s 2001 Protégé lx 2.0 automatic was nice when new, 15″ aluminum rims, nice motor, sunroof, etc. Now at 98,000 New Hampshire miles, shipwreck rusty underneath from salt, it needs new suspension. Soup to nuts.

It has horrible rattles from loose suspension fittings, and it floats like a boat, soaring and zooming with mind of its own over gentle rises. Needs new OEM springs, shocks, all bearings and bushings. All local shops say it’s not worth it. Don’t even want to provide a quote. Is it worth it to spend about $1,500- 2,000 on all new suspension? What if it weren’t rusty? What if I did labor with my weekends and spent $800 at Napa for everything new?

Really what I am asking is why do cars wear to point where not fixing, suspension wise? Is it really a throw away car?

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TTAC’s analyst extraordinaire, Ronnie Schreiber writes:

My daughter has a Volvo 940. The local Volvo mechanic said that the noise it’s making is the #1 piston hitting the head because of a sloppy big end bearing, which explains the low oil pressure at idle. I was thinking that 60 or 70 years ago, a mechanic might have fixed just the bad bearing, without rebuilding the engine. I was thinking just to do a quick fix, I could drop the oil pan, take off the offending rod cap, mic the crankshaft journal, buy the best fitting bearing per the crank measurement, and bolt everything together with the new bearing. So, Sajeev, with this true piston slap question, is it worth it to try a cheap engine repair like this?

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I find myself floating above an endless sea of thimbleberry bushes. The berries are all ripe, infinite delectable crimson caps punctuating a sea of green. I can’t see the trail, but somehow distant and hidden legs carry me along and know where to go, while I gorge on the fruit. Now I’m behind the wheel of my car, watching an endless movie loop of a winding serpentine road, with a rushing river to my left and a wall of towering firs on my right. I have no awareness of actually driving; the car knows what to do while I gorge on the scenery. The road through Oregon’s deep woods is utterly deserted. Then an image confronts me, so unexpected, so surreal, that now I know I’m dreaming.

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Greg writes:

Hello, I have a 2002 Toyota Camry SE with about 120K on it that has been overall pretty reliable. For the past few months, the OEM (it is not aftermarket) radio has turned psychotic and turns itself on and off and flips from radio to CD at will – or so it seems. It seems like this is a loose wire as it is really noticeable when I go over certain bumpy areas in the road, the radio pre-sets disappear and I have to reset them again and again.  Can you advise me what to do next?

PS – My four year old thinks there is a mouse in the radio since it turns it self off and on all of the time.

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Your car is made up of thousands of components, manufactured all over the world and assembled in many places by humans and robots. There is simply no such thing as a 100% “domestic” car anywhere in the world. When (not if) artificial barriers are placed on the manufacture, sale and movement of parts and the eventual manufacture, sale and movement of the resulting vehicle, there are two common outcomes. The best-case scenario is you’re going to pay more—effectively stealing from you and everyone in the global economy. Unfortunately, the typical result is that you cannot buy most of the cars made on this planet in your local market.

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The Porsche GT3 RS with its wildly painted orange wheels was not going to let me past, despite my flashing headlights of protest. Why should he? I was in a mild-mannered Carrera S, devoid of any go fast wings or air ducts. I resigned myself to trying to gain momentum over him before we entered the Flugplatz, where the wider bit of road would provide a much safer passing zone and keep me from joining the purple Peugeot 206 we had just passed at Hatzenbach in the Armco barriers. I needn’t wait so long, as in my mirror, four “angel-eye” rings glared at me from the nefarious BMW M5 ‘Ring Taxi. I put on my right-turn signal, let her pass, and then squeezed the accelerator in order to whip past the Orange Swedish Porker. Let the games begin, for I was on my 100th lap, and it was time for a joust with Sabine Schmitz in our Deutsche Chariots of Terror.

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Bob Lutz may well prove that the Cadillac’s CTS-V is the fastest production sedan in the land, thanks to an engine transplant from the Corvette ZR-1. But what about a genuine all-Caddy production racer? Something you could take to Le Mans, and challenge Europe’s finest exotics or just down to the local drag strip, and blow away every production car in its day. You’d have to turn the clock back sixty years, when Cadillac’s new V8 was the hottest engine in the land. But if you were serious about racing with it, like Briggs Cunningham did at Le Mans in 1950, or the original owner of this car, you’d have to request the factory to make one important change, which alone makes this hot rod Caddy the most historically significant Curbside Classic find to date. Read More >

Steve writes:

Hi Sajeev, I own a 2005 VW Passat with V6 that has 92000 miles on the odo. VW says I should replace the timing belt ASAP. I let my last Passat (2001.5 V6) go until 120K and my local dealer’s shop lectured me on the danger of letting it go for so long. How much am I tempting fate by waiting until I get to 120K this time? Is a timing belt change too complicated for a decent independent mechanic to tackle? Your sage advice would be most appreciated.

There are a number of people on the VW forums that are posting that VW issued some kind of revised maintenance schedule for TB’s? I bought mine used (from a VW dealer) so I may not be on the mailing list. As usual, the opinions run the gamut. I will be very interested in the comments on this issue. And, I will check with my mechanic (authorized VW repair shop, non-dealer) on Monday to see what he says.

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