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Several years before the 4runner was introduced to the world an odd collaboration between Toyota and Winnebago produced a little known compact SUV conversion called the Trekker. More »
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What better way to prove your truck was truly Ram tough than show it driving in a weird animated world? As evidenced by this strange vintage commercial, that is exactly what Dodge decided to do to advertise their two year old Ram truck back in 1983. More »
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As this commercial demonstrates in a very literal and somewhat silly manner, the 1983 Renault Alliance was the car that closed the gap between European technology and affordability. More »
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When introduced to the U.S. in 1980 the Jetta became the first notchback VW ever offered for sale in this country. Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe Coupe seems a fine example, but is its price a coup too? More »
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Remember when you used to have to pull a lever to send power to all four wheels in your Subaru? The hardships our forefathers endured! More »
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We were just kidding about the "defeats the Japanese" part; let's just say that the X-Body wasn't the Toyota-killer that GM needed in the early 80s. More »
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By 1983, Nissan was in the final stages of phasing out the Datsun name in the North American market, so every Datsun had a little "by Nissan" addendum on badges. Datsun, Nissan, whatever- this one will be scrap steel soon! More »
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Yes, we know we're in for a barrage of hate mail from the International Mitsubishi Cordia Zealot League- because every car, no matter how obscure, has a club- but do the rest of you remember the Cordia? More »
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After reading the tale of the science-geek kid whose innocuous Gatorade-bottle-based motion-detector project got the bomb squad on his ass and his life ruined forever, I was reminded of my own similar experience involving a '75 Ford LTD seatbelt buzzer. More »
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Featuring music by Hideki Naoi and Alphaville, this quartet of Japan-market ads for the mid-80s Toyota Corona let potential buyers know that the LASRE 3A engine gave the Corona magical powers! More »
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In the final year of the Malaise Era, American car shoppers were still steamed about those muscle cars that were "legislated off the highways" (under pinko socialist Richard Nixon's watch). Then, from socialist Sweden, came the 240 Turbo! More »
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We love second-gen Toyota Tercel wagons around these parts, so we always enjoy watching hyperkinetic Japanese TV commercials for what JDM buyers knew as the Toyota Sprinter Caribbean. More »
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You don't see many Starlets on the street these days, and they're rarer still in the boneyard. Mike 'Clunkbucket' Bumbeck drives a Starlet, so I called him the moment I spotted this one. More »
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Who in their right mind would buy a station wagon with four-wheel drive? That's probably what the competitors of doomed AMC had to say back in the Late Malaise Era. More »
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We've seen some members of the Alfetta family excel in 24 Hours Of LeMons races, with one coming in third at the Goin' For Broken race in May. No such luck for this one! More »
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What's the best way to sell the 1983 Honda City Hyper Turbo? Honda's Japanese-market admen figured that the ska popmasters of Madness would be just perfect for a series of super-frantic TV spots. More »
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While I was at Infineon to drive the STaSIS S5 a couple weeks back, I kept seeing this silver blur howling past everything on the track. It looked like an old Quattro… but that fast? More »
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Roll up to the Playboy club in a Mazda Cosmo Big Run Genteel back in '83, and you'd be sure to get some special treatment from the bunnies. 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! In our last Hell Project matchup, we learned that two-thirds of Jalopnik readers would choose a Mustang-based Fauxrrari over an Integra-based one as their ride of choice in the Lake Of Fire. The Lake Of Fire, as we know, is rough on body panels… but not nearly as rough as it is on brain-scramblingly complex German electronics. That means we're going to return to Hell Über Alles, with a couple of precision-engineered German machines with bargain-of-a-lifetime price tags.
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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. I've been seeing a fair number of E24 BMWs in Alameda lately, so let's add this one to the DOTS parade. We've had this '83 633CSi, this '87 M6, and '87 L6 so far, and now it's the turn of another '83 (I've been looking for some 5- and 7-series BMWs of this era on the island, but so far I haven't found any parked in photo-friendly spots).
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Ford made the good ol' 240 and 300 inline sixes starting in 1964, and they had the torque and longevity to be great truck engines. By 1983, however, pushrod sixes were going the way of the vinyl LP- quick, get a metric designation on that thing, so buyers will think it's one of those newfangled V6s! We're a little skeptical that a Late Malaise F series pickup ever got 30 MPG highway, but maybe that test was done at a "highway speed" of 42 MPH, using a liquid measurement known as "Ford Truck Gallons," which are equal to 1.5 regular gallons. 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. We haven't seen many Hondas in this series, though I'm still hoping to find a very early Civic or- better still- a 600 on the island. The early-80s Civic wagon is a good example of the Japanese cars that shifted American car buyers' opinion from the "cheap, gets good gas mileage" view of the 70s towards the "these things never break" view widely held today. They were once everywhere, but nostalgia doesn't adhere too strongly to a reliable appliance... and so most were crushed as they hit 300,000 or so miles on the clock. 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. Today we're looking at a vehicle owned by our first four-time DOTS honoree, WhatWouldJesseDo. Well, I think this is Jesse's truck; my Black Metal V8olvo emailed me about his new truck, and I found this Hilux parked on his block. When you have a '66 Datsun, a '61 Mini, and a '70 Puma GT, you need something to haul parts! More »
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Amazingly, a Chevy (well, Chevy/Buick) managed to beat an obscure, 40-year-old German microcar in a heads-up Project Car Hell competition, with a 57-43 split in yesterday's voting. Today we're going back to the common-theme idea; inspired by all the love for the DOTS Cressida, we decided we ought to do a Project Car Hell matchup featuring a pair of Late Malaise boxy Japanese midsize sedans, complete with luxury features, independent rear suspensions, and big inline-six engines. Japanese stuff isn't normally hellish enough, however, due to their boring reliability and tediously good build quality. In order make things more interesting, these projects are going to require massive horsepower upgrades. Boost, engine swaps, whatever it takes! More »
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Perhaps it was the terrifying rust coupled with warrior heritage, but somehow an American Hell Project managed to beat an obscure Warsaw Pact convertible in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll. Actually, it was a near-tie, but still a triumph for the red-white-and-blue over the, uh, blue-white-and-red. Today we're going to up the price of admission to the Gates Of Project Car Hell, though we've found a couple of high-buck cars available at (what ought to be) reasonable prices. Will you go with Late Malaise British super-luxury or Mangled Super Tokyo Hoonage? It's up to you: buy now, repent at agonizing leisure! More »
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Let's say you have a 1983 Pininfarina Spider Azzurra, which is a Fiat 124 built after Fiat handed production over to Pininfarina for a couple years (go here for the story), and you know it's something special. How do you show the world? Why, you convince the world it's actually a Ferrari, by dressing up the Fiat Twin Cam under the hood and then adding a great deal of body modifications. Hey, Fiat, Ferrari, what's the diff? They're both Italian, right? Don't forget the headlight shields and Von Dutch shift knob! Thanks to LTDScott for the tip. More »
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Our last Japanese representative on DOTS Truck Monday was the '80 Plymouth Arrow, but the last one actually bearing the name of an overseas manufacturer was the '74 Datsun of a couple months ago. That means we're due for another Japanese Truck Monday, so let's take a look at this fine tape-striped Late Malaise Toyota pickup. Oh, sure, these things are still everywhere (including the motor pools of every strongman, warlord, and wannabe Lord Humungus in the world), but immortality shouldn't disqualify a vehicle from Down On The Street! More »
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Sandwiched between an asphalt plant and a huge yard used for storage of shipping containers from the nearby Port of Oakland, this road is a good shortcut to get to one of my favorite East Oakland junkyards. It's also a popular spot for illegal nighttime dumping, with heaps of dead refrigerators, concrete chunks, etc. often clogging the shoulders. Every so often you get a parts car that's been relieved of its worthwhile components and dumped here, and the latest such car is an '82 or '83 Z28 Camaro. There was a time when I'd have stopped and grabbed some parts myself (there's always something useful on such a car), but these days space restrictions force me to maintain a very selective parts hoard. Can you feel the Late Malaise spirit? Make the jump for an additional gallery. More »
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I've been trying to do at least one Japanese DOTS car every week or so, but after two Toyotas in a row (not counting the Plymouth-badged Mitsubishi), it's time for... a Nissan. We've seen one of the last cars Nissan made right before the Datsun-Nissan branding changeover, so now let's look at one of the first ones sold purely as a Nissan in the United States. More »
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So we had our Favorite Detroit Malaise Car poll last week, from which the '78 Cadillac Eldorado emerged triumphant (the combo of a 500 cubic-inch engine and T-tops proved unbeatable). But what about Malaisemobiles from across the waters? This poll includes the rebadged imports sold by Detroit as part of their "if you can't beat 'em, put your name on 'em" strategy of the era, in addition to straight-out imports. Jump like a UH-1 leaving the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon to see the contestants!
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With the Malaisetastic '80 Plymouth Fire Arrow that we saw yesterday on my mind, I got to thinking about the meaning of the Malaise Era, specifically about the American-built vehicles sold during that period. Not captive imports like the Fire Arrow or quasi-domestics like the Capri, but real Detroit (or Kenosha) machinery. And, yes, I know that Jimmy Carter never actually uttered the word "Malaise" in his so-called Crisis of Confidence speech in 1979; what started as a joke term for the cars of the 1973-1983 period has now hardwired itself into my brain). Then I realized that I've forgotten the quasi-tradition of having a Friday poll for the readers to vote on their favorite DOTS machine of the week, so I owe you some DOTS poll action. That means it's time to jump like the late-70s inflation rate to pick your favorite of Alameda's Malaisewagons!
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If you're going to race a truck at this race, you might as well make it a Toyota! In most-unToyota-like fashion, however, this '83 ate a main bearing early on in the race and is now being wrenched on by some very focused team members. Before the auto-parts stores closed, they managed to obtain new bearings, and now it's just a matter of getting that engine back together. More »
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After all these months of DOTS, we've only seen two water-cooled VWs (a Rabbitamino and a Quantum). The island is buzzing with air-cooled Beetles (so many, in fact, that I could probably show nothing but Type 1s in this series for a solid month), but what happened to all those Rabbits? They used to be everywhere! And let's not even talk about Dashers and Sciroccos. So, I've been keeping a lookout for vintage water-cooled Wolfsburg machinery, and was rewarded with a few more Rabbitaminos and this 4-door '83 Rabbit. More »
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After listening to the Jack Astro & the Asscrackistanis hit single, we approach the results of yesterday's Mix-n-Match Engine Swap Hell poll with a new understanding. The Ferarri-powered Porsche 912 didn't win because the swap process itself might be slightly less hellish than, say, the Series 60 Morris. No, it won because the spirit behind the swap is most in line with our purist-offending sensibilities! Yes, that's it! More »
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After seeing how the Deutschland V12s went over in yesterday's Choose Your Eternity poll, with the 850i just barely beating the pair of 750iLs, we've learned that it's possible to raise the price of admission charged at the Fiery Gates of Vehicu-Hades and still have legions of madmen ambitious project lovers forking over the cash and diving into the flames. So get ready to whip out ever-thicker rolls of Benjamins, folks, because we're on a one-way trip to Dante Land today! More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=307759&view=rss&microfeed=true The "Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil" 1983 Jaguar XJS could bring a fat price at auction. [IHT] More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=279464&view=rss&microfeed=true We've really gotten hooked on these bewildering Japanese-market car ads. And no wonder- take, for example, this ad for the '83 Nissan Stanza; in addition to the weird pitch-bendy Casio-keyboard soundtrack, it features what appears to be a father-son team taking their matching dates to an alternate-universe 1924 political convention. Warning: you'll have a tough time purging the maddening "I Love Stanza" theme song from your tormented gray matter. – Murilee Martin More »
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