Today’s Rare Ride hails from the the much overused Cutlass nameplate at Oldsmobile. Just in this series we’ve had the Cutlass Calais and a Cutlass Salon, and today we head to the end of the Cutlass era, with a Ciera.

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It’s called “convergent evolution”, and it refers to cases in which two unrelated, or distantly related, animals evolve to similar shapes or capabilities due to the pressures of their environment. Examples can be found here, with the most interesting one being the “pronghorn antelope”. It really isn’t an antelope, you see. It turns out that when there is pressure in an environment, animals will eventually all adapt to their optimum form for that environment.

While there are many unforgiving environments around the world, from the Sahara to the Arctic Circle, few are as murderous as the American automobile market. It turns out that the aforementioned “optimum form” appeared some time ago, and everyone else has been evolving that way ever since..Don’t worry. You may not believe in evolution, let alone the Mitsubishi Evolution, but I will serve as your John Scopes in this auto-Darwinian voyage.

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Having recently done the Ultimate CC Truck, what would its passenger car counterpart be? Let me ask it this way: how many cars have their owners replace their V8 engines with a slant six? If you understand the true attraction of Chrysler’s A-Bodies with the slant six as the ultimate long-life American car, you’ll understand why. There are several dozen A-bodies in Eugene, and I have shot many of them, and yet I still keep uncovering new ones. Many are still used to some degree or another, although most are clearly slowing down in their old age. Not this ’65 Valiant: it’s in full front-line duty, as the business vehicle for an energy specialist that regularly takes him all across the North West. Needless to say, he’s also the ultimate A-Body owner, with his type-A attention to modifying his Valiant in a way to keep it suitable for his preferences and today’s conditions. This baby is good to go for the long haul. (Read More…)