(Updated 11/15/2026) A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about the Compadre, neé GM BTV. In comparison to that little project, the Kijang is considerably less ambitious in scope, only being sold in Indonesia and Brunei. But it has one crucial difference over the BTV, Toyota actually invested some money to keep developing it, right up to the present. But you’d never recognize it as the successor to this primitive little truck.
(Updated 11/15/2026) It’s always a pleasure to run across a former CC, like running into a long-lost friend. I first shot this fine Econoline over in Springfield back in 2009, and wrote it up at the other site. I didn’t see it again for years, and had long forgotten about it. And then here it pops up again, not far from our neighborhood. And it looks just as good as it did then.
And best of all, the owner came out and told me a bit about it. What more could a curbsider ask for?
Every month, the small town of Villeréal in Lot-et-Garonne, southwestern France, welcomes locals and visitors to a classic car gathering (Rassemblement de Véhicules de Collection) around its 16th-century market hall. The town itself was laid out in a grid, or bastide, format back in 1265. The August gathering is probably the largest of the year, coinciding with the holiday season and the annual Auto Rétro Villeréal, a much wider event.
Text by Patrick Bell.
Trucks of the past are featured today, back when you owned one only if you needed one. There is a good variety of trucks and activities to view, so let’s take a look.
Gorgeous styling, luxurious interior, excellent driving dynamics — the Mazda 6 had everything except sales.
It’s easy to understand why some cars are sales flops. Hideous styling? The Edsel and Pontiac Aztek certainly qualify. Dubious quality? The Edsel and Aztek fit there too. Respectively, they’re the classic and modern-day epitome of a sales disaster.
But there are other quite fantastic cars that simply do not sell. Cars with gorgeous styling. Interiors that punch well above their class. Smooth, effortless power. A balance of ride and handling that many carmakers aspire to, but few actually achieve. Reliability you can count on. All at a competitive price.
Although the fastback Mustang SportsRoof has been enshrined as the definitive late ’60s Mustang shape, most contemporary buyers preferred the notchback hardtop. For 1969, Ford introduced a new luxury-oriented hardtop flagship, the now-forgotten Mustang Grandé. Car Life tried a 351 Grandé in February 1969 and found it low on excitement, but pleasant, well-balanced, and easy to live with.
(Updated 11/14/2026) The years 1956-1958 were the most ambitious ever for the post-war Ford Motor Company, with a bold and expensive assault on GM. By expanding into five separate divisions (Ford, Edsel, Mercury, Lincoln and Continental), Ford hoped to attack the General on all fronts, regardless how well entrenched the enemy was. Whereas the efforts with the mid and premium divisions turned into a high-priced disaster, the Ford brand’s 1957 attack on Chevrolet was much more successful, outselling Chevy on the strength of all-new 1957 cars. No model better reflected Ford’s unbridled ambitions that year than their retractable hardtop, the Skyliner. Read the rest of this entry »
(Updated 11/14/2026) Today’s Vintage TODT comes via Shorpy, which means if you want even greater detail than you get by clicking on this image, click this to see it in its original full size splendor. What you’re seeing in higher resolution than you’re likely to ever see again is a Kenworth D-89-H.
This was one of Kenworth’s first COE trucks, and because its long-nosed conventional trucks were generally too long for the length-restricted states east of the Rockies, this was the first to be sold in the Midwest, specifically to Werner Transportation, which was a pioneer in refrigerated trucking.
By early 2000, my wife and I were comfortably settled in suburban New Jersey, commuting by train to Manhattan for work. We rarely drove during the week but because our town was almost entirely residential with few commercial options, we did rely heavily on our Maxima on weekends.
Major changes were afoot, though. My career kicked into high (or at least a higher) gear a few months earlier, after I landed job at a major consultancy. Not long thereafter, we learned we had a wee ‘un on the way. My wife worked for the first trimester but riding the packed Midtown Express, feeling queasy, to a job she didn’t particularly like took a toll. In April, she called it quits and settled down at home, preparing for motherhood. It also meant that a new car, one I hadn’t initially considered, was about to enter the picture.
(updated and substantially expanded 11/2026) At 6:17 AM on my first run of the day I suddenly found myself in the mother of all drifts. Forty feet behind me, the back of Iowa City Transit Bus #13 was coming around fast, threatening to wipe out a block’s worth of cars parked across the street. By the time I caught the first slide, I had overcompensated: now the rear was hanging out the other side. My arms were a whirling dervish on the giant steering wheel, flying back and forth, until the bus straightened out. No need to stop for coffee; I was wide awake on a triple-shot of adrenaline.
This was one of the more exciting moments of my nine months of driving transit buses in Iowa City in 1975-1976. Since the job soon became rather boring, I suppose I should be glad that it and a few other unplanned butt-puckering moments that punctuated my brief career.
If you bring up Ford’s departed Mercury marque, armchair strategists will inevitably tell you Ford erred in not making Mercury a true mid-price brand rather than just a slightly fancier Ford. This “Flo-Toned” 1957 Mercury Montclair hardtop is a survivor of the time in the late 1950s that Ford Motor Company tried to move Mercury upmarket, with disastrous results.
(Updated 11/13/2023)
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the toughest old Japanese pickup of them all?
If it said the Isuzu-built Chevy LUV, would you argue with it? Well yes, the Toyota pickups of the times also have a stellar rep, at least until the 22R switched to a single row timing chain in 1983. I’m not exactly an Isuzu/LUV expert, but I have yet to ever hear of any specific fundamental weakness of these trucks. But then one doesn’t exactly hear a lot of complaints about all the other Japanese trucks of those times either. So maybe the mirror is just flipping a coin. Read the rest of this entry »
(Updated 11/13/2026) I love the Alfa Romeo 105/115 Bertone coupés. Who doesn’t? I caught a couple in quick succession around town recently, both of which will grace these pages eventually. They’re both /pretty different, though they’re essentially the same car and from the same late ‘60s era: one is stock, the other is modified for racing. One is white, the other red. One has quad headlamps, the other not. Let’s start with Junior, then.
It’s often taken as gospel that the major car magazines don’t have much good to say about traditional American luxury cars, particularly Cadillacs. Or at least they hadn’t from sometime in the 70s through Cadillac’s lost decade of the 80s. Even when Cadillac started to turn things around with the ’92 Seville and the Northstar V8, there was still snickering.
