As I’m sure you’ve heard or witnessed first-hand, Hurricane Irene threw her wrath against the eastern seaboard with initial landfall in North Carolina as a Category 1. Although predicted to be a Category 3 at landfall, this storm was still nothing less than a monster. This major hurricane realeased havoc from Myrtle Beach up to Maine as it churned along leaving major paths of destruction behind and massive amounts of rainfall. Power outages became widespread up the east coast, (includes my family in Pennsylvania at this current moment). Streams and creeks became raging rivers taking out roads, bridges, one being a 156-year-old hand-hewn bridge in upstate New York. It destroyed houses and stranded people in or away from their homes. Evacuated people are now stranded wondering the fate of their homes and personal belongings. Washed-out roads and bridges have left complete towns stranded without a way to get to or out like these towns in Vermont that have over 260 roads closed.
This storm has caused massive destruction and that has effected some of our own Mustang enthusiasts. Member, RobTRoma from PA, joked about getting a photo of his car next to a hurricane in our Mustang game thread. Featured above, what looks like a very nice ROUSH S-197 Mustang is sinking in a Subway parking lot in North Carolina during Irene’s throw-down. It almost has an ambience of Jaws coming out of the water before Roy Sheider exploded it.
One of the things I enjoy checking out is increase in the value of some of our US classic cars.
I recently ran across this breakdown in Hagerty Insurance magazine…it normally has some good articles. This one was about American Motors and it had a section on original cost of the cars and the current collector’s value. So check this out:
1967 Marlin – a cool looking car if you ask me – had a base prices of $2,963. Today that car will cost you about $23,100.
A good looking car in Two Tone paint.
1969 Javelin SST – love these cars – I once dated this girl who drove one and..oh…um..nevermind – back in the day they cost $3,144 and today average cost is $33,900.
69 Javelin SST
1970 AMX 390/325 – I know I’m suppose to love these cars – they being, perhaps the sporty-est of the AMC brand, but I don’t – they would run you $3,798 back then and now you can pick one up for a mere $55K!
1970 AMX
1972 Javelin SST – see my comment for the ’69 – base price in 1972 was $3,807 and today $22,400.
1973 Gremlin X Coupe – ok I really don’t care at all about these, except when I see them at the drag strip with a huge GM block stuffed between the fenders – they would set you back $2,098 back in ’72 and today you can get one have it mounted on a pole in the front yard for $11,700 (pole not included and labor extra and you’ll have to sign a waiver).
1973 Grebmlin X Coupe (Seen here without the pole)
1976 Pacer DL Coupe – well.. if wasn’t a DL coupe….ok even though it is…insert comment for Gremlin above – except for $15,000 you can pick one up today, remove the body from the frame, bury it upside down in backyard and with a little tweaking you can have a really cool hot tub.
1976 Pacer DL Coupe…just before it was turned into a hot tub!
OK..that was mean..here ya go:
’76 Pacer DL Sport Coupe
1978 Matador Hardtop Coupe would have tapped your wallet for nearly $5K (4,799) – I sort of liked these cars – but not a lot and today you can sort of like them for about $12,500 big ones.
78 Matador Coupe
Unless it look like this one!!!
This is the Matador X
Want to see some more brands laid out like this? Drop me a comment and I’ll dig some up.
I bumped in to Bill Holtzclaw from Cartersville, Georgia, virtually (Facebook) and he shared a few pics and some detail on his restoration of a 1967 Olds F-85.
Bill's F85
“I am doing a full, frame-off restoration on this 1967 F-85 Club Coupe. It has a convertible frame, 442 suspension, steel crank 330, .030 over with W-31 cam and 2” intake valves, close ratio Muncie 4 speed and heavy duty 3.91 posi rear. It is a radio delete, heater delete, carpet delete car with the factory cloth and vinyl interior. The drive train is built and the chassis is being assembled. The interior is done, the chrome and bright work is done. Next, we’ll pull the body and put it on a rotisserie. It will be two-tone Crystal and Midnight Blue.”
“I’ve had a lot of interest in this project from some of the leading Oldsmobile collectors in the country. It is my version of what would have been a 1967 W-31, which was introduced in 1968. All of the parts to build this car back in the day were available as either RPO options or over-the-counter upgrades. The W-30 package was available as an over-the-counter package in 1967. The W-30 cam and the W-31 cam are one in the same, and the OIA kit will work for both small block and big block cars. So, it was a possibility! ”
The upholstery turned out awesome! He used NOS fabric for the seat inserts. The car was a factory carpet delete car with a near-perfect vinyl floor covering. “I cleaned it and had it dyed the color blue (same as dash pad) that I wanted. It looks absolutely brand new! I had seat belts custom made to stock appearance, and the standard steering wheel came out nice, too.”
Check out the vinyl floor covering
“I had the gauges restored by R&M restorations in Greenville, SC. The odometer was re-set to zero.” The dash bezel was restored by Chrome Tech USA. They repaired the 44 year-old plastic, re-chromed it and then detail painted it. The radio and heater delete plates were purchased from Red Venom Enterprises. “They only make the radio plate, so I purchased two and trimmed one to fit the heater control panel and the PRNDL panel. ”
Bill did the polishing himself
He installed a Sunpro Mini Tach in place of the factory clock. Looks like it came from the factory that way!
Great Job - Bill!!
Final Product
Bill is also the owner of a 1967 Oldsmobile F-85 Town Sedan with “Police Apprehender” package. It has the HiPo 330/320 hp, Heavy Duty Jetaway and 442 suspension upgrades.
Nice!!!
Might be why he’s known as OldsMoBill. “I am also known as the “Oldsmobile Police”!” Bill states.
Bill, I hope you check back with your status from time to time and thank you for sharing.
I want to cover two more cars in this part. The first will be the TVR S3..?? ..yeah…me too! The second will the Caterham Seven.
TVR S3 was put up against the Triumph TR4 and frankly there is nothing I know about a TVR S3..so here we go.
TVR S3 C
TVR engineering started back in England in 1947 with the first TVR being produced in 1949. Here’s the 2nd TVR built:
#2 TVR
Through out its history it used all types of engines include the Ford Kent engines and even a Buick engine (3.5 litre Rover V8).
The S series was produced between 1986 – 1994. The TVR in this article had steel spaceframe chassis and a fiberglass body. The engine was an iron, overhead valve, 2936cc 12v V6 with electronic fuel injection. This power plant cranked out 168 hp and 170 lbft of torque. The suspension was an independent double wishbone with rack and pinion steering. This all combined to let the car reach its top speed of 135 mph.
In the comparison, the TVR S3 beat out the Triumph TR4 in Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability 42 to 32. The price of the TVR S3 is about 4000 Euros with the Triumph at 13,000 Euros.
The company was sold to a Russian buyer in 2004 and after a not so great start the company halted production.
For a full history on the TVR – check out http://www.tvrsseries.com/
Next up is the Caterham 7:
Caterham Seven
The Caterham Seven is a kit car – you can still buy and build them today. Interesting enough it started out as the Lotus Six. The next version was the Lotus Seven, however Lotus dropped the production and Catherham purchased the rights to build the kits. The components are flexible with such pieces as Ford axles and de Dion-axles being used. The engines used is very expansive from the Lotus Twin Cam engine to Ford’s cross flow engines. Even Cosworth BDRs appeared around 1983, in 1600 cc 140 bhp (104 kW) form, followed by 1700 cc 150 bhp (112 kW) versions three years later. In the ’90’s the common engine had become the 2 litre Vauxhall HPC, as fitted to the Vauxhall Calibra, putting out 165—175 bhp. Motor cycle engines have been also used with the likes of the GSXR1300 engine used in the Suzuki and the Honda CBR1100 engine.
These are favorites for the SCCA and other grass-roots racing.
Thanks for all the comments and emails on the Part 1 of the Cars You Never Heard Of.
Thought I’d follow it up with the Panther Kallista. This stems from the same article in “Classic and Sport Car” a UK publication. The article pitted pricey European cars against less expensive cars and rated them. It’s over all theme was “See you can get this close to the expensive cars, for less.”
1985 Panther Kallista
Kallista was the product of the Panther Car Company and they were built between 1980 and 1990, actually coming on the market in about 1982. The were a box chassis with an aluminum body. The engine that was first used was Fords 2.8 V6 which cranked out 2792 cc from its 12v configuration. The electronic fuel injection helped it deliver 150 hp and 159 lb ft of torque. Top speed was about 120 mph with the help of the 5 speed manual transmission.
In the article Kallista was compared against the Morgan Plus 8 which you can purchase now days for about 35,000 British Pounds (about $70k US) compared to the collectors price of 7,000 BP ($14k US). In that contest comparing Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability the Morgan was judged with a total of 37 points and the Panther Kallista end up with 35.
I did find one on Ebay with a few days still to go with a current bid of just over $4k. It’s an 1986, 4 cylinder – not a V6.
Of course I spend a lot of time reading and again a lot of that is two or three-dimensional, although my wife says it’s a single dimension. She sees just “CARS” I see muscle cars, sedans (that I want to turn in to muscle cars), exotic cars and even some European cars. That’s multi-dimensional, don’t you think? I gained a little interest in them when I was a kid and my Dad surprised my Mother with a 60’ish MGB – mainly I learned that unless you wanted to fix ’em a lot…stay a way!!!
I gained a little more familiarization with another brand when I was in college. I had my license suspended….you can figure out why…so don’t make me say ‘too many speeding tickets”, ok? Thanks. So it was only about a mile or so walk to the campus from where I stayed, but if you are from one of the colder States, like northern New York, then you’d know that a morning jaunt on a Dec. morning is ‘nippy” to say the least. So I would catch a ride with a friend. He drove the one of the coolest cars I had ridden. It was a Citroen. Similar to this one:
It had the coolest suspension that would raise when you started it and lower when you turned it off.
My point being that there is another dimension to my reading – European cars. But I am in no way any kind of expert with any of them – although when I lived in Germany, I drove a very old European Ford Escort. That car was horrible!!!! However, it got me round, even when the upper part of the seat frame broke and the only way to drive it was by holding yourself forward using the steering wheel else the seat back, because it leaned so much, should dump you in the back seat. Last year I signed up for..please kneel…”HEMMINGS”… thank you….you may relax now… SPORTS & EXOTIC CAR magazine – some great articles and I enjoy Mike’s and Richard’s writings. Geezze, this is a long way around to the point that I picked up a copy of Classic & Sports Car magazine – UK produced – the other day.
In this was a series of articles that pitted 4 pair of cars against each other. One car in each pair was an expensive classic brand/model and the other was relatively inexpensive newer brand/model. Two things dawned on me, one was,”Hey, I’ve never heard of a Reliant Scimitar SS1 or a Panther Kallista.” The second thing was, “Hey, have never heard of any of these cars!” Normally if I have just one of these realizations – I won’t read the article… nope not interested…. but this time I did.
And now I need to know a little about these cars and I know you do to….all three of my readers!!! So we’ll take a look at the Panther Kallista and the Caterham Seven and the TVR S3 and the Reliant Scimitar SS1.
First up is the Reliant Scimitar SS1.
This car (at about 3000 British Pounds – $6000 USD) was being compared to the Lotus Elan (at 16000 British Pounds or about $32,000 USD). Here is what it looks like:
Reliant Scimitar SS1
Not bad-looking!!!!
These cars were made from 1986 to 1990, however the Scimitar actually arrived on the scene in 1964 with a Ford straight 6 cylinder as the power plant. These more recent models had a spaceframe chassis and fiberglass body, an iron block, alloy heads, SOHC 1809 cc, 8 valve 4. It also sported a Garrett T2 Turbo with electronic multi-port fuel injection system. This allowed it to lay out 140 HP and 141 lb ft of torque and reach a top speed of 128 mph and it only weighted 1969 lbs.
They sported a 5 speed manual transmission, rack and pinion steering, double wishbone independent suspension and disks breaks.
Just to give you some closure, it was compared to the Lotus Elan where it scored 2 points less than the Lotus (38 to 40) in Driving, Practicality, Character, Value and Usability.
Any one out there have one of these? Know anyone that has one? If so drop a comment and pic.
When you work with and/or drive classic cars there is a never ending battle between old school and technology. Do I leave the points and condenser in or do I go all electronic? Do I update the suspension with coil-overs or go with stock suspension? Upgrade the interior to cloth or go with the vinyl? Many of us face those battles all the time. But there’s one clash between old and new that we just can’t to anything about and that is when new non-car technology clashes with old cars.
Back in ancient times the man went out to gather or kill something to bring home for dinner. That hasn’t changed much, especially in my household. Every week I strike out into the jungle to visit the local gatherers’ spot and cart home something for dinner. The only killing going on is my checking account balance.
Today was the day for our weekly shopping, so I fired up the ’70 Stang and headed out, ready for the hunt. After I was done scouting for “sales” and had enough provisions to last seven moons, the clerk (oh, they don’t call them that anymore…’associate’ is the correct term) took my hard earned provisions(HEY!!!..its tough shopping at the mega grocery – carts speeding around like herds of prehistoric lizards, tar pits of jelly on the floor, ill tempered rival tribes in the gourmet isle…yeah…it’s tough!!), stuffed them in to about 20 plastic bags and dumped it all into a cart. On the way out of the store a couple of clerks….excuse me…associates…said have a ‘nice day’ and ‘thank you’, as I tried to push the squared wheeled cart to the parking lot and my car.
As I popped open the trunk on the Mustang, I remembered the floor of this cavernous opening is covered with the new vinyl (original material) I installed a few months back and nothing else (I don’t carry a spare for drag strip purposes and it wouldn’t work with the tire size anyway). I looked at the contents of the squared wheeled cart and realized that by the time I got home, my gatherings will be all over the place, even if I didn’t drive like I normally do. If I tied them shut, the bags are still going slide everywhere, including into the quarter panel wells, creating a dripping plastic bag full of wine that just moments ago were grapes.
My next option was putting the bags inside, on the vinyl bench seat in the rear and the on front bucket set. Still the vinyl was going to let everything slide side to side and drop down on the floor.
Then I remembered back to when I shopped with my mother as a kid and the vinyl seats in our old Chevy Biscayne. The saving grace there were the old school paper bags that stood up straight and were packed heavy to stay in place. Their square shape allowed for the use of effective load master techniques that kept them on the seat or upright in the trunk. Then I thought,”I should have gone with the cloth over the vinyl.”
One of my readers sent me the video below. It’s the second in a series of 3 of a California K-Car club, headed out for car-a-van. Now generally the Chrysler K-Car was and is a but of many jokes. It wasn’t their best plan but these cars have a following.
I’ve gone on similar runs with my Vette and Mustang, same amount of planning, etc, ( we just get there a ‘bit’ faster – :^P). This video show that it’s true…It doesn’t matter what you drive…if you love it. 425px;margin:0 auto;”> [vodpod id=Video.15330551&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]
The Roaring Twentys – a great time in US social and economic history. 1928 things still looked pretty good and no indication of the tough economic times that would lead to the terrible 30’s.
1928 saw 8 car companies fighting it out for market shares.
Chevy lead the way with just over a million units at 1,193,212 cars. Ford was a distant second with 607,592 vehicles.
Surprisingly Willys-Overland/Whippet were in third with 315,000 (well behind Ford). Hudson/Essex produced 282,203 for fourth spot with Pontiac/Oakland at fifth with 244,564, Buick was next with 221,758. Chrysler and Nash grabbed sixth and seventh place respectively with 160,670 and 138,137.
Notes for 1928:
– Chrysler was getting its new brand ready for the next year – the DeStoto.
– Ford business coupes came with a rubberized roof.
