The Sorry State of Affairs in Automobilia in the 1970s, 80s and 90s

[lordsutch]

I don't know about that, a lot of people are saying that whole VW scandal has the same taint as those horrid GM diesel offerings.  It's not like they are cranking out puffy black clouds of soot....out of sight and out of mind.  At least that's how the story has gone; it was being presented as doomsday for VW and while it's going to cost them a crap ton of money that certainly didn't turn out to be the case.  The people who cheated those emissions got busted which just means the technology will have to improve and given how much of a footprint diesel has in Europe it likely will.  Now will that translate into mainstream American sales?....probably not outside of the heavy duty truck buyer but it will be something just like all the other alternate powertrains. 

Diesel wins in Europe because in most countries there's a huge tax advantage for diesel over gasoline, in part because most European countries rely much heavily on trucking for freight than we do, especially now that coal is basically dead - Switzerland basically had to build a freight rail tunnel and ban through trucking to shift transcontinental trucks between Germany and Italy off their roads. Here the taxation levels are fairly similar and until very, very recently the price advantage for gasoline even on a per-gallon basis was substantial due to the ultra-low sulfur transition jacking up diesel prices.

The fact diesel isn't even being used in constant-RPM applications like plug-in hybrid cars in North America, where diesel might work out more cost-efficient than gasoline at US prices at small car scale, suggests there's no real future in diesel here except in buses, trucking, and rail, along with the "contractors who actually use pickup trucks to haul stuff regularly" market.

Incidentally my first two cars were a 1984 Chevy Celebrity station wagon and a 1989 Buick Regal coupe. The latter's claim to fame were bogus "automatic seat belts" that basically amounted to letting you keep the seat belt buckled when you opened the door (there was no motor involved in the process), no doubt implemented to con NHTSA into giving them some sort of production credits for implementing this innovative "safety feature." Mine also leaked oil like nobody's business. Good times.

[Max Rockatansky]

I don't know about that, a lot of people are saying that whole VW scandal has the same taint as those horrid GM diesel offerings.  It's not like they are cranking out puffy black clouds of soot....out of sight and out of mind.  At least that's how the story has gone; it was being presented as doomsday for VW and while it's going to cost them a crap ton of money that certainly didn't turn out to be the case.  The people who cheated those emissions got busted which just means the technology will have to improve and given how much of a footprint diesel has in Europe it likely will.  Now will that translate into mainstream American sales?....probably not outside of the heavy duty truck buyer but it will be something just like all the other alternate powertrains. 

Diesel wins in Europe because in most countries there's a huge tax advantage for diesel over gasoline, in part because most European countries rely much heavily on trucking for freight than we do, especially now that coal is basically dead - Switzerland basically had to build a freight rail tunnel and ban through trucking to shift transcontinental trucks between Germany and Italy off their roads. Here the taxation levels are fairly similar and until very, very recently the price advantage for gasoline even on a per-gallon basis was substantial due to the ultra-low sulfur transition jacking up diesel prices.

The fact diesel isn't even being used in constant-RPM applications like plug-in hybrid cars in North America, where diesel might work out more cost-efficient than gasoline at US prices at small car scale, suggests there's no real future in diesel here except in buses, trucking, and rail, along with the "contractors who actually use pickup trucks to haul stuff regularly" market.

Incidentally my first two cars were a 1984 Chevy Celebrity station wagon and a 1989 Buick Regal coupe. The latter's claim to fame were bogus "automatic seat belts" that basically amounted to letting you keep the seat belt buckled when you opened the door (there was no motor involved in the process), no doubt implemented to con NHTSA into giving them some sort of production credits for implementing this innovative "safety feature." Mine also leaked oil like nobody's business. Good times.

Oh I agree they won't ever hold a candle of that market share that hybrids already inhabit but I doubt they'll go away given how much of the tooling is already paid for out of the European market...there will always be a niche of people who want them and the infrastructure isn't going to go away.  I just don't see the same taint that those cars 30-40 years ago had with billowing black soot coming out of the tailpipe and wonky quality controls.

Some of the videos that have been shown on this site show the manually "emergency release" some of those automatic seat belts had.  That's design was a complete joke and I'm not sure from what angle that was considered a safer alternative to the conventional harness setup that the driver had to use.  But then again I seem to remember a lot of people even back in the 80s still refused to wear seat belts and a lot states didn't require them for the back seats.

[Max Rockatansky]

I drove one of these in college. 302, 2WD, column shifter auto, extended cab, blue/blue/blue. I could bury the needle at about 90. Also, he gets locking diffs wrong, as many commenters have pointed out.
https://youtu.be/YAWBXji6itc

I had a red extended cab 97 Silverado with a Vortec 350 and 4x4.  I remember buying that thing from my Dad since he buried on the cheap since he turned over 100,000 way too fast.  God that thing was capable, it could tow, carry and go over about anything that I could find out in the desert.  I ever pulled the bumper off and repaired a dent which chipped off some paint and caused a rust spot under the bumper.  As much utility as that thing had it was sure a POS as far as build quality went, I somehow managed to lose six fuel injectors all in one shot.

[SteveG1988]

[Max Rockatansky]

That manual should have been an option on the Road Master and Impala SS, that makes a hell of a difference in performance.

[GCrites]

I don't know about that, a lot of people are saying that whole VW scandal has the same taint as those horrid GM diesel offerings.  It's not like they are cranking out puffy black clouds of soot....out of sight and out of mind.  At least that's how the story has gone; it was being presented as doomsday for VW and while it's going to cost them a crap ton of money that certainly didn't turn out to be the case.  The people who cheated those emissions got busted which just means the technology will have to improve and given how much of a footprint diesel has in Europe it likely will.  Now will that translate into mainstream American sales?....probably not outside of the heavy duty truck buyer but it will be something just like all the other alternate powertrains. 

Diesel wins in Europe because in most countries there's a huge tax advantage for diesel over gasoline, in part because most European countries rely much heavily on trucking for freight than we do, especially now that coal is basically dead - Switzerland basically had to build a freight rail tunnel and ban through trucking to shift transcontinental trucks between Germany and Italy off their roads. Here the taxation levels are fairly similar and until very, very recently the price advantage for gasoline even on a per-gallon basis was substantial due to the ultra-low sulfur transition jacking up diesel prices.

The fact diesel isn't even being used in constant-RPM applications like plug-in hybrid cars in North America, where diesel might work out more cost-efficient than gasoline at US prices at small car scale, suggests there's no real future in diesel here except in buses, trucking, and rail, along with the "contractors who actually use pickup trucks to haul stuff regularly" market.

Incidentally my first two cars were a 1984 Chevy Celebrity station wagon and a 1989 Buick Regal coupe. The latter's claim to fame were bogus "automatic seat belts" that basically amounted to letting you keep the seat belt buckled when you opened the door (there was no motor involved in the process), no doubt implemented to con NHTSA into giving them some sort of production credits for implementing this innovative "safety feature." Mine also leaked oil like nobody's business. Good times.

Oh I agree they won't ever hold a candle of that market share that hybrids already inhabit but I doubt they'll go away given how much of the tooling is already paid for out of the European market...there will always be a niche of people who want them and the infrastructure isn't going to go away.  I just don't see the same taint that those cars 30-40 years ago had with billowing black soot coming out of the tailpipe and wonky quality controls.

Some of the videos that have been shown on this site show the manually "emergency release" some of those automatic seat belts had.  That's design was a complete joke and I'm not sure from what angle that was considered a safer alternative to the conventional harness setup that the driver had to use.  But then again I seem to remember a lot of people even back in the 80s still refused to wear seat belts and a lot states didn't require them for the back seats.

Another factor to consider about Europe is that their local refining capacity is set up much more for diesel than in the Western Hemisphere.

Automatic seatbelts were required by the 1990 or so if the vehicle wasn't equipped with a driver's airbag. That's my so many early '90s Japanese cars had them since the JDM was slower to require airbags. Automatic belts were cheaper to implement here than airbags. The later passenger airbag requirement is also why a lot of cars that were nearing the end of their generation still got all new dashes for the mid-'90s such as the GM-10s and Thunderbirds discussed earlier.

[Max Rockatansky]

Yeah it's kind of amazing looking at a lot of the 80s and 90s videos and seeing airbags or anti-lock brakes as being "optional" equipment.  Even in the last two decades....weight gains aside, the advances in automotive safety have been huge.  It wasn't just the Japanese, pretty much everyone was like that to one extent or the other.

That's true which is why it makes it a lot easier for a European make to offer a low volume diesel passenger car since they already have a market driving supply prices down.

[GCrites]

Also in the '80s, the cars finally quit stopping crooked. If you watch those Motorweek retro reviews cars were still trying to loop in the early '80s during panic stops like it was the goddamn '20s or something. By the late '80s all cars, even ones of the same generation, almost all stopped straight. I don't know if it was better tires, calipers, pads, lines, seals or all of the above but they finally nailed that. Brand new '82 Camaros were still trying to get out of hand but my '87 IROC still stops straight as an arrow at autocross despite having 30-year-old, original, unrebuilt calipers.

[Max Rockatansky]

Also in the '80s, the cars finally quit stopping crooked. If you watch those Motorweek retro reviews cars were still trying to loop in the early '80s during panic stops like it was the goddamn '20s or something. By the late '80s all cars, even ones of the same generation, almost all stopped straight. I don't know if it was better tires, calipers, pads, lines, seals or all of the above but they finally nailed that. Brand new '82 Camaros were still trying to get out of hand but my '87 IROC still stops straight as an arrow at autocross despite having 30-year-old, original, unrebuilt calipers.

The real scary thing is that a lot of the early Motorweek tests were from 30 MPH and they were getting out shape.  It's probably a combination of all the above improving over time.  Tires are one of the biggest improvements pretty much on any vintage car.  It's amazing to thing that they were skating around on 14 or 15 inch rims 5 or 6 inches wide back in the 60s.

[SteveG1988]

The MN12 thunderbird was supposed to have an update for 1998. New nose, no v6, a more powerful optional v8, stuff like that. Ford decided to kill it off late in the game. To the Point that the 1999 Taurus SHO uses the wheels intended for the 1998 T-bird, just with the backspacing altered to poke it out more on the MN12. May/June 1997 is the time frame for the canceling of the 1998 model year. That is why they kept making 1997 models until Sept 1997. The 1994 update to the interior was to correct the flawed 1989 interior that was a bit of a rush job. They decided to hold off on the 4.6L and a face lift until 1994 so they had many new items to market at once. 1996 was a upgrade to the nose to fit the revised intake 4.6L engine, that was taller. Hence why if you look at a 1995 nose and the 1996 nose mine has, that the 1996 has no crease down the middle, and has more escort like bulging.

[Takumi]

It's not unheard of that a production year runs long if a model is ending production. The Honda Prelude was produced until October 2001, with cars produced in the last few months still getting 2001 model year VINs and other info. Enough 2001s were leftover at the end of the year that a few thousand were in dealer inventory in 2002, and a handful didn't even get sold until 2003.

[Max Rockatansky]

It's not unheard of that a production year runs long if a model is ending production. The Honda Prelude was produced until October 2001, with cars produced in the last few months still getting 2001 model year VINs and other info. Enough 2001s were leftover at the end of the year that a few thousand were in dealer inventory in 2002, and a handful didn't even get sold until 2003.

The Cadillac XLR dragged on like that for years with unsold vehicles.  A bunch of 09s were sold in 2010 and 2011...but I think they were all called 2009s.

[Stratuscaster]

In a similar vein, the Chrysler Crossfire wasn't produced in large numbers, but sold poorly enough that DaimlerChrysler attempted to move the inventory via Overstock.com - and that didn't really work well either.

In the DCX days, the mantra was to run the plants at full tilt and simply rent as many open paved spaces in and around southeastern Michigan to park all the overproduced vehicles. Ultimately they were moved into fleets or incentivized heavily for dealers to take them.

[GCrites]

With motorcycles, "non-current" models can lead to big savings. I remember living in Appalachia before a lot of the smaller bike shops closed and seeing plenty of unprepped 3-year-old bikes selling for deep discounts such as a 1999 Kawasaki KDX220 looking new, sexy and cheap in 2003. Of course I was in college then and couldn't scrape up $2 to buy an Atari 7800 I spotted at Goodwill. Fast forward 13 years and I'm sitting on $100,000 worth of video games.

[Max Rockatansky]

With motorcycles, "non-current" models can lead to big savings. I remember living in Appalachia before a lot of the smaller bike shops closed and seeing plenty of unprepped 3-year-old bikes selling for deep discounts such as a 1999 Kawasaki KDX220 looking new, sexy and cheap in 2003. Of course I was in college then and couldn't scrape up $2 to buy an Atari 7800 I spotted at Goodwill. Fast forward 13 years and I'm sitting on $100,000 worth of video games.

Funny how that works over time.  I tried to sell I collection of games I had when I was younger back in 09 which included the following systems for $500:

-  NES
-  SNES
-  Gameboy
-  Gameboy Color
-  Gameboy Advance
-  N64
-  Game Cube
-  Sega Genesis
-  Sega CD
-  Game Gear
-  Atari 2600
-  PS1
-  PS2
-  PS3

I couldn't even get a wiff for all those systems and games...so I kept them.  They probably aren't worth much...but they certainly would be worth way more than $500 I was asking back then.  They look great on the mantle now...and I pick some older stuff up to kill some time now and then.  It's funny how things swing around so quickly on value sometimes...I see the 4th Gen F-Body kind of going through something like that even since the 2010 Camaro.

[GCrites]

Most systems aren't going to see major spikes in the near future since systems are too common. But games that aren't too common can go nuts at almost any time these days as long as they are over 12-15 years old.

[SteveG1988]

When ford designed my car, they went after bmw. That meant coilovers in the front with a short/long arm (wishbone upper, odd shaped lower, 2 ball joints) front suspension. And a Independent rear suspension. To make it super smooth they went with front and rear subframes. Meaning that this taurus sized car with a 1.3 inch shorter than the crown vic wheelbase, weighed 3,500-3,800 lbs depending on engine. The design team was called out on this, it was too heavy, and 900 dollars too expensive per car. Yet it was in production for late 1988-late 1997. The V8 was missed until the 1991 model year when the 302 was shoehorned into a engine bay designed for a 3.8L v6. Later the 4.6L got shoe horned in. Thanks to the T-Bird you got the V8 Explorer. they literally just took the modifications they did to make it work on the thunderbird for size, an put it into the ranger based explorer. Friend of mine who loved crown vics for the longest time says this about how the MN12 handles. "It rides smooth like my crown vic, and handles the bigger road imperfections better, the crown vic handles the small bumps a lot better, but when you push this car, it will just take off and have fun" Passive rear wheel steering, and having my rear camber set to 0 makes that a lot more obvious. The factory setup was to give it a little bit of understeer, set it up the way mine is with 0 degrees of camber, and you get a more compliant tail, that is fun around bends. It does have one fun thing about it in terms of looks. If you get a 1996/1997 V8 no badging to say it is a v8, and thanks to ford being ford, you got wheels that make it look like a taurus. With a FWD style (for the 90s at least) offset. No v8 badge, just a dual exhaust and a v8 engine note if you pay attention to the sound. I've had people think they were front wheel drive like the 90s monte carlo.

[GCrites]

My folks had a '97 T-Bird. With the 3.8, no limited slip and the smaller, crumbly Firestones it was considerably less fun than one with a 302, limited slip and decent tires. I wouldn't mind dalilying say a '94 with all those things.

[Max Rockatansky]

Here we go:

That's about the most cheesy thing ever that AMC actually made a Levi's edition Gremlin. 

[Max Rockatansky]

I'd love to see GM try a modern version of this with AWD slammed version of the GMC Canyon with the 464hp turbo 3.6L LF4:

[SteveG1988]

My folks had a '97 T-Bird. With the 3.8, no limited slip and the smaller, crumbly Firestones it was considerably less fun than one with a 302, limited slip and decent tires. I wouldn't mind dalilying say a '94 with all those things.

1994-1997 had the 4.6L for the v8. i lack a limited slip. on the t-bird those will kick you out in the snow something fierce.

[GCrites]

'93 it is then. I'm not a Mod motor guy. Winter tires would have to be snows in the smaller size. I could go anywhere I wanted in nasty Cincinnati storms with the 944 I had fitted with snows.

[Max Rockatansky]

'93 it is then. I'm not a Mod motor guy. Winter tires would have to be snows in the smaller size. I could go anywhere I wanted in nasty Cincinnati storms with the 944 I had fitted with snows.

Didn't a lot of those midwestern states outright ban studded snow tires and chains?  I could swear I remember told me a law like that passed in Michigan after I was gone for a couple years?

[SteveG1988]

'93 it is then. I'm not a Mod motor guy. Winter tires would have to be snows in the smaller size. I could go anywhere I wanted in nasty Cincinnati storms with the 944 I had fitted with snows.

the Mod is a lot faster in that car, plus no automatic belts on the 1994+

[Max Rockatansky]

'93 it is then. I'm not a Mod motor guy. Winter tires would have to be snows in the smaller size. I could go anywhere I wanted in nasty Cincinnati storms with the 944 I had fitted with snows.

the Mod is a lot faster in that car, plus no automatic belts on the 1994+

I had an 02 Mustang GT with a 4.6L Modular in it.  The thing was way under powered which was likely due to it having only two valves per cylinder despite being overhead cam.  I always preferred the 5.7LT1 and 5.7L LS1 which the F-bodies were using at the time the SN95 platform was being since they had so much torque due to the displacement.  The SN95 had a couple hundred pound weight advantage which helped even the odds...I think my Mustang was a tick under 3,300 for curb weight while the non-convertible V8 F-Bodies were about 3,600 if memory serves.  Ford really shot themselves in the foot by sticking with the 4.6L Modular in 2010 when the Camaro came out with the LS3 which was producing 426hp versus the 315hp the modular was cranking out 315hp.  Granted Ford switched to the 5.0 Coyote for 2011 but they really let the Camaro get a bigger foothold than it should have had that first model year.