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Another one from the vaults: 2007 to be exact! — JB

I’d like to start this week with a bit of an apology – not for what I’ve done, mind you, but for what I am going to do. Fourteen years ago, I was a flat broke, know-nothing kid starting at the bottom of a small-town Ford dealership’s auto (and light truck!) sales department. The hours weren’t great, and most of the actual minutes were even worse, as Douglas Adams would say. On a monthly “draw” against commission of eight hundred dollars, I didn’t exactly live like a king. Heck, I couldn’t even afford to eat a real lunch. Instead, I’d buy two fifty-nine-cent McD’s cheeseburgers and wander over to the used car department, where “old Frank”, the finance manager for the “used side”, would be telling stories. After forty-plus years in the business, Frank knew all the tales of the car biz, and he wasn’t shy about telling them, no matter how disturbing, slanderous, or just plain obscene they might be. One lifeless Tuesday afternoon, I said to him,

“Hey Frank, you oughta write a book about this stuff.” Frank reacted to this mild suggestion with unconcealed disapproval and what was very possibly contempt, as if I’d suggested that he put a firecracker in the dealership toilet. His lit cigarette – yes, you could still smoke indoors at a car dealership back in 1994 – dangled dangerously out of his stained hand. He “fixed me with his eye”, as the Ancient Mariner did, and replied v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

“I could do that,” he said, “but I won’t. I would never write or say anything against this business. I wouldn’t share our secrets, our business, our life, with people on the outside,” and here his glare became quite focused and intense as I shrank back in one of the used car building’s rickety old wire-frame chairs, “and neither… should… you.”

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Gains in market share, that is. It’s market share that counts. That perplexing axiom had been drummed into me in the many decades I spent on the other side. You need to be faster than the overall market, or you fall behind. Of course, you can gain share by giving away cars, but you won’t do that for long.

Detroit had a big comeback last year. Let’s look how big. And let’s discuss whether Bloomberg is right when it predicts that “U.S. automakers led by General Motors Co. may lose share in their home market this year.” (Read More…)

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Shall… we… play… a… game? How ’bout that old Sesame Street standard, “One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other – One Of These Things Just Doesn’t Belong.” I’ll name four people, and you tell me which one “doesn’t belong”. Ready? Setta? GO! (Read More…)

For a long time, Japan’s automakers had pressured their government to enter free trade talks with Europe and the U.S. The Japanese government had dragged its heels, putting the interest of ageing farmers first. With a trade agreement, Japan would be a ripe market for American rice farmers and cattle breeders, and I would finally be able to enjoy a good steak in Japan without risking a heart attack. Caused by the price, not by the cholesterol.

After the Japanese car industry did flee the strong yen and the country, its government reluctantly entered negotiations. Not surprisingly, the American car industry is opposed. (Read More…)

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To provide a little light weekend reading in the months to come, I will be syndicating some of the “Avoidable Contact” columns that I wrote for our friends at SpeedSportLife back in the day. At the same time, I will be restarting the “Avoidable Contact” series and publishing it here. Be aware that these are long posts, running from 2,000 words to twice that. You’ve been warned. Don’t forget to check out the nice folks at Speed:Sport:Life: their current lineup includes some great young writers and the well-known photographic excellence of founder Zerin Dube — JB

Gather ‘round, everybody. I have an epic tale to tell. It’s the story of how Fake Luxury Conquered The World. There are heroes, and villains, and sweeping vistas, and if we don’t exactly have a princess cooped up in a tower, we might have a few sexually liberated young women in airbrush-mural vans. Interested? Follow along with me as we return to the dark days of the early Seventies…

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Today, the Volvo 760 celebrates 30 years on this planet. Concieved in an uncertain time in the auto industry and launched in 1982, the 760′s various incarnations lasted until the S90 and V90 were laid to rest in 1998.

Like so many great cars, the 760 was built with whatever happened to be laying around at the time.  Cost-effective was the operative word, and the 240′s basic architecture was lengthened slightly, while losing 220 lbs in the process. A 2.8L V6 (the famous PRV motor) was available, as well as a diesel, but the 760 Turbo would live on in the hearts and minds of enthusiasts.

My friend Chris, who took the above photograph, grudgingly gave up his own pristine 700-Series Turbo this summer, for a Lexus IS250. I only got the chance to drive it once, but reveled in the massive turbo lag and equally entertaining turbo boost and the utilitarian nature of the cabin. The 760 Turbo was arguably the last idiosyncratic Volvo (though the 740 and 900 Series carried on its lineage despite re-skins and name changes), with a host off oddities like the self-leveling Nivomat suspension, a turbo boost gauge without any calibration, and the “4-Speed plus Overdrive” manual gearbox.

The introduction of the 850 range in the early 1990s marked the end of an era, as front-wheel drive and transverse engines asserted their dominance in the Volvo lineup. While I’m a fan of the current cars (the S60, XC90 and XC90 are solid vehicles), the old, boxy rear-drivers are iconic vehicles and arguably the heart and soul of the marque.

The first thing we need to make clear when talking about the Sterling 827 is that it is not a Honda. It’s a Rover. Rover! (Read More…)

A 19 year old student in Halifax, Nova Scotia put up a classified ad looking for a vintage car. The make, model, year and body style are all irrelevant. What Spencer, the ad’s creator, is looking for is “…a classic car with a past that I can keep alive, and continue to keep alive through future generations, continuously adding to the history of a special car.” And he doesn’t want to pay a cent for it.

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I’ve got a truly ridiculous car-parts-based project in the works, a project that requires several dozen functioning vintage car clocks. For about three years now, I’ve been hitting junkyards with an 8xAA battery pack, so I can hit car clocks with 12 volts and see if they’re worth buying. Most (>80% of analogs, 50% of digitals) fail, but enough have passed that I’ve got a couple of boxes full of functional European, Japanese, and Detroit car clocks. It will be decades a while before I get around to building The Great Car Clock Project, so I’m going to show off some of the better vehicular timepieces while testing the TTAC’s readership’s anorakian car knowledge. Today’s Mystery Clock won’t be a huge challenge, but it’s one of my favorites. Quickly: Year, make, model of the car that donated this Jeco digital?

Denver really is an alternate universe when it comes to the typical inventory in a self-service junkyard (compared to California, where my formative junkyard years were spent). You won’t find many BMW E30s or Volvo 240s, both of which inhabit California yards to the extent that they clog The Crusher’s jaws, but you will find every oddball four-wheel-drive car built in the 1970s and 1980s. I found this ’89 Corolla All-Trac wagon a couple months back and thought, “Man, these things must be a one-in-a-million find, even in Colorado!” Not so, as it turns out; at another yard maybe ten miles away, here’s one more. (Read More…)