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Behold the "Doubting Thomases", they line the street wearing trench coats murmuring no in a creepy manner. If that wasn't bad enough, they don't believe anything you tell them about cars. More »
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What better way to advertise your entry in the competitive mid eighties compact car market than inviting the world's strongest man to lift it up and try and keep it from moving forward? There wasn't one in Ford's eyes because that is exactly what they did in this vintage Ford Tempo commercial. More »
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The spokeswoman featured in this commercial had men buying cars for her entire life. From the really cool Nash Metropolitan her Dad purchased for her to the significantly less cool Malaise era GM clamshell station wagon provided by her husband, the car making decisions had been made for her by someone else. More »
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These days finding a rust free vintage Datsun truck is nearly impossible. According to this commercial, back in 1984 "the port" was overflowing with so many of them, they needed an actor dressed like a captain to announce their big clearance sale. More »
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Chevrolet was taking charge with their "High Output" Camaro for 1984. The company was so proud of the updated Z28 they decided to create this vintage advertisement showing the new Camaro doing what it did best—dodging computer generated orbs and stopping for Godzilla like creatures in the middle of the road. More »
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Cadillac touted the 1976 Eldorado as its last convertible product ever, causing speculators to rabidly snap them up. Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe 1984 Eldo ragtop may have been Caddy's way of saying just kidding, but should its price be taken seriously? 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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Put on your weird metallic silver gloves and brace yourself for the self congratulatory glimpse into the future that is this 1984 Chevrolet Corvette commercial. At the time Chevrolet was so confident you'd never seen anything like the entirely redesigned ‘Vette before, they needed 90 seconds to tell the world. More »
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Ford_Tempo_Fanatic may never forgive me for what I did to a free Tempo at Infineon last spring, but at least I've managed to find a vintage ad showing the Tempo on the race track! More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the City That Rust Sorta Ignored: Denver, Colorado. Air-cooled 911s aren't as common here as in Alameda, so this '84 was worth photographing. More »
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Welcome to Down On The Mile High Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the City That Rust Sorta Ignored: Denver, Colorado. Here's a very clean Spider Veloce, fresh from California. More »
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LeMons racing's highest award, the Index of Effluency, goes to the vehicle that achieves the most from the least. This time we saw a Daihatsu Charade finish 34th and a Plymouth Belvedere finish 33rd... but one car beat them both. More »
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So you've got numbers-matching, date-code-obsessed Mopar fanatics paying forty octillion bucks for 318-powered '70 Chargers, and you've got Shelby fanatics paying eighty octillion bucks for replica AC Cobras. How about a super-rare automatic-equipped '84 Shelby Charger? More »
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The J Body wasn't quite GM's finest hour, but let's travel back to 1984 and experience the Firenza, Quebec style! 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. All this time and we haven't seen a single GM G Body in this series? More »
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Let's continue our Cordia weekend with this inspiring ad from Australia. More »
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Cars are growing too complex, and we're not the first to complain about it. We probably can't stop the rise of the self-driving car, but we need to stop and remember why we first climbed behind the wheel. More »
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Even by the standards of Japanese-market car ads, this one for the '84 Mazda Familia (aka 323) seems exceptionally incomprehensible. There's what appears to be a fuzzy Dustbuster. There are oversized backpacks. And, of course, the Familia Gals! 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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We saw a few outtakes from my deservedly brief stint as a filmmaker last week, and now I've dug up a 25-year-old VHS tape of the crypto-car-centric 1984 epic The Phone Police. 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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One very 80s automotive phenomenon was the two-seater commuter car. Of all of them, only the Honda CRX had real staying power; the others mostly disappeared. Still, junkyard archeologists sometimes turn up some interesting bones. 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! Who doesn't love a happy little Triumph? More »
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When the LeMons perpetrators get together, the conversation inevitably turns to the "Cars We Wish Someone Would Bring To A Race" topic. The Chevy Citation X-11 always makes our Top Ten list. More »
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In the mid-80s, there was no word more magical in automotive-marketing circles than TURBO! In the '84 2000's case, the turbo "pumps in huge quantities of air… and pumps out one hundred fifty horsepower." More »
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Sure, you could get a Z with T-tops in North America, but somehow the Japanese-market "T-Bar Roof" just sounds better. 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. Look, some AE86s are still seeing daily-driver duty!
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We're on a four-straight Crack Pipe roll, with 68% of you directing the $37,995 Ferrari Mondial to take its sorry self to Booth Number Two. Will today's car be the one to break the streak? More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Here's an example of badge engineering from the perhaps-best-forgotten GM X-Body platform. More »
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Times are good for Z-car fans looking for a low-mileage 50th Anniversary 300ZX Turbo, because two different sellers are vying for your money… nearly $30,000 of your money! More »
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The last time the Black Metal V8olvo raced, it was black and blue... and evil. It's still evil, but- like a bleak Swedish winter of death- it's all in white now.
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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 Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Should the early-to-mid-80s Land Cruisers qualify for this series? I've been seeing a few of them around town, and they always struck me as belonging a bit more to the Maximum Cup Holder Comfy SUV Era than to the Unkillable Warlord Grade Toyota Truck Era. But the RHD Troop Carrier Land Cruiser was made in the 80s, and I noted un-cupholder-esque details such as the locking front hubs on the civilian 60 Series, and the styling on this era's trucks is pretty truckish, so what the heck: here's an '84 Land Cruiser for Truck Monday!
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Yesterday, 68% of voters felt that $129,900 was too much to pay for a 4-year-old lemon-law-buyback Maybach 57, which is doing pretty well according to the harsh standards set by Nice Price Or Crack Pipe. Today we'll be considering a super-low-mileage, near-showroom-condition Dodge Daytona… but we're not talking about the kind of Daytona with the big wing and U-joint-bustin' V8. No, we mean the K-car-based Daytona Turbo Z, which is pretty much the concentrated essence of 1980s style. It's got lots of plastic body parts. It's got the word "Turbo" printed in multiple locations. It's got 142 factory horsepower, and this one's got just 2,021 miles on the clock! That's averages out at fewer than 85 miles per year! The seller has blatantly disregarded eBay car-seller tradition by using correct spelling, grammar, and capitalization, but he or she makes up for it by pointing out the "Star Power" of the car. Worth 25 grand? What do you think? More »
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The Hyundai Stellar was quite the mishmash of parts-bin bargains, with the same chassis as the Ford Cortina Mk 5, a Mitsubishi engine, and styling by Giorgetto Giugiaro. That doesn't matter, however; what does matter is that ads for Korean cars have the most awesome combo of macho voiceover and cheezy echo effects in the history of automotive marketing. For another good one, check out the Daewoo Maepsy ad when you're done here. 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. I've been neglecting the big BMWs for most of this series, so it's time to follow up the the '86 735i with another E23 from the cocaine-and-S&L-money-mad mid-1980s. Remember the Savings And Loan Crisis? Wild West loans on worthless assets and egregious fraud following in the wake of deregulation of a once-staid sector of the financial system, ultimately costing 160 billion bucks in taxpayer money? Wait, that sounds familiar, except for the bargain price tag… anyway, here's the kind of car that a low-level S&L scamster would have bought with the proceeds of his first "dead horses for dead cows" loan.
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Ready to cast some Nice Price Or Crack Pipe judgment this morning? 60% of you thought that the $12,500 1973 Ford Ranchero camper was way overpriced, in spite of that 351C/4-speed setup. Today we're going for something a little more affordable, in honor of the onrushing Financiapocalypse. Sometimes you see a car project and you have to wonder what the builder could have been thinking? It's obvious that a lot of thought and quality workmanship went into this '84 Colt Turbo- which even has the extra-hip Twin Stick dual-range transmission- but, well, why? Anyway, the important issue here is price; what do you say? More »
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While many mid-80s VW buyers were satisfied with a plain ol' Kleine GTI, others were willing to take extreme measures to get their hands on the Wolfsburg Edition Rabbit. Yes, climbing up on a moving car transporter was totally worth it, considering you'd get such features as a cassette deck and cool emblems. More »
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The Fox-based '84 Ford LTD really did handle pretty well… if you checked the boxes for all the suspension options that came on the cop version when you bought one, that is, and for some reason that bit of info doesn't get much play in this ad. This ad would have been far more entertaining had Mr. Bondurant taken the base version out for some door-handle-scraping racetrack action. Why, some madmen even autocross the Fox LTD! 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! Yesterday, we saw the "Bentley" (actually a Rolls with Bentley grille) beat the "Rolls-Royce" (actually a Vanden Plas Princess with a Rolls grille) in the Choose Your Eternity poll in a 59/41 vote. Today we're going to contemplate the concept of fame. Now, none of us can afford to buy JFK's Continental or the Gremlin from Wayne's World, but that doesn't mean we don't have a shot at a famous car- we just need to aim lower! And today… well, we're aiming really low!
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