The Cressida was never a big seller in North America, and the second- and third-generation versions make up most of the examples you’ll see these days. First-gen ones like this ’80 I spotted in an Oakland self-service yard on Monday are just about nonexistent… and the number of survivors is about to be reduced by one. (Read More…)

The Reatta we saw in the junkyard yesterday was a pretty rare car (though not so rare as its Hyundai Scoupe neighbor), but California self-service junkyards tend to be full of such jewels. Here’s a long-forgotten, one-of-250-built Mopar that makes those two seem commonplace. (Read More…)

My trip to California to judge the Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal 500 24 Hours of LeMons started with a jaunt to Los Angeles, where I saw this extremely rare Hyundai Scoupe in a junkyard. Not so rare as the Scoupe, yet more interesting from an automotive-history standpoint, was this Buick a few rows away. (Read More…)

Here’s another one for the “Whatever Happened To…” file: the Hyundai Scoupe. I’m in Southern California for a couple of days, prior to heading north with Judge Jonny to judge at the Skankaway Anti-Toe-Fungal 500, and decided to visit one of the junkyards that provided many of the parts for the ’65 Impala Hell Project. Right away, I find a car I’d forgotten even existed. (Read More…)

California Governor Jerry Brown (D) sided on Friday with red light camera companies and the remaining municipalities that use automated ticketing machines. He vetoed a measure that would have placed the mildest of restrictions on photo ticketing.

“I am returning Senate Bill 29 without my signature,” Brown wrote in his veto message. “This bill standardizes rules for local governments to follow when installing and maintaining red light cameras. This is something that can and should be overseen by local elected officials.”

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Before packing up the Impala and leaving Georgia in the fall of 1996, I took the car to Atlanta Dragway and ran some semi-disappointing low-17-second quarter-mile passes. Back in California, I resolved to make some improvements to the car’s running gear. After 15 years as a cheapskate, junkyard-centric gearhead, I was finally willing to spend substantial cash for new aftermarket performance parts. The main question was: what kind of engine would I build? (Read More…)

The rules for the Billetproof show are simple: Nothing newer than 1964, no trailered vehicles, no post-1960s mag wheels, no fenderless cars with independent front suspensions, and— above all— no billet anything! I flew out to California Saturday to check it out. (Read More…)

When scanning old negatives for the most recent installment of the Impala Hell Project series, I found these Ansco Pix Panorama camera shots that I took in gritty, grimy, industrial Hayward, California in 1993. They didn’t add anything to the Impala Hell Project story, so I’m sharing them in a separate post. (Read More…)

In Part 10, the Hell Project Impala got Fiat scoops on the hood and hit the I-5 trail again. By late 1993, the car looked more or less the way I’d planned when I started the project and had become a surprisingly good daily driver (thanks to more modern brakes and a reliable, HEI-equipped 350 engine). I still planned to do some suspension and horsepower upgrades, once the early 1990s recession relaxed its grip enough for me to land a decent-paying job, but the setup I had was fulfilling my driving needs very well. Then, in the spring of ’94, Richard Nixon died, and I decided to take the Nixon-hood-ornamented car down to his birthplace and mingle with the mourners. (Read More…)

While scanning endless strips of 35mm negatives for the Impala Hell Project series, I keep running across shots of random cars I thought were interesting at the time. This sort of photography led, 15 years later, to my Down On The Street series, and so I thought I’d share this set of grainy Tri-X photographs of a Malaise Buick in California’s Central Valley, captured on a super-cheapo Ansco Pix Panorama camera. (Read More…)

The reason I’m only doing ’65 Impala Hell Project posts every week or so is the fact that it takes for-freakin-ever for me to search and scan endless sheets of 35mm negatives and slides for images that are relevant to the story (the 1999-vintage SCSI film scanner I’m using sure isn’t helping matters). There is an unexpected bonus that comes with this process, however: I keep running across interesting car photos shot during my travels. (Read More…)

Ever so environmentally conscious California  offered its citizen a rebate up to $5,000 if they buy an electric car. That and the $7,500 federal tax credit adds up to a good chunk of money. 1978 vehicles later, the state is out of funds. No more. According to the California Air Resources Board, “the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project may run out by July due to high consumer demand.”  May run out? It already did. (Read More…)

Not satisfied with impoverishing residents and unwary visitors with $500 automated tickets for being a tenth of a second late at a light, California’s legislators are moving a new bill allowing cities to reduce many posted speed limits by 5 mph. The lower limits will, in turn, allow them to shorten yellow lights, which will produce more red light camera tickets (four of the sponsoring cities have red light cameras).
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The amount of yellow warning time at California intersections would drop along with speed limits under a bill being considered by the state legislature. The Senate Transportation Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday on Assembly Bill 529, a proposal that re-writes the state’s speed trap law so that cities would be able to round down all speed limits after conducting a traffic study. The measure passed the full Assembly by a 77 to 0 vote on May 19.
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I missed the latest twist in Chrysler’s California dealer drama when I was traveling in Iowa last week, but because it’s such a significant story (and because Ford recently proved how expensive dealer drama can be), we’ll commit the cardinal rule of blogging and take a look at some week-old “news.” California’s DMV won’t report the findings of its investigation into Chrysler’s allegedly non-compliant “company store” until September 29, but the Detroit News has reported that “about 75 percent” of these dealer complaint cases end in settlement and that

Chrysler Group LLC may be on the verge of selling its company-owned flagship dealership in Los Angeles to a private retailer, which could appease angry franchise dealers in California.

So much for ChryCo leaving the state in an angry huff. In fact, angry is about the last thing CEO Sergio Marchionne sounds about the whole thing…

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