Redd Foxx, not Red Fox. ... View more

I can't even begin to count how many repossessed Eclipses I inspected for Mitsubishi finance back in the 90's. To boost sales they would sell cars to people who couldn't afford them, and many of them ended up repossessed. At least the Mitsubishi owners were honest about it though; Hyundai was doing the same thing but when the car developed a problem that the owner couldn't afford to fix they would just drive it out to the middle of nowhere, set it on fire and then report it as stolen. Mitsubishi reliability? I was at their dealer in Berkeley once (incidentally the factory had taken over the store because the dealer was going broke), complaining that the replacement transmission that they had put in our insured's car after accidentally destroying the computer in it was defective, and the service manager pointed to an alternator on the bench and said that it was the 5th factory built alternator that had failed shortly after installation. Also, sales weren't helped by the fact that people of the WWII generation associated the name Mitsubishi with the Zero fighter plane. Pretty much the only good thing ever to come out of Mitsubishi was that great commercial featuring a very talented girl doing a dance with her arms while sitting in the passenger seat. ... View more

I have wondered for many decades how it is possible that new autos are the only thing still being sold the same way that everything else was in 1880. Why should the price I pay depend on how good of a negotiator I am? My father was so good at wearing down salesman that more than one salesman got fired after selling him a car, roof or appliance. I did not inherit that skill, which is why I haven't bought a new car since 1973. I prefer to get a nice used one from CarMax or someone else with fixed pricing. ... View more

Except for the Miata and Solstice I haven't seen any of these cars on the road in decades, and I suspect that they would be very difficult to locate. ... View more

Did Reuss break the news about the Corvette hybrid on LinkedIn because he assumed that he'd be looking for another job after the announcement? Enquiring minds want to know. ... View more

Really beautiful car. ... View more

Used to have a Jeep Laredo that could use E85 or gasoline. When I compared the two I found that the E85 was cheaper, but gave less mileage. Per mile, the cost of the two was pretty much identical. ... View more

You have to remember that for the generation born right after the war, "made in Japan" meant cheap junk. It took a long time for the Japanese to overcome that. ... View more

Speaking as a Boomer, one overlooked factor in this piece is the ease of getting in and out of the car. Except for the Viper and Subaru these cars are much easier for a 70 year old to enter and exit than any non-SUV made today. I loved driving my son's old MR2 and my daughter's Pontiac Fiero, but even 20 years ago it was hard for me to get in and out of them. Today, I don't think I could do it without assistance. This might also account for some of the popularity of SUV's. When the company that I used to work for switched their company car fleet from Jeep Libertys to Chevy Impalas I was surprised at how much harder it was to get in and out. ... View more

Why is there a giant hole right through the rear lower cab? ... View more

Don't know if it's still true, but you used to be able to buy 110 octane ethanol-free gas at small airports because that's what private planes use. Would have to bring your own gas can though. ... View more

Not a fan of hybrids, which combine the worst points of gas and electric vehicles - i.e. - both systems need to be maintained. Aside - if they had called it an electric wagon instead of electric vehicle, it would be a PHEW. ... View more

One of the most beautiful cars ever made. ... View more

The rumor is that after introducing its SUV Lotus will generate electricity by connecting a generator to Colin Chapman's rapidly spinning grave . ... View more

The fundamental problem is that Detroit has more land than people. According to TV news reports there are entire neighborhoods in Detroit where the utilities have been shut off because no one lives there anymore. If the plant is torn down it will just result in an immense vacant lot that will never be used for anything. ... View more

15 miles away in all the rich suburbs surrounding Detroit. ... View more

Used to know someone that had an Amphicar. You couldn't just zoom directly from the land to the water as there were several plugs and such that had to be inserted or taken out. Saying it could do 70 mph is a bit of a stretch; it pretty much topped out at 45 on the freeway. Back in the 80's there was a vacant storefront in Suisun City CA that had 4 or 5 Amphicars stored in it; I have no idea why they were there or what happened to them. ... View more

If you compare a wagon with woodgrain decals to one that is just painted you can see that the wood siding improves the appearance tremendously. The downside was that replacing the decals was so expense that a older wagon could be totalled out just by scratching all the decals with a nail. ... View more

My first company car was a 76 or so Pinto station wagon with wood siding, roof rack, the first AM/FM stereo radio I had ever seen, and painted the exact shade of dark copper as the wagon in the article. Station wagons were an idea that should never have gone away - fold down the rear seats and you had the equivalent of a pickup with a camper shell, good for hauling stuff home from the hardware store or sleeping in while camping. ... View more

At least some of the Mitsubishi dealerships in the US ended up being bought by Mitsubishi and run at a loss just to maintain their presence in some important market areas. ... View more

My recollection is that the Vespa was invented as disposable transportation for Italian paratroopers. The biggest problem with large scale paratrooper assaults has always been that by the time everyone finds each other and forms up into units you've lost the element of surprise. ... View more

The ideal pickup is a stepside, because the bed doesn't have wheelwells cutting into its carrying capacity, and the steps on the side make it easier to load and unload. 4WD? As a Land Rover salesman who had grown up on a farm once confided to me "if you can't get there in a 2 wheel drive pickup you've got no business going there." ... View more

Underexposed scenes with extremely quick cuts are a way of hiding that the computer graphics aren't all that well done. ... View more

At a car show I saw a BMW painted in a terrible shade of brown, with the licence plate FECAL THUNDER. ... View more

In the 40's 50's and early 60's GM's biggest problem was that they were so dominant in the market that the US government was constantly threatening to break GM up into separate companies. To try to prevent that GM developed a culture of being inefficient, unresponsive to the consumer and not trying hard. It worked until Japanese cars started coming into the market; it took GM a couple of decades to adapt to the new situation. (Chrysler had a different answer: they just rebadged Japanese cars as American cars. The fact that the American people actually bought the idea was Lee Ioccola's greatest achievement ). As for the Probe, overall it was a good car but it did have a perculiar weakness: the rocker panels collapsed way too easily when the car suffered a side impact. ... View more

I absolutely love it! ... View more

Nice to see a photo taken in the tiny California town of Sunol! ... View more

Also, how is the driver suppose to read the gauges? And I really want to know the story behind the "domestic" water supply. ... View more

Remove the entire front end assembly, make the car itself about a foot longer, put the engine in the back, and you might have something. As is, it's a very large car with a very small interior. And the way the driver is isolated from the passengers is quite odd. ... View more

The owner has the right idea - just get it running and leave the rest as found. ... View more

"Cali" is a derogatory term that was invented by Oregon residents as a put-down of all the Californians moving there. Please stop using it. ... View more

It's not a van, it's not even a mini-van, it's more like a Mini-Cooper. Not all that useful. With the original VW van you could literally pull the engine out while parked on the shoulder and do any necessary repairs right there. Long ago VW stopped competing with Ford and started competing with Mercedes and BMW, and the company's been going downhill ever since. ... View more

What I want to know is, what's under the hood of the Studebaker truck? Why is the engine completely hidden under a cover? Is it electric? ... View more

From Wikipedia: In early 2008, true MAPP gas production ended in North America when production was discontinued at the only remaining plant in North America that still manufactured it. However, many current products labeled "MAPP" are, in fact, MAPP substitutes. These versions are composed almost entirely of propylene with minuscule impurities of propane. ... View more

The vinyl woodgrain on the Feep (Fiat Jeep) needs to be extended downward about 4 inches. And I'm not sure what's going to happen when the woodgrain on one of the panels needs to be replaced because of accident damage. Will you have to buy the entire $1,750 kit to replace one door panel decal? ... View more

My now long-gone grandfather once explained that the purpose of a high wheeler was to allow you to travel on muddy roads without getting the undercarriage stuck in the mud. In Kansas they were called "mudders." And that beautiful silver bomber is a model of a B-58 Hustler, a terrific state of the art plane who's mission was obsolete by the time that they was deployed. ... View more

Reminds me of the Unimog, an all-purpose vehicle built to be a combination car and farm tractor. And that's a compliment . ... View more

I too always that that LeTourneau was a great man, until I talked to someone who had worked for him. He may have been a great philanthropist, but he was very tight-fisted with his employees. ... View more

Didn't see any info about when the customization was actually done. The car would have looked at home in any tow yard in 1980's Oakland. ... View more

Compared to the old models this one looks more like a motorized bathtub, but it does seem a bit more practical. At least it doesn't look like the engine was an afterthought and just hung off the front. ... View more

Back when they were just old junk cars, here in the West many 1950's era cars were buried in the banks of creeks to prevent erosion. They occasionally reappear today as the creekbed erodes. ... View more

I can also remember when there was a wide choice of interior colors, coordinated with the exterior. Back when the Mercury Zephyr was new I had one for a company car, with a baby blue exterior and white interior. Flash forward to 2006 and the company car was a Jeep Liberty and the interior colors were limited to 2 slightly different shades of gray. ... View more

The camper probably actually detracts from the value of the truck. Given that it's fiberglass it will cost you around $1,000 to have the dump accept it. ... View more

Long ago, working as a damage estimator I inspected an actual, used in the TV series, Starsky and Hutch Torino that had been sold to a private party. At that point the car was still registered to Ford as I recall. The car had many, many hack repair jobs, including to the frame. The owner told me that the cars would get damaged during filming and cobbled together at night. A few years later there was an article in our company newsletter saying that the Dukes Of Hazzard did the same thing. If the Dukes were filming on location they would actually rent a local body shop for the week and have their own crew do the repairs. ... View more

Bought a 1973 Plymouth Gold Duster (the Plymouth version of the Dodge Dart) brand new and had it for 15 years. Slant Six. Only repairs it ever required was replacing the $10 ignition resistor twice and the headlight dimmer switch once. It had the fold-down rear seat which Plymouth called a Spacemaker. There was no parcel shelf behind the rear seat so when the seat was up it created a little kiddie corral that kids loved to sit in. The car was handy for camping because with the seat folded down you could easily sleep in the area created. ... View more

The whole story of how the US worked so hard to rebuild Germany and Japan after WWII while essentially abandoning Britain could fill a book or two, and probably has. The US saw a strong Germany as our best defense against Russian imperialism, and acted swiftly to get them on their feet again. Britain made the mistake of voting in a Labor government and taxing the rich heavily, which the US government interpreted as a step towards Socialism if not Communism, and a threat to America. This may explain why 10 years after the war ended Germany had a booming economy while London still had streets blocked by rubble. Some economists have argued that the thing that finally effected the full recovery of the British economy was the tremendous amount of cash brought into Great Britain by the Beatles and other bands of the "British Invasion." ... View more

The drawings all look like they came straight from a 1950's "learn to drive" book. ... View more

Citroen seems to have done everything better. A shame they were unable to make it in the American market. ... View more

He has set the gold standard for Beaters everywhere! ... View more

Minus the nuclear reactor, actually not a bad design. ... View more