For those of you who don’t know, this past week the Northeast United States was hit with an intense and devastating (and aptly named) Nor’easter, its winds topping 90 miles per hour causing massive destruction, flooding, and power outages.
Well, after approximately 73 hours without electricity or heat, and a couple of empty bottles of wine in the recycling, I’m happy to say that power is restored and has returned to normal. Exiting the highway behind this 1994 Caprice Classic on my way to work renewed my sense of normalcy, albeit about two decades late. Once ubiquitous, these final generation “whale” Caprices have become highly sparse in my neck of the woods. This higher-trimmed destined for private customer two-tone was an especially exciting sight.
Well, after approximately 73 hours without electricity or heat, and a couple of empty bottles of wine in the recycling…
So local hospitals can expect a baby boom in roughly 9 months?
It usually works that way. The population in my town never changes though because every time a baby is born, a man leaves town.
It is said that there was a spike in hospital births nine months after the infamous November 1965 Northeast/Canada blackout.
This has been a pretty intense winter for the Northeast. I’m looking out my window right now and its snowing quite a bit. Apparently we’re going to get about a foot of snow, with some of the white stuff coming down at a rate of 3 inches per hour. I didn’t lose power last week, but most of my area did. Apparently wildly inconsistent weather will only increase with climate change, so we’re probably just going to have to get used to it. And it’s still preferable to hurricanes, wildfires, or droughts.
Did your dealership lose power? I imagine there’s not much you could do in that scenario, other than clean snow off the cars.
Knock on wood, but at least here in southeastern Massachusetts, it hasn’t really been all that bad of a winter, snow-wise at least. We’ve had a few storms since December, but only one where it snowed more than a foot, and it’s always warmed up significantly in the following days to melt it pretty quick. February in particular, was especially warm with a few days in the 70s.
This past storm yielded no snow, but it was the closest thing to a hurricane this north we’ve received here in a few years. We did lose power at the dealership about an hour before closing on Friday, but it was back up and running by opening Saturday.
Glad you are okay…. my old home town Duxbury made the national news on NBC, plus 13 houses gone or removed in Scituate.
Yeah, all the towns right on the coast got hit especially hard with flooding from the massive ocean waves and tides. At least where I am more inland, we didn’t get severe flooding, but a whole lot of trees down.
Probably not the best car for navigating a winter storm……
In retrospect, these went from being a sow’s ear (1991 Caprice which looked like a bloated Hudson Hornet IMHO) to a silk purse, via the 1996 Impala SS.
The Buick Roadmaster? Not so much. My late mother-in-law had a ’95 RM and we used to call it the “Road Cochon” (French for pig). It had the Chevrolet LT1 engine which was a plus but a little too much excess baggage and really cheap interior materials beyond that to make it a desirable car.
Full-size RWD cars did just fine in snow with good tires.
And How Do You Know That It’s 94 Model?
Carfax License Plate Lookup.
I have always found these to be a very color-sensitive car. White is not its color.
The reds were nice. Here’s my Dad’s 1996 right after getting the windows tinted. I certainly wouldn’t mind inheriting 🙂
That’s a sharp looking Caprice Dan. I agree that generally the darker colours look better on these cars. I still think the Impala SS was the nicest of the lot, with large wheels and tires, a good stance and the black paint. While the Caprice hasn’t aged overly well, I still think the Impala SS looks good today.
That said, I never minded an all white 9C1 Caprice. I think one like this looks fine.
The “Bubble” Chevys general looks improved after GM rounded out the rear wheels.
IMHO The “box” Chevy was far better looking. The Buick was down right ugly. Strangely I prefer the “B” wagon of that generation
“The “Bubble” Chevys general looks improved after GM rounded out the rear wheels.”
Agreed, but adding a Hoffmeister Kink to the C Pillar completed the transformation.
Our power was restored within a day and a half or so, luckily we have a generator. Our tv and Internet also went out, which sucked.
The arrows in the pictures are rather reflective of the Caprice’s styling from 1991 to 1996. Sort of all over the place.
Glad to hear you’re past that Nor’easter and power is back. Winter sucks. We’ve had nothing but ice storms here all winter (I’ll take an 18″ snow over ice any day) with our first snow yesterday. It didn’t stick due to being 38 so it really doesn’t count.
Reverse CC effect: I saw one of these on my walk home just last week, and stopped to take a look at it, wondering if I should photograph it. I didn’t, but I’m glad you did, Brendan. Glad things are returning to normal, and also that things weren’t worse.
I know this is a bit of a contrary stance to popular opinion, but the Caprice looked better with the skirted rear wheels, pointed quarter windows and black segmented taillights. The Impala only wore it well because it came in dark colors and had sporty wheels to hide the bloat and questionable lines, but the regular Caprice, in white no less, looks like a car owned by a city government. All the changes made what was a love/hate design into a universally dreary fleet design.
Nice find Brendan. To me, the Audi 5000 and the 1986 Taurus/Sable set the template for aero sedan styling in North American. And for the next decade, any new aero designs would be measured against these original designs. IMO, the aero look didn’t work on the large proportions of this gen of Impala/Caprice.
The aero design established by Audi and Ford worked on trimmer and moderately sized cars. The ‘new’ standard size. Not on behemoth cars trying not to look obsolete among modern and more appropriately sized cars for the times.
Ford itself did a very presentable job of adopting aero design to the Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis, and Lincoln Town Car in the 1990 and 1992 model years.
+1 the box design wasn’t remotely attractive on the Panthers the way it was for GM, the Aero body Panthers across the board were huge improvements over their predecessors. GM design just plain stunk at this point, good designer direction can incorporate any corporate theme into any size or shape successfully, and Ford had it during this period.
Not to me they didnt….I’m a three box slab side kinda guy when it comes to auto styling.
While the 1979-91 Ford’s weren’t the most stylish cars, I never cared for the 92-97 Crown Vic’s styling. I thought the Town Cars were well done though. I think the open wheeled whale 93-96 Caprices were better looking than the 92-97 Vics. The 98 – 2011 Crown Vics were by far the best looking Aero Vics.
That said, the 77-90 Chevrolets were better looking than all of the above.
Make that Audi. Ford borrowed from Audi.
I drove a 95 SS in Boston for several years, never changed to snows. It took a little skill planning and judgement but never got stuck. People panic too easily now. Most of the time the salt hits the roads before the flakes do.
One of my favorites is the 96 Impala SS. Drop in a crate SBC and I’ll be good to go!
Glad you made it through okay….it was a day similar to yours back in 1981 that made me determined to get out of the Connecticut cold and snow. A year later I moved south.
Now as I cruise to retirement, I plan to be a snow bird. I love it up there in summer and fall, and down here in winter and spring.
Brendan,
Seen this Caprice quite a bit over the past 5 years from Rockland up to Quincy area.
Got a couple other interesting cars you may be interested in spotting too.