Lee J. has sent me the last shipment of his R&T collection, going back to January 1966, and ending in 1991. He sent the first batch a couple of years ago, and I’ve been struggling to get through them, which will take quite some time. This is really a remarkable and generous gift, as I always held R&T in high esteem for the greater objectivity of its road tests. I actually started a binder collection of their stats page in middle school, so I could have a handy reference in case of debates about 0-60 times and such. This fulfills that desire to a vastly higher level, and I’m most appreciative.
I’m going to be scanning several decades at one time, as I don’t want to get lost in just one. And for the oldest, we’ll start with this January 1966 issue, which has the Mustang by Bertone on the cover, and road tests of the new Toronado and the VW 1600 fastback. We’ll get to those very shortly; in the meantime, here’s a few random ads and the classified ads, in case you want to call and see if that Ferrari California swb for $6,000 is still for sale.
A rather modest way to introduce the all-new 911 in the US. Would anyone have imagined what a long life that model name would have?
I had totally forgotten that there was such a thing as the SAAB Special, a 96 with the hot Monte Carlo 850 engine (two stroke triple).
The “new” Cortina. A very rare find now.
The Triumph 2000. A senior at my high school drove a black one to school every day, so it was a familiar sight to me.
And the classified ads. Multiply the asking prices by 8.1 to get at an adjusted amount. That Ferrari California will set you back a whopping $48k, if it’s still available. Let us know…
Thanks again Lee!
Oh, wow. I’ll just skip over the Jaguars and Ferraris to comment on the SIX gull wing 300SLs. And a Lancia Flaminia by Zagato. Check out the Lotus Elan and accompanying toy-tug Chevrolet wagon with 327! Or maybe take the Packard Caribbean and Amphicar pairing if just want to chill.
Those classifieds are something. You have to admire the optimism of the guy selling the 60 Stude Hawk with the 2 bbl V8 and automatic as a “potential classic”. For the equivalent of $5200 in today’s money, it clearly was not a classic in 1966.
My wife’s father owned a Saab dealership for a time in the 60s, and I cannot imagine that they were an easy sell.
A 2-stroke Saab, especially without oil injection, would have been the very definition of a niche product in the US.
I learned several years ago that the Triumph 2000 had been sold in the US, but it was news to me. I’ve never seen one in the metal.
Triumph went after the same customers at home that Pontiac did in the US, and 1966 was just about Peak Pontiac, no wonder the 2000 didn’t travel well.
Wasn’t every thing not from Detroit a “niche” product. ?.
True, but the Saab 2-stroke was especially so.
You could argue that the VW Beetle was fairly mainstream by 1966.
Odd to put “unusually well-instrumented” in the first sentence of the copy of the Porsche ad. But they probably knew their target anal audience would dig it.
I didn’t know the Porsche ride was famous–for what?
That Bertone Mustang appears to have inspired the Mazda RX-5 Cosmo a decade later.
A ’51 MG-TD for under $9,000 in today’s dollars would be a great find.
I don’t see how any woman would be proud to run around with her beau in a 2 cycle SAAB. The face in the add doesn’t match reality.
Just another model year, and the Ford V4 would become available.
They are both nude from the waist down!
Maybe they are in a rush to the sauna.
That would explain the face on the driver 😉😉.
Great to see these, Paul—Lee J’s gift + your industriousness with scanner adds up to some wonderful time travel. This not too long after I started reading R&T at the library, something definitely different from Motor Trend. The want-ad prices (even at 8.1x) are loaded with sweet deals, for sure.
I remember Ford importing the Cortina, but I don’t think every dealer carried them. I remember photos of the rally and race cars, which make me wonder what the (street) Cortina was really like:
Growing up among the Dutch in South Holland Illinois meant seeing a few DAF autos and quite a few SAABs of this generation. My father really wanted one and it was at this time that I discovered the uniqueness of both brands. For affordability and convenience, my dad ended up with very nice VW Beetles while I was growing up in South Chicagoland. They slowly replaced the many Ramblers on our street.
I was still too young during these years to do more than glance through these issues. Our barber shop had them, but they had even more Marvel comics that I would race through hoping the guys in front of me took up time that I could finish a story.
The 1965 Ferrari ad (with photo and $17,500 price) gave Haskell Wexler as the contact. He was among the top cinematographers of the era, and in January 1966 he would have just finished shooting Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; his next picture was In the Heat of the Night.
Unless, of course, the car was owned by a different Haskell Wexler with a Hollywood address…
And the SAAB Special comes on strong in the braking, too: caliper disc brakes up front, oversized finned drums in the back.
Up ’till then Saab had some pretty crappy brakes especially because of freewheeling. Several times I took one up into the foothills and had to be very careful to not let the brakes fade from overuse.
Must not be a lot of tall mountains in Sweden.
When you get to the February issue and the Porsche 912 road test($4,900 in 1966) and apply a 8.1 times markup, that would make it a little under $39,000 as a good used car today, but BaT was getting winning bids in the $54,000 neighborhood at last check. This for a four cylinder-the 911 as a used car is more dearer.
Thanks Lee J; what a thoughtful gift! Now the CC community can enjoy the many road tests and related info from decades past. Personally, I’ll be interested in the earliest years from this collection.
What a generous contribution to the CC archives. Had a ’66 Fastback for years, actually 2, one I sold shortly after I installed the rebuilt short block it came with, had 62k miles and was in perfect original condition. Looking forward to that write up.
But it got me the 1,000 dollars I needed to buy my ’70 C10 in 1976, kept it until 2006.