1987 Chrysler Conquest - Keep Your Mouth Shut

Back in the 1980's, seemed every automobile manufacturer on both sides of the Pacific had a long hood, short deck sports car for sale in this country. Or at least a sporty looking car with a long hood and short deck. Teeny-tiny Mitsubishi had a neat little runner they called the "Starion". Apparently, Chrysler thought so much of the Starion they bought a bunch of them and sold them here as the Dodge Conquest from 1984 to 1986 and the Chrysler Conquest from 1987 to 1989. This Facebook Marketplace find is a 1987 Chrysler Conquest for sale down in Akron for $6,000. 

Starion's sold as Chryslers were "captive imports", that's where a manufacturer bought a make and model from another manufacturer and sold them as their own. The thought was it cost effectively stopped up gaps in a manufacturer's lineup. What was the gap in Chrysler's lineup given they had their K-car Dodge Charger, Daytona. Plymouth Turismo and Chrysler Laser at the time? Calling those front-wheel-drive K-cars "sports cars" for starters. 

I remember these from back then and reading the rave reviews they got from auto scribes; I still didn't give them the time of day. All I wished was that my beloved domestic pony cars could get the ink these things got. 

Contemporary reviews heralded their powerful, turbocharged, four-cylinder engines, precise 5-speed shifters and nimble handling that could carve up a mountain road with the aplomb of cars costing two- to three-times more. Best any critic wrote of a third-gen Camaro was they didn't get killed driving it fast. Seemed there was a mass right-wing conspiracy against my beloved Detroit iron. What did those guys know that I didn't? 

When I met my wife, her father had a 1984 Starion which I thought interesting given the man was pushing 60 at the time. Little did I know he was a sports car fan with a taste for dramatically styled cars. I never asked him why a Starion of all things, but his father-in-law was fond of Toyota Celica's and Supra's so something tells me the man we called, "The Don", wanted something similar to a Celica or Supra but not too similar. 

Couple of times I drove his Starion, I really liked it. It was an automatic so the performance of the big turbo four was muted somewhat, but that thing could go. And its slot car like handling had me wondering why I was driving an '82 Buick Riviera at the time. Oh, that's right. I couldn't afford anything other than an underpowered "old man's car". 

His Starion wasn't perfect and he had had plans to get rid of it. It had some electrical gremlins, for instance the power windows wouldn't work; probably just a fuse now that I think about. The AC didn't work either. Only way to get any air flow was to open the small moonroof. He traded it in soon after I met my wife for, of all things, a Nissan Pulsar. 

I thought about ribbing him about it saying, "I thought you liked sports cars", but I thought better of it. Probably one of the reasons he liked me. I knew when to keep my mouth shut. 

Mitsubishi had stated that the name "Starion" is a contraction of "Star of Arion", symbolizing a star and the mythical horse Arion, linking it to power and high performance. 

1990 Chevrolet Lumina Euro 3.1 - You Can't Go Home Again

 

When I sold my beloved but decrepit 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS in June of 2023, it put the literal bow tie on nearly twenty-five years of all but exclusive Chevrolet W-bodies, also known as the GM10-platform, for me. Before the Dale I had a 2001 Monte Carlo SS, a 1997 Monte Carlo LS, a 1994 Lumina Z34 and, the one that started it all in December of 1989, a brand new, and fully loaded, black, 1990 Lumina Euro 3.1 similar to this one for sale on Bringatrailer.com. No. I didn't bid on it although the thought passed through my mind. 

The only difference between mine and this one, aside from the exterior color, mine had bucket seats, a console, a cassette player and power windows. I had no idea Chevrolet built Euro's like this; thought they got away from the ala carte ordering by then. Guess not. Old habits die hard. Trust me, I know all about that. 

Chevrolet was two-years late to the W-body party when they rolled out the Lumina for 1990. Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick got theirs in for 1988 albeit coupes only. For 1990, Chevrolet introduced the Lumina as a coupe, four-door sedan and a funky not-so-mini minivan that resembled a Black and Decker "Dustbuster" they called "Lumina APV" (all-purpose vehicle). Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick got four-door versions of their Grand Prix, Cutlass and Regal, respectively, for 1990 too. Cadillac never got a W-body. Pontiac and Oldsmobile got similar looking minivans to the Lumina APV in 1990, the Trans Sport and Silhouette, as well; Buick and Cadillac never got one. 

I really liked my Lumina Euro, I still don't think there's a bad line on it although it hasn't aged as well as I thought it would all those years ago. At the time I thought it would be a classic right up there with the 1957 Chevrolet. Well, guess what? I don't know everything, and I have no problem admitting that. I mean, nothing screams "1990's" and not necessarily in the best of ways like these cars do today. 

My Lumina Euro was quite the step-up for me from the hoary and unreliable 1982 Buick Riviera it replaced. The Riviera broke down constantly; I didn't have a second of trouble with my Lumina Euro in more than four-years and nearly 100,000-miles. Remarkable when you think about it given the time period. It handled well though I remember the ride being very stiff if not jarring, the steering very heavy, if not unnecessarily so, especially at at low speeds. It was comfortable, roomy, good on gas and, most importantly, again, very reliable. It was, in short, everything the Riviera wasn't. 

GM spent approximately $7-billion 1980's dollars on developing the W-body platform that was their answer, technically, to the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable introduced for 1986. Oddly enough, although it didn't matter to me since I loved coupes, rather than introduce the W-bodies in 1988 with even the availability of a four-door, GM went coupe only; Ford offered the Taurus and Sable as four-door sedans and five-door wagons with no coupe options. GM offering the W's at first as only coupes, in addition to being two years late with them, were huge mistakes.  

Questionable styling on the four-door sedans certainly didn't help. Even the Lumina in four-door guise are disposable, rental car designs that scream "first Bush administration"; not that the first-generation Ford Taurus or Mercury Sable look any less so but they're arguably less awful looking than the four-door W-bodies.  

I traded my Euro in for a lease on a 1994 Lumina Z34 in December of 1993. Not only was it a financial faux pas, ideally you don't want to put anything down on a lease not to mention it's best not to lease at all, but I was never as happy with it as I was with the Euro. It had a fair share of gremlins the Euro never had while not being the high-performance, screaming hellion of a muscle car I thought it was going to be.  

This is a relist on Bringatrailer, it had sold recently for $5,000 but the bidder reneged. I get that bidding on a car you don't test drive or actually see in person can be a tough putt, but you don't follow through on a bid and Bringatrailer will ban you. 

I'm not the biggest fan of silver cars but this one works for me. It's not black or blue, which I think make this car look much better, but my biggest issue with this car is the lack of buckets, console, it doesn't even have a tape deck, and the old school crank windows are just a tad too old school for me. Just as well. It's like they say, you can't go home again. You also can't buy an old car "just like" one you had and expect to have the same feelings about it  

1964 Jaguar Mark X - Begin Again

My wife Janet and I watched the 2014 Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightly musical comedy-drama "Begin Again" on Netflix recently. She liked it but didn't love it, I found less to appreciate about it aside from its somewhat accurate insight into the music recording industry in the mid-twenty teens. I thought it so lost and pretentious that the even transcendental performances of its wonderful cast, that included a 1964 Jaguar Mark X, couldn't save it from being a fluffy, soulless, and unsatisfying musically driven version of "When Harry Met Sally". 

"Begin Again" is about Dan Mulligan, played by Ruffalo, a down and out record company executive who becomes professionally smitten, although we're led to believe not personally so, with Gretta James, played by Knightly, an aspiring singer he runs into at an open-mic night while he's on a massive, and I mean massive bender. The rest of the film deals with Dan attempting to produce an album featuring Gretta and, well, guess what happens next! And, no, not that. 

We never find out, though, why Dan drives, of all things, a big old Jag. It's a prominent set piece in the film, but it's never disclosed why, of all fifty-year-old cars in the world, he drives something so offbeat. Oh, I know. The Mark X is just like Dan -somewhat alluring, inherently talented but innately flawed and unreliable. Err, I don't think the producers dug that deep. I bet they found it when scouting shooting locations up in Toronto and it fit the bill for what the director of the film called for; a car for Dan that was left-of-center. If that's the case, jump well done. 

If anything, the Mark X adds a dash of elan to Dan even if that mystery is happenstantial. To most people, cars are appliances to get them from point A to B, us car wonks want to believe there has to be something more than needing transportation behind why some people drive cars we construe are more than utilitarian. Most often, that's not the case. For all we know, one day Dan may trade the Mark X in for a Hyundai Sonata.  

The Jaguar Mark X, or "Ten", was Jaguar's big, range-topping saloon, that's Brit-talk for sedan, from 1961 to 1970. From 1965 to 1970 it was known as the "420" to highlight a bump up of displacement from 3.8- to 4.2-liters, but it was essentially the same car. 

Mark X's and 420's featured much of Jaguar's latest technology found on the E-Type sports car which was also new for 1961. Dual-overhead-cam, inline six-cylinder engine, four-wheel-disc brakes, monocoque or unibody construction, double-wishbones up front and an independent rear suspension. Pretty heady stuff for the early '60's. It's styling, though? Beg to differ all you want and from some angles, like the brochure shot above, the design sort of works. From others? Well, an E-Type or Keira Knightley it ain't. 

Jaguar broke their own molds with the Mark X's "pontoon" body, much of its ethos, Jaguar would emulate on their sedan designs for much of the next half-century. Jaguar replaced the Mark X ultimately with the far comelier XJ-6\12 they debuted in 1968; the XJ and Mark X were sold side-by-side through 1970. The Mark X replaced the very long in the grill Mark IX that dated back, in large part, to 1948. 

With its odd proportions and being relatively elephantine, the "X" wasn't for everyone. It was intended to be competitive in North America, but it was too expensive over here for what it was - a big, heavy, thirsty Brit with American car like build quality with a questionable design. While more affordable in England, the Mark X didn't do well there either because "petrol", as they call gas, then as now, is way more expensive than it is here. 

Given what it was up against even before we consider the subjectivity of its appearance, the big car that wasn't big enough for America and was too big for England, didn't stand a chance. Jaguar sold less than 25,000 of them over ten model years. 

"Begin Again" is set in New York and The Big Apple makes several and very clever cameos. Technically, "Begin Again" is tight as a drum and very well acted. It's the screenwriting where it blows its head gasket.

The Toronto based owner of the Mark X in the movie originally leased the car to the film's producers. He later sold it to them so they could use it for promotional purposes. 

2017 Toyota Camry XLE - It's Been Such a Pleasant Autumn

 

Hopefully our mechanic can figure out why my wife's 2004 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder GTS is overheating, I for sure cannot. If not, we're in a pickle. Not only do we loathe car shopping, but we have no idea what we'd even like to get. In an attempt to combine practicality and performance, I thought a Saturday afternoon kicking the tires on this 2017 Toyota Camry XSE would be time well spent. 

Granted, Janet, my wife, wasn't thrilled with the possibility of going from her sporty, little Eclipse to what is a big grocery getter, but car guy here, my thought was she'd fall in love with the way it rode and handled and how feature rich it was for the money. Although to make $18,500 work for an eight- going on nine-year-old, 75,000-mile Camary would require some mental gymnastics for me let alone Janet. 

Things went south immediately as our salesperson swung the car around for our test drive. Turned out they had mistakenly listed the car in Cars.com an X-S-E when it was an X-L-E. Big difference. The XLE is a "luxury" car, the XSE is supposedly as close to a BMW like sports sedan as a Camry could be. I let our very nice although somewhat robotic salesperson know that I wouldn't have driven the better part of an hour for a Camry XLE; not his fault of course but he wasn't the first used car salesman to glaze over when they realize they were dealing with a car nerd. 

We agreed to a spin anyway but not before we noticed the car had a number of scratches on it, some fairly deep. That and it was filthy. Best was, our sales guy came with us on the test drive. So much for turning I-77 into my personal Autobahn. 

The car started and ran fine; it has the same monster V-6 that's in my 2009 Toyota RAV4 so it galloped along strongly. The air blew cold, the power driver's seat had plenty of adjustment and the steering column tilted and telescoped so I could get comfy. It was packed with all the latest techno doo-dads that our Eclipse and RAV4 do not have; uou have no idea what a novelty a backup camera still is to us. The looks we get from salespeople when we get goofy over them makes us feel like we're Amish who escaped the compound. 

My issue with the car, aside from its Walter Mitty meets Ziggy sheet metal, was its handling which was just shy feeling as though I was driving bathtub half full of water. That and the brakes were surprisingly not up to modern snuff. I give Toyota hall passes on just about anything I construe as "questionable", but I wondered if there was something wrong with the brakes on this car. Janet refused to drive what she referred to as something her grandparents would own. 

I didn't mince words letting our sales guy sitting out back we would not be buying this car. Still, back at the dealership, he dragged us through the proverbial dog and pony show of sitting us down and discussing our "needs".  When he fired up the dealership website to do a search of what we might want, I knew it was going to be twenty- to thirty-minutes before we got our butts out of there. 

Then the way-too-young-to-be-the-manager-guy came over, I guess, to inquire why we wouldn't be buying this car. He explained their "forever warranty" program to us, as if I'd buy a car based solely on a warranty that I had to pay extra for. You know how that goes, you pay a small fortune up front for what was sold to you as a comprehensive warranty when in fact it's not. After you arm wrestle with the third-party warranty company over coverage, you pay a $500 deductible. That's if you're lucky that when you need the warranty, the company backing it is still in business. 

We scooted out of there and hot-tailed it to our next appointment which went no better.  Well, I did find that 1981 Corvette I blogged about but aside from that, that was pretty much a waste of time. Detailed blog on that experience upcoming. 

I sure hope our mechanic can fix the Eclipse. It's been such a pleasant autmn so far. 

PS - the dealership updated the ad for the car we test drove making it an XLE. 

1972 Lincoln Continental Coupe - The Good Doctor

 

On the blue collar block I grew up on back on Long Island, somewhat oddly, there lived a young pediatrician and his family, and it was obvious they were loaded. Not only did they live in the only post-War house in the neighborhood, but they were constantly improving it. In a day and age when window units were still a novelty, they added central air conditioning, automatic, in ground sprinklers, an alarm system, a fully finished basement, a fully modern kitchen with a microwave oven and so on. And The Good Doctor drove a Lincoln Continental coupe like this 1972. 

Therefore, these cars have always been "money" to me. What's more, he and his family were wonderful people, even my cranky parents liked then, and I learned it was possible to be rich and successful and be graceful and elegant; traits that aren't always mutually exclusive. I was enamored of the big Lincoln and humbled by it at the same time; I would feel small next to it, and in more ways than one. 

These Lincoln Continentals replaced the famous and distinctive "suicide-door", 1961 to 1969 Continentals. Come 1970, gone were the rear-hinged doors, the four-door convertibles and the unibody's and in their place were these dressed up, long wheelbase Ford LTD's that had a more than their fair share of General Motors design ethos in them. 

Made sense since despite the uniqueness of the previous Continentals, Cadillac kicked their tailpipe at the box office year in and year out. Well, as they say, if you can't beat 'em...

In many ways, though, in terms of creature comforts, these cars were the equal of anything Cadillac had to offer. With regards to richness of materials and giving off the aura of wealth and prestige, they had it hands down over Cadillac. Lincoln tried harder but they made little more than a dent in big daddy Cadillac sales. 

Lincoln built these hard top Continental coupes through 1974, the oh-so-boxy, 1975-1979 pillared one's pale in comparison to these dreamboats. I'm a GM girl at heart but there are a Ford or two I wouldn't kick out of my garage. I'll take a Continental like this one with it's smaller, pre-1973 safety bumpers please. 

The Good Doctor and his family moved off of our humble little street in the mid-1970's to a much tonier zip code on the Island's North Shore. I don't recall if he was still driving that big Lincoln. I know by the time they left he had upgraded his wife's car to a Mercedes Benz. 

1969 Plymouth Road Runner - Horse (power) of a Different Feather

Plymouth updated their "B-body", intermediate line for 1968 with new styling for the coupe only GTX, and full-range (coupe, convertible sedan and wagon) Satellite and Belvedere. There was a new model too that was a bone stripped, pillared two-door bereft of most creature comforts even a Belvedere buyer on a budget would opt for. As spartan as it was, under the hood was a different story. Stuffed with either an exclusive version of Chrysler's "RB", 383 cubic-inch V-8 or the mighty 426-CID "Hemi", what they called "Road Runner", after the Warner Brothers cartoon character that had been around since 1949, it was horsepower of a different feather. This Bring-A-Trailer find is a 1969. 

This isn't any run-of-the-mill '69 Plymouth Road Runner either - it's the holy grail of Road Runner's, one of just 194 built that year with the "Hemi" and a factory installed Hurst four-speed manual transmission

Now, before you go scootin' off to Bring-a-Trailer, know that the bidding is done, and it sold for $140,000. Whoa. That's big bucks for what is, ostensibly, a taxicab with a street legal race car engine. No power steering on this one either. Not my cup of anti-freeze but apparently there's plenty of people who feel differently. 

So, what exactly is this thing? 

Originally billed as a return to the muscle car in its purest form, the Plymouth Road Runner was a factory built and factory warrantied performance car; a car performance junkies would have built for themselves so to speak. You could get the Hemi and Hurst four-speed in the GTX, but that car was heavier, far more feature laden and was heavier. Consequently, it was more expensive. 

Despite the memorable albeit goofy name, the Road Runner was unapologetically all stuff with little fluff and through the Malaise Era, the stuff of legend. These days, its five-second zero-to-sixty and quarter mile times in the "high-fourteens" are just another day at the trailer park. 

Again, with the Hemi and Hurst four-speed, this Road Runner is one rare bird. No doubt its scarcity and condition drove the bidding as high as it did. Jay Leno is fond of saying that his favorite old cars are ones that are "original and unrestored", this one is "number's matching", but it underwent a comprehensive restoration in 2015. It's not even in the "Bronze Fire Metalic" it was born with. So, a hundred and forty-grand for a what, in my opinion, is a recreation seems like a lot of money but what do I know. At least it's not a clone. I prefer the "fuselage" Road Runner's Plymouth built from 1971 to 1974. 

Pristine, original and unrestored '69 Hemi Road Runners have sold recently for more than $300,000. So, who knows. This might be well bought for the person who's writing the check for it. 

1965 Buick Riviera - The Big House

Grafton, Ohio is a small, rural town roughly twenty-minutes southwest of us here on the far west side of Greater Cleveland. Around here, Grafton is known for one thing, the medium to minimum security jail, or being politically correct, "correctional facility" that houses upwards of 2,000 inmates. I can't help but feel the preening eyes of the perps on me as I drive down Avon-Belden Road, the paved cow path that snakes through the jail's sprawling campus. I assuage the creepy feelings by humming the theme to "Cops" to myself. That and mumbling, "...if you can't do the time, don't do the crime". 

The Big House in Grafton is also home to this lovely, 67,000-mile, 1965 Buick Riviera that's currently for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $34,900. 

Introduced in 1963, the Buick Riviera was General Motors' second salvo at the four-passenger, Ford Thunderbird introduced in 1958. GM's first attempts at a personal luxury car like the Thunderbird, the 1961 Oldsmobile Starfire and 1962 Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick Wildcat, essentially dressed up 88's, Catalina's and LeSabre's, nice as they were, weren't nearly as distinctive as the Thunderbird.  

The Buick Riviera, though, checked every box and metric on the then current wish list of personal luxury buyers. Distinctive styling? Check. Unique and gorgeous interior? Check. Powerful engine? Check there too. 

At first, these cars weren't intended to be Buick's but a relaunch of the LaSalle, Cadillac's companion make GM put to pasture in 1940. When the LaSalle idea was stymied, head designer Bill Mitchell offered it to Cadillac and then Chevrolet who both turned it down. Oldsmobile and Pontiac showed more interest but wanted to alter the car's design, only Buick took the car lock, stock and barrel. They chose to call it, "Riviera", a moniker Buick first used to denote their hard top models going back to 1949. We have to remember that back in the early '60's, GM's myriad divisions were more like separate car companies owned by the same conglomerate. They were able to operate with an autonomy that's hard to fathom now. 

With a 360-horsepower, 401 cubic-inch V-8 with two four-barrel carburetors and Buick's Super Turbine 400, that was added in 1964, a Buick Riviera was serious luxury GT. Still, it was clobbered at the box office by the Ford Thunderbird by nearly two-to-one. Why? Combination of things. 

First off, it was too expensive for young performance buyers and lacked the flash and dash of the Thunderbird. It was deemed to lack the elan important to Cadillac buyers too. Nonetheless, the Riviera was a fine car in its day although it occupied an all too narrow a niche in a limited market. 

General Motors didn't get the personal luxury car recipe right until they introduced the mid-sized Pontiac Grand Prix in 1969 and Chevrolet Monte Carlo in 1970. By then, Ford had turned the Thunderbird into a caricature of itself too. 

Details in the Facebook Marketplace ad for this Riviera are scant. It's a numbers matching, mostly original car, which scares me some, air blows cold which is a plus. Average retail on these is $22,900, high retail $54,400. Seems the seller hopes to split that difference. I love these cars and this no doubt a more prudent buy than something less expensive that would need significant cash spent to make it what this one is already. 

If there ever was one, this '65 Riviera for sale in Grafton near the jail, is the perfect gangster car. If you chose to rob your own bank and spring for it.