i've had a pair of 1974 Monte Carlos.. swapped a 454 into one to do bug burnouts and swapped a 700r4 trans into the other in search of miles per gallon.. parted out a 74 Suburban once...
i've had a pair of 1974 Monte Carlos.. swapped a 454 into one to do bug burnouts and swapped a 700r4 trans into the other in search of miles per gallon.. parted out a 74 Suburban once...
I still own my 74 REPU. Not only is it my birth year, but we could have been made on the same day. 3/74 production date, and my birthday is in December.
My first car was an '84 Ford Ranger.
I'd still like to own an '84 Mustang SVO to keep as my "forever" car.
Nothing want-worthy was made in the year I was born. Everything sucked.
EVERYTHING.
I guess technically Mazda was making the RX-7 and the RX-3 SP. And GM was making the "Bandit" Firebird, and while those look cool, have you ever actually driven one of those? They make Flexible Flyers look like solid blocks of granite in comparison, and then they rust audibly making them nightmares of chassis flex.
Porsche also brought the 930 back to the US, but they weeniefied it with a larger engine and other things to tame it down. Because nothing says "bland" like focus-group-think and listening to whiny owners who want to you change what your originally created because they're all "whine whine I backed my 911 into a guardrail because the boost hit like a sledgehammer and I lifted".
Knurled wrote: And GM was making the "Bandit" Firebird, and while those look cool, have you ever actually driven one of those? They make Flexible Flyers look like solid blocks of granite in comparison, and then they rust audibly making them nightmares of chassis flex.
Yes I have. Many of them. And I disagree with your assessment. They turn flatter than a viper, have more down low torque than the Queen Marry and have build quality that would make Horacio Pagani jealous.
OKAY, all of that is a lie.
Knurled wrote: Nothing want-worthy was made in the year I was born. Everything sucked. EVERYTHING. I guess technically Mazda was making the RX-7 and the RX-3 SP. And GM was making the "Bandit" Firebird, and while those look cool, have you ever actually driven one of those? They make Flexible Flyers look like solid blocks of granite in comparison, and then they rust audibly making them nightmares of chassis flex. Porsche also brought the 930 back to the US, but they weeniefied it with a larger engine and other things to tame it down. Because nothing says "bland" like focus-group-think and listening to whiny owners who want to you change what your originally created because they're all "whine whine I backed my 911 into a guardrail because the boost hit like a sledgehammer and I lifted".
you do know that all of the things that you hate about those cars are pretty easy to change, right? $35 solid aluminum body mounts and modern tires totally change the way GM F bodies ride and handle and it's is stupid easy to make most GM V8 engines at least respectably fast- just unchoking the exhaust on that era of any GM car or truck wakes them up...
It's not the bushings so much as the whole front of the car is cantilevered off of the floor and not much supports anything. Add metal fatigue from the decades and you get cars where you put them on a lift and the engine sags three inches and the front bumper sags six. GM simply did a craptacular job of building a chassis - there's a lot of weight and no structural integrity to show for it.
It really doesn't help any that their suspension tuning ethic was to make everything really stiff to compensate for a noodly chassis.
First car I purchased with my own money ($50 to the owner of a shade tree shop I worked for) was a '57 Beetle. I was 16 and figured I could get it running again. So very rusted out with no engine but it came with a later non-split trans that would work better with the '64 bus engine I would install. Everything was there for the most part. But the rust was so bad that when my brother and I drove it down a dirt road and thru a section of mud it ended up with more mud inside than outside. Fun times!
I have not owned a birth year car yet. There are some 1970 cars that I wouldn't mind owning at some point.
First car was a 69 GT6+. I just sold it about 6 years ago to put toward the addition on the house. I sold my 65 skylark convt as well.
I don't usually play this game, but was kind of trying to find at least one 1960 automobile. The closest I could get was the 1959 Edsel.
You kids make me feel old.
My wife is a '69 model and laments there aren't many cool cars she likes from that year, bearing in mind she has no interest in things like Roadrunners or Boss 302s. Which is probably good considering my income level.
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