1980 Plymouth Arrow - Youth is Wasted on the Young

Often times, old cars make great time machines. This 1980 Plymouth Arrow showed up in my Facebook Marketplace feed recently and I was whisked back to 1983 when I was shopping for a car to replace my first car, my pathetic 1974 Mercury Comet. 

Ultimately, the car I would buy would be my less dreadful but still awful 1975 Chrysler Cordoba. Along the way to Corinthian Leather town, though, my search took some unusual twists and turns. I test drove a somewhat ratty, but fun-to-drive, V-8 powered 1976 Chevrolet Monza and a low-mileage, fairly clean, $900, 1979 Plymouth Arrow that was very similar to this freakishly nice 1980. 

These sold new for about $3900, but their resale values were terrible. Hence, that '79 Arrow I test drove had such a low asking price. In 1983, finding a four-year-old car for just $900 was uncommon. 

Naturally, this big car loving, red-blooded American boy passed on it. Despite its nimble handling, superior maneuverability, and much better fuel economy. What's more, by the early 1980s, Japanese automakers had established a reputation for sparkling build quality and reliability. The Arrow, though sold as a Plymouth, was built by Mitsubishi.

In the four-plus years I had my Cordoba, I don't think it went more than three-months at a time without something catastrophically breaking on it. It was also slow, handled like a truck and got terrible gas mileage. The kicker is it didn't even have Corinthia Leather. 

I have to dig deep in my memory banks to remember why I passed on the Arrow, but it was probably because I didn't think it "cool" enough. That and that I knew I could get the Cordoba from a friend's parents for a couple a hundred less. $200 was nothing to sneeze at when you're making $3.10 an hour slinging hash in the cafeteria of the local hospital. 

I know, I know. How could someone who was 19 years old at the time and had a penchant for automobiles think a Cordoba was cooler than a Plymouth Arrow. Well, let's be fair, it's not like this is the most "rad" car on the planet either. While the design is quasi-interesting, there's also a dork-factor to it that's hard to quantify, I could argue that my Cordoba was less dweeby, although a vastly inferior car. 

Desperately needing an entry in the subcompact market to compete with Chevrolet's Vega and Ford's Pinto in the sub-compact class, lacking the funds to make one of their own, from 1976 through 1980, Chrysler bought these cars from Mitsubishi, they were known as the "Celeste" in Japan, and rebadged them as "Arrow". 

For $6,990, I could go literally back in time now and do what I should have done forty-plus years ago; bought that little Arrow for just $900. This one has a new carburetor, clutch, brake lines, coil, battery and fresh paint. After market sunroof too. Poster of the ad bought it from someone who spent thousands to get it into this shape. I believe it. 

You know, whoever was first to say that youth is wasted on the young sure knew what they were talking about. 

1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car - Mo Money Mo Problems

In 1975, The Ford Motor Company's Lincoln division updated the Continental's they introduced in 1970 with these even more so slab-sided monsters. The 1970 Continentals replaced Elwood Engle's legendary 1961 to 1969 models with their famed rear-hinged, "suicide doors". I found this 1979 Continental Town Car "Collector's Series" while at an open house with my wife recently just west of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. 

                                      

Seems the only thing longer than the car itself is its name; "Lincoln Continental Town Car Collectors Series". Sheesh. That's a mouthful. That's saying something too given at 233-inches long, this was not only the longest car you could buy in this country in 1979, but it was also the longest car Lincoln ever sold. 

Lincoln charged about twice the sticker price for these "Collector's Series" that commemorated the last year for this version of the Continental before the old shrink-ray got 'em. These cars couldn't hit federally mandated fuel economy standards for 1980, so Lincoln had no choice but to significantly downsize the Continental Town Car, Town Coupe and Continental Mark. With just 3,900 "Collectors" sold out of roughly 77,000 Town Cars sold in 1979 though, seems we're rubbing bumpers here with some pretty rare company. 

Buyers who ponied up the extra cabbage for one of these got exclusive paint schemes with a color-keyed vinyl roof, gold-colored trim (note the subtle gold hue of the front grille), turbine-style cast-aluminum wheels, and every optional piece of doo-daddery available, including a CB radio and an electronic AM/FM four-speaker stereo system with a Quad-8 tape player. Breaker-breaker, who's got a Tony Bennett 8-track they can loan me?

Underneath, the Collector Series was the same softly sprung, impossible to maneuver, underpowered bomb "lesser" models were. There was no engine or suspension upgrade available; just as well as nobody bought these for their ability to pull Gs or their quarter-mile prowess. Nor did they care these were little more than tarted up Ford LTD's. 

This car definitely has a "prescence" about it, though, plebian LTD's, which had been already downsized for 1979, don't. Whatever that means in this context is anyone's guess and whether that's a good thing or not a matter of opinion. When I was a kid growing up on Long Island's "South Shaw", I was impressed by people who drove cars like this because they meant, "money". 

Up on the tonier, haughtier "North Shaw", and you say that with your jaw clenched tight, by the end of the 1970's, a Mercedes-Benz denoted money although there's no guarantee that someone up there had any more money in the bank than us poor slobs down on the South Shaw did. Although, their "money" could go around corners with at least some degree of aplomb. 

As a kid who grew up wanting for everything, still comes as surprise to me that many people I know that appear to have money have significant money problems. Additionally, having money, doesn't mean you don't have problems. As they say, "Mo money, Mo problems". 

While I'm not a fan of these big Lincolns, most big old Ford's too, it is nice to see one in this kind of shape outside of some car show. No doubt there's some story here as to how this big old "Townie" has 47 years; I think it had temp tags I'd guess it's a southern car. The current owner taking advantage of the two, maybe three weeks up here we call summer. 

 

1976 Chrysler Cordoba - Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder? That's Not Always the Case

Whether it’s my advancing age, what I like to think of as continued maturation (or self-refinement), or simply the fact that I don’t like green cars, I no longer see what I once saw in a 1975 or 1976 Chrysler Cordoba. Even this très jolie 61,000-mile ’76 green machine can’t sway me from seeing it for what it really is—or was: Chrysler’s derivatively designed, “me too” entry into the booming personal luxury car market of the 1970s.

Wait… isn’t absence supposed to make the heart grow fonder? Apparently, that’s not always the case.

Funny how nostalgia can fade. There was a time when I would have loved to find another 1975, or a very similar 1976 Cordoba, to replace the ’75 I wrecked on an icy stretch of Sunrise Highway on Long Island one December morning in 1987.

This one popped up on Marketplace recently, and my reaction was… meh, whatever. The asking price is $9,800, which might sound high, but a comparable 1976 Chevrolet Monte Carlo or Pontiac Grand Prix—the cars I really, really wanted back in the day—would command at least a third more, if not double, in this condition.

Back then, I really wanted a Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, or even an Oldsmobile Cutlass coupe, but they were out of reach financially. So I bought my ’75 Cordoba on the cheap and convinced myself it was close enough. It was a good deal, and I could do the mental gymnastics required to make it work, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Besides, it was a seismic upgrade over the dreadful 1974 Mercury Comet it replaced—a car so embarrassingly awful that I joke the Cordoba was really my “second first car.” 

I’m all about value, but only to a point. These days, I’ll pay a premium for something I truly want. At the same time, I’m perfectly willing to walk away if it isn’t exactly right, knowing I won’t be satisfied with anything less. There is an upside to getting older: wisdom.

 

As I slide further along this slippery slope of self-analysis, I’ve come to realize it wasn’t so much the car itself that I longed for, but what it represented—a clean, definitive bookend between the end of my challenging childhood and the beginning of what I hoped would be a wonderful adulthood. If I had truly loved the car for its own sake, that combination of personal meaning and appreciation would have driven me to track down another and keep it for life.

Instead, I’ve arrived at clarity rather than idealization: my Cordoba, sadly, just wasn’t that special to me.

But I’ll tell you this—what I would give to be 19 again, beaming with the same pride of ownership I felt the day I got it. 

1973 Buick Electra 225 - Some Things Never Change

 

General Motors redesigned their B- and C-body (full-size) line up for 1971 with cars that were evolutionary rather than revolutionary in terms of what they replaced. To be in compliance with 1973 federal five-mile-per-hour impact standards, the front ends were reworked so that enormous, some would say hideous, "cowcatcher" front bumpers could be bolted on to them. Our '73 Buick Electra here, which I found for sale on Marketplace with a $14,000 asking price (good grief!) suffers from the ignominy of the chrome battery rams. 

All I can say is, as a car-crazy urchin running amuck with minimal parental supervision at the 1973 Auto Show in the city at the long since razed New York Coliseum, the big bumpered 1973 models looked fresh and modern making anything without the damn things look dated and old. The heck did I know? 

For 1974, the rear end of all cars sold in this country had to be able to absorb a five-mile-per-hour oopsie and not sustain damage too. As often happens, things got worse as all C-body hardtop coupes got tossed into the proverbial dumpster for 1974; the B-body two-doors would follow in 1975 and 1976. There were no hardtops at all through "The Great Downsizing Epoch" of 1977-1986.  

Thing is with the big bumpers, which were intended to save consumers money by making cars less prone to damage in fender benders, in the end they actually cost owners more. Manufacturers passed the cost of engineering them onto buyers and the big bumper cars were more expensive to repair in collisions greater than five-miles-per-hour. Whoops! The impact standards were rolled back to two-and-half miles per hour for the 1984 model year and beyond. Explains why today, if you just tap someone or someone taps you, you're out $1,500 to $2,500 to fix it. At least. 

Our '73 here has more problems than a massive chin-spoiler, though. While you'd never confuse the performance of a Buick Electra with a race car, by 1973, lower compression and primitive emissions equipment had whittled away at what little go there was. Furthermore, what defined a luxury car sold in this country had been fading since the mid-'60's, and these class-of-'71's may have been the tipping point. 

Cheap plastics, rubber, vast expanses of genuine, imitation fake wood too. Who were they kidding. You couldn't get leather seats in a Buick Electra either back then. Not that the slippery, rock hard and soulless leather you could get in a Cadillac was anything special. 

Perhaps no car sums up my childhood more succinctly than this big old Buick, again with a towering $14,000 asking price but that's what these dinosaurs are going for these days in this kind of shape. Much like this country at the time, forget my upbringing which was a shit show in and of itself, this Buick was caught between what was and the uncertainty of what was yet to come. 

Cliches be damned, some things never change. 

1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille - Joe Namath's Cadillac

Well, here we go again. This guy over in Cranberry, PA has his 1979 Cadillac Coupe deVille he claims was once owned by Joe Namath up for sale just like he did last spring. "Joe Willie" grew up in Beaver Falls, a good twenty-five-minute drive south. Asking price is $15,000.

The seller says the car comes with the original Florda registration that may or may not prove it was owned by Mr. Namath. The seller doesn't say this trunk load of memorabilia goes to the buyer either. As a long-suffering New York Jets fan of a certain vintage, I'm intrigued. Although, frankly, I'm intrigued more so by the car than who once owned it. And to know me is to know I love Joe Namath. 

If Joe bought this new, he would have purchased it in the year or so after he retired after the 1977 season. After an injury riddled and abysmal 1976 season where Joe threw only four touchdown passes and sixteen interceptions, the Jets attempted to trade the Super Bowl III MVP to the L.A. Rams, but the deal fell through. The Jets placed on him waivers which he cleared making him a free agent. He then signed a one-year-deal as a backup QB behind Pat Haden with the Rams. 

If this was in fact Namath's car at some point, I find it interesting he'd purchase such a relatively modest vehicle. Light yellow on brown? Joe, seriously? At least it's a loaded, "Phaeton" model. 

He wasn't necessarily known as a "car guy" although his taste in some things tended to be rather ostentatious. For instance, he drove this 1974 Cadillac Eldorado, during training camp at least, at Hofstra University on Long Island prior to the 1975 season. 

Because of his bad knees, it's said he preferred large and spacious cars; to that end, the 1979 Cadillac Coupe deVille, despite being smaller or "less large" than previous models, more than sufficed. The front seating area is so cavernous, a carpeted trash bin for your Twix wrappers and smokey treat boxes could fit under the glove compartment in the right side of the passenger footwell; I don't see it here, though. 

Being a top-of-the-line "Phaeton", this car is equipped the way I'd like mine with a power-adjustable passenger seat. My father's '79 Sedan deVille had a manually adjustable front seat and sat way too low. Like my father's car, "Joe's car" has a "60/40" split front seat; 60-percent of the front seat is the passenger side. You could, in theory at least, sit three across there. The arm rest being the "back" of the middle passenger's "seat". Cadillac did not offer 50/50 seats, buckets or a center console. 

These 1977 to 1979 Coupe deVille's are getting harder and harder to find in this kind of condition. to that end, it's priced reasonably. They never really grabbed the attention of Cadillac cognoscenti like even the big bumper, "colonnade" 1974 to 1976 models did. They were the first deVille's to be all but mere appliances that well-heeled buyers, like Joe Namath supposedly, and those wanting to appear well-heeled bought, drove and simply disposed of. 

Why that is the stuff of "car guy" lore. You either get it or you don't. Shame that was, though, because over time, the nefarious reasons for the Cadillac-nation not taking to these like they did to the elephantine barges these replaced has long since passed. These cars, while still gigantic, were far more maneuverable than those big boats were. 

Sadly, the passage of time has not been kind to one of my early childhood heroes. Once heralded as being one the greatest NFL quarterbacks of all time, Joseph William Namath is now known for being merely famous as opposed to being a great quarterback. 

1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille which was originally owned by Joe Namath. The car has been indoor storage for 30 years. With the purchase you will receive the original copy of Joe Namath’s Florida driver’s license and the original copy of the Florida Vehicle Registration.

Joe Namath owned a 1979 Cadillac Coupe deVille (often cited as a Phaeton edition) after his football career, which he favored for its roomy, comfortable ride. The car was in the Namath family for over a decade, and it has been described as a well-maintained "time capsule" with over 90,000 miles