The Jensen Interceptor brought together American power and British design and craftsmanship in a rare heavyweight sports-luxury liftback.
The company even made a few of them into convertibles, like today’s Rare Ride.
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Air-cooled engine at the back, two upright, circular headlamps at the front, and classic gold metallic paint.
It’s not a vintage Porsche 911, but it is a cousin — a Volkswagen 412 from 1973.
What do you get when you cross an enthusiast of a dead car brand, a bank account, and a late-model Panther?
This. Presenting the 2008 Edsel Citation:
An enterprising GM executive, a British tuning company, and a compact hatchback came together in 1975 to make a very special, limited-production Chevrolet.
It’s the Cosworth Vega, naturally.
An aluminum garage door rattles open on its track. As the goldenrod-colored panels lift up and away, a luxurious family wagon comes into view. Once the kids, parents, and Golden Retriever are lightly secured inside, the luxury wagon glides out of the lightly sloped driveway and away from the bi-level with the paneled den.
It’s 1978, and it’s Town & Country time.
Tiny, mid-engined, and featuring those all-important gullwing doors, the Autozam AZ-1 has it all. And now you, too, can enjoy the things Japan was tired of in the 1990s.
A recent edition of Buy/Drive/Burn included a Chrysler 300M from the turn of the century — a car which represented the third time Chrysler created a line of vehicles wearing “300” badges. The other day, the Internet presented the 300M’s closest ancestor, and my curiosity piqued.
And since we’re into coupes on Rare Rides lately, come along as we check out a big, bold coupe from Chrysler.
Last time on Rare Rides, we surveyed a little Fiat 124 Sport Coupe. A family car underneath, it aimed to be affordable fun for the middle-market. Today, we have a look at some not-so-affordable fun for the well-heeled. Come along for the New Class coupe experience.
You can go into a Fiat showroom today and buy a brand new Fiat 124, undoubtedly delighting a dealer who’s desperate to move some reworked Miatas. It wasn’t always this way, though. The 124 name was originally applied to a lineup of Fiat-developed vehicles, like today’s Sport Coupe from 1974.
The Rare Rides series will always have space for unique French cars. It’s featured several Renault vehicles and a couple of Citroëns to date, but only one Peugeot, to my recollection. That one, a 106 GTI, was an import to Canada by an enthusiastic second-hand buyer. Today we feature a second Peugeot: one actually sold by a dealer, brand new, in America.
It’s the hottest 405 sold in the U.S. — the excellently named Mi16.
In what’s bound to be one of the most obscure editions of Rare Rides yet, today’s ride is very limited-production in nature. So limited, in fact, that only one was produced. And it’s so limited in its exposure that the Internet can’t seem to decide the year it was actually built.
It’s hard to know where to start with this thing.
Today’s Rare Ride is a special, sporty edition of a rather mundane Malaise subcompact. It hails from a time when the American customer matched the color of their vinyl seats to their wide lapel. So let’s delude ourselves for a few minutes with the Monza Mirage.
Among the fairly common group of vehicles produced on General Motors’ B-body chassis in the 1990s, one stands out. It’s extra-long, fairly luxurious, a last-of moment, and unloved among the sort of people who collect older vehicles.
No, it’s not the Impala SS, which everyone overprices when it’s that Purp Drank color. It’s the Custom Cruiser, by Oldsmobile.
The Rare Rides series has dabbled in AMC previously, cataloging some of the fun ideas generated by the good people of Kenosha, Wisconsin. We’ve featured the luxury targa Concord Sundancer, the unrealized Van, a baroque Matador Barcelona, and the Renault-by-AMC Alliance GTA. But none of those represents the AMC brand quite as well as today’s Rare Ride. It’s a pre-CUV crossover. A luxurious Subaru Outback, before there was such a thing.
It’s of course an Eagle 4×4 wagon, looking Limited in black over tan.
Part III of this Rare Rides series explored how NSU readied itself to re-enter the car market and end its longstanding production tie-up with Fiat. Shortly after the painful divorce from the Italians, NSU’s first rotary-powered car was ready.
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