2004 Mazda RX - 8 - Exhibit A, Your Honor

Although my sister-in-law's now-ex-husband, let's call him "Mike" to protect the guilty, had a company car he could use personally—within reason, I have to imagine—back when we were all still living on Long Island, he splurged on a Mazda RX-8. That would have been around 2007 or 2008. This basket case of an RX-8, which is the same color as his was, is a 2004, and it's for sale about an hour south of the Triple Wide. The asking price is $1,100, marked down from $3,000.

Oooph. That's quite the price cut, and not a good sign. Oh, they're firm on price too. "Don't be low-balling me, bro. No trades. Cash only."

Apparently, according to the seller, it's rebuilt engine from a 2007 RX-8 only runs when it's cold and needs its apex seals replaced, which would be a fairly expensive repair. Mazda did issue service bulletins covering hard-start/no-start conditions on early RX-8s related to low compression, including cases where carbon accumulation could cause the apex seals to stick in their grooves. Apex seals perform a function similar to piston rings in a conventional piston engine.

At the heart of the RX-8 is its Wankel rotary engine, developed by German engineer Felix Wankel and NSU, a West German automobile and motorcycle manufacturer. Buyer of this car gets an after-market cold air intake. Mazda licensed the technology in 1961 and became by far its most famous automotive champion. Mazda introduced its first rotary-powered production car, the Cosmo Sport 110S, in 1967 and continued developing the engine for decades.

Mazda eventually became synonymous with the rotary. There was the RX-2, RX-3, RX-4, RX-5, RX-7 and, finally, the RX-8. The RX-7 became the most famous of the bunch, but the RX-8 was Mazda's last rotary-powered sports car until production ended in 2012. More precisely, it was the last Mazda powered exclusively by a rotary combustion engine; Mazda eventually brought the rotary back in 2023 as a range extender in the MX-30 e-Skyactiv R-EV.

There were many manufacturers interested in the Wankel engine, but they ultimately decided against using it after discovering that it wasn't particularly fuel efficient and was difficult to tune to meet ever-stricter emissions standards in the United States and abroad. General Motors developed its own rotary program and considered using the engine in the subcompact Chevrolet Vega. American Motors designed the Pacer around the assumption that it would be powered by a Wankel supplied by GM. When GM abandoned its rotary program, AMC was left to shoehorn its inline-six into the Pacer instead.

What I liked about Mike's RX-8 from the handful of times I drove it was its handling. So fun. It was one of those cars that seemed to be hard-wired to your brain; you think it, the car does it. What was challenging was the rotary engine. And, frankly, the look of the car.

With only 1.3 liters of displacement and, in six-speed manual form, 238 horsepower, the RX-8 could be a dog around town. A dog that needed to run to live up to its performance potential—and run to the tune of 9,000 rpm. Not something you're going to be able to do often on traffic-clogged Long Island roads. Mazda rated the 2004 six-speed manual at 238 horsepower at 8,500 rpm, with a 9,000-rpm redline; the automatic made 197 horsepower.

Aesthetically, it's funny how poorly these cars' intrinsic weirdness—which was construed as cool, cutting-edge and innovative when new—has aged. Never a good-looking car in my opinion, it was certainly unique and innovative and, when flogged properly, was quite the high-performance car. As most performance cars are, though, as daily drivers they rarely work, despite however much mental gymnastics you do to convince yourself that they do.

Mike didn't hold onto his RX-8 for very long. Impulsive and impatient, although he used the proceeds from the sale of their Long Island house when they moved to Chicago to pay off the balance of the loan on the RX-8, he had grown tired of the car's quirks and idiosyncrasies and used its trade-in value as a down payment on a lease on an Acura MDX.

Yeah. That's yikes-on-top-of-yikes. When some people say they're "not good with money," my sister-in-law and her ex-husband are "Exhibit A," Your Honor.

By ditching his RX-8 relatively early on—I think he had it less than two years—he did get rid of it before it became a maintenance nightmare. The Wankel burns oil by design; the RX-8's oil-injection system deliberately feeds oil into the combustion chambers to lubricate the seals. That's normal for a rotary, but it also means the owner has to keep a close eye on the oil level. In one long-term test, Car and Driver found that its RX-8 consumed roughly a quart every 3,600 miles—far more than Mazda's system was designed to use.

My sister-in-law and her now ex-husband made a number of eye-opening financial faux pas over the course of their stormy almost 27-year marriage, "the RX-8" is just one example. They divorced in 2025. 

1985 Chevrolet Celebrity Eurosport - A Fun to Drive, 1980's Chevrolet Sedan?

 

It's not every day you see a Chevrolet Celebrity these days, let alone one that's for sale and wearing the sporty "Eurosport" package. This one for sale down in Akron has just 51,000 clicks on its ticker and is "loaded" with front buckets, a floor shifter and the updated-for-1985, port-fuel injected, 2.8-liter, 130-hp V-6. If you're familiar with '80s GM sedans, this was about as good as it got, especially at the lower end of the market.

The asking price is $4,000 which, given its apparent condition, sounds like a bargain. Well, for the right buyer.

Chevrolet came out with the Celebrity for 1982, and the Eurosport debuted for 1984 as Chevrolet's answer to the very well-received Pontiac 6000 STE, which had arrived a year earlier.

The Eurosport wasn't really a top-of-the-line Celebrity so much as a performance-and-appearance package. Base Eurosports were pretty spartan, but buyers did get the F41 handling suspension, along with unique trim pieces and blackout treatment. All the "good stuff"—bigger wheels and tires, the fuel injected V-6, air conditioning, power equipment and the like—was optional. Chevrolet essentially let you build your own sporty Celebrity one option at a time.

And that's where things got interesting.

You still couldn't get four-wheel disc brakes like the 6000 STE had, nor its electronically controlled self-leveling rear suspension, tachometer and fancy digital instrument panel.

The base Celebrity stickered for about $7,900 in 1984, while a bare-bones Eurosport came in at about $8,200. But a buyer willing to weave his way through Chevrolet's notoriously complicated order forms could build a thoroughly equipped Eurosport for about $12,000. A comparable 6000 STE was roughly $14,400—about $2,400 more.

Scoff at two grand as you may, forty-some years ago that was a substantial amount of money, especially in this market segment.

Thus, a Celebrity Eurosport was essentially a budget-priced alternative to the Pontiac 6000 STE, which always seemed odd to me. How many people knew how good a 6000 STE really was at the time? I'd venture to guess not many who weren't car-magazine-inhaling goobers like me. 

Drive one of these today and you'd probably think, "This is horrible. What an underpowered, noisy dog."

And, yeah, by today's standards, a 130-horsepower family sedan that needs around eleven seconds to reach 60 mph isn't exactly a rocket.

But that's also missing the point.

We wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for cars like the Celebrity Eurosport and Pontiac 6000 STE. Granted, they weren't up to par build quality wise with Asian imports at the time. 

Domestically, though, they were among the cars that proved a mundane front-wheel-drive family sedan could be made to handle, feel and—dare I say it—actually be fun to drive. 

1967 Pontiac Grand Prix - Nameplates Were Forever

This big old boat of a Pontiac Grand Prix has been stuck in my drafts folder for weeks now. The challenge for me is finding something—anything—to say about it. Aside from the fact that I still find it interesting that from 1962 to 1968, a "Pontiac Grand Prix" was a full-size car. 

Big Pontiacs from this time period aren't my cup of antifreeze. So, in the interest of recognizing that I can't always blog about cars I like, I feel obliged to put fingers to keyboard. 

Growing up in the 1970s and coming of age in the '80s, for most of its time above terra firma, a Grand Prix was a midsize car. Although from 1969 to 1977, what General Motors called a midsize car would today be considered epically enormous.

It's for sale down in Valley Grove, West Virginia, a good two-hour drive southeast of the Triple Wide. The seller claims it's a great restoration project. The asking price is $8,000.

It will need the brakes and fuel system "gone through," which tells me it's not running. Even if it were, it probably wouldn't be able to stop. Sheesh. For eight large, you'd think they'd have taken care of that.

These O.G. Grand Prixs were part of General Motors' three-pronged salvo at Ford's phenomenally successful four-passenger Thunderbird. Oldsmobile got there first with its Starfire in 1961, followed by Buick's Wildcat and Pontiac's Grand Prix in 1962.

The GM trio featured luxurious interiors and, in general, more powerful engines than the cars they were based on. The Wildcat, for example, was initially based on Buick's Invicta, while the Starfire was based on the full-size Oldsmobile 88. The Grand Prix itself was essentially a more sporting, upscale version of the full-size Catalina coupe.

Buick upped the ante in 1963 with its game-changing Riviera, a corporate-designed car with a unique body that looked like nothing else in Buick's lineup at the time.

When GM redesigned its full-size B- and C-bodies for 1965, the Grand Prix got a reimagined body as well. Swoopier and seemingly larger than before, the interiors remained quite sumptuous for a Pontiac.

These cars could also be ordered with Pontiac's famous 8-lug wheels, which incorporated aluminum brake drums with integral hubs. The idea was to take advantage of aluminum's superior heat-dissipation properties to reduce brake fade. The system was clever, unusual and, these days, a little intimidating to anyone who has never worked on one.

And wouldn't you know it? Our Marketplace find here has those 8-lug rims. They're hard to find today, and the specialized brake components aren't exactly something you want to discover are missing when you're halfway through a restoration.

So, when the seller says the brakes need "going through," I hope whoever buys this knows what they could be getting themselves into.

For the asking price, the buyer does get what appears to be a pretty clean body. She's missing her fender skirts, which I don't miss at all.

The interior is almost worth the price of admission. And she's a four-speed car, too.

The 1965–67 Grand Prix' also featured handsome, hideaway headlights, operated by a fussy vacuum-actuated system. Finding replacement components—and someone who knows how to work on them—could make this another area where it pays to be handy.

Back in the day, General Motors had a habit of recycling nameplates onto entirely different types of cars, and the Grand Prix was just one of them.

Pontiac also used its famed Ventura nameplate on an X-body compact that shared its basic architecture with the Chevrolet Nova. And in 1974, Pontiac committed what some might consider automotive blasphemy by putting the GTO name on a Ventura-based compact.

Then, in the '80s, Pontiac did it again: The Bonneville, once one of the division's biggest and most prestigious cars, became a midsize car.

Nameplates, apparently, were forever. What they were attached to was another matter entirely.

1988 Zimmer Quicksilver - If You Know, You Know

Back in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, neo-classic cars like the Stutz Blackhawk and Bearcat were somewhat of a rage. For better or worse, they were cars that evoked the automobiles of the Great Gatsby era far more convincingly than a Chevrolet Monte Carlo or Pontiac Grand Prix ever could. While most of them were based on existing automobiles of the day, arguably none was more unusual than the Zimmer Quicksilver, built by Zimmer Motorcars from 1985 through 1988. This one recently popped up on Marketplace for sale about an hour or so south of The Triple Wide is a 1988.

IYKYK: If this looks like a stretched Pontiac Fiero, you'd be right.

Underneath its swoopy fiberglass body—which makes a third-generation Corvette look like something from East Germany in the 1970s—it's essentially all Fiero, except for power steering. Pontiac Fiero's did not have power steering; Zimmer added it to the Quicksilver.

That also means it's powered by General Motors' corporate 2.8-liter, 60-degree, port-fuel-injected V-6. Making all of 140 horsepower and 170 lb-ft of torque, even with a curb weight of roughly 2,900 pounds, Quicksilvers were no speedsters, even by the relaxed performance standards of the day. All were fitted with a three-speed automatic transmission.

To give the Quicksilver its distinctive long hood, Zimmer stretched the Fiero's structure by roughly 29 inches overall, including 16 inches ahead of the cabin and another section behind the rear wheels. That gave the Quicksilver a total length of roughly 194 inches—about the same length as a then-current fourth-generation, or C4, Corvette.

Still, compared with some of the other monolithic neo-classics of the era, the Quicksilver was downright diminutive. These pictures make it look considerably larger than it actually is.

To substantiate its $52,000-plus asking price when new—an eye-stabbing ton of money in the 1980s not that it isn't now for a car—the Quicksilver came lavishly appointed with leather and genuine wood. And yet, unlike some of its more elaborate neo-classic contemporaries, again, if you know, you know: It's hard not to see its humble Fiero origins once you're inside. 

If the Quicksilver had one thing really going for it, it was build quality. Contemporary and later assessments have noted the unusually good fit, finish and quality of the materials for such a low-volume car. That's saying something for an American automobile from an era when build quality was not something anyone took for granted. We're still not quite at Toyota and Honda levels of obsessive manufacturing consistency, but an American car today is hardly the thrown-together boondoggle some of them were decades ago.

One of the many issues facing the Quicksilver was that, despite Zimmer having a dealer network at its peak, this was still an extraordinarily low-volume specialty car. Zimmer reportedly had as many as 48 dealers in 28 states during its heyday, but finding someone who knew the Quicksilver—and was willing to work on its Fiero-based mechanicals and Zimmer-specific modifications—was another matter entirely.

And then there was the competition.

The Quicksilver entered a neo-classic market that was already crowded with established names such as Excalibur, Stutz and Clénet, along with smaller players including Panther and Tiffany. Excalibur was probably the 800-pound gorilla of the bunch. Its cars had been around since the 1960s, had a substantial dealer network and, unlike the Quicksilver, were purpose-built neo-classics rather than heavily restyled versions of mass-produced automobiles. Excalibur was still building its big, chrome-laden cars when the Quicksilver arrived, although it filed for bankruptcy in 1986 and was subsequently reorganized.

Clénet was another formidable name, producing flamboyant, hand-built cars with 1930s-inspired styling, while Stutz had considerable name recognition and celebrity cachet. These cars were aimed at buyers who wanted something more conspicuous than a Mercedes-Benz or Cadillac and weren't particularly concerned about subtlety—or value.

The Quicksilver was different. It wasn't a giant V-8-powered rolling monument like an Excalibur or Stutz. It was a mid-engine, two-seat personal luxury car with the mechanical heart of a Pontiac Fiero and styling that looked as though somebody had stretched a Lincoln Mark-series coupe through a taffy machine. At roughly 170 examples built, it was also considerably rarer than most of its competitors.

Of course, rarity didn't save Zimmer.

The original Zimmer Motor Cars operation was caught up in the financial problems of its parent company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1988. The company was subsequently restructured, and the original Zimmer operation eventually disappeared. The Zimmer name was later revived by an unrelated owner in the 1990s, leading to another generation of neo-classic Zimmers.

So, is the Quicksilver a great car?

Well, that's debatable.

Is it a great Fiero?

Absolutely not.

Is it a great neo-classic?

That's debatable, too.

But is it one of the most gloriously weird automobiles to emerge from the excesses of the 1980s?

Oh, hell yes.

And considering only about 170 were built, seeing one sitting on Facebook Marketplace a few miles south of The Triple Wide makes in blog worthy. 

Asking price on this one, that has a scant 18,000-miles on it, is a cool $19,500. 

 

That Time I Broke Down on I-80, 70-miles from Home

A bang followed by a muffled under-hood scream and a temperature gauge that suddenly spiked told me everything I needed to know: get off the Ohio Turnpike. Now.

I was just a half-mile east of Exit 209, around mile marker 210.1, and with the temperature gauge pinned in the red, running the engine for even another minute could make a bad problem much, much worse. I pulled onto the very narrow shoulder on the right side of the road, which happened to be part of a bridge, and shut it off. I reached for my Triple-A card as the bridge see-sawed up and down and my car was buffeted back and forth by passing traffic.

"Are you in a safe place?" the dispatcher asked.

"Ummm, no. Not really. Actually, it's quite dangerous," I said.

"Oh, sorry to hear that," she said. "Year, make and model of your vehicle?"

Somewhat put off by her apparent indifference to my precarious situation—but realizing it was probably just part of her script, and there wasn't much she could do about my location anyway—I responded:

"2009 Toyota RAV4. Green."

A couple of minutes of the worst on-hold music of all time later, she came back on.

"Okay. You're all set, Mr. Connolly. Thank you for being a Triple-A member for 45 years. A tow truck will be there to assist you by 7:40 p.m."

It was only just past 6:00 p.m.

Good grief.

It was then that one of those ODOT—Ohio Department of Transportation—vehicles with the big flashing arrow on top appeared in my rearview mirror.

"Yes!" I thought to myself. "The traffic gods are converging! I'm saved! They'll not only get me to safety, they'll fix my car for me, too, in the blink of an eye."

If only that were true.

The person in the truck raised the big arrow, alerting passing motorists to the hazard that was me and my ancient RAV and suggesting they move to the left.

Many did not.

You don't think much about the faceless, non-playable characters—NPCs—you see stranded on the side of the road with their hoods up. At best, you're like, "Geez, sucks to be them," as you whiz on by.

You look at it differently, of course, when it's your ass in the barrel going over the falls.

Part of me was thinking, "I can't believe no one is stopping just to check in and offer me a bottle of water."

The ODOT employee sat in the truck for nearly 15 minutes. Then I saw the door open and out she came, motioning for me to stay in my sweatbox of a car. She made her way over to the front passenger-side window, which I had already lowered.

Through the deafening roar of traffic, she asked what was going on. I told her I thought I'd lost my water-pump pulley, and she took my phone number and said someone from Johnny's Auto & Truck Towing would be calling.

When I told her I had already called Triple-A, she told me Triple-A doesn't service the Turnpike; the Turnpike's designated towing operators do. Sure enough, no sooner had she said that than Triple-A called me back and told me the same thing.

"Call pound-677," they said.

The ODOT lady, whom I later learned was named Loretta, said not to bother because she had already contacted the tow company. She then went back to her massive truck.

Probably a liability to have people in my position wandering around up there with them.

I decided to get out of my car and wait behind the guardrail. Better to get a late-afternoon sunburn than be pancaked by some yahoo who didn't see Loretta's arrow.

Once over the guardrail, I discovered there was literally nowhere to go. I had maybe a foot and a half of gravel before a sharp incline down to the nameless, lonely road the bridge passed over; actually, it was Ravenna-Warren Road. A tall metal fence blocked access to the road, presumably to prevent people from walking up to the roadway to play license-plate bingo.

Chris from the towing company showed up around 7:00, a good 40 minutes ahead of the time Triple-A had given me.

A short, gruff-looking guy who was maybe 45 years old, he didn't give me a chance to put the RAV in neutral before he dragged it up onto his flatbed, leaving tire skids on the road and on his bed.

"That won't give me flat spots on my tires, will it?"

He stared at me blankly, then motioned for me to get into his truck.

As a Triple-A Platinum member, I was eligible for a tow of the 70-plus miles back home. That also meant an hour-plus ride in a bouncy Ram 5500 with someone who, much like sitting next to someone you don't know on an airplane, you'd just as soon not speak to.

I knew I'd have to fight my instincts and impulses and not be chatty. He appeared to be someone who'd rather not make small talk.

I spent the first 10 minutes or so wafting in the cool, cigarette-smoke-drenched, air-conditioned air of his truck's cabin, texting my wife and checking email before realizing I was down to about 10 percent battery. He had his phone plugged into what I could tell was the only charging port on the dash.

Knowing I didn't want to come across like the Uber driver or passenger who insists on conversation, I started out by lobbing softballs.

"This thing gas or diesel?" I asked.

He stared straight ahead, his right hand at five o'clock on the steering wheel and his left hand clutching his phone.

He then muttered, in the rather unusual Midwest-meets-Deep-South kind of way some native Ohioans talk:

"Day-zul."

"Must be a Cummins turbo-diesel," I said excitedly, although doing my best not to sound like a car geek—a car geek with a dead Toyota RAV4 on the back of his massive rig.

"Wow, this thing is quiet. Not like the rattling knockers back when I was a kid."

Silence.

Mildly freaking out over possibly spending an hour or so with nothing to do but stare out the window—I don't do well with being idle—I felt compelled to pursue a conversation.

"How many of these do you do a day?" I inquired.

"Depends," he said.

And that was that.

Giving the convo one last shot, I said to him, "Bet you could tell some stories."

He looked over at me, nodded, and said:

"You have no idea."

For the rest of the ride home—which he took what seemed to me like the longest, dog-legged route possible—I got story after horrific story. He used I-80, I-71 and finally I-480 as a heart breaking visual aid, pointing out where this happened and where that happened.

There was the story about the family of five who stopped in the right lane of the Turnpike near Exit 261 after hitting a deer, only to be plowed into by a semi seconds later, killing everyone except the youngest child, who was sitting in the middle of the front seat.

There was the older couple zigzagging through traffic in their Volvo convertible when the driver lost control and somehow flipped the car, with its open top landing on the concrete divider between the eastbound and westbound lanes.

There were stories of wrecks people walked away from without a scratch, along with stories of people dying—sometimes multiple fatalities—in accidents that didn't initially appear all that severe.

DUI accidents. "Phone accidents." Crashes in bad weather. Huge semis in ditches that took days to pull out. Motorcycle accidents. Suicides. Murders. There were a couple of stories about times that people crashed into his truck when he was working, stories of co-workers hit by motorists and killed. 

At one point, I asked him if he was desensitized to what he sees.

He said he was, to a certain degree.

But he said he still has a hard time dealing with children who are killed or severely injured.

After 26 years on the job, most of those years working 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., six days a week, he said—in not so many words—that he'd learned how to compartmentalize what he sees.

We got back to the Triple Wide around 9:00 p.m.

Chris angled his ramp so I could drive the RAV4 down it and into the back of my driveway. It still runs, although noisily. I think it's the water pump. Who knows?

After we did the paperwork, Chris gave me a Hollywood-handsome grin I didn't think he had as I shook his hand, gave him a gentle chest bump and offered a sincerely heartfelt:

"Be safe out there."

Perhaps it was cathartic for Chris to tell me as much as he did. I know police officers and firefighters enjoy—probably a bad choice of words—telling stories about their ordeals. I have to imagine his wife has heard all the stories, too—stories that, after a while, probably run together until they're all but the same.

I doubt he'll be putting the story of me and my RAV4 into his storytelling power rotation.