Detroit '79

What might the value be of a 30-year-old Econoline whose roof...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:21:00 -0500

What might the value be of a 30-year-old Econoline whose roof has peeled off in dramatic shards of red-brown? It’s that 250ci knocker set beneath that vinyl console cover within. In 1979, the final generation of Ford straight sixes was ending its penultimate decade; compact V8s would replace inlines in the Ford stable by the 1990s. Actually, the van has almost no value whatsoever, unless you’ve got a Rolodex bearing a few addresses in Australia. Aussie company Classic Inlines developed an aluminum head based on the Australian 250-2v head, but with raised intake ports, high swirl combustion chambers, and larger valves. The heads can also be machined to fit electronic fuel injectors. With more power and decent fuel economy, owners of Falcons and Mustangs are now keeping their inlines instead of going V8. So the next time you see an ancient rustbox wearing the Econoline badge, think of the Australians and go have a kangroo sausage omelet.

[ebay]

Long before Ford outfitted 100 web-savvy travelers with 2010...

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:08:00 -0400

Long before Ford outfitted 100 web-savvy travelers with 2010 Fiesta hatchbacks, video cameras and internet access — and cast them to the four winds in search of adventure and viral-video gold — there was this. Many derided the original Ford Fiesta as a hapless, rustful econobox during its three year US run, from 1978 to 1980. But owners shined to the Fiesta’s revvy 1.6-liter Kent four and tight handling. That’s why most surviving models spend more time autocrossing than they do parked at Walgreens. This well-used model saw much pavement action at Susquehanna, PA-region SCCA events by a serious competitor who installed a Haltech fuel-injection setup and awesomeness-boosting box flares. For $7000, you also get four engines, one of which you could use in your TVR 1600M project car.

[Bring a Trailer]

If you’ve ever seen a Juicy Fruit gum (or Mountain...

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:49:00 -0400

If you’ve ever seen a Juicy Fruit gum (or Mountain Dew) commercial from the 1970s, you know the kind of youth-cultural vibe Ford was going for with its Free-wheelin’ appearance package. You’ll know it by the black bumpers, sunburst decals and other such “custom” accouterments. You could order the Free-wheelin’ kit on the Bronco, Ranger pickup and even the Pinto, which also shipped with a glass porthole that afforded extra privacy for when that half a jay and bottle of Mateus kicked in. Now you can recapture those days with a full-size Bronco that knows by instinct which side of the Cars’ Candy-O was the makeout side, and which one just plain sucked.

[via ebay]

After three decades’ worth of oppressive headlight...

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:38:00 -0400

After three decades’ worth of oppressive headlight standards (round only, please), the DOT — obviously under the influence of the newly hybridized Blueberry Super Skunk strains of the mid-1970s — started allowing square headlamps on new cars in 1975. By ‘79, the majority of new cars like Chrysler’s personal-luxury hit, the Cordoba, wore four-cornered lanterns up front.

Now in its mid-period, the Cordoba was holding its popularity among silk-wearing, newly divorced men in their mid-40s arriving at the local Holiday Inn lounge doused in Hai Karate. The whole Ricardo Montalban schtick was wearing a bit thin, but Chrysler-signed checks continued to arrive at the typecast Latin Lover’s Malibu estate. By 1980, Chrysler would redesign the Cordo, cutting its size, slapping it haphazardly onto the miserable Plymouth Volaré J-platform, and drawing down the power curtain to meet early-80s gas-crunch market demands. Sales tanked, but good-soldier Montalban nonetheless returned for yet another model year of cartoonish posturing and melodramatic, Madison Ave-hack prose. This car was the first augur of the ’70s end. Actually, it was the second if you include Uriah Heep’s 1978 album Fallen Angel.

[via ebay]

Ok, so Fort Wayne, Indiana isn’t technically Detroit, but...

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:16:00 -0400

Ok, so Fort Wayne, Indiana isn’t technically Detroit, but the Scout — in all of its two incarnations — is one of the four most significant proto-SUVs ever to travel American pavement (Wagoneer, Blazer, Scout, Travelall), the latter pair of which were born of International Harvester. This ‘79 Scout II sports the important Rallye package, whose middle-English spelling refers to a 12th century practice of foisting mediocre horses on the dim-witted public, noted in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Sellers would go about “paynting strypes” to make the horses look “rallye, rallye gud.” Chaucer later admitted he’d made the whole thing up in his posthumously released sequel, Canterbury Fail. This specimen, originally owned by the guy who played the bongos on Lalo Schifrin’s “Theme From Mission Impossible” (not really), has the 1970s version of exclusive alcantara seating (i.e., plaid), and a recent paint job that probably exceeds factory spec by a factor of 10.

[via ebay]

Dodge moved something like 7,000 of these Lil’ Red Express...

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:58:00 -0400

Dodge moved something like 7,000 of these Lil’ Red Express Truck packages in ‘78 and ‘79, riding the late ’70s long-haul trucking and CB-radio craze and a simultaneous national obsession with customizing pickups and vans. It was part of what Dodge called its “Adult Toy Program,” but even more important was its performance charter. The Little Red Express Truck was known in some circles — like that of Chrysler’s Tom Hoover, father of the 426 Hemi — as “The Last American Hot Rod.” Despite tightening emissions regs, Dodge still managed to build something hot enough to give the goofy bastard in the ad above — the one grinning ear to ear — apparently a decent shot at a threesome. How?

The secret was a loophole in the government’s smog laws, now obvious in light of the past decade’s full-sized-SUV bacchanalia. Since it was a truck, the Express’s big-rig style chrome stacks could blurt out all the full-strength emissions it wanted from its worked-over 360 V8. It was a brilliant strategy on Hoover’s part to package a pickup truck as a stealth muscle car, using a race-massaged truck engine to turn back the performance clock to the days before the intrusion of power-sapping anti smog gear. In a Car and Driver dragstrip test, the Express was pitted against a Porsche 928, Porsche 911SC, Ferrari 308GTS, Porsche Turbo, and whatever the fastest Corvette of the time was. Only the Porsche Turbo was quicker, just ask Don Sherman.

[via Auto Trader Classics]

Suckers to the side. On their near-to-brilliant Def Jam...

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:26:00 -0400

Suckers to the side. On their near-to-brilliant Def Jam debut Yo, Bum Rush the Show, Public Enemy dropped an ear beating called “You’re Gonna Get Yours.” Equal parts tribute to the Oldsmobile 98 and comment on racial profiling, YGGY was a four-minute sonic head kick rivaling Guns and Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” for most intensely vivid album (and career) opener in the history of popular music. Two decades later, it’s a little ragged around the edges, but has still aged a bit better than this decade-older Oldsmobile 98, which could use a shot of whatever Chuck D put in his iced tea back in 1987. Not running, but plush enough to be quite the project car.

[via easyautosales]

American Motors F*** Yeah! Laugh all you want, but 30 years ago...

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 17:35:00 -0400

American Motors F*** Yeah!

Laugh all you want, but 30 years ago next month, two Spirit AMXs ran at 24 Hours of Nürburgring, one of them with actor James Brolin (!) behind the wheel. The two cars, sponsored by B.F. Goodrich and set up similar to this one for sale — 304ci V8 and four speed — were the only American entries in the FIA’s 24-hour Group One endurance race that year. As automotive journalist Gary Witzenburg remembers, the two AMXs ran great, hitting up to 140 mph on the straights, and finishing 25th and 43rd overall out of a field of 120. Not quite losing your virginity in the back of the family Concord, but not a bucket of failure either.

[via carsforsale.com]

"September 7, 1979 – ESPN debuts."

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 08:04:00 -0400

“September 7, 1979 – ESPN debuts.”

A seven-liter V8 with under 200 horsepower? You are correct,...

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:55:00 -0400

A seven-liter V8 with under 200 horsepower? You are correct, sir. Cadillac’s 425ci, V8 was well into its swan song by 1979, soon to be replaced with the next decade’s more economical Caddy 368. Still, both carburated (L33) and injected (L35) versions of the ‘79 engine rendered 320 lbs-ft of torque, more than enough to launch this well-preserved Fleetwood limousine headlong into a Palm Springs micro-burst, unbeknownst to the aging Los Angeles cabaret singer tucking into a fully loaded hero sandwich inside the rear compartment. Numbers match, not that they wouldn’t.

[via Auto Trader Classics]

In a shotgun-spray ad campaign that ran during the late...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:35:00 -0400

In a shotgun-spray ad campaign that ran during the late ’70s gas crunch, GM insisted its Chevrolet Chevette would, “drive you happy.” I last drove a Chevette sometime in the late ’90s. It was an angry little sky-blue job that, for a reason unknown to me, carried a sombrero and a beachball in the hatchback. I had to white-knuckle it along a winding, rolling secondary road in the New York suburbs during a snowstorm. Pulling into the driveway, I signaled for a vodka the size of a Janitor in a Drum canister just so I might peel myself down off the ceiling.

Still, having a survivor like this one would probably augment a nice, sunny day spent singing along with Jonathan Richman on the AM band, crackling from that community college radio station three towns over, and taking long pulls on a bottle of diet Dr. Pepper.

[via ebay]

Which high(ish) performance coupe honoring the 1979 running of a...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:04:00 -0400

Which high(ish) performance coupe honoring the 1979 running of a famous midwestern 804-kilometer race could be ordered with a %-speed transmission? Here’s a hint, its V8 was replaced in 1980 with the least-powerful V8 ever offered in such a car — 120 hp. And right, that transmission’s really a four-speed overdrive.

[via ebay]

In its penultimate year of production, the Ford Pinto’s...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:25:00 -0400

In its penultimate year of production, the Ford Pinto’s 2.3-liter overhead-cam four may have produced just 88 horsepower, but the 8-track stereo pumped out at least 5 watts’ worth of The Cars’ Candy O. (This one’s been upgraded to cassette.) But with 31K on the clock and an owner-reported $7000 in maintenance logged, your gain here could subsequently be the gain of whoever owns the publishing rights to Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind,” which you’ll of course put into heavy rotation on the vintage Kenwood deck from morning to night.

[via ebay]

Every man, woman and child in the US in 1979 had an uncle who...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:43:00 -0400

Every man, woman and child in the US in 1979 had an uncle who drove one of these sparsely optioned Impalas or Caprices. My own uncle of this sort was named Morris. He lived in Shrewsbury, Mass and kept a garden in which he grew pumpkins the size of John Candy.

[via ebay]

After three years in the weeds, the Hurst logo returned to...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:33:00 -0400

After three years in the weeds, the Hurst logo returned to Oldsmobile dealers’ lots with a version of the Cutlass Calais W-30. (The re-introduction of the 442 badge was still a year away, so this Hurst/Olds is kind of a malaise-era orphan.) And although it was the first of GM’s H/O-designated engines that didn’t displace 455ci, it was the only one of GM’s ubiquitous A-body models in 1979 with a 350 V8 — though it only produced 170 hp. So says Wikipedia:

This H/O was built by Oldsmobile at the Lansing plant and didn’t get sent off for additional work at Hurst Performance Products or Cars and Concepts. For this reason, there would be no possible loophole around the then current EPA regulations.

Plus, you could get any color you wanted as long as it was white or black. And don’t forget the Hurst dual-gate automatic shifters, which may have actually had a purpose.

[via ebay]

Remember that time in Key West, after too many 7 and 7s, when...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:09:00 -0400

Remember that time in Key West, after too many 7 and 7s, when you talked about buying one of these and keeping it in the garage, covered in cosmoline for 30 years? Then you were going to sell it for three times the sticker price? Bingo. Oh, and that original sticker on this 32-mile specimen? $10,600.

[via ebay]

The luxuries just keep on coming with this Lincoln Town Coupe,...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:07:00 -0400

The luxuries just keep on coming with this Lincoln Town Coupe, one of the last great two-doors of the American Century. The lucky buyer is a mere set of curb feelers, a mint-green zoot-suit-and-zebra-hat combo and an application of clearcoat away from conjuring the late Ron O’Neal. Sure, Jade green is rated lower than purple or champagne on the Pantone pimp color chart, but you can always buy a pair of plaid pants and pretend you’re a retired union boss from Myrtle Beach.

[via ebay]