The Truth About Cars » Curbside Classics

Curbside Classic: 1968 Chevmobile Impala

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:20:09 +0000

Hybrids are big in Eugene, but some are just plain huge. The Prius is the official new car here, having dethroned Subaru. But here’s a hybrid of a different color: instead of a marriage of two drive systems, it’s a cross between two brands, the engine of one transplanted into another. Back in the day, [...]

Curbside Classic: 1965 Volvo 122S Amazon

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:57:44 +0000

How exactly did the Volvo 122 Amazon achieve its mythological stature? Naming it after the eponymous nation of all-female warriors was a good start. Legendary ruggedness and durability solidified its status. Sporty performance burnished it further. Then there’s the magic belt: one of the twelve labors of Hercules was to secure the girdle of Hippolyta, [...]

Curbside Classics: Chrysler’s Deadly Sin #1 – 1976 Plymouth Volare and Dodge Aspen

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:59:08 +0000

While the human Seven Deadly Sins – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride – clearly play a part in any automaker’s fall from grace, Detroit cultivated its own favorite deadly transgressions. Chrysler’s recurring dirty little habit was premature ejection: spurting cars out of the factory door before they were ready. The shoddily built [...]

Curbside Classic: 1985 BMW 635CSi

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:29:35 +0000

Somewhere deep in the comments to last week’s oft-misunderstood Datsun 210 CC was this: “With all the beautiful cars in the world, why do you insist on picking shit boxes all the time?” Well, it’s not like the streets of Eugene are lined with Delages and Delahayes sitting curbside in the [...]

Curbside Classic: 1980 Datsun 210 Sunny

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:04:05 +0000

With what words shall I express my overpowering feelings toward this tin can wrapped in vinyl wood appliqué? Jeremy Clarkson once called the Sunny “the worst car in the world ever” (probably not for the first or last time). To show he meant it, he hurled one to its death from [...]

Curbside Classic: 1951 Packard 200

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:50:31 +0000

You would be forgiven for mistaking this modest-looking sedan as a low-end Dodge, Pontiac or Mercury. A Packard? The very name conjures images of exclusive cars from the classic era, like this illustrious coach-built V12, or perhaps its last gasp luxo-boat, the 1956 Caribbean. But finding this lowly [...]

Curbside Classic: 1960 Comet

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:19:21 +0000

If this goofy-assed little car showed up at your premium brand’s doorstep and told you it was an unwanted orphan, would you let it in? And keep it as a foster child, or adopt it as your own? That’s the scenario Mercury found itself in with the Comet. And true to [...]

Curbside Classic: 1978 Ford Fiesta

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:54:49 +0000

In the depths of the gloomy automotive winter of the late seventies, the Fiesta made a brief appearance that brought a ray of sunshine into our deprived existence. She was like that cute, skinny little German exchange student who appeared one day at High School, and dazzled us with her algebra, physics, gymnastics and fencing. [...]

Curbside Classic: 1965 GMC Handi-Van

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:27:11 +0000

Regression to the mean. Lowest common denominator. Thinking inside the box. These over-used expressions are all-too often applied to Detroit iron. But which vehicle most fully lives down to them? Here it is: the crudest, simplest, most wretched-handling and least-safe vehicle made by the Big Three in the sixties. It’s a box with two cart [...]

Curbside Classic: GM’s Deadly Sin 3: 1991 Saturn SL2

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:47:46 +0000

Friends, we are gathered together to pay our last respects to a fallen brother. Saturn was the love child of Roger Smith and Hal Riney; one was the Chairman of GM, a manufacturer of cars; the other, an ad man extraordinaire, a manufacturer of emotions. Let us savor their own words as [...]

Curbside Classics: GM’s Deadly Sin #2 – 1971 Pontiac Ventura II

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:24:01 +0000

Bernie Madoff’s first bogus trade. Richard Nixon’s first fib. Charlie Parker’s first hit of heroin. What do they have in common with this perfectly harmless-looking Pontiac Ventura II? That first little giving in to temptation has a nasty way of turning into a big deadly habit, like GM’s badge engineering. All bad habits have a [...]

Curbside Classic: 1973 Jaguar XJ12

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:21:27 +0000

Jaguar and V12. Two of the most lyrical automotive icons ever. One stands for grace at speed, the other for speed with grace. The combination of the two offered the prospect of a marriage made in automotive heaven. Yet when they finally enmeshed, the result fell short of the potential envisioned by the marque’s match-maker [...]

Curbside Classic: 1959 Ford Courier

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:41:43 +0000

Welcome to the Thursday edition of Curbside Classics. Tuesdays is for the big winners (and losers), the exceptional, the unexpected. Thursday will be for the more modest and prosaic finds. Any car a quarter century old or more still plying the streets of Eugene is worthy of our respect. Along with a helping of disdain, [...]

Curbside Classic: 1959 Chevrolet Biscayne

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:30:05 +0000

Look at the picture above. Now pretend it’s your rearview mirror. That giant set of batwings is right behind you and gaining; now it pulls into the fast lane. A couple of teenagers grin as they zip by you ass-backwards at seventy miles an hour. The front grille of the ’59 Chevy slowly recedes in [...]

Curbside Classic: 1950 Cadillac Series 61 Coupe

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:02:27 +0000

Bob Lutz may well prove that the Cadillac's CTS-V is the fastest production sedan in the land, thanks to an engine transplant from the Corvette ZR-1. But what about a genuine all-Caddy production racer? Something you could take to Le Mans, and challenge Europe's finest exotics. Or just down to the local drag strip, and blow away every production car in its day. You'd have to turn the clock back sixty years, when Cadillac's new V8 was the hottest engine in the land. But if you were serious about racing with it, like Briggs Cunningham did at Le Mans in 1950, or the original owner of this car, you'd have to request the factory to make one important change, which alone makes this hot rod Caddy the most historically significant Curbside Classic find to date. Well, there was that Vega...

Curbside Classic: 1970 Honda 600

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:19:45 +0000

Your 2050 Brazzaville Micro-i600 solar-electric personal transportation device automatically glides into the Biodynamic Vego-Taco Loco lot and parks itself. On the way inside, you pass the static display of a 2010 Honda Pilot. Your seventeen year-old son stops in his tracks, looks at it with bewilderment, and asks if you really drove around in one these big, ugly, two-ton carbon-spewing behemoths forty years ago. Will you mumble something incoherently about times being very different then and tell him to hurry along, or will you stop, gaze admiringly, and wax eloquently about your distant but ever-so-vibrant Pilot memories?

Curbside Classic: 1963 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 Convertible

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:28:52 +0000

Tear the highly practical metal roof off one the most boring big American sedans like a 1963 Olds Dynamic 88, and suddenly it becomes the key ingredient of an intensely romantic scenario: a hot summer day, a full-size ragtop, a beautiful woman to share it with, and the open road. What could be better? It's got to be one of the top "relive the youthful automotive memories/dreams" recipes for guys my age or so. Except in my case, it's a nightmare.

Curbside Classic: 1972 Plymouth Fury and Saab 95

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:50:10 +0000

A recent study shows that the generation gap has dramatically narrowed. Parents and kids are now each others’ best friends, or something like that. But it wasn’t always so chummy, especially in the sixties and early seventies. I have a theory for that: it was the heyday of the rear-facing third-seat station wagon. Nothing like the generations traveling while facing in opposite directions to cultivate oppositional disorder. And just to add a little more dissonance, how about we examine the two most polar opposite examples of the genre.

Curbside Classic: 1984 Toyota Tercel Wagon

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:26:41 +0000

I'd say we all could use some R&R after exhaustively documenting the Vega's innumerable weaknesses and frailties. So how about we spend a little time communing with its polar opposite in almost every conceivable way possible (while still being a small wagon). I could have picked any of some thirty or forty Tercel wagons still hard at work on the streets of Eugene to shoot. But check out the impeccably-restored 140 year-old Carpenter Gothic house behind this one. The house and the Tercel are both owned by my nearby neighbor David Gusset, a renowned maker and repairer of fine violins, including my 1833 Valenzano. If anyone can appreciate a well made instrument built for the long haul, it would be him.

Curbside Classics: 1970 Camaro RS

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:43:57 +0000

After being trapped six weeks in a 1971 time warp, I had the controls of the Curbside Classics time machine all set for the mid-eighties. But once again, fate interceded. Running some errands, I had my first encounter with no less than two 2010 Camaros. Then, on the way home, something called out to me as I tooled down Franklin Boulevard. I found it parked behind the old boarded-up Chevy dealer, and it had an important message for you and me: "beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; it's in the object itself."

Curbside Classics: 1971 Small Cars Comparison: Number 1 and GM Deadly Sin #2 — Chevrolet Vega

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:46:22 +0000

Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test.

There it is, a golden yellow Vega, seductive and infinitely irresistible, hanging from the tree of automotive disappointment. Its serpent maker found plenty of smitten takers (especially among the motor press), because the bitter truth imparted was apparently in a time-release potion: “The best handling car ever sold in America” (Road &Track). Motor Trend’s COTY. C/D readers voted it the best economy car three years in a row. And it won this C/D six small car comparison. I (mentally) bit too, having spent idle hours in 1971 with a Vega catalogue speccing a yellow Kammback GT exactly like this one. But sure enough, the sweetness of that first bite evaporated all too quickly: the apple was rotten at the (engine) core. The Vega was GM’s Watergate/Waterloo, the beginning of its inevitable end. And yet here I am forty years later, totally smitten, seriously considering biting the apple again.

Curbside Classics: 1971 Small Cars Comparison: Number 2 — Simca 1204

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:04:58 +0000

Curbside Classics is taking you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test.

I don't have any shots of the Simca 1204. I haven't seen one in over twenty-five years; have you? So I'm taking my lifeline (to Google images). But the Simca 1100/1204 was such a remarkable and historically significant car, perhaps the most influential small car since WWII. Its DNA is in every transverse-engine FWD hatchback in the world. The VW Golf was a perfect crib of the Simca wearing a handsome Italian suit. Plus, j'aime les voitures françaises. And the Simca almost won the C/D test. It should have won. So forgive me, but we're going to have show and tell without the show.

Curbside Classics: 1971 Small Cars Comparison: Number 3 — Toyota Corolla

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:58:13 +0000

Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test.
Hail the conquering hero! Well, not of C/D's comparison test, but who cares, as long as the sales are there. And by 1971, the Corolla was well along in its conquest of the US small car market, despite being only three years fresh. In 1969, only its second year on the US market, the Corolla leapt to the number two import sales spot, and was nipping hard at the Beetle's pointy tail. Try replicating that today! And by 1975, the "little crown" was lording over the defeated krabbeltier. So what exactly were the Corolla's remarkable qualities that sent VW (and Opel) into such a deep and permanent retreat? And it's shortcomings that kept it from winning this comparison?

Curbside Classics: 1971 Small Cars Comparison: Number 4 — Ford Pinto

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:44:16 +0000

Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test. Few cars are more polarizing than the Pinto (except the Prius, of course). Commonly derided for its exploding gas tank and general crappiness, other folks found (still find) it to be cheap, fairly reliable transportation with a variable fun quotient, depending on its configuration. Sometimes cars develop their reputations later in life, but the underdeveloped Pinto was pretty much an open book, right from the beginning. A children's book, at that. The Pinto should have been called Foal; it was a baby car.

Curbside Classic: 1971 Small Cars Comparison: Number 5 — VW Super Beetle

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:39:19 +0000

Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test.

If you were going to a speed-dating event, and were thirty-three years older than all the "competition", you might be forgiven for wanting some quick cosmetic surgery. But if the result was a reverse Michael Jackson, you'd damn well better hope that your "experience" and "build", and other timeless qualities are still in demand. Otherwise, your days finding willing partners/buyers are numbered, like this 1971 VW Super Beetle.

Curbside Classic: 1971 Small Cars Comparison: Number 6—AMC Gremlin

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:59:06 +0000

Curbside Classics takes you back to 1971 for a virtual comparison test of six small cars, based on (and partly borrowed) from a C/D test. Please don't spoil the outcome, if you know it (the suspense has been building for over 30 years). Was a car ever born with the odds so stacked against it? Its name is defined as "a small gnome held to be responsible for malfunction of equipment". Its design was penned on an air-sickness bag during a (bumpy?) flight. It carries almost 60% of its weight over the front wheels despite being RWD. Its steering has six turns lock to lock. And it looks exactly like what it is: a perfectly normal-looking sedan that had its rear end amputated by a cleaver. The Gremlin would have had to create a pretty major malfunction in my PC (and C/D's typewriters) for it not to end dead last.

Curbside Classics Review: 1936 Plymouth

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:28:25 +0000

Did I hear someone ask "How about more capsule reviews such as a 1930 Ford Model A where 0-60 is measured with an hourglass?" At Curbside Classic we aim to please; I'm on it. And although I didn't rustle up a Model A within 24 hours, I came pretty close: a 1936 Plymouth. The only problem is that the Plymouth never did make it to sixty.

Curbside Classic: GM’s Deadly Sin #1: 1986 Buick Riviera

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:59:00 +0000

Good morning class, and welcome to GM's Deadly Sins 101. In this seminar we will review and analyze some of the most critical blunders GM made over the decades, focusing on the ill-conceived, unreliable, ugly, and just plain mediocre products that destroyed the company. I struggled mightily with the decision as to the first example, given all the boners available to me. But here it is, GM's Deadly Sin #1: The 1986 Buick Riviera.

Curbside Classics: 1971 Mini

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:38:16 +0000

Out of adversity arises creativity. Alec Issigonis' brilliant Mini was conceived in the depths of the oil import embargo brought on by the Suez Canal Crisis of 1956. Just like our energy crises gave birth to the Chevette and the Cavalier. Ok, no more GM references. This is the Mini's fiftieth birthday, and it deserves our undivided adulation. Well, at least from a safe distance, anyway.

Curbside Classics: 1964 Buick Riviera

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:50:04 +0000

GM gave us some genuine peak experiences before its long fall. Their post-war summit was the mid sixties. Its stock hit $358 (adjusted) in 1965, and profits crested in 1966 with $15 billion (adjusted). What about the best year for its cars? That would have to be 1963, with the trio of Corvette Sting Ray, Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick Riviera. And which one gets the nod as number one? I can't decide. But this Riviera happened to be sitting along the road on the way home from the lumber yard, so the decision was made for me.

Editorial: Curbside Classic: Pontiac Trans Sport and Transvertible

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:56:51 +0000

Curbside Classics is all about serendipity. Good thing too, because how else would I be inspired to write 800 words about the Pontiac Trans Sport? And I don't just mean stumbling across this bizarre Transvertible. Well, yes, that was good. But I also needed a regular Trans Sport to complement this flight of fancy. Easy, and boring enough. But take a look at the paperback tucked into the dash: John Steinbeck's "The Wayward Bus". Two for Two.

Curbside Classics: 1966 Mercedes-Benz 250 S

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:08:29 +0000

Here's a genuine milestone car. This Mercedes W108 began the lineage of modern S Series cars, which took its maker to the pinnacle of the global luxury sedan market. In the US, it single handedly broke the backs of Cadillac and Lincoln. A youthful ride in one left me permanently altered. And it all started with this somewhat modest but exquisite 250S. A couple of more milestones: this is the first Curbside Classic car owned by a TTAC reader, and it marks my two-hundredth car deemed interesting enough to photograph. Oh, and this is CC number thirteen. Many milestones indeed.

Curbside Classics: 1974 Opel Manta

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:45:30 +0000

I apologize. The pictures of this beautiful Manta are crap. I let myself get carried away. Hanging around with that pugnacious little Fiat 850 infected me with a burning desire to catch an Opel: Chrysler-Fiat-Opel, the new Holy Trinity. Part of me knew better; I had enough on my plate already. And I haven't seen an Opel in Eugene in ages. But my desire was downright Napoleonic. As is the result.

Curbside Classics: 1972 Fiat 850

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:52:17 +0000

Fate may have posed the 1965 Chrysler in the graveyard. But now I now needed a Fiat as the redeemer to the crumbling Chrysler. I waited in the cemetery, but nothing walked (or drove) out of the mausoleum. Well, “fate is for those too weak to determine their own destiny”. That would explain how Fiat became Chrysler’s fate. I was determined to find one, but for a while, it appeared that I was too weak to make my date with Fiat.

Curbside Classics: 1965 Chrysler Newport

Paul Niedermeyer — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:50:08 +0000

Fate intervened. I wasn't going to do another Chrysler product CC for a while, after the two recent Plymouths. But there I was tooling out West 11th, when I spotted this red Chrysler up ahead. When I finally got next to him at a light, I waved my camera and gestured if he would pull over for a shoot. A nod of assent followed. But he kept burbling along, and I began to wonder. Suddenly, he pulled into the Lane Memorial Gardens. How fitting.

Curbside Classics: The Two Jeep Gladiators

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:36:30 +0000

Once upon a time, two Jeep Gladiators were built at the great big Jeep factory in Toledo, Ohio. One Gladiator was white, and the other was green. Gladiators were built to be the toughest trucks in the whole world. They could outwork any other pickup. And outlast them too. And for thirty some years, the white and green Gladiators worked and worked, doing all sorts of really hard jobs. Then one day, a couple of years ago, the white Gladiator said to the green Gladiator "I don't need to do this hard work anymore. I've figured out an easier way to make a living!"

Editorial: Curbside Classics: 1970 Plymouth Duster 340

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:01:15 +0000

You know those anti-meth ads, which graphically show the physiological effects of speed - lots of bad skin and rotten teeth? Well, this car is the automotive equivalent of the tweaker. I found it sitting forlorn among the garbage cans in a dirty alley, complete with lumpy, flaking yellow skin, bald tires revealing their cords, and exuding the smell of cold, stale tobacco. And desperately awaiting its next hit of crank. The Duster 340 is the speed freak incarnate.

Editorial: Curbside Classics: 1951 Plymouth

Paul Niedermeyer — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:31:32 +0000

This is the very car that inspired Curbside Classics. I’ve been admiring its blocky solidity for ten years, whenever its owner and I happen to workout at the Y simultaneously. I can count on its reassuring, unchanging presence at least a couple of time a month - an anchor of constancy in this turbulent world. And you can’t get much more anchor-like than this cast-iron 1951 Plymouth Cranbrook. But anchors sink, and this car began Plymouth’s long dive into the deep blue.

Editorial: Curbside Classics: 1986 Nissan Stanza Wagon

Paul Niedermeyer — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:32:05 +0000

A Stanza wagon? What the NSFW! Before you run for the exits/bookmarks, give me a minute to spell out my Curbside Classics criteria: 1) at least twenty-five years old; 2) used as a daily or regular driver; 3) shows the patina of age; 4) has a significant place in automotive history; 5) has a place in my personal automotive history; 6) has distinctive design features; 7) has an enthusiast following; 8) represents the unique carscape of Eugene; 9) is under-appreciated; and 10) inspires me to write about it. Believe me, the boxy Nissan (a.k.a. Prairie) is worthy.

Editorial: Curbside Classics: 1967 MGB GT

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:06:10 +0000

I once met a girl in a complicated and unfulfilling dream. But it was so vivid, that for years afterwards, I had trouble remembering whether she had been a real girlfriend or a figment of my nocturnal imagination. Stumbling across this 1967 MGB-GT brings up the same confusion: did I actually own an identical “B”, or was it too just a dream?

Curbside Classics: 1965 Pontiac LeMans

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:37:43 +0000

Take a good long look at this handsome car. This beauty was one of the best in that beautiful decade of the sixties. Are you seeing its magnetic attraction yet? Well, this rough survivor might need a little help; try squinting a bit. I sure saw it when I was seventeen; I simply couldn’t keep my eyes off a black coupe exactly like this. And as a consequence, I learned a painful and lasting lesson. OK, better stop looking and keep reading.

Curbside Classics: 1964 Rambler Classic

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:01:35 +0000

What makes a car a true classic? Being one of the handsomest and most enduring designs of its time? Staying in production for twenty years? Having a long-stroke in-line engine with a classic OHC hemi-head? Winning a big race at the ‘Ring? Having illustrious heads of state as loyal owners? Or just slapping a chrome "Classic" badge on its flanks? How does this Rambler stack up? Has it earned its chops, or is it an imposter?

Curbside Classics: 1968 Saab 96

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:41:04 +0000

It's hard to look at this old Saab and not get choked up. And it's not just because this once proud and spunky company is on the ropes. Old Saabs just have a way of stirring my emotions. This is going to be a Saab story.

Curbside Classics: 1971 Cadillac Coupe DeVille

Paul Niedermeyer — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:11:45 +0000

Rambling along the streets of Eugene, I encounter cars that unleash memories and musings. Today's nostalgia comes courtesy of the 1971 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. 1971 was a very BIG year for Cadillac, as well as for US workers and me. And in a number of ways, things haven't been quite the same for any of us since. When this 1971 Coupe DeVille first rolled off the assembly line, it was the biggest ever, a full nineteen feet long and almost seven feet wide. And it remains the high-water mark for American cars. The '71 Caddy was the quintessential land barge. It floated along serenely and optimistically across America on the still youthful and un-crowded interstate system, its 7.7 liter V8 slurping a gallon of 39 cents gas every 12 blissfully isolated mile.