(first posted 4/16/2019) I have several route options for my daily commute, and one of the more rural (and scenic) ones takes me past this farm where a pair of immobile 1994-96 Oldsmobile Ninety Eights are slowly sinking into the Illinois loam. I’m guessing a little on the year(s), but think I can make out the slightly face-lifted grille used in the latter part of the twelfth (and final) generation.
Recently, I had the experience of having a teenage boy in my company. He was at the house with his mother and younger sister and, wanting to create some distance from Spawn, I had him help me pick up and dump a bunch of tree limbs that had accumulated in the yard.
While doing all this, various questions shot through my mind: When did I get to be this age? Why is Spawn no longer a baby? Had it truly been that long ago when I was the nervous young man talking to the father of my focus? Am I really old enough to be called “Mr. Shafer” and “sir”?
Text submitted by Victor Van Tress.
Today, we’ll go over the story of how I came upon owning, for many years, an ’86 Peugeot 505 Turbo that had a brief, yet prominent, role in boosting its maker’s image in the US. All this being the result of my love for stock car racing and vintage cars.
General Motors was the undisputed U.S. market leader as the 1957 model year got underway. In spite of a dominant 52% market share, GM wasn’t content to rest on its laurels and rolled-out a dizzying array of models on redesigned platforms (new B- and C-bodies), extensive facelifts for the A-bodies and even promising new technology like fuel injection on select models. So GM entered the new model year with guns blazing–let’s take a look at all the highlights as detailed in Motor Trend’s 1957 New Car Show issue.
1929 Cadillac 341B Fisher 7-passenger Imperial Sedan in Calumet Blue and black / Teddy Pieper — RM Auctions
I found an auction listing for this 1929 Cadillac Imperial limousine while looking for pictures for a different article, and while I only ended up using one photo of the car in that post, I thought this handsome relic of Jazz Age luxury deserved a closer look.
(first posted 2/1/2019) Regardless of one’s personal opinion of the Toyota Camry, it’s a quantitative fact that the Camry ranks high as one of history’s best selling car. With well over 10 million sold worldwide and counting, it is a relatively rare sight to see a Camry that’s, well rare. Yet, every now and then it actually can happen, as was the case with this V20 generation Camry wagon, probably the first one I’ve seen since Howard Dean ran for president of the United States.
Some older cars can just make you smile, by virtue of styling cues from a bygone era, flashy chrome, vibrant colors, endearing quirkiness, or maybe all of those things. Some cars just look happy. This is not such a car. This stripped-down, full-size Ford rolling slowly down a highway on a hot summer afternoon presents an expression of dour seriousness. No fluffy frivolity here; this car has a job to do, and it’s doing it, with as little fuss and fanfare as possible. Both full-size sedans and bare-bones cars have virtually disappeared from the car market in recent decades, which makes this sighting rather unexpected… still not happy, but certainly unexpected.
While today we usually just call them all Edsels, when it debuted in 1958 Edsel was actually a full vehicle lineup, sporting both “Senior” and “Junior” models, each with a variety of model names. The recently launched Lincoln Corsair (a name previously used by Edsel) got me thinking about the fates of the other Edsel model names. How many went on to have second lives, and how many (like the Edsel name itself) have faded into ignominy?
Text by Patrick Bell.
I am a car watcher first, but I am a people watcher as well. It has always been fun to connect cars to their people and people to their cars. Today we will narrow it down a little more, with a good selection of images to look at people’s fashion tastes in their clothes and cars.
original photos posted at the CC Cohort by Eric Clem
The restyled 1961-1963 Rambler American has often been derided as the ugliest and most mal-proportioned car of its time. It was boxy, but not in a good way. Its rear wheels didn’t looked like they were four inches too far forward in their openings. The rear end was crude, worthy of an East German Wartburg. It was too tall and narrow. In other words, it was all kinds of wrong.
But cut off the roof and roll back the new-for-1962’s convertible’s top, and all is forgiven, especially given that this was America’s lowest-priced convertible that year. How can something so homely still be so cute? Such is the power of a folding top on a sunny day.
1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI Signature Series in Dark Maroon / Orlando Classic Cars
For 1980, Ford shifted its popular Lincoln Continental Mark personal luxury car to the smaller, more fuel-efficient Panther platform, only to watch in horror as sales of the new Continental Mark VI fell to about half the level of its gargantuan Mark V predecessor. The conventional wisdom is that customers balked at the Mark VI’s downsizing, but was that the real problem? I’m not so sure.
(first posted 7/16/2013) robotr10t has uploaded a raft of his sightings in Europe at the Cohort, and one of the more unusual ones is this Eunos Cosmo. Sold only through Mazda’s Japanese premium channel Eunos, the 1990-1995 Cosmo was the final iteration of the Cosmo line of rotary sports coupes that goes back to the original Cosmo coupe of 1967, the world’s first two-rotor rotary-engine car. So it’s only fitting that the Cosmo line ended with the world’s only production triple-rotor automobile. Read the rest of this entry »
I shoot vintage vans, especially old camper vans, for obvious reasons. This extended length Maxivan with a high roof is as close as it gets to my ProMaster in configuration. Maybe I should have just looked for one of these?
No thanks; I’m too spoiled by the way the ProMaster runs. But let’s take a look at this ancestor.
I’ve been a long time fan of the classy Chrysler-Ghia Falcon show car of 1955, perhaps my favorite of the “Idea Car” concepts built during the Exner-Ghia collaboration years. And here, in my perusal of vintage images online, what do I see? A Ghia Falcon, with Venezuela plates, pulling out of some upscale driveway in that nation.
I had at some point, while reading about the car, heard there was a debate on the number built and their whereabouts, with figures going from one to a top of three. Now, with photo in hand, it was time to give my Spanish some use, update myself with the car’s current details, and do a bit of digging for any isolated info out there.
