mmarshall

Since the moderators feel that we sometimes go off on tangents too much by talking about, or making reference to, or dwelling on, older vehicles and automotive history, instead of current vehicles in the threads, I thought maybe we'd try a dedicated Car Chat thread for nothing else BUT older cars. By "older", I figure, maybe, before the last 10-15 years, or, better yet, those of the 20th century, before about 2000. And, hey, if you even want to discuss the first "Horseless Carriages", from the late 1800s, before 1900, that's fine too....here is the place to do it. Steve...you can talk about your dad's old Lincoln Continental, Aaron9000, your old Cadillacs, and me, of course, the big Buicks and Chryslers I had as a long adult that I loved. We can talk about what we learned to drive on, our first long trips in them, ....and those infamous Detroit lemons from the 1970s through the 1990s that got at least some of us, at the time, to convert to Japanese-branded products. I was lucky enough to grow up during the Great American Age of muscle-cars in the 1960s, and got to sample some of them first-hand. Although big luxury cars were my forte and first love even as a youth, it was fun to sample a Plymouth Road Runner, Pontiac GTO, or Ford Mach I Mustang with 400+ HP, though, of course, unlike many teens of the time, I drove responsibly, even in muscle-cars. And I learned to drive both manuals and automatics on the famous Chrysler Slant Six engine, easily the most durable engine of its time....in fact, most of those engines outlasted the rather shoddily-built Chrysler bodies and frames around them LOL

So, if you like old cars, want to talk about them, or just reminisce on your old driving days.....here's your chance.

05ls430518

iTrader: (1)

My friend who owns his own shop his dad has an auto body shop and has been doing it for 50 something years. He specializes in muscle car restorations, soon as summer comes around I will be posting a bunch of pictures of some awsome classic cars.

mmarshall

Thanks. I like the interior color pattern on that AMC Gremlin.

If your dad and your friend work on a lot of cars from that era, they might (?) remember the blue Levi's Gremlin X from the early 1970s, which featured a denim-blue paint job, matching blue trim-colors inside, and genuine Levi's blue-jean material on the seats.

It had a lively commercial on TV (that was before the Internet) when a young teen-age girl would look at it and say "Wow....a car that wears pants".

05ls430518

iTrader: (1)

I will ask yah my friends dad has an awsome collection to, my father has had some cool cars 60's camaro, my mom had an amc pacer, and a javalin. they also had a plymouth acclaim, as well as a dodge shadow and my dad had a red 1980's chevy truck lifted it was awsome looking.

I am only 26 so I cant share my driving experiences from back when but my favorite car my parents owned was a 1992 dodge spirit it was (powder blue? The light blue).

Aron9000

Here's a classic Buick you might like Marshall. My uncle bought a 1965 Buick Gran Sport convertible. Maybe its called a Skylark Gran Sport, but the emblem on the front grill and trunk clearly read "Gran Sport", no Skylark or GS badging. First year for the "Gran Sport" option, it had the 401cu Buick "Nailhead" V8 under the hood, automatic trans(I think he said it was a powerglide automatic). Bright red, black top, black vinyl interior, bucket seats, floor shift/console. Great looking car IMO, bit more interesting styling than the 1965 Chevelle, which if you squint hard enough you can see they look a bit similar(Both were GM A-bodies).

His is in great shape, what I call one of those "survivor" cars. IE its never been fully apart, never had the body off the chassis. No rust, laser straight body panels, original chrome on the bumpers/trim. Guy who redid the paint 15/20 years ago was a bit of a hack, it looks great until you get right on it from 1-2' away, then you can see all kinds of small imperfections, almost looks like dirt under the paint. Still its the right color red, not orangy red, has a deep shine to it. He's been fixing it up this winter, as it sat for 15 years or so unused and had a bunch of deffered maintenance/little piddly crap to fix on it.

Wish I had snapped a pic, but it was up against a wall in his shop with the hood up. Looked exactly like this one though, although I think his had some thin whitewall tires on it.

Aron9000

My uncle also made a good point about why he bought this car.

RARE.

Something like 2,000 Gran Sport convertibles rolled off the line for 1965. I know its just kind of a trim/engine option on a basic Buick Skylark convertible, but you have to consider how many of these cars have survived after 50 years. Chevy made about 2,000 1965 Corvettes with the 396 cubic inch big block V8, but a lot more of them survived, as they were a lot more of a special car that people garaged/drove only on weekends. Cars like that Gran Sport, people tended to drive them, use them up, they were sub $500 cars by the early 1970's owned by teenagers who ragged them out, wrecked them, they rusted to pieces, people didn't treasure them like those C2 Corvettes. Thus there are a lot more 1965 Corvette rag tops on the road today vs 1965 Buick Gran Sport rag-tops.

mmarshall

Nice. Thanx for the pic. I briefly (for a few months) in college, owned a white 1965 Skylark like that.....same platform, smaller 300 c.i. (5.0L) V8, 2-speed Powerglide transmission...not as much of a muscle-car as that red GS, but in virtually mint condition...a relative of my parents had previously owned it and kept it each night in a parking garage. Only had 20,000 miles on it. I liked it, but decided that I wanted something larger...I liked the big Buicks. My late Mom liked it, and she bought it....she insisted on paying for it, bless her heart, when I should have given it to her for all my parents did for me. She was also a Notary Public for the State of Virginia, which made used-car-buying and selling in our family easy....piece of cake on the titles.

Unfortunately, the Buick Skylark GS, even with the same big engines (and the Stage-One option), was never the hit in the American muscle-car department like the Chevelle SS and Pontiac GTO, (and, to a lesser extent, Oldsmobile 4-4-2), which were done on the same body and platform. Most young people (I was one of the few exceptions) simply didn't care for Buicks in those days....even their muscle cars. Buick didn't have a hit in that department until the Grand National and GNX debuted 15 years later, in the 1980s.

In those days, convertibles as muscle cars, except for some Corvettes, also generally weren't as popular as two-door sedans/coupes, for a couple of reasons. First, with the modified structure underneath, they weighed more and still had notable body-flex, which impacted on acceleration, handling, and braking. Second, the ragtops on most of them (only the Ford Skyliner, in the late 1950s, offered a retracting steel roof) lacked break-in security, were relatively poorly-insulated. and usually required replacement every few years. But, as always, they were fun in the sun.

mmarshall

Just out of curiosity, what did you learn to drive on, Aron?

Aron9000

A Buick of course!!! Nothing special like that old 1965 Gran Sport though, it was our old family car. 1991 Regal sedan, it was nicely optioned though with the 3.8 V6(lots of torque, sounded cool for a V6), bench seat, column shift, lots of cushy burgandy velour, paint was a dark red metallic, kind of a flip flop color between dark red/purple. Rode like you were on a cloud. Wish the folks had bought the bigger Park Avenue, but dad was a tight-wad.

Also learned to drive on his 1988 Toyota pickup with the 5 speed, the little 2wd mini-truck was kind of fun with the 5 speed, had the oh so 80's stripe down the side. That was actually a nice truck, no rust, kind of wish I had gotten it instead of the Buick for my 1st car, slammed to the ground mini-trucks were still in style when I first got my license. The rich kid at school had one of those then new at the time Chevy S10 Xtreme's, black, reg cab, flare-side box, lowered even further, I mean it was all style and no function, but my 16 year old self thought it was way cool.

mmarshall

Yes, the 1991 mid-size Buicks were better cars than the 1965s in virtually every way, except for the cheap-looking 1990's GM matte-plastic interiors and their poor fit/finish....which were somewhat like on the early 1970s Chrysler products.

An 80s-vintage Toyota Truck with no rust? That alone was fairly uncommon. Most of them rusted out in exactly the same spot....a line that ran around the base of the bed, where the bed was welded to the frame. That was because, in order to get and the 25% tariff that the Reagan Administration imposed on imported trucks, Toyota sent the beds and the rest of the assembled trucks across the Pacific to its West Coast warehouse separately, and the painted beds were welded onto the truck-chassis at the warehouse....with crappy welds that virtually all rusted out in the same spot.....you couldn't stop it no matter what you did (even by constant washing to get the salt off) because the welds rusted from the inside out.

Although this is a severe case, it is typical of how these trucks rust out....as you can see, in a line just above the wheels and at the base of the tailgate, along a line where the beds were welded on.

Aron9000

^ Yeah its nice living in the south, truck was about 12 years old at the time and had around 175k on the odometer. And yeah they all tend to rust along that line, it was something about the way the bed/body was designed, dirt/leaves etc got stuck up in there. You can get reproduction steel(that fixed the trapped dirt/rust problem) or fiberglass beds for these trucks now days.

mmarshall

From what I was told, it wasn't the design of the bed, or dirt/sediment getting in, but simply crappy welds that easily corroded no matter what you did to them. Those rust-lines (apparently) did not happen on the Japanese-market trucks, or in other countries where the trucks were built and sold in one piece, and property welded at the factory. They happened here in the U.S. because the beds were shipped over on the boats separately from the rest of the truck-assemblies and welded on at Toyota's West Coast warehouse. It was a big-money issue (as, of course, so much of the auto industry is).....by shipping and welding the trucks that way, they avoided the (at that time) 25% tariff on foreign trucks imposed by our government.

LeX2K

The bed was never "welded to the frame" the truck box was two pieces, bolted together with seam sealer applied. It rusted badly for two reasons, one because as I mentioned the steel was not purified properly and two the seam was a moisture magnet.

Aron9000

Man that's a weird *** way of doing things, no wonder it rusted out. I always thought truck beds as one unit, mainly the side of the bed being one stamped piece of steel on the outside, not two separate pieces like those old Toyota beds.

mmarshall

What I was told, both by owners of the trucks and by a old friend of mine (since retired) who was the Service Manager at a Toyota shop I (then) dealt with regularly, was that they were welded on at the West Coast warehouse....for reasons which I explained above.