Name That Car Clock: Black Quartz Analog
Nearly two months have gone by since the last Name That Car Clock challenge (a Lincoln Town Car timepiece of uncertain vintage), but I’ve got dozens of additional car clocks in my collection of junkyard prizes. Today, we’ve got a tough one— a generic-looking analog flanked by oil-pressure and ammeter gauges in an underdash cluster. Quartz car clocks have been around since at least the early 1970s, and this one doesn’t show any country-of-origin identifiers. Before you make the jump, make your best guess about the year/make/model of the car from which I extracted this chronometer.
1981 Isuzu I-Mark Diesel
Here I am taking my Judgemobile for a spin around the Gingerman paddock, captured via a GoPro taped to the end of a broomstick stuck in the grille. As you might guess, the owner of the I-Mark gave me the OK to pull the cluster containing the clock for my collection.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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- Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh A prelude is a bad idea. There is already Acura with all the weird sport trims. This will not make back it's R&D money.
- Analoggrotto I don't see a red car here, how blazing stupid are you people?
- Redapple2 Love the wheels
- Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
- Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
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Wow, I thought I knew all the diesels, but I didn't know this one; and that's embarrassing because it was once a Curbside Classic: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/09/curbside-classic-1982-isuzu-i-mark-diesel/
I said Chevette!!! Half right!