This was a relatively quiet week for me and Bark, although I wrote a few things that stirred some comment and gave America yet another look at my rarely-seen beardless visage variant.
When I was in Hilton Head last weekend visiting my father, he gave me some old photos that he’d taken. Presumably they were taking up valuable space in his rather large home that could be devoted to photos of other people he liked better, or possibly just some air molecules or something. But among them was a photo of me on the day I got my Fox, over twenty-three years ago. From that, I wrote The Golden Age Of Cheap Cars. It’s done remarkably well with the readers, at least for a psuedo-Proustian ramble about being unable to afford a Civic Si.
While we’re at it, I will share this photo, which I like, from that weekend.
I had just one post at TTAC this week, mostly because I had three last week, and as most of you already know, it was about the Denali clickbait. It was comment-packed but not that popular in the overall scheme of things.
From Bark, we have a QOTD with actual, specific relevance to the auto industry as it exists now. Poor form, brother. A good QOTD is always as vague as possible. Next time, try “What’s The Best Thing With Wheels?”
You can hear Bark, along with Hooniverse‘s Jeff Glucker, on the Smoking Tire Podcast. Jeff’s pretty quiet throughout the podcast. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that Jeff and I have a very special connection in this business. You could say that we parked our cars in the same garage, although I backed my car out and got the hell out of there before he pulled in. He continues to deny this parking incident ever took place, and since he’s something like six foot four and a half I’m going to continue to act like I don’t have an admission of the fact on the part of the facility operator on the matter. Hope that was vague enough for some of you to not understand it.
What’s happening this week? Well, I’m going somewhere to drive something with 900 (nine hundred) horsepower. More on that subject after I return alive. In the meantime, enjoy your Labor Day, all of you. You know what Labor Day is: a day when office workers have a chance to stretch out and demand free refills at the restaurant before filling up their cars and heading out to do some serious shopping.
did I miss something? When did TTAC get a Kinja?
White Ohio : ‘ parked in the same garage ‘
Black anywhere : ‘ another mule kicking in the stall ‘ .
Nice photo .
-Nate
LOL @ ‘another mule kicking in the stall’
PS: Born in Columbus OH, lived all over starting at Morse Rd. and Cleveland Ave where there was an airport and supper club I worked at when I was 14. Also lived in Worthington and Westerville over the decades. Remember I-270 being opened and going too fast in a corvette in the rain in retrospect. My first car was a ’65 Corsair Corsa. Family had Anglias, Cortinas, Austin Healley 100-6, Isetta, I’ve had many different cars.
Can you confirm or deny that there was a “270 championship” among the hot rodders of the day before it was formally opened, and the winning time was 27 minutes? That’s what I’ve always heard 🙂
Why not ? .
The P.R.’s have been running the ‘ New Jersey 500 ‘ longer than I’ve been alive and ‘ The Palmdale 500 ‘ is a daily event out here….
-Nate
No, I can’t confirm/deny. The ‘Outerbelt’ was opened by degrees in stretches. Each new opening segment was a celebration 🙂 I was young and looking for fun with few cars. It worked.
Currently in Columbus, Obetz (hotel) and Ashville(job site) to be exact. I-270 is slow compared to I-285 in Atlanta(home). Back in the day, summer of 1987, I made “The Perimeter” , 62.7 miles(outer loop) in 24.5 minutes at 3am on a weeknight from a standing start. One cop seen and he didn’t even bother coming after me( I was prob running about 130 right then). These days traffic is far heavier so it would be impossible to do now, but if traffic is moving you best be keeping it between 75-80 or a school bus is liable to start “drafting” you.
BTW : we tried to get one going on the then under construction I-210 but no one else wanted to play so we had at it more or less solo and drove the poor security guards crazy ~ one eventually went to jail for shooing a passenger in frustration .
-Nate
The cheap cars piece also summed up the scene at the McDonald’s in Cincinnati where I was working in 1990. I fondly recall ride-alongs in my coworker’s new zero-option Festiva. He added amps and a couple of Bazooka tube subs for the bass, of course. Around the same time, my future wife’s brother bought a zero option (not even a rear bumper) Nissan hardbody pickup. It was new and reliable, plus the payment was around a hundred bucks! I had to be different/stupid, so I had a couple of different worn out, rusty Fiat Spiders and a BMW Bavaria around 1990-91. A lot of wrenching was done in my long-suffering parents’ driveway. Still, I rarely missed work or college classes, and I learned skills that would eventually help me to secure a job in the auto biz. Good times.
“Eskimo brothers”.
Really enjoyed the Golden Age of Cheap Cars Article. I’m a few years your junior but my generation of friends all drove cars from that era. I started with a 89 Saab 900 with 172,000 hard fought miles I bought from an auction. I moved on to a ’90 9000 Turbo with 201,000 miles on it that I blew the turbo on shortly after and finally acquired a 91 Jetta GL in Tornado Red with the big bumpers and some bitchin’ hubcaps. I fondly remember staring at my Saab for hours on end just like you and waxing it for the first time with the utmost care. I shared the article on my Facebook page and must have received ten different comments from all my old friends reminiscing about the fun shitty cars we all grew up driving. Thanks for helping me relive some of those moments.
Had to toss out a couple more cheap shitty first cars we loved…
Mine a 59 Plymout, used, over 100K which was an achievement back in those days. Only $195. Most cars its age, Fords, Chevies, etc. were going for at least $500 or more. But the then-new torsion bar suspension had people freaked. Turns out they were right in my case, the front right bar broke after a year or two.
But I found one of the three best mechanics I have ever known in a long life, and he and his employees fixed for me, a poor starvingg college student, for about $140, so I was still ahead of the game. It was an unusually good place. He had about ten guys working for him, the shortest had a tenure of close to twenty years. And the “kid” the wrecker driver, part time mechanic, had been there for sixteen years.
One of my best friends had a Hillman Minx, a good driver but zero options.
After the Plymouth died after three or four years, busted con rod, I started horse-trading my way up the VW ladder, starting with a 36HP really old one. Even had one with bad paint that I started out trying to sand down, but eventually got tired of that and traded again.
Yes those were the good old days.
My 21 year old son is looking for his first car, and the prices make me feel like an old geezer who doesn’t understand why vending machine Cokes don’t still cost a dime.
I paid for my first car, but I didn’t buy it. My parents didn’t like any of my choices up to that point. I had to work, but there was an ad in the paper for a 1981 Subaru GL for 500 bucks, which was pretty much my budget. Called the guy and set up a meeting that night. I handed my mom my 500 bucks and asked them to go look at it, and if they thought it was an OK car for me, then bring it home. Needless to say I was very disappointed once I actually saw it. It was turd brown, fairly clean, found out later it was mostly held together with bondo. This was in 1988, so a 7 year old car with 90k on it was mostly bondo. Great. Not the most appealing car design to look at either. I promptly decided I was going to just run the hell out of it, blow it up, then get a different car. It WOULD NOT BLOW UP. I red lined it every shift. Donuts in reverse for eternity I ran both of the local junkyards out of used tires that would fit it. Find a hill, coast backwards with the clutch in, floor it and sideslip the clutch was always entertaining. Spinning the tires while going backwards was always a fun time. I eventually wrecked it in a ditch, tried to fix it. Turns out the driver side caliper was damaged, and I lost the brakes going way too fast. Ramped it off a 14 foot drop. Still drove it home and gave it to my buddy who fixed it and drove it another couple years until the clutch finally went. 1981 Ford Escort L was after that. It was also turd brown. Had over 100k on it when i flipped it into a tree. I haven’t been in a single accident since, so I blame the cheap crap cars for my wrecking issues back then. Then again it could be that I bought a 1957 Ford Custom 300 with 3 on the tree next. It wasn’t really hoonable, but I still managed to blow the original motor up. Then I joined the Navy and got married, had kids etc. Now my 2nd wife has 2 cars, and I drive a company work truck. Not real sure where everything went awry. Being an adult isn’t as grand as it seemed like it would be back then.
I also enjoyed the golden age of cheap cars. It’s amazing to me that a whole new generation of adults has grown up between that magical time and the present and that car makers no longer worry about entry level options. My Dodge Shadow made me a Chrysler guy and has caused me to buy one slightly used 300M and a new T&C. Chances are it will also lead me to shop the 200 when the time comes to buy another car and has also made me generally seek out Chrysler products at the rental counter.
This is the part where I say that manufacturers these days are missing the boat, but then there is that whole “today’s kids aren’t really buying cars” argument to contend with. It’s a shame when the world goes and changes in a way that makes it less fun…
Without going into discussion of foreign marques, you’re really doing yourself quite a disservice by not taking a look at some of the current/new offerings from GM and Ford.
I quite enjoyed the “golden age of cheap cars”. Though I am about 10 years younger, I had a similar experience. Bag boy at the local grocery store until I saved up enough for a car. Said car wasn’t new - but it was a “golden age car”. 1992 Nissan Stanza w/the lovely KA24E. Easy to work on, easy to fix, reliable, and fun to drive. No airbags, no ABS - let alone stability control. Great little car. Anyway, made me (and my family, who bought it new and which I bought off my father for the trade in cost) Nissan customers for 25+ years now. My folks went from the Stanza (new) to 2 Altimas and now a QX56. I went to a G37 and now an Xterra. All new when purchased and I love how most of them still had a little Stanza DNA in them. But when the time comes that my X needs to go, I sadly can’t say there is much in Nissan’s current lineup to entice me (maybe Infiniti). Hopefully that will change in 5 years time when I’ll need something.
Counterpoint: the $10,500ish you spent on your Fox is the equivalent of around $19k today. In February, I bought a base-model ’15 Fit for $16,500 out the door. Six speed, ~2500lbs, and an oxcarty suspension. And it’s surprisingly quick, too. That sounds fairly analogous to your Fox, and this thing has power windows!
I don’t think wages for the “working poor” have doubled since then, even if many prices have more than doubled. FWIW.
My first job was washing trucks in Michigan, transportation was a huffy single speed bicycle, my first cars were by no means new, I looked at all of the ads for small cheap and new, but could never make the math work enough to justify that kind of outlay. My first cars were all ten and twelve year old gm and Chrysler full size v8 two door cars, the first one i paid money for was an eleven year old Chrysler 300, initial cost was 150 dollars, I was told that I nneeded to learn to do my own repairs, I learned much! The way the economy is today, with all of the requirements I did not have then, I do not know how kids buy cars in this day.
“For those of us who were enthusiasts, it was frustrating how little attention the magazines paid to the cars we could actually buy. Car and Driver might test a Mazda Protégé ES sedan but they’d never test the cheapo hatchback which could be had for forty percent less.”
Not often, but every few years you get gems like these:
http://www.caranddriver.com/comparisons/volkswagen-golf-vs-honda-civic-mercury-tracer-and-five-more-compact-cars-archived-comparison
http://www.caranddriver.com/comparisons/ford-escort-vs-nissan-sentra-saturn-sl-and-nine-more-compact-cars-archived-comparison
I dreamed of having a new Civic DX hatchback like my rich cousin.