This little bright yellow Chevy Spectrum (Isuzu I-Mark) was looking a bit boxed in between these two Rav4s, so I took pity on it. But not enough to give it a full write-up, as Jim Cavanaugh already did that a while back.; just enough to slow down and peel off a shot. How could I resist?
A lot of cars look good in yellow, but few have been offered in that tone even when a nice splash of color was en vogue. I’ve always assumed the association with taxicabs hurt consumer acceptance of yellow.
That said, even a nice, bright yellow doesn’t help this poor little Chevy Rectum very much.
Taxis and other commercial vehicles. When we had a Japanese foreign exchange student, I mentioned that I wanted a yellow Escape for my first car, and she looked at me quizzically and asked, “like a school bus…?”
Damn, that’s bright. Hitch it up behind a solar-powered car and you’ve got perpetual motion!
I always liked the front fascia on these. The grille and headlight shape gave it a look of an angry child.
Wow – every one of these I ever saw was blue or gray.
A lot better than the shades of yellow we’ve been seeing for the last decade[too much orange called “Chrome Yellow]. Those have been real Taxi-Cab yellows.
My Grandmother’s 70 Maverick Grabber was close to this shade, though dialed back some.
The Spark has a lighter shade of yellow that works well and somehow makes the whole car less freaky looking.
Always loved the yellows on the Corvairs of the 60s as well.
I guess the later twin-cam versions of these with Lotus suspension are a real hoot. These were everywhere when I was a young kid, and I thought they looked pretty cool, especially the taillights on the facelifted versions. I didn’t notice the stubbiness of the overall shape (though all cars were more upright at the time).
I don’t know why Isuzu developed its own T-car replacement, but their rarity, obscurity and potential to be fun when properly equipped makes me like them.
Completely new to me. It looks like some sort of mixture between a 1977 Alfa Romeo Giulietta and a 1983 Volvo 360 sedan.
I think Holden sold them here, for about five minutes.
I’m not going to comment on the color, but this photo is another one of the type that make me notice, (and ask why) the size of today’s vehicles are what they are. Here we have two current “smallish” SUV’s flanking a 20 year old small car that winds up looking like it’s not even the same scale. I realize its a very small car, but it looks positively 7/10ths of actual sized car.
By the late 90s, when I was driving my 85 Mazda GLC, I got used to seeing nothing of the cars next to me at a stoplight, other than doorhandles. Grabbing my food at the drive up windows at Wendy’s and Arby’s required a a foot long reach upward when seated in my 98 Civic. I couldn’t reach the drive up ATM at the bank at all when seated in the GLC or Civic, had to get out and stand at the machine.
Why indeed. In the film “Titanic” when Ismay is going on about how big the ship is, someone makes a snarky comment about people’s obsession with size.
The size difference is what caught my eye as well. There are truly very few dinky cars around anymore, not that this is a bad thing.
I liked the way GM leveraged it’s international connections to field some decent small cars over the years, from the 60s Opels to the Saturn Astra. Don’t like their tendency to drop them like a bad habit, leaving their customers with borderline orphans.
Suspect the same will happen with the Buick version of the Cascada, built in Poland on the Opel Astra platform. The Astra gets a new platform in a year, so the Cascada will probably go away, with only a handful sold, and the owners constantly waiting for the dealer to receive a part. In my area, the Buick dealer has been handed the job of supporting Saturns. I can imagine the conversation in the waiting room between a Cascada owner and a Saturn Astra owner, comparing how long it’s taken for the shop to get a part for their cars.
My first car, a 1975 VW Rabbit 2-door, was a slightly subdued variant of that yellow hue. VW also offered chrome yellow (as in school bus yellow) that year, which didn’t appeal to me at all.
I think yellow works well on small cars, but not on boulevard cruisers.