1950 Oldsmobile 88 Futuramic - Check with Your Wife First

Here's something you don't see every day: a car made before 1960 that I actually like. What's more, it's a pre-1955. Wow. Look at me branching out.

Granted, this 1950 Oldsmobile 88 is a member of GM's all-new postwar family introduced for 1949, although the 88 itself isn't a hardtop. So, let's not get too crazy.

It's for sale at Harwood Motors in Cleveland, a good hour-plus east of us on I-90. The asking price is $22,900, which sounds like a bargain for what appears to be a very nice, highly original example. It's not completely original or unrestored, however; the dealer says it has been repainted, the interior was restored a few years ago, and the trunk was refurbished. Still, it retains a very authentic early-'50s look.

There is a lot to be said for my appreciation of this car. While it still stands tall like pre- and immediately postwar cars do and embodies much of that suitcase-fender aesthetic, a design ethos I usually don't care for, this 88, along with most of General Motors' 1949 models, is an exception to the rule. Well, the two-door models anyway; especially the hardtops, which, again, this is not.

There was a reboot of sorts across the board for 1951 that, in my opinion, goofed the whole thing up. But let's not go there now. Instead, let's bask in the simple beauty of this 1950 "88".

Oldsmobiles were marketed under the "Futuramic" banner in this era, including the range-topping 98 and the entry-level 76. The 88 was the intermediate model, using the relatively lightweight A-body also used by the six-cylinder 76, but with Oldsmobile's new-for-1949 "Rocket" V-8.

Through 1950, Oldsmobile's lineup consisted of the 76, 88 and 98 series, with the first digit indicating the series and the second digit indicating the number of cylinders. Hence, the 76 had six cylinders, while the 88 and 98 had eight. For 1951, the 76-series was gone, along with its ancient flathead six-cylinder engine, a basic engine design that Oldsmobile had been using since 1923.

Oldsmobile first used the "Futuramic" name on its 98 models in 1948; the last year Oldsmobile used its prewar styling on the rest of the lineup. The 98 was completely redesigned for 1948, and the Futuramic concept was extended to the smaller 76 and 88 for 1949. Frankly, nothing says "1950s" quite like something named "Futuramic," and I think it adds to the élan and charm of this car.

I grew up in the 1970s in a household stuck in the 1950s in more ways than one. It wasn't by design, either; it was almost by necessity. My parents bought their home on Long Island in 1956, updated it immediately and didn't do so again until the early 1970s, so I know a thing or two about '50s kitsch.

You drive one of these cars today and you're not going to be impressed with it. The steering isn't hydraulically boosted, nor are the brakes. You'll build up your forearm muscles doing a ton of correcting as the steering tends to wander. Amazingly, though, that quickly becomes second nature.

The brakes aren't power-assisted, either. The four-wheel drums require considerably more effort than you're accustomed to in a modern car, and the pedal travel is positively elongated by today's standards. You learn to anticipate stops pretty quickly.

Oldsmobile introduced power steering in 1952, while power brakes didn't become available until 1953. 

There was much hullabaloo over the "Rocket V-8" engine. Like Cadillac's new-for-1949 V-8, the Oldsmobile Rocket used an overhead-valve design, but the two engines were independently developed. Making all of 135 gross-rated horsepower from 303 cubic inches, the Rocket was quite the barnstormer in the 88.

Some say the Oldsmobile Rocket 88 was the first "muscle car," and it's certainly one of the cars most often credited with starting the genre. The combination of a relatively lightweight body and a big, powerful V-8 made the 88 something of a hot rod straight from the factory. Everything, as they say, is relative.

Sadly, the reasonable asking price tells me that the market for cars like this is beginning to wane.

Not surprising, though, given its age. The generation that grew up with tangible ties to these cars is, he whispers tactfully, "aging out of the hobby." Those of us left to appreciate them don't necessarily have intrinsic ties to them. A nostalgic bond is a key component of why someone would want a car like this. Perhaps a lost and beloved family member had one, and having a car like this is a way to bring them back.

In a vacuum, though, nostalgia or no nostalgia, the seller of this car has their hands full with it. I appreciate the car for what it is, although I know it's going to be a chore to drive. I wouldn't take it out on an interstate, and it will ride and handle like an old dump truck with square wheels. Someone has to appreciate the aesthetics of this car and tolerate its myriad quirks and foibles.

Updating the brakes, steering and suspension would be criminal.

The seller's ad notes that whoever is serious about buying it needs to ask their wife about it before agreeing to the purchase. Apparently, the car had been sold, but the prospective buyer backed out of the deal when his wife blew a gasket over it.

How many people are out there today who'd not only appreciate this car for what it is but would "write a check" this large for it? If you said, "not many," I agree with you.

Hence, I believe that's what's making the asking price fairly reasonable.

Still, quite the bargain if you ask me.

1989 Ford Mustang LX 5.0 - Lies. All Lies.

Back in the late 1980s, my best friend Phil and I made several trips from Long Island, New York, up to New Bedford, Massachusetts, to spend a weekend drinking our faces off with our friend Marty, who was working overnights at a radio station up there. Before one of our jaunts, I had the bright idea to rent a "Five-Point-Oh" Ford Mustang just like this one that recently sold—or, more accurately, failed to meet its reserve after bidding reached $24,500—on Cars & Bids.

On paper, at least, the idea was sound, but you know what they say about good intentions. Renting a car kept the miles off Phil's new Acura Integra and ensured we'd make it all the way there and back, given the tender state of the 1982 Buick Riviera I was using as a daily at the time. That it was a Mustang with the "5.0" on the sides was cake frosting on top of cake frosting as far as I was concerned. Or so I thought.

Phil actually picked the car up because the rental place where we got it was closer to where he lived. He picked me up well past rush hour on a Friday night to begin the 215-mile, roughly four-hour slog on I-95 north through Providence, Rhode Island, and down into New Bedford, Massachusetts.

New Bedford was a depressed former whaling capital, made famous—or at least infamous—by Jodie Foster's 1988 movie, The Accused, which was loosely based on the notorious 1983 gang rape at Big Dan's Tavern in the city. The movie wasn't actually set in New Bedford, but the real-life case that inspired it was.

Phil, at first, was mesmerized by the power of the car.

"The pickup of this thing is incredible," he said between puffs of his Marlboro Light, which he strategically exhaled out the window so as not to leave a trace of smoky-treat stank in the car.

After an abortive stop for beer in eastern Connecticut—you couldn't buy beer in package stores there after 8 p.m.—Phil says to me, "Chucker, you wanna drive?"

He didn't have to ask twice, although I quickly understood why he asked.

Getting onto I-95 from the mile-long entrance ramp was exhilarating; everything's relative, of course. My '82 Riviera had a 140-horsepower Oldsmobile "307" V-8 that provided barely adequate scoot. The Mustang, significantly lighter and spurred by a 225-horsepower "302," accelerated with a ferocity I had never experienced before. 

"Holy shit!" I yelled as I pushed the little pony near 100 mph, then backed off. I high-fived Phil, who seemed to have lost some of his enthusiasm for the car.

By 1989, the Ford Mustang LX 5.0 was little more than a Mustang GT without the GT's goofy body cladding and debatably racier wheels. Underneath, the two cars were remarkably similar. The LX 5.0 got essentially the same performance hardware as the GT, including the 5.0-liter V-8, larger front brakes, Quadra-shocks and the performance-oriented suspension and steering components. It also got 15-inch alloy wheels, although the styling was different from the GT's: the LX wore 10-hole alloys, while the GT got turbine-style wheels.

And, yes, that "5.0" wasn't quite 5.0 liters. The engine was a 302-cubic-inch V-8, which works out to about 4.95 liters, but Ford marketed it as a 5.0-liter.

Best of all, if you were so inclined to buy one, the LX 5.0 coupe was about $1,800 less expensive than a GT hatchback in 1989: $11,410 versus $13,272. Back then, that was some serious beer money.

Only problem with the Mustang was the ride was punishing, the seats were uncomfortable, the exhaust drone quickly grew tiresome and it inhaled gas. No wonder Phil gave up driving it; compared to his highfalutin Acura, the Mustang was Fred Flintstone-mobile primitive.

Speaking of which, when we crossed over into Rhode Island, we found we couldn't buy beer there either, at least not where we looked and not that late. Rhode Island package stores could legally sell until 10 p.m. in the winter and 11 p.m. in the summer, so apparently we simply weren't looking in the right place. Same deal down in Massachusetts. Oh, well, Marty will have beer, right?

He did not.

So that meant that after driving over five-hours in a car that turned out to be a rolling torture chamber, we did a bar crawl.

We hooked up at a nightclub with our friend Donna from college, who was working in radio in Providence. Phil and I hit it hard. I mean, hard.

The next morning I woke up in a cold sweat on the floor, completely unaware not only of where I was, but how I got there. Phil was comatose on the couch on the other side of Marty's "living room."

"Phil?" I asked. "How did we get home last night?"

"Oh, shit, I don't know!" he said.

Then I said, "Where's the Mustang?"

Phil said nothing.

Assuming it would be near the front door of the dump of an apartment Marty was living in, I sprang out the door to find it.

No such luck.

I walked around the block.

Still, no Mustang.

It was a Saturday, and Marty had already left to work at the radio station that day, so I couldn't ask him.

I ran back to Marty's place and called Donna.

"Hey, how are you lunatics doing?" she said, laughing after she picked up.

"You have any idea where that Mustang is we came up in?" I asked, panic-stricken.

"You and Phil were in no shape to drive last night, so I drove it back to Marty's neighborhood for you. Then Marty drove me back to my place."

"Whew. Thanks! But...where is it now?" I said.

"Couple blocks over from Marty's. I had trouble finding a spot, so I wedged it between two parked cars. You better move it because half the car is on the sidewalk."

I found the keys on Marty's kitchen table and hopped over the couple of blocks to where Donna said it was.

And it was there, half in the street and half on the sidewalk, just like Donna said it would be.

A City of New Bedford ticket was tucked under the driver's-side windshield wiper, flapping in the breeze.

Along with a notation for a $100 citation, there was a handwritten warning on the ticket:

"IF VEHICLE IS NOT MOVED BY 10 AM, IT WILL BE TOWED AT OWNER'S EXPENSE."

It was 9:45.

I started the beast up and gingerly backed it off the sidewalk.

Head pounding, I moseyed on back to Marty's.

Nice guy he was, Phil agreed to split the ticket with me. We chugged some coffee and jumped back in the Mustang to see the sights of, umm, New Bedford.

After a stop at McDonald's for "brunch," we bought a couple of suitcases of Bud and a bottle of Jack and Bacardi at what the locals call a "packie"; that's short for "package store," the kind of store up there that sells hooch.

Hungover and tired as hell, I was still enthralled with the power of the 5.0, although growing increasingly annoyed at its brutal, punishing ride, especially on the moon-crater-like streets of New Bedford. Although it handled well compared to my oafish Buick, the steering was numb and had no road feel.

I began to realize that having one of these as a daily might not be a good idea. Still, I soldiered on. After all, the car looked cool, it was a 5.0, and Phil and I could give Don Johnson and the other guy from Miami Vice a run for the money, too. Even as badly hungover as we were.

With nothing to do, and Marty on the air at the time, we decided to drive over to the station, which had a glass front window into the studio overlooking the street it was on. I parked right in front of the glass with Marty on the air, Marty eyeballing us when he was on the air, knowing I might do something.

And I did.

As soon as Marty opened the mic, with the car in park, I floored the gas, the roar of the 5.0 echoing throughout the neighborhood. Marty smiled, knowing the racket was bleeding through on the air.

Well, that quickly grew tiresome. So I pulled out of the spot and backed the car up square in front of the window, engine idling, waiting for Marty to go on the air again. Just as we heard him start talking, I pushed as hard as I could on the brakes and floored the gas. I let off the brake pedal for a split second and then partially put it down again, lighting up the tires in a hail of smoke and flying rubber.

Great fun. Until a New Bedford police cruiser pulled up right behind me.

"You boys having fun?" he asked, eyeballing the unopened beer and liquor in the back seat.

"Sorry, sir," I said, doing my best to drum up the altar-b0oy charm of my youth that allowed me to get away with sketchy shenanigans. "This is a rental car and I'm not used to the power of this thing," I said.

He took my license and the car's registration back to his cruiser. Phil was laughing his ass off while hammering a Marlboro Light.

"This one's on you, Chucker," Phil said.

The cop came back with a $20 summons for reckless driving.

"Look," he said, "I know you're from out of town and all, and your driving record is pretty clean, so I'm going to let you go with this and little more than a warning. I catch you doing that again, you're going to be in some serious trouble. You understand?"

"Yes, sir. And thank you," I said.

I crept away from the scene of the crime as slowly as I could, the burble of the 5.0 nothing more than a liability at this point.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, save for another night of heavy drinking, although this time at Marty's place, where a bunch of his work buddies showed up to help us pound through our beer and liquor.

The next day was a Sunday, and we headed back to Long Island, hungover worse than we were Saturday morning. We should have taken the Port Jefferson Ferry back to the Island out of Bridgeport, Connecticut, but all the boats were booked solid for the rest of the day. Traffic was biblically bad all the way "around the horn," as we say. I don't think we got above 30 mph from the Rhode Island-Connecticut line until we crossed the Queens-Nassau line on the Island.

I, for one, had enough of the kidney-crushing ride, the cheap seats, lifeless steering, the endless drone of the exhaust and the terrible fuel economy; couldn't have been better than 11 or 12 miles per gallon.

I dropped Phil off at his house after nearly eight hours of agony. I returned the Mustang that night, vowing to never own one, let alone drink again.

Lies. All lies. 

 

1964 FWD Peter Pirsch Fire Truck - You Almost Killed Me Today

Although I'm not a truck girl, per se, and as silly as this may sound, I love fire trucks. Especially red ones like this 1964 FWD with a Peter Pirsch body that popped up on Marketplace for sale down in Canton. They're asking just $1,400 for it. Such a deal. 

This big engine is historically significant because it represents a transition from the traditional postwar fire engine to the larger, more sophisticated apparatus that would become commonplace in American fire departments for decades.

The body was designed and built by the Peter Pirsch & Sons Company of Kenosha, Wisconsin. The company was founded in 1900 and became one of America's best-known manufacturers of fire apparatus. Pirsch eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1987. Pierce Manufacturing in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is owned by the Oshkosh Corporation, is the largest manufacturer of firetrucks in the United States today. 

The chassis this is built on was manufactured by FWD, originally the Four-Wheel Drive Auto Company, also based in Wisconsin. FWD specialized in four-wheel-drive trucks and heavy-duty chassis and became an important supplier of military and commercial trucks. The company has survived in various forms and, through its current incarnation, continues to build specialized, heavy-duty truck chassis.

However, my purely affectionate view of fire trucks changed after a fire broke out in my childhood home on October 24, 1979. That feeling of awe, safety and protection when one rumbles by with sirens screaming is now mixed equally with fear and dread because I know very well that where that truck is going could very well be my house.

I was in my sophomore year at Oceanside High School back on Long Island that picture-perfect Wednesday afternoon. I was the starting center on the JV football team and was headed to the locker room for practice when my name was announced over the school's crackly P.A. system and I was told to go to the principal's office. Immediately. 

Once in the office, the staff, which was, if anything, indifferent to students, was eerily and suspiciously kind to me. The kind of overt niceness that puts me on edge to this day; I knew something was up.

One of the usually stone-cold, stoic aides said to me, "Charles, there's been a small fire in your home and your mother called and would like for you to be taken home immediately."

While she said it in as nice a way as possible, what she said had as much of an impact on me as if she'd said it to me in the hack-sawed, blow-your-head-off way my mother would have. Even the principal came out of his lair, gave me a hug, patted me on the head and assured me everything was going to be all right.

"The fuck is going on here?" I thought to myself.

I braced for impact all the way home in the aide's car. My heart was racing, my mind a blur. I was so upset I don't even remember what kind of car she had. 

We couldn't make the left onto my block from the main road because of the fleet of fire engines lining the street. The aide dropped me at the corner and wished me well.

I walked the plank down the block past all of the pumpers. I don't remember, but some of them might have been FWD's like this one. Fire hoses were attached to every hydrant on the block, water was everywhere, and the odd stench of burned wood and plastic hung in the air.

I got within a couple of doors of my house, and my worst fears were realized: the fire was worse than advertised.

The fire had started and was all but contained to the small bedroom my younger brother and I shared. A firefighter was hacking away with an axe at an increasingly gaping hole in the side of the house where the window next to my bed was. Smoke and steam continued to pour from the hole. Everything my brother and I owned was strewn on the ground, some things still smoldering, some things, like my mattress, incinerated. 

One firefighter told me the fire was out and it was safe to go inside the house. I said nothing as the aluminum door slammed behind me. Water was dripping from seemingly everywhere; there were buckets and pots to catch some of it.

My mother was in the dining room, right off the front door; she was chatting with insurance people and a police officer. Once she turned her attention to me, she was scant with the details at first, easily unhinged even on her best day, she seemed fine with everything, actually. 

My mother had an acid tongue and was notorious for saying the absolute worst things at the most inopportune times. Like the time when I was 11 and I was inconsolable when my best friend died of pneumonia. She barked at me sharply, "I hope you're this upset when I die."

Apparently, the fire started under my bed. There was only one outlet in that room, and my brother and I had maybe a desk lamp each plugged into it and a small black and white TV through extension cords that wrapped around the room. There was a large window fan in the window next to where my bed was, too. Aside from being told that it was an "electrical fire" that may have started because of a "short in the fan," I never got a definite answer as to what started it.

My mother, bless her heart, eventually came around to her true self. Just before bed that night, after the fire, knowing that the fire started under my bed and that it was obviously all my fault, she unpinned a hand grenade and tossed it at me:

"I just want you to know that you almost killed me today."

Ole Red here comes with a 750 GPM (gallons per minute) pump, original ladders, booster hose, and a Waukesha six-cylinder engine with 12 spark plugs. Asking price does not include the rotating beacon lights. 

1996 Suzuki X-90 - The Answer to A Question No One Asked

Wowza. When was the last time you saw a Suzuki X-90? For me, it's been years. And I mean years. You didn't see many of them back in the day, either. Suzuki imported just 7,205 of them into the U.S. between 1996 and 1998. This one I found on Facebook Marketplace about 45-minutes south of the Triple Wide Palance is a 1996. 

Hard to fathom why they didn't sell. I mean, a two-passenger sport-utility vehicle with a tiny trunk and a face only a mother could love? Four-wheel-drive was optional, too. What could go wrong?

Quite a bit, apparently.

The X-90 was essentially a Suzuki Sidekick underneath, although with a radically different two-seat body, a removable T-top and, in true Suzuki fashion, a part-time four-wheel-drive system. It actually began life as a concept at the 1993 Tokyo Motor Show, where the public and press apparently liked the idea enough that Suzuki decided, "What the hell, let's build it."

And build it they did.

The X-90 also arrived in the wake of another Suzuki with a somewhat checkered reputation: the Samurai. The Sidekick had already become Suzuki's larger, more civilized small SUV, while the Samurai disappeared from the U.S. market after 1995.

Much of the Samurai's reputation had been shaped by Consumer Reports, which famously rated it "Not Acceptable" after its 1988 emergency-avoidance testing found that it could tip up. Suzuki sued Consumer Reports in 1996, alleging product disparagement. The litigation dragged on for years, but the two sides eventually settled in 2010. Consumer Reports stood by its testing while acknowledging that its oft-repeated statement that the Samurai "easily rolls over in turns" had been misconstrued. Importantly, Suzuki received no monetary compensation.

Regardless of where you come down on the Samurai controversy, the episode certainly didn't help Suzuki's image in the emerging small-SUV market.

And the X-90 was Suzuki's answer to a very different question: What if you took a small, capable 4x4 and turned it into a two-seat personal runabout?

The idea wasn't entirely crazy. Jeep had been selling civilian off-road vehicles since the early 1940s, and by the mid-1990s small SUVs were beginning to move from niche transportation into the mainstream. The Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V, in particular, were demonstrating that there was a growing market for smaller, more carlike SUVs.

The problem was that Suzuki's X-90 was too niche.

It had only two seats, limited luggage space, an oddball three-box coupe body and a price that put it up against vehicles that were considerably more practical. Even Suzuki admitted it hadn't done much to promote the X-90. By 1997, sales were already in the tank, with just 888 sold during the first three months of that year.

In other words, the X-90 was a clever solution to a problem that very few people actually had.

Suzuki pulled the plug after the 1998 model year. There wasn't really a direct replacement; the conventional Sidekick continued, while Suzuki moved toward the more mainstream Grand Vitara for 1999.

Today, of course, the X-90 looks less like a bad idea and more like Suzuki being about 20 years early. A two-seat, funky little SUV with a removable roof sounds downright fashionable now.

With my 2009 RAV4 possibly DOA, could this one that popped up on Facebook Marketplace be its perfect replacement? Although it has 218,000-miles on it, which is, frankly, rather high, the timing belt has been recently changed along with a new clutch? Asking price is $4,250. Hopefully my wife will talk me out of this if push comes to shove.