Today’s Rare Ride started out as a rather ordinary Cadillac Brougham but was thoroughly transformed for some reason by a well-heeled customer into something unusual. I’m a bit at a loss here.
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Tag: brougham
For the connoisseur of Malaise Era Broughams, the Mercury Montego MX Brougham checks all the boxes: long hood, “stitches” molded into plastic door panels, unapologetically phony “wood” dashboard trim, low-compression smog V8, and obvious kinship with a much cheaper corporate twin. That’s what we’ve got with today’s Junkyard Find from the year of Richard Nixon’s resignation. (Read More…)
For better than three decades, Chevrolet sold Americans full-sized sedans with angular lines and — in most cases— V8 engines. Beginning in 1959 (or even earlier, depending on how strict you are about the definition of “angular”), a big rear-drive Chevy box sedan was the most mainstream American motor vehicle… and that came to an end in 1990, after which the Caprice got a new cetacean body on the old 1977-vintage chassis.
These late Box Caprices have become very tough to find in junkyards, so I decided to document this picked-over example in Colorado before they’re all gone forever. (Read More…)
The New Yorker name goes way back for Chrysler, running from the 1940 model year all the way through a series of K-car- and Eagle Premier-based front-drivers in the 1980s and 1990s. To me, though, the greatest of the Chrysler New Yorkers were the ones built on the majestic C-Body unibody platform for the 1965 through 1978 model years, and I have the most affection for the “we don’t care about oil prices” cars of the Middle Malaise Era.
Here’s a (nearly) two-and-a-half-ton ’77 Brougham hardtop sedan, which met its doom in a Denver self-service yard last fall. (Read More…)
In the late Eighties, American auto manufacturers still sold large, traditional luxury sedans in decent numbers. Their aging sedan consumer base fondly remembered the vinyl and chrome of yesteryear and still relished brougham-style accoutrements.
Up for consideration today are three comfortable, luxury-oriented sedans from 1988. It’s hard to lose here.
Finding a Malaise Era Cadillac in a self-service wrecking yard is interesting, especially when it has Cadillac’s not-so-successful first attempt at a cylinder-deactivation engine. Those cars don’t make me sad, though.
A nicely customized show-car Cadillac with metalflake paint and pro-applied airbrush work in a junkyard — that makes me sad, even if it did suffer from the wretched V8-6-4 engine. I found this once-glorious Cad in a Denver-area yard last summer. (Read More…)
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.
It started off casually enough, in the luxury Slack chat environment of TTAC just a day or so ago. Amidst a conversation about large Chryslers of the early ’70s, TTAC’s Steph Willems declared he wasn’t sure which fuselage-design Chrysler product he’d choose to take home.
Let’s see if we can’t venture some opinions on this topic.
The Rare Rides series has previously featured a couple of AMC products. First up was the unique and stylish Eagle Sundancer, followed up by the Van concept that never quite made it to production. Today, we head back to the late Seventies and take a look at the seriously brougham Matador coupe. And it’s not just any old Matador — it’s the special Barcelona version.
I hear polyester rustling.
This week has unintentionally been all about brougham here on the Rare Rides pages. Kicking things off was the Mercury Grand Monarch Ghia, followed by a Nissan Gloria in Brougham VIP guise. Broughams from America and Japan, displaying that brougham effect across the globe and across decades.
So let’s try another configuration: a 1970s top-tier brougham from Japan — the Nissan President.
Today in Rare Rides, we’re keeping it brougham. Last time, we examined a grey Mercury Grand Monarch Ghia (as 1970s America addressed brougham).
Now, we check out a grey Nissan Gloria Brougham VIP, as 1990s Japan addressed brougham.
Our own Sajeev Mehta pointed out this grey brougham box the other day. He always keeps his ear to the pulse of the Internets for any old Ford, Ghia, or Ford Ghia vehicles which come up for sale.
It’s luxury and elegance on a Grand level! Come have a look.
Today’s Rare Ride is fairly old compared to the rest of the cars in this series, and it’s the first look at quirky and long-expired manufacturer American Motors Corporation (AMC).
A few years before being swallowed up by Chrysler in its desire to own Jeep, AMC produced this very unique PLC-TC, or Personal Luxury Coupe Targa Convertible.
Come and have a look.
Since we haven’t seen a Ford product in this series since this Fox Granada four months ago, and we just saw three GM cars in succession, I decided this week would be the turn of a once-plush Ranchero GT Brougham, now fallen on hard times in a San Jose self-service wrecking yard. (Read More…)
TTAC commentator SavageATL writes:
I have a 1991 Cadillac Brougham, the old rear-wheel-drive model. The car was sitting for a long time, and it has a Chevy 305 with bad valve seals. Lesson: beware of low-low-mileage cars.
It smokes badly on startup after sitting and burns a good bit of oil — about one quart every 250 miles. I’ve driven it as-is for a while, but the day is coming when I’ll need to do something about it.
I was told that the heads would need to be replaced to the tune of about $800. I am thinking for that kind of money I can go ahead and swap out the 305 for an LS. I was quoted about $2,750 for a 5.3-liter junkyard LS swap and $3,750 for a 6.0-liter junkyard LS swap, start to finish.
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