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Would you prefer a pure Italian Quattroporte with 288 honest Maserati horsepower… or one with a blown Ford 5.4 modular V8 grunting out 626 Detroit horses? And what would you pay? Yes, that's two separate questions, and we're only interested in the latter one here; we're assuming that all but the most obsessive ardent Maserati purists will allow for modifications to the not-so-sacred Quattroporte, anyway. As was the case with yesterday's NPOCP Skoda wagon , this car has been for sale since North America was part of Pangea, and we've been getting tips about it for almost as long (thanks to Franzouse for the most recent tip). So, the car: 626 horsepower plus supercharging plus manual transmission plus Maserati nameplates definitely registers a reading in the red part of the Badass-O-Meter™, and we must observe that Las Vegas is the perfect home for it. We won't speculate on performance figures, but they must be truly scary. So, think about what kind of machine you can...
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Here's a little car that's nearly extinct in rust-prone areas. We saw a '77 Accord in this series not long ago, and it was startling how many readers had never seen a first-gen Accord on the street. Now we're going to look at an example of the early 2nd-gen Accord , which was still quite small (2,076 pounds) and was the first Accord to be built in North America. Horsepower was up to 76- yes, those weight and power numbers would be considered laughably small nowadays, though these cars drive just fine- and Honda's rep for reliability was really getting entrenched in the American consciousness by this time. The price back in 1982? $8,449 for the LX, or $1,050 more than the base Accord hatch. Clearly, the cachet of the LX badging wasn't enough to stop some vocab-challenged vandal from keying "ASS" into the hood paint...
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UDMan is writing for the CarDomain blog these days, but he's been kind enough to share some of his latest finds with us. The '83 Callaway Porsche 944 we saw earlier today got us in a German Callaway sort of mood, so let's check out this super-rare '82 Callaway Volkswagen Scirocco that UDMan spied while covering a Callaway event: galleryPost('UDManCallawayScirocco', 7, 'Callaway 1982 VW Scirocco'); Callaway Cars held their first annual open house on the second weekend of October at the company’s headquarters located in bucolic Old Lyme Connecticut. Saturday was a spectacular, New England autumn day, bright, sunny, and warmer than normal, just right to showcase some of the rarest automotive creations that were ever made. This was also a chance to take in the essence of an organization, which grew from a one man business that was conducted in a garage in his home, to a well respected engineering and production company with three locations worldwide. I knew I...
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What's a really cool used vehicle worth? Yesterday, 60% of you opined that 300 grand was too much for a beautiful Citroën DS21 Chapron Palm Beach , so today we're going with another much-beloved, yet more affordable, machine: a 1982 VW Rabbit Diesel pickup. It's had an engine upgrade and a ton of new parts, the interior is authentic Malaise Turquoise, and the whole package looks great. No doubt about it, this is the nicest example of a Rabbitamino we've seen in a long time. But… $12,000? What do you think? [ Craigslist San Francisco , thanks to Casadelshawn for the tip!] galleryPost('NPOCP82CaddyDiesel', 4, '1982 VW Caddy Diesel For 12 Grand'); Do you like 12 grand for an '82 VW Rabbit Diesel pickup? ( surveys )
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Near as we can tell, this video for the Sonido Lasser Drakar song "82 Pontiac Firebird" shows a wholesome-looking refrigerator-white 3rd-gen Firebird that turns into K.I.T.T. when the sun goes down; meanwhile, the car's driver becomes a werewolf , thirsty for the blood of the Badly Choreographed Cheerleaders. Thanks to Franzouse for the tip!
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! It seems that the Japanese won't be celebrating an improbable victory over PCH Superpower Britain this time around, with the Land Rover beating the Nissan Patrol 57% to 43% in our poll . Today we're going to return to a couple of perennial PCH heavy hitters, cars that we all really really want , yet make us stagger back in awe and horror when contemplating the magnitude of the task they represent: the Mercedes-Benz 6.9 and the Jaguar V12! There are ordinary Project Car Hell vehicles, and then there are the heavyweights . The projects that, in the words of the prophet John in Revelations 20:10, will have you "thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever." In fact, the Book Of Revelations is the only shop manual you'll need with a PCH...
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newVideoPlayer("/82_Starlet_JDM_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Those sand rails had better look out, because the Starlet- right off the boat from Japan and sporting JDM fender mirrors and right-hand-drive- now rules the desert! Never mind the fuel-economy thing; it's off-road prowess that gets Starlets off the showroom floor!
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newVideoPlayer("/82_Toyota_Celica_494.flv", 506, 423,""); The problem facing the producers of this ad was plain: they had a budget of roughly $2.99, yet needed to show how futuristic and advanced the new third-gen Celica really was. The solution? Huff paint until your vision goes all woobly, then start the cameras rolling! Arriving on the planet in a snow globe Space Sphere, the Celica awed the world with its quasi-flip-up headlights and ability to drive in a straight line!
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newVideoPlayer("/82_Nissan_Sentra_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Of course we realize that the books were cooked on that 58 MPG figure; the old EPA test had about as much to do with real-world driving as the image of Sea Monkeys has to do with real brine shrimp. Still, though, the '82 Sentra sipped gas through a cocktail straw, and entry-level econoboxes 26 years later are guzzling the stuff by comparison. Would present-day car buyers find this Datsun intolerably loud, cramped, and bouncy, pissing themselves in terror every time an Expedition loomed in their field of vision… and what's with the hand-cranked windows and lack of air conditioning? Yeah, a car like this would have no chance today, but let's see what happens when gas hits 10 bucks per!
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. The BMW E24 is not exactly an endangered species, but it's such a good-looking car that every single one I see in Alameda qualifies for this series. Never mind that I have photographs of six Alameda 2002s stockpiled- it's 6 Series time again! This car is owned by the man I consider to be the King Of Alameda BMWs; not only does he have a '74 E9 on the street, he's got a turbocharged 745i and who knows what other droolworthy Bavarian steel in the garage and scattered around the neighborhood. We'll be seeing the rest of his cars soon enough, but today it's the E24's turn. He picked up this '82 633CSi cheap when its previous owner despaired of ever getting his PCH running. It needs some work, but the body is straight and it now runs just fine. It's tough to find an example of car-quality-per-dollar quite as good as...
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newVideoPlayer("/82_Ford_Granada_Germany_494.flv", 506, 423,""); Now, you might think German men would be at a disadvantage when trying to score with the ladies in Paris, but she'll be saying "Ja, ja!" when Hans rolls into town in a brand-new Ford Granada. No, not this kind of Granada - we mean the European Granada ; Ford thought the name was so good that they needed to assign it to two totally different vehicles. Paris-based Franzouse gets the credit for sharing this one with us; we can assume he's now heading to Berlin to see what kind of effect his Mehari will have on the women there.
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newVideoPlayer("/82_Pontiac_6000_476.flv", 506, 423,""); In the early 80s, it looked like American cars couldn't compete with the imports so well any more. But wait! Here comes the '82 Pontiac 6000, which does its talking where it counts: on the road. Loaded for bear with a (90 horsepower) four-cylinder engine and totally different from its Chevy Celebrity sibling, the 6000 no doubt had Japanese auto execs diving out of office windows.
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Today's car is one I see frequently, and I've spent months wrestling with an internal debate over its eligibility for this series; sure, it's a quarter-century old and a great-looking car, but probably 98% of the diesel W123s ever sold are still on the road today and it's a stretch to call this one a survivor . Eventually, the rarity of the early-80s coupes in North America sold me; back in the early 80s, what self-respecting wealthy car buyer craved the sportiness of a big Benz coupe, yet was willing to put up with the 120 horsepower of a rattly, smoky diesel? OK, the OM617 was actually quiet, didn't smoke, and was probably the most reliable automobile engine ever made, but Americans who look for stolid reliability tend to want four doors. I'm not sure this is actually an '82; it could be as recent as 1985. The feds didn't...
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Amazingly, a Chevy (well, Chevy/Buick) managed to beat an obscure, 40-year-old German microcar in a heads-up Project Car Hell competition, with a 57-43 split in yesterday's voting . Today we're going back to the common-theme idea; inspired by all the love for the DOTS Cressida , we decided we ought to do a Project Car Hell matchup featuring a pair of Late Malaise boxy Japanese midsize sedans, complete with luxury features, independent rear suspensions, and big inline-six engines. Japanese stuff isn't normally hellish enough, however, due to their boring reliability and tediously good build quality. In order make things more interesting, these projects are going to require massive horsepower upgrades. Boost, engine swaps, whatever it takes! These days, the demand for the "four-door Supra" is so high that it's tough trying to find one cheap enough to serve as the basis for a project that's going to involve a lot of cutting and pasting. That doesn't mean it...
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The Smokey & The Bandit II cachet, coupled with the challenges inherent in a compu-Q-Jet-ized turbocharged Pontiac 301, handed the Indy 500 Pace Car Turbo Trans Am a solid 60/40 win over the Saab 99 Turbo in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll , giving Detroit bragging rights- if that's the right term- over Järfälla for the day. Today, we're going to look at the price on the gas pump and laugh! You see, if you want to flaunt your success to the world, you need to light your Cuban cigars with $100 bills (since Tricky Dick pulled all the higher-denomination bills from circulation in 1969, the C-note is the best you can do) and drive a vintage British luxury machine that drinks high-octane gazoline the way Winston Churchill chug-a-lugged fine brandy! Hasn't every true car geek toyed with the idea of buying a genuine Roller? You'd be able to contemplate the insect-like scurrying of the proles from the leather-and-hardwood comfort of your own living room on wheels ...
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