I remember seeing a 58 Eldo at the Rank and Son show in Milwaukee back in the day. My recollection is the color was Pacific Coral and because it was a 58 I think it was a one year only body. A very cool car with a unique back end and tail light treatment. Wally Rank hosted the show every summer and had 100s of cars on display from both his personal collection and from individuals like me. I remember attending attending the shows and thinking these are some very cool cars on display, this is where I saw my first Skyliner and some cowboy actor's Caddy with longhorns on the hood. For a couple of years I even got to display one of my cars, my first collectible, a '63 Avanti R1 in Turquoise with Fawn accents. Everyone who arrived at the show with a car to display was greeted personally by Wally Rank, given a ticket for a free lunch and provided with a goody bag. As a 20 something kid he made me feel like my car was the coolest one at the show, a real gentlemen. Rank and Son Buick is now a field in a not so nice part of town though back in the day it was the centerpiece of cars on display for one weekend every summer. ... View more

I got to see the Clio in person, this very one I'm sure, at Road Atlanta back in 2014 or 2015, can't remember which. The gentlemen who drove it there did just what the author did, borrowed it from the Lane. I was fascinated by the engineering and how they stuffed that V6 in the back seat, it reminded me of a car I saw once named Shogun, I think it was a Ford Fiesta with a Taurus SHO drivetrain stuffed in the back seat. It takes all kinds of nut jobs to dream this stuff up, and dangerous or not they're all cool as hell ... View more

Love the bumper sticker, I need a few of them. Another sign I saw years ago at a friend's British car shop read "CARS PARKED IN FRONT OF THIS DOOR WILL BE CHEERFULLY DISASSEMBLED AND SOLD FOR PARTS" ... View more

In 1989 I ordered a 5.0 LX convertible, Red, White Leather and a Black top. When I ran a Marti Report I was surprised to discover it's only 1 of 273 of this combination. I wanted a black top for two reasons, first, white gets dirty too easily and second black looks much better, I think it's the black top with White upholstery that makes it so rare. I chose the LX over the GT for one reason only, those lovely big stainless steel pipes hanging below the rear quarters, an awesome look, I think. I still have the car today and it's covered 29000 miles in its lifetime, I've made sure to take impeccable care of it as it's the only car in my collection that I bought new rather than restored. That being said, nothing lasts forever. Turns out the rear window motors have a plastic clutch mechanism and the plastic shatters over time, the parts cost me 3 bucks though everything behind the front seats needs to come out to get at the window motors. No big deal really and a good opportunity to clean in the nooks and crannies. Put it all back together and all was well, or so I thought. I then went to replace the door striker on both sides, they're covered with a cylindrical plastic bushing, which like the window motor clutch plastic, had disintegrated. I'd like to get my hands on the engineer who designed this setup, as I unscrewed the striker I heard a clunk and I knew just what it was from, the nut on the back side of the striker was not a kept nut. So, back to unupholstering the rear again, only to find there is no access without removing the convertible top mechanism, obviously not something I had any desire to mess with. Instead I did some arthroscopic surgery with my magnet and retrieved the nut and carefully lowered it into position so I could mate it with the striker bolt. The first crap piece of the design is no kept nut, the second totally crap design was to cover the access to the nut with the convertible top mechanism. Arggggh All in all though it's a fantastic car with fantastic exhaust notes and it goes sideways when you step on the gas. I think it would be fun to have a hatch back as well since the convertible is less than rigid, but the top goes up and down for fun in the sun. ... View more

I had a similar experience with a radiator out of one of myh V12 Jags, here in Milwaukee, WI there is only one shop and he only does trucks, really big trucks and Caterpillar earth moving equipment. One of guys who has helped me greatly with guiding me through my Shelby Mustang restoration mentioned a guy in Wausau, WI, in the north central part of the state. I called him up and he said "sure, I can rod it out" (rodding out is a lost art where you take a rod shaped like the tube and clean each and every tube of scale). I used many local radiator shops back in the day when I worked for a Jag dealer, it was completely hit or miss, usually miss, that someone would really go through the painstaking process of rodding out the core, couple that with the complexity of removing a radiator from a V12 only to be disappointed it still overheated after re installation!! Bob from Glen Ray Radiators turns out to be the premier Mopar radiator restoration guy and he did a phenomenal job on my XJS radiator, hasn't run hot since. I asked if he could re core my Shelby radiator and he said he's done them for years, this guy is a real craftsman for any model radiator and it's nice to have someone still in the business, even if they're 3 hours away. ... View more

The Deuce thought it was a revolutionary car as well. Hagerty released a bunch of internal documents on the birthday of the Mustang and all the design research was based on the Corvair's success. They were trying to build a Corvair Beater, which it turns out, they did, and handily too! ... View more

I knew of one of these instances though not when the car was a classic. We had a customer at the gas station who had a very troublesome 914, he convinced a co worker of mine to steal it and burn it, he'd had all the German engineering he could take. He collected on the insurance policy and my co worker collected some money, I have no idea how much. The kicker was, the owner of the 914 was a cop!! BTW, thanks for closing the article with "that's a whole other story". I keep looking through Websters to find the word "Nuther", as in a whole nuther story. It's not in there yet, though I'm sure it will find it's way in someday. ... View more

I'm not sure why the entire industry wants to go entirely EV. Jaguar announced it will be all EV, so much for the great american road trip, instead drive 300 miles and spend the night. Maybe, just maybe, welcome back to Route 66 and all the Radiator Springs like towns along the way, nah, been there done that. ... View more

When I was 17 I worked in a gas station with a guy who had one of these, actually it was a 67 Eldorado but it shared the front drive transmission. The guy who owned the car was a bit of a nut job and liked to get the car airborne, quite the feat with a tank sized car. On one entrance into the station parking lot he got the front wheels off the ground and when they reconnected at full throttle the chain (the one noted in the article) broke. Turns out the whole mess has to come apart to change the chain even though it is accessed through something like a timing chain cover on the back of the trans axle. We pulled back the carpet, took an air chisel and opened up the flat floor and replaced the chain, all in about 3 hours. A hack job for sure but he got his car back on the road. ... View more

Sure looks like there's a lot of Bondo in that right rear quarter, and a rust hole to boot. Someone out there is crazier than I am or they know something about the car that makes it special, I have no idea what that could be though. ... View more

My first brand new car ever was an 83 GLT2SRO, it was an awesome car and I had it for 18 years. It was as nice when I sold it as it was when I bought it. I was working as a Jaguar and Lotus technician and Volvo was our main line, if I recall I paid $13,382.00 for it and I sold it 18 years later for $8,000.00. While the above description may be confusing it was Volvo's official name of the car, it was a GLT, 2 Door, Sunroof with a 4 Speed and a Laycock Overdrive Unit. These are great cars and go on for ever if they don't rust away, I think they're also very good looking cars, I like the boxy look. ... View more

Let us not forget the popularity was so great that America's Group wrote a hit song about said Honda 50, "I'm gonna turn on the light so I can ride my Honda tonight". And this happened less than 20 years after Japan was America's arch enemy. Too bad Bagdad, Iran and others aren't smart enough to follow suit. ... View more

Because I'm old and human I expected to read about mechanical injection and I was wondering why a distributor in the pictures, early Bosch type injection used a trigger board or even extra points to trigger injectors, but that's electronic injection, not mechanical. Reading a little more closely I realized it was ignition, not injection. A couple of tips for checking key items on your distributor. First, if you have a vacuum advance or retard, check it by simply attaching a hose and sucking on it to see if it holds vacuum, the distributor plate should also move. Second, check to see the mechanical advance is working, grab the rotor and twist it, in one of the two directions it should move/rotate and then return back home on its own. Lastly, if your car runs like crap, wiggle the rotor from side to side, if there's movement you likely have bad bushings in the distributor causing all kinds of timing and dwell problems with each rotation. Rebush your distributor and your engine will run like a dream ... View more

Rob, I feel your pain. 20 Years ago when I resurrected my 71 Elan Plus 2 I put in brand new Metalastic Rotoflex couplings in the half shafts, at the time I couldn't afford the $1600 CV jointed half shaft upgrades. Well, this spring during the annual servicing of the fun car fleet I was met with a leaky heater core on my 30 year old 5.0 convertible, a leaky heater core and a bad rear suspension fulcrum bearing on my 91 Series III XJ 12, and, you guessed it, a broken Rotoflex coupler on my Elan Plus 2. I guess some spring services are more involved than others. Now, being near retirement age I could finally afford the $1600 CV half shafts, I rang up my friend Ken at Dave Bean Engineering and the new shafts arrived days later. Last weekend I set about installing the new shafts, and in true Lotus fashion the first one went in with about 3 hours of work, the second one in about an hour. Now it was off to the test drive to see how much springiness would be removed from the drive line under acceleration and deceleration. They worked great. However, I've always had a sticky rear caliper on the left side and it's something I've known about for 20 years, no effect on braking so it's not been an issue, until I removed the rubber dampener (the Rotoflex) from the drive shaft. Now when cornering I get a harmonic noise from the dragging brake pad that used to be isolated with the Rotoflex, now it sounds like someone swirling their finger on a giant wine glass in the back seat, I guess I'm going to have to rebuild the rear calipers in the fall, I'll bear with the noise for the summer. Now off to the Heater core races, YUK ... View more

Okay, this guy is completely nuts, bonkers, twisted, flip city and so on. I own one of these wonderful machines and couldn't imagine doing any of these repairs on the street with a floor jack and jack stands. I'm not sure how he got the spring out of the front suspension, you need a special Jaguar tool that's about 2 1/2 feet long that fishes up the center of the spring from the bottom and then you can remove the spring seat pan from the lower A arm and relax the spring, he's either got the tool or he's lucky not to have a spring embedded in his head. These are great cars and ooze a quiet sophistication, though without a lift and a full set of proper tools they will eat you alive, starting at your wallet. ... View more

Is that a Laada Niva I see in the garage next to the 100? In 1999 my bride and I took a trip to Ulan Ude in Siberia, we had two daughters and her OB told me if I got her pregnant again I would be in deep trouble with her (the doc, not my bride), though our family wasn't complete and our trip was to gain a third daughter. I could wax on for hours about our trip, Aeroflot planes, the Tupilov 154 that I thought I would die in, having a US passport when waiting in line at the US Embassy (that was a wonderful feeling), and making new friends on the other side of the world, but I'll stick to the Laada for this story. Our facilitators in Ulan Ude were a couple, the wife from Minnesota and the husband from Ulan Ude, he drove a Niva. While I was there the Niva was acting up and being a car guy I was compelled to do something about it. I asked if there was and auto parts store and he took me to an open market, not tents, just vendors with their wares spread out on the grass. I secured a rebuild kit for the Solex carb (which I was surprised by though it was probably from those East German relationships) and a set of front brake pads. I asked my friend Andre if he had any tools and from the look on his face when he answered I decided to pick up a Russian Leatherman, two screwdrivers and a metric crescent wrench. Two evenings later we had it running like a song. I've always wanted to buy a Niva and give it to our youngest daughter though I've not yet found one on this side of the pond. I did see one in Bavaria on a recent pre pandemic business trip, I left my card under the wiper though no one ever called me. Too bad, I know she'd love working on it. I've answered the whole nature nurture question, my third Daughter, Galina, is exactly like me, though in much better ways. All in all it was a fantastic trip and our daughter has made our family complete. I made a new friend in Siberia, Sascha, he owned the only Chevy Suburban east of Moscow, for many years after our adoption trip I would have prospective parents mule Chevy parts to Siberia for my new friend. If I had one wish for prospective adopting parents it would be for them to know that weather they come from the womb or from a trip to a far away place there is no difference at all. My bride says the look on my face was exactly the same when I held all my daughters for the first time, even though one was a year old at the first hold. Funny how cars seem to have a connection in everything we do. ... View more

I agree, an excellent review that hit on all the right stuff. In the 47 photos they could have lifted the bonnet to include a few from there ... View more

Doesn't Mary host that BBC show with Paul Hollywood? I wonder what she'll bake up next!! ... View more

I've always wanted to try to clay bar a car though it seemed like so much work and I do not have a soft touch, for anything! I'm going to go out and buy this stuff today and as soon as it's warm enough I'm going to wash all the play cars with the Griot's one during their spring bath and service. I love stuff for dummies!! Now if only I were brave enough to tackle the swirls on the old giant black Series II XJ12, I'd sure like to try though I'm positive I'd screw it up, permanently. ... View more

I couldn't agree more. I have an old Lotus Elan Plus 2 that has about 100 hp though it feels much faster since you're riding so low to the ground. Even with speed limits of 35 it's a blast to run through the gears, tach up on down shifts and go around corners at slow speeds, and even that feels fast. And getting out for a ride to nowhere is pandemic proof and pandemic relief all at the same time. Motor On ... View more

Very interesting article, and I can confirm that all the data is pretty accurate. I usually ship a car every two years or so for one reason or another. My most recent acquisition was a 2010 Corolla, nothing sexy to be sure, though it belonged to my niece in Cincinnati and the failed manual gearbox was in the trunk along with all the ancillary items and I'm in Milwuakee. The car sat in her apartment complex outdoor lot for more than two years in this condition and I had no idea of its mobility capabilities. My last shipment was a Vanden Plas V12 from Florida to Milwuakee, it was 750 bucks and came, to my surprise, in an enclosed trailer. The Corolla didn't need more money thrown at it, I was merely trying to help my niece get rid of this car. I ultimately decided a road trip was the best method, and I was able to take my bride along with me for on overnight get away. We rented a vehicle dolly from U Haul in Cincinnati for 79 bucks one way, which I thought was a bargain. I used points to stay at the local Hilton and was able to visit my niece and her family for a few hours. The trip did require loading all the possible things needed into my 4Runner, floor jack, jack stands, come along, tools, brake clean and anything else I could think of. Being a manual gear box I thought maybe the parking brake would be stuck on so I made sure I had all the necessary items to remove the rear drums and un seize them. Turns out I only needed my portable air tank to fill the tires and a package of zip ties to tie up all the hanging cables, wires and slave cylinder so they wouldn't drag on the road. We had a great trip, my niece got a fair price for her car and I had a project to put back together. Turned out to be a great little car and the roadtrip with my bride was a nice get away. ... View more

A lot of folks out there with some unkind words about the Lotus. I was a tech for a dealer in the late 70s and early 90s, we picked up the Lotus line in 83 and since I had all the Jag service I got trained on the Lotus as well. While this was a fragile car (Renault transaxle) and could easily be destroyed if driven incorrectly, it was the fastest thing I had ever driven at the time, and mind you I was servicing lots of E Types, both 6 and 12 cylinder. The icing on top though was its handling prowess, nothing stuck to the road, especially in corners, like the Turbo Esprit. And to boot it looked like a bodied race car under the skin. And as Collin preached, "build a great car and add lightness" (my quote might be a bit off. ... View more

I think it would be awesome in my daughter's 1966 Donzi Ski Sporter 16, it would have to be a marinized version though.  It would probably look like the Dallas breaching in The Hunt For Red October when she "Hit It" ... View more

I'm fortunate to have a 1991 Series III Daimler Double Six, the car is affectionately known as Lizzy as the Queen had one as well, which she drove with some regularity.  Jaguar Heritage Trust had that one too and before delivering it to the Queen Jaguar put 4000 Miles on it to make sure it was in good nick before the Queen got it. ... View more

Great article that brings back some great memories.  I grew up in Country Squires, 8 kids and mom and dad all fit, that's why mom drove a Ford since only they offered 10 passenger seating.  And since I'm on the bottom end of the 8 I got to share the club seating in the rear with three of my sisters, one older, two younger.  The color of Tom Cotter's unit I think is Sauterne Gold, my mom had a 65 in that color and followed it up with a 72 red one, both sans a 428 with 4 speed and center console, that would have taken up a valuable passenger spot, which was needed unless they left me behind, which only happened once.  Everyone went out to dinner in the Wisconsin Dells and when they came back I was sitting on the motel stoop, ever since then role call took place before any family departure.   Thanks for the fond memories ... View more

Lots of people upset that the Opel GT and Corvette were excluded.  The author mentions they did not include pop up head lights which both the Vette and the Opel had.  Not sure if the Cord was a pop up or a an moving panel exposing the lights.  Great catch on the Galaxy by someone, only the LTD and the XL (and Country Squire wagon) had 'em.  Riviera though has to be the best. ... View more

A hoarder never throws anything away.  A collector makes regular trips to the dump.  A hoarder has an unrealistic emotional attachment to junk.  A collector understands what's valuable (at least to their car) and what is junk and has no problem getting rid of the junk.  This is at least the hoarder definition that I'm holding on to :). ... View more