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Several decades later sophistication is hardly the word that comes to mind when you think about Pontiac Firebirds from the late 1970s, but that is the angle they were using to sell the Firebird Formula back in 1979. More »
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We aren't exactly sure what inspires someone to put a Jeep CJ-7 body and the chassis of a 1984 Corvette, but this is what the mostly finished result looks like. This odd combination is currently on Ebay waiting for someone else who wants a Corvette that looks like a Jeep badly enough to finish up this bizarre project. More »
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A few weeks ago we told about what would likely be the last chance to ever buy a brand new 1979 Pontiac Trans Am from the showroom floor. Last Saturday the car left the Indiana showroom where it spent the last 32 years after one deep pocketed Pontiac enthusiast paid $85,000 for the Trans Am. For that sum the new owner got the pristine 6.7 mile muscle car and the unofficial title of the last person to ever buy a brand new Trans Am. More »
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The idea of using an SUV as a family car was still a fairly novel concept back in 1979. That didn't stop Jeep from singing the praises of their station wagon alternative Cherokee and it's family hauling ability. While conventional two wheel drive station wagons didn't have a chance of making it through squishy roads or rough terrain, as you can see from this vintage advertisement they were no problem for the full size 4x4 Jeep Cherokee. More »
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According to the current owner this 1977 AMC Pacer is the lowest mileage example in the world. Although proving that claim is nearly impossible, considering the fact this Pacer has traveled a mere 12 miles in its 34 years we find it pretty easy to believe. More »
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If you've ever wondered what a brand new 32 year old car looks like feast your eyes on this 1979 Pontiac Trans Am. Next month this ultra low mileage Pontiac will finally leave the showroom where it has spent the majority of the last three decades, giving one lucky buyer the chance to buy a brand new '79 Trans Am. More »
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What has four wheels and reflexes so quick it almost seems alive? The MG Midget of course. During the model's final year of production British Leyland decided to pair up the still clean cut and color coordinated sport of skateboarding with their not long for the world and mostly outdated MG Midget to create this vintage advertising gem. More »
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Welcome to Found Off The Street, our look at cars found on the cape that rust liked so much it decided to summer there; Cape Cod, MA. Today we have a pair of 1970s International Harvester Scout IIs More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. What are the odds that two '79 Corvettes would live a mere two blocks apart? More »
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Volaré sedans were not-uncommon sights on the road as recently as a decade ago, but have any of us ever seen a Volaré coupe? More »
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Though we rarely see 124 Spiders on the street nowadays, they are still out there. Here's one that hung on long enough to see five different decades. More »
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Back in '79, when Zastava was just gearing up to build the car we call the Yugo, residents of Belgrade were treated to the drama of a dude in a stolen 911 leading the cops on nightly chases. More »
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While today's Junkyard Find dwarfs its 1965 ancestor we saw in the same wrecking yard a while back, it's still on the insubstantial side next to the current generation of "small" pickups. More »
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Seeing Alfas in the junkyard brings a tear to our eyes, even when it's a big 90s sedan. When it's a genuine Twin Cam-powered GTV, it's almost too much to bear! More »
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When was the last time you saw a first-generation Honda Prelude on the street? Even in low-rust California, these things disappeared years ago, so finding a first-year example in my local self-service boneyard was a bit of a history lesson. More »
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Maybe if Super 8 film hadn't been such a comprehensively terrible medium, I'd have kept making films; who knows, by now I might have become The King Of Eastern European Dental Fetish Porn! More »
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Did you notice the hyphen in the name of this car? That's because Datsun's marketers wanted you to think about SEX when you thought about the North American version of the Nissan Silvia. More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Lots of Scouts on the island! More »
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Oldsmobile got whacked by The General earlier in the decade, but there was once a time when Olds had the best-selling midsize car in the country: Cutlass! More »
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That's sort of how the mid-Malaise Era went; you could opt to swap your rapidly-eroding dollars for the already obsolete Chevrolet Chevette, or for a much larger car made by an obviously doomed manufacturer. More »
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35 MPG city, 47 MPG highway! Compare that to the numbers on the '09 Nissan Versa FE, which manages just 28/34 MPG. More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street Bonus Edition! We're back with more Tomsk photos from behind the Orange Curtain. More »
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Even with most of the weekend's posts focused on 24 Hours Of LeMons South coverage, we still need to keep up with Down On The Street Bonus Edition. Tomsk has sent in many, many photos. More »
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Welcome to Project Car Hell, where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Since Fiat and Chrysler are now henchmen, PCH must honor their alliance!
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The 30 grand 1995 Mitsubishi 3000GT was sent packing to Booth Number Two by the voice of the mob, but what will the voters make of this 1979 Dodge Shag Van? More »
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Imagine a time when four-wheel-drive trucks were sold for their ability to slog through snow and mud, not their ability to repel urban criminals and perform minivan tasks without minivan stigma. More »
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What kind of outfits would you expect Brazilian booth professionals to wear when showing off VW Beetles and Variants at the '79 Salão do Automóvel in São Paulo? How about long flowery dresses, the better to show off the features of the new alcohol-fueled VWs? BЯдΖǐL-ЯЄРΘЯΤЄЯ has unearthed these great photos for us; make the jump to see them all and read his description. More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Cadillacs sold pretty well, even after most of a decade of Malaise-y gas prices and general sense of diminished expectations, so you could still buy a great big angular slab of rear-wheel-drive Fleetwood as late as 1984. Here we've got a raggedy '79 Fleetwood that's been sitting on a major commercial strip for a couple of weeks now.
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Here's a two-for-one Classic Ad Watch deal from the darkest days of the Malaise Era. First up, a Gladding Chevrolet (Maryland) offer for a Chevette with factory air for just 99 bucks a month. Before you jump in the time machine to take advantage of that sweet deal, however, consider the '79 Mercury Zephyr, which was cheaper than both the Toyota Corona and the '78 Zephyr. More »
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Not very shockingly, the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL beat up on the Pontiac Bonneville in our 6.9 Liters Of Misery Choose Your Eternity poll on Friday, no doubt because voters were counting camshafts or dollars in the original purchase price or something. Today we're going to have the traditional post-24 Hours Of LeMons PCH, only instead of letting you choose between the cars that finished #1 and #2 (in this case, a Supra and a Jetta) we're going to choose between two cars we really, really want to see someone bring to a LeMons race. They were expensive when new, featured sophisticated DOHC V8s and rear-wheel-drive, and came equipped with dizzyingly complicated electronics and plush luxury gear… yet it's possible to pick either one up for a LeMons-friendly price today!
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This is Down On The Street Bonus Edition, where we check out interesting street-parked cars located in places other than the Island That Rust Forgot. We've seen a couple of Peugeots and a Renault in DOTSBE this week, so today we need to give equal time to a marque you rarely see on the North American street. Franzouse found this extremely rusty Simca 1100 while staggering home from a party one night, and had a Proustian flashback to his parents' old 1100. Make the jump and you shall see and read more about this car. More »
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Looking for a BMW from the era of diminished expectations and runaway inflation? Maybe you're considering a mid-70s BMW 2002 with huge bumpers and an automatic, which you should be able to obtain for a bit under a couple grand. Come up with, say, a hundred times that amount, however, and you could fire a thermonuclear Buy It Now at this BMW M1, which was custom coachbuilt for the Prime Minister of Qatar back in the day. It's got low miles, looks great, and is ready to drive. Thanks to Cameron for the tip! More »
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Welcome to Project Car Hell, where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! I really wanted to call today's matchup Édition Débâcle, but the heads of our beloved Server Hamsters tend to explode when they're forced to deal with weird furrin letters in our headlines, and headless hamsters don't run on wheels. Never mind the English-only hamsters, though, because we've got to choose between two equally impossible desirable French cars. More »
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That's right, dear readers, humanity has now officially reached the pinnacle: diecast 1:24 and 1:60 scale replicas of the amazing '79 Chrysler LeBaron Town And Country station wagon! With an even hundred horses from its undaunted-by-Malaise 225 Slant Six, the 3,600-pound Town And Country provided a great example to road-tripping families eager to teach the kids about the proverb of the Tortoise And The Hare. Thanks to 57Sweptside for the tip! [Motormax] More »
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The Ford Ranchero cartruck went through numerous platform changes over the years, with the full-size sedan-based '57-59s, the compact Falcon-based '60-66s, the mid-sized Fairlane/Torino-based '68-76s, and the bloato-mid-sized LTD-based '77-79s. We saw a beige-and-brown two-tone '79 last summer, and now I've found another two-tone '79 on the island. More »
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Normally, a Malaise Era car with 500,000 miles would be an ideal appetizer for The Crusher, but this one is a movie star! Yes, this 1979 Peugeot 504D was driven by Adam Sandler in You Don't Mess With The Zohan, a cinematic masterpiece that will one day be regarded as the Citizen Kane of our era... and it could be yours for only $2,500. The seller says "No air, no heat, no rust, a few dings and small leaks," so we figured it was just too nice for Project Car Hell and deserved its own post. [Craigslist Orange County] More »
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The Datsun 200SX for '79 didn't have TURRRRRBO power yet, but it packed a not-too-shabby-for-its-time 92 fuel-injected horsepower. Weighing just 2,268 pounds (about 650 pounds less than the '08 Sentra), the 200SX didn't feel particularly Malaise-y, and it even came with a Sky Roof! It wanted you to open it up and watch its moves! More »
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I'd really like to shoot more Malaise Era Civics, but it seems most of them have been crushed by now, victims of their own reliability. The problem is that these cars just did their jobs without showing a huge amount of lovable personality, and thus it wasn't much like shooting Old Yeller when an owner's coldhearted fix-it-or-scrap-it calculus came into play on a broken 20-year-old Civic. Well, that's my theory, anyway. So, here's a '79 that's beaten all the odds and kept on doing its job; I photographed this car just across the street from the '77 Volvo 244DL, making this block a little museum for Malaise Era imports. More »
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What's the best way to show that your car is better than the competition? Slap a huge Malaise decal bearing your car's name on the side, set up the ramps, and jump the competition! It's even got more headroom than the Rabbit, which we all know is roomy enough for Wilt Chamberlain! Then it kicks Honda's ass by having a longitudinally-mounted engine, though we're not sure quite how that's an advantage in a front-wheel-drive car. More »
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There's a Volvo 262C parked in a driveway scant blocks from my house; it would be a super-cool DOTS car, but it's off-limits. Not so for the Bertone in ejacobs' neighborhood, which is on the street and set up for easy photography with no other vehicles nearby. These things sold for 15 grand back in the day, well over twice the price of a regular 242; this one has some rust, but looks pretty complete. More »
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