|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » 1980S » 4X4 ( RSS)
-
|
Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time, the '72 Stutz Blackhawk blackjacked the Buickborghini and stuffed it in the trunk, for disposal in a hole in the desert later on (the way so many Blackhawk owners in Vegas solved their problems back in the day), according to the 71% of you who voted that way in the Choose Your Eternity poll. Today we're going to go with a couple of choices that allow me to use not-often-seen-in-PCH flags in the poll: Romania versus the Soviet Union! 1989 wasn't such a great year for Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceauşescu , but, even as the rabble beat down the jeweled doors to his palaces, he could console himself with the inspiring thought that the "Romanian Jeep," the ARO 244, was available for sale throughout the world. Even in the evil, decadent United States, a truck shopper could march right into a seedy office above a taxidermy shop in...
|
-
|
Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Last time we had another PCH Superpower upset, with Germany beating Britain in the Glas Versus Lotus challenge . Britain will come back strong, of course, but for now Germany can enjoy the pool of oil gathering beneath the Project Car Hell trophy. Fast forward to today; since it's Maximum Minivan Day , we're going to have Maximum Project Minivan Hell. For a Toyota to qualify for Project Car Hell, it must be rusty, rare, and packed with impossible-to-find options. We've found all three with this 1989 Toyota 4x4 van (go here if the ad disappears), which has some body rot (in a refreshing display of honesty, the seller sums it up in a single word: "Rusty") and the super-rare-in-North-America 4x4 drivetrain option. There's an assortment of minor (you hope) repairs to do, and it's nearly certain possible that the overheating problem...
|
-
|
What with all the great DOTSBE photos coming in from readers all over the globe, we haven't had a chance to show any Denver cars for a few weeks. This means we have quite the backlog, because in addition to Denver regulars Kitt and Ejacobs , I get shipped to Denver for work every so often and shoot the occasional street-parked vehicle myself while in town. Today is Kitt 's turn, with this clean BRAT she found in her South Denver 'hood. It seems that every third vehicle in town is a Subaru, but you don't see many of these things around. galleryPost('DOTSBEDenverBrat', 9, 'Subaru BRAT Down On The Denver Street');
|
-
|
Wouldn't you know it, the 60s BMW coupe beat the 80s one in our last Choose Your Eternity poll . Sure, the 633CSi is more complicated, but you might be able to find a parts car or three in your local wrecking yard... and where's the Hell there? Today we're going to return to the perennial France-versus-the-world battle for the All Time Global Project Car Hell JiggaChampion Trophy (which leaks rusty water and has to be jump-started), and- just because we love an underdog- we're going to let Japan take on the mightiest of PCH Superpowers! We really dig the Dangel 4x4 conversions for the Peugeot 504, and we'd totally drive one... but we Norteamericanos can't get them, thus sparing us the agony joy that is French four-wheelin' action. Or so we thought, prior to Kleinlowe sending us the tip on this Dangel-ized 1981 Peugeot 504 wagon (go here if the ad disappears). As Kleinlowe says "check out the angle of the Dangel," and we have to agree there's something...
|
-
|
We saw the Gremlin beat the Spirit by quite a margin in our last Choose Your Eternity poll . Maybe it was the Wayne's World connection, or maybe it was just the obscurity of the AMC Spirit. Either way, we're going to follow up a pair of quirky American machines with a pair of equally quirky Japanese machines. Sure, Subaru is plenty mainstream in North America these days, but remember when Subarus just seemed vaguely weird , say a couple decades back? When you only saw the little boxer-powered cars in areas with huge amounts of snow and NPR listeners? Those 80s Subies are semi-rare and quite cool, not as bulletproof as your Japanese Big Three machines of the era, and parts are getting tough to find... which makes them great raw material for your exile adventures in the garage! The acronym behind the Subaru BRAT's name stood for "Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter," which doesn't sound as good as "Leonamino," but we can't fault the marketers...
|
-
|
Our last Japanese representative on DOTS Truck Monday was the '80 Plymouth Arrow , but the last one actually bearing the name of an overseas manufacturer was the '74 Datsun of a couple months ago. That means we're due for another Japanese Truck Monday, so let's take a look at this fine tape-striped Late Malaise Toyota pickup. Oh, sure, these things are still everywhere (including the motor pools of every strongman, warlord, and wannabe Lord Humungus in the world), but immortality shouldn't disqualify a vehicle from Down On The Street! I found this rack-equipped 4X4 parked on the same block as the '53 Packard Cavalier and just around the corner from the '74 Plymouth Satellite Sundance Edition ; perhaps the presence of those two stellar DOTS heroes blinded me to the presence of this fine work truck for all these months. Check out these fine Late Malaise tape stripes! It's true that the 22R engine in this truck might not have been the mighty bass-boat-haulin'...
|
-
|
They all laughed at the AMC Eagle back in the day; why would anyone want to buy a car with four-wheel-drive ? And, of course, just about everything AMC did during the Late Malaise Era reeked of the panic swirling about Kenosha at the time, so car buyers could just picture the bash-to-fit frenzy of line workers running over to the Jeep assembly plant to swipe components to affix to Concord bodies. But these days everyone seems to want "command position" driver height and 4WD every bit as much as they want 16" diameter cupholders. Before its time! You still see a few of them around , though, and the Gray Lady has taken notice. [New York Times]
|
-
|
newVideoPlayer("85_Tercel_Wagon_476.flv", 463, 387,""); Ever since we had an '85 Tercel 4WD wagon on DOTS , I've been trying to find an ad for the thing to use in this series. Yes, it's a hokey Christmas-themed ad, but at least there's some low-yield hoonage involved. Was 1985 the high-water mark for Toyota, before the accountants took over and focus-grouped the life out of their vehicles?
|
-
|
newVideoPlayer("83_JeepCJ_Macho_476.flv", 463, 387,""); You know what big-haired early-80s chicks really liked? No, we mean even more than cocaine. That's right, a macho dude who rides a buffalo to work! Thing is, sometimes you need a ride that doesn't leave bovine poop in the parking garage, and then there's the matter of getting Buffalo Crotch Scabies from bareback bison riding. That's when you go for the Jeep CJ, which is slightly more comfortable than the buffalo, yet nearly as macho.
|
-
|
newVideoPlayer("83_JeepCJ_Macho_476.flv", 463, 387,""); You know what big-haired early-80s chicks really liked? No, we mean even more than cocaine. That's right, a macho dude who rides a buffalo to work! Thing is, sometimes you need a ride that doesn't leave bovine poop in the parking garage, and then there's the matter of getting Buffalo Crotch Scabies from bareback bison riding. That's when you go for the Jeep CJ, which is slightly more comfortable than the buffalo, yet nearly as macho.
|
-
|
While we had an 80s Toyota on DOTS just last week , we're really overdue to see an example of one of my all-time favorite Toyotas: the '83-86 Tercel Wagon. I've owned more of these than any other kind of car (admittedly, most were City Tow auction cars I turned around quickly, but I had a couple of drivers I kept for quite a while). I've always had a soft spot for funky old Toyotas (maybe because my very first car was a '69 Corona) and it saddens me to see how their cars have lost so much soul since the Tercel wagons, AE86s, and small pickups of the mid-1980s. The crazy thing about these cars was that the funky drivetrain setup actually worked pretty well. You had a longitudinally-mounted engine sending its two-digit horsepower back to a weirdo V-drive-style transmission , with a little tiny differential under the engine oil pan and a driveshaft going back to the rear axle (the 2WD cars seemed to have the same transmission with the rear output shaft deleted). The front...
|
|
|
|