Tag: 1980

1980 Toyota Celica GT: A Rare Birdie In The Salty Midwest

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One night back in August of 2013, I was on my way to one of my preferred Mexican restaurants for some takeout pico de gallo and homemade chips to enhance movie night. I detoured through a residential area to avoid a feckless snail on the main road. In so doing, I saw what appeared to be a late-’70s or early-’80s Celica.

Wow. That’s not something you see in the Midwest these days. Those early Japanese cars may have had robust engines, but rustproofing was, shall we say, not ideal? At any rate, most ’70s and early ’80s Toyotas, Datsuns and Hondas were either gone or seriously Swiss-cheesed here by the late ’80s and early ’90s.

Of course, as it was dark, there was to be no picture taking, but I made a mental note to return, and did so, later that week.

The all-new 1978 Celica replaced the Mini-Me Mustang variant after ’77. It was also the first Toyota designed at the new Calty design studio in California. The look was now smooth and modern, but lacked many of the cool JDM-style detail fillips of its predecessor.

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1980 Oldsmobile 98 Regency Diesel – I Also Like To Live Dangerously

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What can I say about the GM diesel V8 of the late 70s and early 80s that hasn’t been said by countless others? Many people hate them, some love them, but most either want to forget them, or already have.

But tonight I saw this on a Facebook group I’m in which is called Finding Future Classic Cars. As a big fan of these full-size top-of-the-line Oldsmobiles, I had to check it out.

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Found on eBay: Triple Yellow ’80 Fleetwood Brougham!

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I’ve always loved triple yellow Cadillacs. And in its various guises from approximately the late ’60s to the early ’90s, it was always a classy color, in your author’s opinion. The matching pastel yellow leather interior was not always available each year, but it usually was. You’ve got to have the matching yellow leather and top for the full effect, you see. As a friend of mine once told me, you can’t drive a triple yellow Cadillac and not feel good. They’re so bright and cheerful!

So I was instantly infatuated this past Thursday morning when another Cadillac-obsessed friend, Ron Schweitzer, sent me a link to this fine Colonial Yellow 1980 Fleetwood Brougham. As Frank Costanza once said, hoochie mama!

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1980 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz Diesel: A Survivor!

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Do you remember the GM 5.7-liter Diesel? Even those of a certain age who haven’t directly experienced one undoubtedly have heard of them. My parents’ friends down at the marina had a Dark Jadestone 1982 Delta 88 Diesel coupe, and I can distinctly remember its lud-lud-lud-lud engine beat. The Werthmanns had good luck with that car, and kept it for 10 years. While theirs ran like a top, that wasn’t exactly the most common experience…

Oldsmobile was the pioneer in engineering GM’s Diesel V8. The engine was also available for the Cadillac Seville in 1978, and for the Eldorado, Fleetwood Brougham, Coupe deVille and Sedan deVille in 1979.

Despite many horror stories over the years, the much-maligned 5.7 Diesel, when properly maintained, could be reliable. However, many of the buyers of GM cars fitted with this engine were quite unfamiliar with the additional care and feeding diesel engines required vis a vis the gasoline V8s many of them traded off for one of these. As a result, many of them experienced headaches from their cars. The whole GM Diesel V8 episode turned many Americans off to Diesel engines for years. Though by 1982 they had been reengineered and as a whole were much less needy. But by them it was too late; people were staying away.

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80 F150 01

1980 Ford F150 Ranger Lariat & 1982 F150: Brougham Or No Brougham?

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Ford pickups have been the top selling full size truck for years, starting in the late 1970s. Why? Mass appeal. Just like the Chevrolet pickups, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Dodge/Ram pickups, they offer variety. Plain or fancy, two- or four-wheel drive, and more recently, two- or four door, you can, much like the original Ford Mustang, equip them as basic or as loaded as you please.

80 F150 Lariat

For 1980, all F-Series pickups were redesigned and very modern-looking, considering the Dodge D-Series dated to ’72 (albeit with a couple of refreshes) and the Chevy/GMC pickups were last redesigned in 1973, although a more square-rigged facelift was only a year away for the GM trucks.

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1980 Chevrolet Caprice Classic: It’s The NEW Chevrolet!

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Note: Today’s post is another one written by my friend Carmine a few years back. But he still has this car! -TK
High fuel prices, uncertainty in the Middle East and at home, economic troubles, tightening CAFE  regulations. No, it’s not 2012, but 1980, a year that marked the start of the long goodbye for the classic full-size American car. The fact that it took so long would have been highly unpredictable during those grim years of 1980 – 1981. But gas prices receded, the economy recovered, and The NEW 1980 Chevrolet became an evergreen. Or Classic, more precisely. Here’s its story as told through my own 1980 Caprice Classic.

This was a time when these cars were referred to by its maker as “The Chevrolet”, not Impalas or Caprices.  For decades, the full size Chevrolet had been the standard bearer of the Chevy lineup, the meat and potatoes American family car. But the writing was on the wall, when in 1980 the hot new Citation sold over 800,000 units, (a staggering 811,540 to be exact, over an admittedly long model year but still quite a feat).  As they say…things would never be the same again. For the Chevrolet, for GM, and for the way that people looked at full size cars.

The timing of the launch of the Citation couldn’t have been better. Introduced as an early 1980 model right after the 1979 oil embargo, the Citation and its X-Car brethren represented the wave of the future: front wheel drive, space and fuel efficient with transverse mounted 4 and 6 cylinder engines. With the Citation and its most modern layout and packaging, cars like the Caprice and its competitors were done for. What was new and revolutionary just three years before in 1977 was now the dinosaur staring at the comet of the 1980’s raining down on it.

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