No legs it's a Mediterranean cabinet...goes straight to the floor...danm thing was probably wider than any dimension of the corvais passenger space.... Zenith should have been whipped for NOT including a stereo in that bulk of a cabinet. It also was heavy for a sawdust and veneer cabinet... I went and got it in my burban and it wasn't easy to load...had to get an end up on to the cargo deck then lift the other and push... neither was easy to do........it made me miss the crummy air suspension of the envoy ( I could let the air out and the deck would drop from near waist to mid calf making loading sutff like that MUCH easier.

Sounds like a job for a Corvair “Rampside”:

https://goo.gl/images/TQHDjs

jr

Apparently GM tailgate width was sacrificed to reduce blind spots. I thought car designers were supposed to get rid of problems without creating worse ones.

Cargo area comparison photo below. That half-lowered tailgate on the GM was rather misleading.

As for the Mopar, I saw one that was nearly if not completely identical to the one in the photo in late December, same colour too.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1549055612

I drive a Challenger, it's the closest you'll get to a new 1970 vehicle. It's a huge 2 door with a giant hood and 392 cubic foot engine.

https://i.imgur.com/sqpo4eP.jpg

Daily driver is a 2011 Ford Escape.
The relic now in near-mint shape after being totaled is my mom's 1991 Ford Crown Vic wagon.
It's like driving a sofa LOL
Net pic (same color and trim level)https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0..._wagon_008.jpg

My buddy has a 75 Olds Custom Cruiser wagon. It's got that clamshell rear door, in fact, it's the same car as in that picture. It's pretty cool. His car is in great shape, it was a one (elderly) owner, garage kept until he bought it in like 2010 or so. Can you imagine, that old man bought this car in 1975 when he was 65 years old, for a retirement car, and lived to be 90-something to sell the car 30-some years later? Sadly, my friend keeps it locked up in his garage and it hasn't been out or running for many years. But I'm sure it's still in the same excellent shape.

Those wagons are so rare on the road nowadays, that one time I saw one totally identical to his parked on a street somewhere, and I pulled over and called him to make sure nobody had stolen his car!

A friend inherited his Grandfather's house and car and it was a 70's olds (IIRC a 1977-8 Cutlass). He lives in the house with the original furnishings plus a bunch of MCM stuff he collects, and he let the car rot in a storage locker for over a decade. Another friend helped him get it back to roadworthy recently, though it probably isn't driven much. Ironically the same car in a different color has been rotting worse outside in that same storage complex.

My grandma also had a late 70's olds sedan in the 90's...One winter something grazed the side, it got rusty fast and she traded it for a Buick.

Had a 2005 Corvette. Got sick of the wife complaining. Got her '12 Prius and she has a Lincoln MKT. For the hauling, 2004 Cadillac Escalade ESV. Long wheelbase!

I still can fit quite alot of equipment in the back of the Prius thou. Just lost a little manhood...

I guess I orta sell my Ginormous Y2K Ford Excursion. Don't use it much anymore, the wife has a Touareg, the Ferd gets 8-10 MPG in town, a ROUSING 14-15 on the hiway, but I just CAN'T... Didn't realize when I ordered it, that it would be my "Lifetime" car, but it is. I'm 62, have no income anymore, except Soash Security & Disability, basically can't afford ANY new car, LIKE th' damthing, made noises about sellin' it about a year back, got looked at w/Daggers by Bethany-I taught her how to drive in it when she was 8,9-its PAID For, can't get a new one, it ain't worth nothin' now-MAYBE $3500-Maybe, according to Bethany's husband, shit, may as well just KEEP it...Always wished Bethany & her brood would have it to ride around in, playin' w toys 'n' stuff in its gigantic Maw, but now, the Safety Nazis decree you have to be virtually BOLTED in place, lest ye be turned into Hamburger in the Horrible Wreck that is just over the horizon...Jeez-Oh-Pete, I Rode around in Pick ups in the beds of 'em for most of my life, & worst thing that happened was a Bug smacked me in the forehead oncet or 2X..

Way back, when the Ford Mustang first came out, it was tagged as a Woman's car. Not too much today!
My 2011 Prius is my daily driver. I consider it to be an Electrician's car or Electronic Techs car. I do have two Jeeps and a Dakota pickup, if that a redeeming quality. :D

Every time I see the news, there seems to be a big nasty accident on I94 between the IL line and Milwaukee. IDK, if the semi accident made national news, but all the drivers' were lucky they didn't perish. That was a few days ago!

That makes me feel better! Haha. At least when it breaks I can go thru and sub out the affected battery module in the pack. Been there, done that. Also headgaskets are a peach to change. 300k mi on it now.

The Escalade has the nice 6.0 LQ9 engine. about the same lower end as the LS2.

All in all gets the job done. wife drove the Prius into a parked car last December. Bent up fender and all but ahh who cares.

Those Triton V10s really like visiting gas stations. the 6.0 in my truck is about on par.

I had a 2006 Prius, where I had the battery pack out twice. Once at 205K and 235K. Just go through the packs and the one that reads under 7 volts is the one that needs replacement. Get them on the Eplace site. They all seem to come from the east coast. They're used as taxis in NYC and other large cities.
I sat in the bank drive through yesterday with the AC on, for 5 min and the engine never ran. The AC runs off the invertor pack, 3 phase AC. How's that for good engineering. :thmbsp:

A new project.

1947 Plymouth Special DeLuxe Business Coupe. Bought it in early July, and am gradually getting it serviced and back on the road.

That coupe is sweet!

I kind of have a phobia of new modern cars. Crossovers, Self driving, hybrid, all electric, CVTs, tiny displacement over stressed turbochaged 4 bangers, gas direct injection, dash tablets/infotainment, automatic transmissions......All stuff I don't want or need.

My mom has one of those Subraru Crosstrek things, worst car I've ever driven. It's top heavy, cramped, completely gutless, it eats oil, uncomfortable seats, no cargo space, and worst of all it's ORANGE!

The car manufacturing firms make a lot of profit on all the extras.
Evidently the car buyers want all these items. The good old days are over, when people bought a car they could truly afford. :sigh:

hi volt, I might have to own a late 40s Plymouth one of these days....my kind of car! The 4drs are dirt cheap, too.

We have an '04 Winnebago class C on a Ford Econoline chassis with the V10. S-M-O-O-T-H engine, they really worked overtime ironing the roughness out of that thing. It's hard to check the mileage as I can never seem to fill the tank to the same level from time to time, but on one very long trip (to Branson) I averaged 10mpg. Imagine, a 15,000 lb house running 70 mph down the interstate, or it can drive Uncle Sandy's Mighty Valdez through 10 miles of Miracle Mile in Knoxville! Funny how that works.

I still have my '49 Packard & '51 Fordor, both are for sale and when one sells I'll keep the other. My favorite is whichever one I'm driving at the time! I've been daydreaming a lot lately about what I might own next; one guy hinted he might be willing to trade a '63/64 Thunderbird for the Packard, which might be interesting. Then, I spotted a '27 Buick sedan for sale. Rear seat legroom? You could hold a square dance back there!

And the mention of self-driving cars? Supposedly my step-brother has programmed his Tesla to park itself when he gets to work (he just hops out at the office door) and when he's ready to leave it comes and gets him. I don't know...to me, it's nice to be somewhere, hear a car alarm, and know without a doubt it's not me!

"its PAID For"

#1 attribute I'm looking for in a car. They all are, except the wife's Volvo v60, which is 3/4 paid-for.

Keeping the 2003 Suburban, at 120k miles it's barely broken in, but sadly rusty.
Still, with Quadrasteer, it's currently irreplaceable with a new ride.

Keeping 50+ year old Sunbeam Alpine.
Keeping 30 year old, 9000-mile Honda Pacific Coast (just got it...)
Keeping 20 year old, 90k-mile Lazy Daze Class C
Keeping 2005 Mini Convertible (54k-miles) until my wife wants some other cute car...

My '69 & '67 Clincolns are my "Tomcattin'" cars.. They get Atrocious mileage, are way too big, aren't especially roomy, considering their size, and yet...You'd have a fight on yer hands if you tried to take 'em away... Part of the fun of having a Tomcat car is just THAT-Having a car for basically JUST showing off... Seeing in & BEING seen in. Some of the best times I've had in my life were when I'd get the Pervertable out on a warm night, loading it up w/friends, & Hittin' the High Street-Main Drag... Seein' & waving to EVERYBODY, & have 'em wave back at you...Used to be, doing THAT was NOT considered to be antisocial, anti this, anti that or even mean & nasty. It was just kids havin' FUN, which is all I ever did in it.

With you on that. So far every vehicle I own has been bought with the cash I had at the time, and no financing.

I seen that quadrasteer in the manual for my 02, and kinda wonder how it compares to the standard front steer of mine? Wonder if it reduces townig payload? Rust repair on burbans ain't fun... mine had got in a fender bender by it's previous owner and got a combined dent fix rust patch...all done with nothing but a crap ton of body filler and paint....2 winter's in it rusted under most of the previous crap work... removing the old BS and rust and rebuilding the missing parts with metal has been an interesting time consuming experiment...one I hope not to repeat on a utility ride.

I'm still driving the Lincoln too. She just turned 70K and celebrated by eating all her belts, and springing a leak in the lower steering/power brake hydraulic hoses....2/3 are still original since when the first sprung a leak it was such a pain to remove I decided not to open the other 2 cans of worms....1 definitely opened it's self...one day I gotta pour some money into that car and nicen it up.

Towing payload is 9600 or 9800 lbs. vs. 10K with the 6.0L. I think the 8.1 was 12K. No Quadrasteer with the 8.1 due to torque limitations of the rear end. (Which is actually the Dana front end off some 4x4 truck, I was told.)

There are people who have transferred QS to a Savannah van of similar vintage, so "portability" would make things interesting.

It is certifiably great for towing maneuvering. Low speed and highway. That ad wasn't kidding...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0pbf4uNp3I

On the rust, I've got some new rocker panels for it, and a plan to re-engineer the inner rockers with something more structural, and tack the outer rockers on for 'looks', not structure. Things haven't sagged yet, so I'm hoping that addressing it this fall will work out. The new metal will be galvanized...

I usually buy my cars broken, bent, or salvaged.. Fix 'em up myself. I cant stand financing.. The wife wants a new Escalade... Nope... Sorry babe.. Ill look used..

Automatic transmissions were not a problem at all... right up until they started making 8, 9, and 10 speed units. Even though the engineering is ok on those, they never seem to work right because a computer can't anticipate a driver's every move. With a 3 or 4 speed, it really didn't matter because they didn't have to shift every second.

CVTs are just misunderstood. Like any new tech. That, and getting parts can be impossible. So yeah, I wouldn't advise getting a CVT, just because parts are scarce and/or expensive!

Gas direct injection would be perfect if they could just vent the crankcase to the atmosphere instead of letting all that oil into the intake to get burnt onto the valves. Pity.

With auto transmissions it's a driving preference thing, I just feel like they always shift at the wrong time. (notable exception is the later Ford CVPIs) For me driving feels wrong without the tactility of working a shifter lever and clutch. And yes there are very good auto transmissions out there that outlast most manual ones.

Also for small sports cars (like my NB Miata) auto transmissions are stupid. period. It's part of the driving experience for this type of vehicle. I don't think I would even buy a Corvette if it was auto, and yes the new midship 'vette is auto only, damn shame :thumbsdn:

To be fair about CVTs all the ones I've driven have been half-baked slip-o-matic jobs that are doomed to failure (coughNISSANcough).

And finally for the GDI solution, just run port injectors along with the direct ones to wash the crap off the intake valves :lmao:

Can driving a bicycle can be counted? :headscrat
(it dosen't have a motor).

Sure-Why not ?!?

Quick story: I had a few errands to run around town Sunday afternoon & decided to take my 70 year old Packard. I pulled into my last stop and this little kid comes riding up on his bicycle, maybe 5-6 years old. He was really excited, "Mister, mister, that's such a cute car!" He then said something to make all of us feel old:

"It must be from the NINETIES!"

Cringe...

I'd have replied nah, folks were riding buggies in the 1890's!

Some of my least favorite periods for cars of every make is the ~49-54 models that came once most makers finally ditched their pre-war designs. Most cars then if you removed all the chrome changed the grille and the lights and removed the extra bars in the middle of the front and side windows would be darn hard to distinguish from a 1990's car...

Many of the 62+ model cars also were kinda plain and boxy like 80's cars just with differences in chrome grille and lights.

There were some exceptions in both eras, but that has been my generalization for a while.

The finned era cars of the late 50's and the pre-war body styles (that got warmed over for a few years post-war) feel like the only cars not to have the same boring lines kept in cars of my time (as a child of the early 90's I saw plenty of 80's beaters still crawling the roads).

Thanx for sharing everyone!! http://www.videokarma.org/images/icons/icon7.gif

I presently own six cars and none of them have automatic transmissions. All of the slushboxes I've tried to drive over the years continually hunt for the right gear, so I guess I just don't know how to drive an automatic.

Last year I test drove a car with an automatic and a turbocharger. To me, it was a bad combination. You hit the accelerator, the transmission downshifts, the engine RPMs pick up, the turbo spools up, and then the engine red-lines so you have to let up on the accelerator :sigh:. I ended up buying the same model but with a 5 speed manual.

Bad post

That's kind of the nature of a turbocharged engine, though. It needs to rev high to produce power. If you drive at real low rpm all the time, you're not gonna get much power or efficiency.

Sounds herky-jerky :thumbsdn:

We've racked up 45,000 miles on our Tesla Model 3 since April last year. Only problem has been a failing air conditioning compressor (it didn't totally fail, it was getting noisy). Some back of the envelope math says it's lost about 5% of its original range... on par with other cars and if the trend continues to match it won't fall much more for the rest of the cars life.

-J

I've been doing some dangerous daydreaming this week: my '51 Fordor is as close to a personal "daily driver" that I have since we downsized our fleet. If my wife has to go somewhere and I want to go out it has to be in the Ford. Well, it's at the mechanic right now getting some overdue love including a front-end rebuild, carb rebuild and, uh-oh, it seems it blew the head gasket between the middle 2 cylinders. (Meaning, it doesn't overheat but almost no compression on those 2 so it runs terrible.) With it out of service for a while, and winter weather fast approaching, I've been browsing Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. Hmmm, wonder what $1000 (or so) will buy, sez I? Some tempting stuff in that price range: '81 Dodge Ram with a slant 6, auto and power windows (!), back brakes don't work. '95 Dakota 4wd with a bad transfer case, replacement sitting in the bed. AMC Eagle wagon (really!) that "needs front suspension work, parts included". A couple rusted out first-generation S-10's & some Rangers/Mazda's, all in running/driving condition. A '73 LeSabre sedan. I drove by the low-end used car lot just across the state line and spotted out of the corner of my eye what I thought was an R-body Chrysler (c.1979 "full size") but turned out to be a '75 or so Pontiac Grand Ville Brougham 4dr hardtop. Once among the most expensive cars Pontiac would sell you, today this one has degenerated into something close to what only a demo derby driver could love.

Will I really pull the trigger on one of these beasts? It would be easy enough to do: where I live you can very easily tag any of them as Historic and, with a phone call to your insurance agent, you're on the road...no inspection. (Safety First!) The dear Mrs. seemed skeptical, though she did kinda like that Buick (that was her second car). Time will tell!

I'd at least want to buy something immediately driveable... having a car repaired being the reason you're looking to buy in the first place. In what shape was that Buick? My friend has a '78 or so Lesabre and it's the rustiest pile of junk hoopdie you'll ever see scraping along the road.

Having a 4X4 is nice when the municipalities near you are cheap and don't plow enough to keep up with the snow at important times like work commute... and you end up having to drive through 2-5" of slush for miles on end... having a vehicle sure footed to pass in those conditions is WONDERFUL.

Agreed, I sure don't need another project. I'm not sure that I want to tackle anything worse right now than a battery or some burnt out bulbs. At least, if I bought something it wouldn't have to go far-maybe 25-50 miles a week, and hardly ever see the highway. Well-I say that. I've said that about other old stuff I've owned, then went on to drive it all over.

The Buick didn't look too shabby in the photos; the seller called it a "9 out of 10" which is way generous! Somebody put custom wheels on it; it's apparently spent the last few years parked in a field with a few other pre-downsizing Buicks so it probably needs the fuel cleaned out, a tune up, the brakes gone through. About the time I had it ready to roll Spring will be here and the Ford will be long since back on the road.

I would buy a crappy Ford escort or corolla or something that runs and drives but not good enough to get attached to... lol

Having a '67 Clincoln Pervertable w/a non functioning top, quite honestly, ain't much fun THIS time of year.... Altho, several yrs back, we had a 24" blizzard in mid April, I got it out, Top down, of course-and spent a nice afternoon cruisin' around, everybody pointin' & laughin' at me... Careened into several snow banks in parkin' lots, the snow/sludge flew over the tops of cars... Hey, Fun is where you make it...