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Sorry.
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reminds me of the a first-grade joke:
guy goes to the Datsun dealership and the salesman is really steering him towards a Z. “Well,” he says “I was actually hoping to get an S-car.”
“An S-car? what’s that?”
“You know, so everyone can see my S-car go!”
it fell on deaf ears, though, since I didn’t know what escargot were in the first grade.
this must be a thing. alright, @Donald_Petersen, hop to it!
I never had a vanity plate on either of the trucks I owned, but they did have quite a bit of personalization, á-la Mr. Petersen. Currently, my “fast” bike, a blue frame with bullhorn-style bars, has a Schlitz Malt Liquor bottlecap for a headbadge.
@jlw the TV stations around here have put Dean’s “Matt Helm” movies into heavy rotation, which are awesome. He drinks and drives every time he’s behind the wheel! My, how times have changed.
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One word for this: Cheers!
Those are amazing in their plastic 70s excess. 1976 was a particularly fat year. The 1976 Thunderbird (and its corporate sister, the Lincoln Continental mark IV) were over two feet longer and nearly a ton heavier than the 1980 model was, four years later.
The Grand Marquis was even longer and heavier if it didn’t have the 460 V8. Truly a land barge for the ages!
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Wow, just looked at some photos and video of the '76 Grand Marquis.
It literally looks to me like they could put some slat armor on the windows, and use it as an APC. Although, it would probably have trouble with bridges. Most APCs do.
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Best plate I’ve ever seen was here in Minnesota on a Chevy Impala – “VLAD”
Kudos to that clever car owner.
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It is 2015
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Some people think oral doesn’t count. Particularly the abstinence-only types. Freshness assured unless seal is broken.
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Well, y’all asked for it.
My list isn’t as interesting as my dad’s. He started trading cars with his buddies back around 1953, when he was fifteen. He’d come home from school with a different car than he left home with. One time he added them up and figured he’d owned over 300 cars by the time he was thirty. God only knows what some of them would be worth today… Model As, '37 Fords, '40 Fords, a '50 Mercury. He was so proud of his '48 Cadillac that he actually took color pictures of it from three angles. But he rarely owned them for more than a few weeks. When I was born he owned a 1952 Chevy 3100 pickup that he’d bought for $60 and a case of beer. He had that until I was 6 or 7, then sold it to the dad of a girl in my class for $300. I was so sorry to see it go, I insisted on kissing its front fender goodbye. He’d sometimes let me sit on his lap while he drove that truck to the dump at the far end of our trailer park, and he’d let me steer. We were going maybe 8 mph, and I was overcorrecting all over the place, but man was it fun.
Just like this one, but with more green primer than brown.
When I was born we had a '67 Galaxie 500, but I have no memory of it. Other than the '52 Chevy, the car I remember most from my childhood was the one I eventually learned to drive in: our 1974 Renault 12 TL.
60hp, 4-speed manual, no PS, no AC, front-wheel drive. Black vinyl upholstery, which got deadly hot in direct sunshine. We actually put a hitch on it and towed a Tote-N-Tarry fiberglass trailer behind it.
One just like this, but powder blue instead of beige/green.
We somehow traveled all over the southwestern states in it, going as far as St Louis and Montana and back. The tongue broke on that trailer once, requiring a roadside welding job (my sister and I still remember the sparks flying when the tongue hit the pavement at 55 mph), and one time a wheel bearing seized up, necessitating an unscheduled night camping at that Bedrock campground that was blogged on BB last week.
Anyway, I learned to drive in the Renault, but my first car (shared with my sister) was my mom’s old 1978 Mercury Zephyr wagon.
Just like this, but silver, with less-badass wheels.
My mom re-entered the workforce in 1983 as a real-estate agent, and bought this car to show houses in. After a couple of years she’d made enough money to buy a spankin’ new '86 Taurus, so she sold the Mercury to me and my sister for $750. At one point, after a few months of joint ownership, my sister had a bad allergy attack and couldn’t see so well, so she let her boyfriend drive her home in our car. This broke a cardinal rule my parents had about that car (don’t let your friends drive it), so they forced her to sell her share to me. My sister always resented that, understandably. I used that car to deliver pizza with for a few years, from my senior year of high school until mid-1989 or so. Had a 302 V8 and C4 automatic transmission. Essentially the '78 Fairmont/Zephyr was the prototypical Fox-chassis Ford Mustang that debuted in 1979, just with more doors and less sex appeal. I lost my virginity in that wagon, my girlfriend and I weirdly proud of the rugburns on our knees from the red carpet upholstery in the back. On another occasion, I took my 3-year-old niece to the drive-in, where we watched All Dogs Go To Heaven and Ernest Goes To Jail. I unwisely overfilled her with a Happy Meal, popcorn, and too many Red Vines, and she yakked all over the (thankfully vinyl) upholstery. When I took her to the snack bar to clean her up, she charmed the hell out of the girls behind the counter. I once drove a couple of friends down to Rosarito Beach in Mexico in that car, the only time I’ve driven across the border. The bull horns I bought on that trip are the ones I mounted above the windshield of that car (and later, briefly, on the '77 Mustang II). I still have the horns somewhere, but the 2700 Variable Venturi carburetor on that 302 started giving me trouble, so I traded that car for my dad’s '77 Honda Accord hatchback.
Looked exactly like this, but with less shine and more rust.
This car was great! Had 186,000 miles on it when I sold it. 1.6 liter engine, 5-speed stick, loads of fun to drive. It originally belonged to my brother-in-law, and I drove it until my dad and I couldn’t keep up on all the valve jobs. Around that time (1991), my brother offered me a job on a movie he was directing, so I decided to move from suburban San Diego up to Hollywood. So I needed a reliable car, and ended up paying $1200 for a 1981 Honda Civic hatchback.
Just like this, but powder blue.
This is the car I outfitted with a T-grip shifter, barefoot gas pedal, and a beeping backup light. Serviceable, uneventful, reasonably fun to drive, never let me down. All three of my Hondas were stick shifts, and I do believe I managed to get laid in all of them (sorry, subsequent owners, except not-sorry since all three went straight from me to the junkyard with worn-out valvetrains). When I lived in Hollywood, I lived right behind the Chinese Theater on Orchid Avenue. Behind my building (blue arrow) was a parking garage, and I got the left-hand half of the leftmost garage (red arrow).
That garage door has since been replaced (probably several times), but in 1991 it was only locked on the right side, and reasonably easy to bend open on the lower-left corner. Within a week my car was broken into twice. The first time they carefully broke the rear window’s latch (preserving the glass) and stole my portable CD player and most of my CDs. I picked up a window latch at the junkyard and just listened to tapes on a boombox on the shotgun seat. A week later, probably the same somebody just smashed the same window and stole the boombox and most of the tapes (including my second copy of Deep Purple’s Perfect Strangers album).
While I was in Hollywood, I had some spare scratch and decided to get a hobby car. I found a 1962 Buick Skylark for sale from the second owner for $400.
Looked exactly like this, with 67% more rearview mirrors, and curb feelers.
The guy I bought it from hadn’t owned it long, and just wanted out of it. He’d bought it from the original owner, some superannuated elder of the community who’d sprung for the clear plastic seatcovers and a few extra rearview mirrors, two on each fender. At one point I decided to clean out the trunk, and inside it I found a copy of the L.A. Times from November 15, 1963… there was a minor article on the front that mentioned President Kennedy’s upcoming trip to Dallas in an offhand manner. The car was in swell shape, except it didn’t run too strong, so I figured I’d get around to restoring it sooner or later. At some point I discovered a store on Magnolia Avenue in Burbank that sold nothing but automotive manuals. What a goldmine! I paid $75 for both factory service manuals (engine and chassis) for '62 Buicks.
After Sleepwalkers and Encino Man wrapped, there was a threatened Screen Actors Guild strike, so there was no work for a while, so I moved back to San Diego to go back to college. I tried to drive the Buick down to San Diego, but only got about 10 miles down the freeway before it overheated. I called my dad, and he showed up with his truck and a rented trailer, and we hauled the Buick down to my parents’ house in San Diego. Then I went back to L.A. for my Honda and the rest of my stuff. Now that I was back in college and delivering pizza, I knew I’d have to unload the Buick, so I put an ad in the paper. Some guy called and expressed interest. I went out and lifted the hood to see if there was anything I could do to enhance the likelihood of sale. Within a couple minutes I realized that two of the spark plug cables were misrouted. I swapped them back to the proper plugs, and suddenly that little aluminum 215 cubic inch V8 was purring like a kitten. Figures. I could have been driving it all that time if I’d ever taken five minutes to actually fiddle around under the hood. The guy gave me $600 for my $400 Buick, so I couldn’t be disappointed.
Shortly after that, the Civic’s valves burned out, so I went looking for another Honda. My dad and I wandered around El Cajon, and soon found a 1978 Accord hatchback, very much like my old '77, but blue and without a hood. But the price was right, at $500. I painted the wheel trim rings neon orange to class it up a bit and drove it around town without a hood. One time I got pulled over (I think it might have been smoking a bit, though it could have been expired tags; don’t remember), and I asked the nice CHP officer if there was any problem with me driving without a hood. “Nope,” he said. “You need doors, and a minimum windshield, but you don’t need a hood.” The fastest I have ever personally driven was 115 mph in that very car. I was honestly just curious to see what it could do.
That Honda’s valves burned out after only 155,000 miles, so I sold it to a junkyard for $85. Around then I came into some money (almost $3,000) so I bought a gem: a surprisingly shiny 1976 Ford Mustang II Ghia, bright red with crimson velour upholstery.
The car looked precisely like this
And the upholstery looked a lot like this, only scarlet velour.
It was like driving around in a Turkish bordello, I always say. 2.8 liter V6, in cream puff shape. The only issue was the temperature gauge didn’t work, but since I bought this car from a dealer, I knew I could get it fixed there for free. I went to college some more and delivered some more pizzas in that car. Eventually my buddy Justin offered to sell me his '77 Mustang II, the one with the crappy four-banger in it. I considered it (he only wanted $400 for it), and so I borrowed it for a week. Then my girlfriend (future first wife) accidentally wrecked the door on it. The door was open and resting against her mom’s '84 Bronco II. She didn’t notice it, and drove forward in the Bronco II, which opened my Mustang’s door much farther than it was meant to go. So I ended up buying the Mustang II, and for about a year I had a fleet of two Mustang IIs. They suck, but I still like them. The blue one is the one I cut a sunroof in with a torch. At some point, the rhythm guitarist in my band borrowed the blue Mustang II for a couple weeks. He got in a minor wreck in it, gave a false name to the cop, and managed to get away on foot. Justin, the former owner (and our bassist/vocalist) was still listed as the registered owner, so got dinged with a $2500 insurance claim. We didn’t talk to that guitarist again for a couple years. Eventually he asked if he could rejoin the band, and we told him sure, as long as he paid Justin $2500 for the claim (plus nominal interest), and presented me with a $400 car. We didn’t really mean it, though. He was kind of a shitty guitarist.
Around this time, my girlfriend and I decided to get married. I knew I’d have to go back to work in Hollywood, since I still didn’t have a degree and didn’t know how to do anything else. I drove the red Mustang II up to L.A. for a job interview, and somewhere around Carson on the 405 the car overheated. I really should have fixed that temperature gauge when I had the chance. Didn’t have the money to tow the car anywhere, and I feared I’d cracked the block, so I ended up selling my beautiful red Ghia to a junkyard, again for $85. I nearly cried. And my buddy Justin reminded me that he always said Ghia stood for “Gotta Help It Along.”
Couple weeks later I came into some more money, and I borrowed some from my brother and parents and headed to Toyota of El Cajon. This would have been October of 1994, less than a week before the brand-new for 1995 Tacomas showed up on the lot, and they were selling off their last few 1994 pickups (Hiluxes to you non-USians out there) for dirt-cheap. Seriously. Mine was one of the very last Hiluxes sold in the states, built the first week of October 1994, and I paid $7500. The identically-specced '95 Tacomas were going for $13,995. Best automotive money I ever spent.
No radio, no A/C, no rear bumper, completely stock. 5-speed stick, 2.4 liter 22R-E four-cylinder engine. The only extra was the metallic blue paint, which cost me an additional $150. I drove that truck for twelve years, and eventually gave it to my niece. She drives it up in Alaska now, with nearly 300,000 miles on it. That was my last stick-shift, and man, do I miss it.
In 1995 I worked on a crappy TV show for the USA Network called Campus Cops. The Unit Production Manager owned a beautiful 1970 Mercury Cougar XR-7 convertible, which I coveted but didn’t think I could afford. The show’s payroll accountant told me I could finance it through a certain credit union, and so I did. I paid off the $7500 loan by $300 a month. Originally a 2-barrel 351 Cleveland, that car now possesses a 351 Windsor for more hotrodding flexibility (they stopped making the Cleveland in 1974, whereas they kept making the Windsor engines for another 20 years).
How it used to look, and how it’s supposed to look.
And how it looks now, alas:
One of these days it’ll be all restored and shiny black. Oh, yes indeedy. This car is the one car I’ll never sell. I haven’t really driven it since my daughter was born, eight years ago, but it’ll be coming back soon.
In 1996 I drove the Toyota truck up to Estes Park, Colorado, so I could work on the ABC-TV miniseries version of The Shining, which we shot at the Stanley Hotel, where Stephen King and his wife were staying when he had the bright idea to move his upcoming haunted-house story into a Colorado hotel. While we were staying at the hotel and shooting this miniseries during the winter off-season, a couple of strange things happened.
I read Stephen King’s book Christine around 1986 or so. That’s the one about the haunted 1958 Plymouth Fury. Remember?
I have a distinct memory of finishing that book on the school bus on my way home. I stuffed the tattered paperback into my backpack, and looked out the bus window. And there was an actual '58 Fury, not red, but still a '58 Fury, in the lane right next to the bus. I thought for a second I must be imagining it, but I double-checked and sure enough, it was a Fury, twin headlights and Fury logo and all.
The next time I saw a '58 Fury in person was in a converted stable right next to the Stanley Hotel, which the hotel used as a garage. Right next to it was a 1959 Cadillac Sedan de Ville, which somebody had cut in half, shortened, and welded together as a 2-seater (like a first-generation Thunderbird). Boy, did those proportions not work on that car. Both the Caddy and the Plymouth were covered in dust and broken hotel furniture, as if they’d been in that stable/garage for decades. And it was really strange, because, well, 1958 Furies are pretty rare, and also because Steve King himself was there in that hotel, writing script revisions for us. And to top it off, one of the picture cars on the show was Dick Halloran’s own 1959 Caddy.
Coincidence? Sure. But a big one!
One of the other picture cars on the show was the Torrances’ own red VW Beetle.
The Transportation department bought a couple of 1974 Beetles and repainted and reupholstered them for the show. They soon discovered they’d bought one Super Beetle, which didn’t match the other one due to the Super Beetle’s curved windshield (regular Beetles had flat windshields), so they ended up with a spare Super Beetle that I bought off the production for $750. I planned to drive it home from Colorado once the production ended, but I didn’t realize it had a burned exhaust valve, plus I didn’t quite understand the limitations of stock VW suitcase engines, so I drove the Bug down the hill from Estes Park to Boulder to Denver at 75 mph, and overheated the engine so badly I cracked the case halves and lost all my oil. I managed to talk the Transpo department into buying the Super Beetle back for about $250, and headed back home to California in my Toyota truck.
While I was in Colorado, my Cougar suffered some body damage back home in California. So far it’s been hit three times while parked, minding its own business. And one time, I went though a yellow light and crashed into a car that was turning left in front of me. I thought the driver saw me, but she was jawing on the phone and didn’t. Wrecked the front of the Cougar, obliterated her Grand Am.
I kind of despaired of finding new body parts easily, as most of the body panels on my Cougar are specific to 1969 and 1970 years, and the front end is 1970 only. But there used to be a junkyard in the San Fernando Valley called Memory Lane, that specialized in pre-1974 cars. Coolest junkyard in town. Anyway, I headed over there one Saturday, went through the big gate, and started hunting through the Mercury section, trying to find anything I could use. I needed a hood, both front fenders, the front bumper and air dam, radiator, headlight buckets, pretty much the whole front end that wasn’t suspension or steering-related. And all I could find was a front fender from a 1972 Cougar, wrong shape altogether. I heaved a sigh of resignation, and turned to leave.
But as I approached the exit, what did I see parked just behind that big gate? A complete and straight 1970 Cougar! They wanted $2500 for the whole thing, but since it wasn’t a convertible, I just wanted the parts. Couldn’t believe my luck. Took off the parts, loaded them into my truck, and tootled away in triumph. Now I really just have to finish some sanding and paint the fucker, but proper bodywork is soooo time- and labor-intensive (and expen$ive if you don’t do it yourself) that I’ve been trying to get around to finish this damned car for over 15 years.
At some point I bought another 1970 Cougar to use as a parts car, but once I liberated my 351W engine and a passenger door from it, I gave the rest away.
A buddy of mine is married to a woman whose father owned a 1968 Ford F-250 Camper Special.
Very much like this, but all sky-blue instead of two-toned.
She grew up going on camping trips in it. The camper itself was five years older than the truck, and all polished wood inside, kinda like being inside a yacht (I imagine). At some point in the early 2000s, when gas first got really expensive, he decided to unload it. Since it only got 6 mpg (downhill with a tailwind) he figured he’d have a tough time selling it, so he just gave it to me. I went on a few fun camping trips in that thing, but usually took the camper off to just use it as a truck.
360 big block, similar to the 390 but with a destroked crank. C6 transmission, Dana 44 rear end with 4.11 gears. Top speed of 65 unless you wanted to break something soon. Seriously needed a Gear Vendors overdrive. I added an Edelbrock Performer carb and intake and Mallory electronic ignition and got it up to 11 mpg. I’d still have the truck to this day, but my wife insisted I get rid of the camper, and the only way to get rid of the camper without taking an axe to it was to roll it away with the truck underneath, so I gave the rig away to the bass player of The Hangmen, who is not only an amazing bass player but also a hell of a sweet person. Easy come, easy go.
Around ten years ago, a fella I knew gave me his old 1987 Jaguar XJ6 Vanden Plas when I built a dub rack for him.
Not so shiny these days…
The car had 186,000 miles on it (somewhat amazing for a Series III Jag) and he didn’t want to be bothered with it. A buddy gave me a ride out to Santa barbara to pick it up, and I drove it home. Very slowly. The engine only ran on five cylinders, and the transmission needed to warm up for five or ten minutes before it would shift out of first gear. Going up the 7% Conejo Grade between Camarillo and Thousand Oaks was a hair-raising experience. I don’t think I topped 20 mph on that hill. But I made it to the top and all the way home, and on that drive I could imagine myself wearing a scarf and doeskin gloves and maybe a deerstalker hat… man, that car handled like a dream, even with its busted-ass piece-o-shit British Leyland engine. I became determined to do a Chevy engine swap. Here was my donor:
I bought a 1993 Chevy Caprice wagon solely for its 5.7 liter 350 engine and 4L60E overdrive transmission. Paid $1000 for this car (or one just like it but not nearly so shiny), and it sat in my driveway for most of a year before I finally got around to doing the swap, which actually only took two days for the broad strokes. I used a John’s Cars swap kit, which was remarkably fun and easy, with wiring harnesses and connectors custom-made for exactly your donor Jag and donor engine/transmission combo. That Jag still runs swell, but I gave it to my nephew and he kinda slightly wrecked it. Broke the right half of the IRS right off the frame, so it’s still kinda barely driveable but incredibly unsafe.
This particular Jag is now a lost cause, but I really want to do another of those swaps, this time either into a mid-80s XJS, or maybe something older than 1975 to avoid the smog headaches. (Took me most of a year to smog the Jag after the swap, in part because all the smog referee offices were closed statewide due to budget shortfalls).
Well, those are the arguably interesting ones. I still have the Cougar, and the Hilux and the Jag are still in the family. Currently I also own a 2007 RAV-4 and a 2004 Toyota Sienna, but nothing very interesting has happened with either of those.
Could they be any less interesting? I don’t see how.
See, I’m having trouble stifling my yawns even now.
So anyway. What the hell do you all drive?
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That was incredible; @jlw could really turn this into its own article.
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Donald did it all, what could I possibly add?
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This is a running gag in my state with court reporters: the people who sit at a little machine and type up the proceedings. A friend of mine was actually questioned when he requested his plates because he asked for the same letters in a row plus the next available number. For personalized plates, which are much cheaper than vanity plates, you have to have letters first and then numbers, and you can either specify that the number has to be exact or you’re willing to take the next available number. Smith 56, if there are already 55 other Smiths, that kind of thing. Anyway, the nonsense grouping of letters already had about 16 plates, so he was going to be number 17. They gave it to him, because he gave an excuse and they couldn’t prove it was anything untoward. As you might have already guessed: it’s the same thing in court-reporter-typing that vittu is in Finnish!
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Just break it out to the front page for greater distribution.
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I give up?
Geez, I feel old.
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Hoho!! A land-barge to be sure. The Marquis was also fond of intermittently catching fire at the carburetor–I kept an asphalt shingle in the back seat to beat out the flames. Unfortunately many of my dates did not find the fire endearing or even appreciable…
As for the '76 Thunderbird…Long live the Thunderchicken, as Dad liked to call it. The Thunderturd, if properly motivated, could belch a ginormous cloud of black smoke upon starting, which was something Dad discovered at the mall when the 'turd vomited said smoke all over a rightly-pissed-off group of young ladies. And when we used the 'turd to re-sod a friend’s front yard, Dad never cleaned out the trunk, and from that point forward mushrooms and anthills were a normal part of life in the car. We also learned that the anthills were home base to a roving band of small black ants that would descend almost immediately upon any food being carried in the car–if you like those fries without some insect protein, better eat up quick, sport.
I have a great deal of respect for your automotive quiver, @Donald_Petersen, as Dad also owned a baby-shit-brown Accord that introduced me to the All-Night Auto-Doctor following a head gasket failure.
I consider my Dad to be an intelligent, thoughtful human being who has absolutely awful taste in cars. Maybe a year ago he was looking for something ‘new’, having turned in the leased CRV, and he came home with a purple velour-topped convertible with wire spoke rims, curb feelers, and mold in the back seats (something like a '79 Monarch, but cheaper and smaller and definitely uglier). [sigh] He took it back the next day, thank dog.
Now get off my lawn you kids with your “fuel injection” and “functional safety features”. Punks!
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It already IS its own article!!!
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Now I just miss my old '77 280Z 2+2. ::sigh::
@anon29631895: That seems unpossible unless everything got processed in Madison. 
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Ok, I’m going to go take my meds now and lay down for a while.
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