2000 Chrysler Concorde - You've Been Warned

Found this gem of a 2000 Chrysler Concorde on Cars.com last weekend. Sure is nice, isn't it? I must say that  back in the day, whomever penned this, or whatever team did it, they had it going on and I have to rattle my memory banks to remember why my wife and I bought a Ford Taurus back then and not one of these beauties. Well, probably because for what we dropped on that fully loaded Taurus we couldn't touch a lofty Chrysler Concorde.  Especially one equipped the way I would want one. That and the fact that back then Chrysler's didn't have the best reputation. 

After the seemingly endless K-Car derivatives that stabbed us in our eyes repeatedly throughout the 1980's, Chrysler had some great looking sedans in the 1990's based off their "LH" platform that debuted in 1993. That platform, incidentally, had DNA in it going back to, are you ready? AMC. AMC originally developed the platform in the 1980's with Renault. Chrysler bought AMC in 1987 and along with Jeep, they bought the chassis and running gear that underpinned the Renault 21 and 25. Just like that, in addition to a small truck division, Chrysler had the replacement for the blasted K-Car. They sold those boxy and fairly odd looking cars as the Eagle Premier and Medallion and Dodge Monaco before the ugly ducklings became the LH's. 

Chrysler updated the entire LH lineup for 1998 and of course, as is seemingly typical in the auto industry, the cars got bigger. The Concorde, which was, in my worthless opinion, the least attractive of the LH's, was stretched out nearly seven inches to a whopping 210 inches plus. While that's not '75 Chrysler Newport big, that's still ginormous. Like just shy of '65 Chevy Impala huge. However, the new bigger cars were somewhat lighter than their predecessors and the bump in length also came along with a longer wheel base which made for one cavernous rear seat area. The bigger canvas also allowed stylists and engineers to design a roof that despite a coupe like rake, had more than ample head room for rear seat passengers. 

Such a pretty silhouette...and if you use your imagination a little, you can see that it may have inspired some later GM designs like the 2006-2011 Buick Lucerne. Wouldn't have been the first time a Chrysler design was cribbed by GM scribes. You just don't see cars like this today then again, you don't see many new cars these days because fewer and fewer of them are being made. These cars may have been the best looking front wheel drive, "three box" sedans ever made. Subjective? Oh, you betcha. Seriously, compare these side by side to a Taurus or Impala of the same vintage and it's not even close. Problem was, again, reliability. They just didn't stay bolted, screwed or glued together very well and Chrysler cheaped out on the details too. They did have a great warranty back then - then again, they needed one to help sell the cars. 

I wish I could take full credit for that snarky warranty remark but a rep for GM once said that to me with regards to Hyundai's crazy ten year warranty. 

When I was working briefly for CarMax back in Dallas years ago, a customer bought one of these with the full, additional power train warranty that they offered years ago. It was an unusually comprehensive warranty that while expensive, dealerships make a ton off extended warranties, did cover anything that could go wrong with a car's engine or transmission. Sure enough, on that particular Concorde, which had Chrysler's at the time top of the line, two hundred fifty three horsepower, single over head cam, 3.5 liter V-6, another derivative of the AMC/Renault alliance from the '80's, the engine failed and CarMax' warranty picked up the entire tab to the tune of more than seven grand. There are some price points that warranty companies wince at and that was one of them. 

I'm a sucker for a pretty face and a sexy bod just as much as anyone, especially one that wraps what is a relatively strong performing automobile as well. As long as the vehicle is running. These cars, and this one is in exceptional shape for being as old as it is, are best appreciated for being state-of-the-art 1990's automobile architecture and nothing more. This car has just over 34,000 miles on it and has an asking price of $4,900 and I love how Cars.com says it's a great deal. Well, it is on paper but there's no way you're going to get paper on it that's an extended warranty. Here's the listing. You've been warned. 

1989 Mercury Grand Marquis - As Much As Things Change

 

This commercial for Mercury's Grand Marquis was a not so gentle reminder that things were going to change for the big "Panther" come 1992. These cars and it's fraternal twin Ford Crown Victoria getting the "aero" treatment for '92 similar to what Ford breathed on the Lincoln Town Car in 1990. The new cars used the same chassis, what Ford called "Panther", were rear wheel drive, body on frame and had a V-8 engine although it was Ford's relatively space age, at least for the time, overhead cam "modular" V-8 rather than a god's green earth, overhead valve, "pushrod" engine. What is it they say about as much as things change they remain the same? 

I thought they were a tad odd since, to me at least, the "new" cars retained most if not all of the attributes that the old cars had and after twelve years, even someone like myself, who's somewhat abhorrent to change, welcomed something different. Maybe they felt much of their targeted clientele might have left the old "boxy" Panthers behind once they got a load of the new models. Who knows. Anyway, I found our 1989 "Grand Mark" here this morning as I was doing one of my "cheap car" searches on cars.com and it brought back a ton of memories. Make that two tons. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Things sure have changed, haven't they? I mean, not only is Mercury gone nearly a decade but Ford not only doesn't build any rear wheel drive, V-8 sedans any more, for all intents and purposes, these days - they don't even build cars. So, forgive me if I wax a little nostalgic here today for the way that things used to be.

It seemed like way back in the olden days there were two distinct groups of car buyers - young, or young at heart and old. Or old at heart, like I used to be. At late and usually not so great Mercury, their Sable was for the young buyers while the big ole Grand Marquis was for the oldsters or those resistant to change. Same went for Ford with the Crown Victoria and the Taurus. Those who drove one of these because they were either in the service industry or given one as part of their employment, of course, are exempt from either gross generalizations. Drive a Sable and a Grand Marquis back to back and I'd be hard pressed to believe anyone would say that the Grand Marquis was the better driver. As far as the physical appearance goes, well, I can understand how someone could have construed the Sable as being too "out there" at the time and have gone running to the safe confines of what they were familiar with.

In many ways, these cars were never really new. While they were certainly "all-new" in 1979 when Ford finally downsized their full size wares going so far as to introduce an all new chassis they called "Panther", Lincoln followed suit in 1980, much like GM's ballyhooed 1977 downsizing, the new big Ford's didn't really advance the state of the art of automotive engineering much. Mechanically, they were a rehash of the same old, same old that had been around since well before World War II. Body on frame, engine up front, drive shaft to a live, leaf spring sprung rear axle, recirculating ball steering. Rack and pinion steering? Independent rear suspension? Struts? Nope. 

As far as having efficient interior design, that was a different story. Remarkably, the new "big" Fords had more genuinely usable space inside despite losing more than a foot of length and just over two inches of width. They also lost some six hundred pounds. While the shrinkage was done primarily at the behest of fuel economy, in addition to the commodious new interiors, their trunks were larger too, there were also benefits to maneuverability and handling. To those ends, progress was made. Ford freshened the package in 1987 eschewing some of the boxiness of the design. Sadly, two door versions didn't survive the tasteful albeit slight reboot. 

You have to wonder, though, what America would have thought of the Sable and Taurus had Ford introduced them back in 1979. In hindsight it's easy to say that they would have been accepting of the jelly bean shaped little cars that rocked the world in 1985 as 1986 models, but keep in mind that in 1979, imports were just beginning to get a real foothold in this country. American's still liked their beef and white bread although they were leery of how large they had become. Something had to be done regardless of whether or not there were gas crunches or not. Introducing new think like the Sable and Taurus in '79 may have been too much to handle. We'll never know. 

Some people say that change is good. Well, it's only good if in fact it is good. Change, if anything, is stressful and the older we get and the more experience we have the more we can evaluate the prospect of change and appreciate everything that it entails. In the mid 1980's, both Ford and GM had plans to discontinue producing body on frame, rear wheel drive sedans when they introduced their new front wheel drive designs. Some bright executive had the foresight to give the big old timers a stay of execution. As much as things change they remain the same? That might be true only to a certain degree. GM kept building them through 1996 while Ford, no doubt due to the fact they had a market onto themselves, kept pushing out them out until 2011. 

1967 Ford Thunderbird - Nothing Less and Nothing More

From a fairly half witted answer to Chevrolet's Corvette to a seminal personal luxury car to, well, I'm not quite sure what, Ford certainly messed around with whatever they wanted their "Thunderbird" to be, didn't they? And, not unlike a song or movie that's not very good but does have a memorable name or beat, in my humble opinion, none of Ford's thirteen generations of Thunderbird ever quite lived up to it's vaunted native American inspired name. Thunderbird. What a great name for anything but from an automotive perspective, what does or did it mean?



Of all the various iterations, the most fantastically bizarre and all over the road of them were these  four door "fifth generation" T-Bird's Ford rolled out between 1967 and 1969.  Our subject here hails from 1967. Actually, this generation of Thunderbird went all the way to 1971 but I don't count the "Bunkie Beak" '70 and '71 models. They were called that for Pontiac honcho Bunkie Knudsen who jumped to Ford in the late sixties and insisted a huge beak be added to the front of these cars. 

Funny how your first impression of anything sticks with you. When I was a kid, I thought these cars were weird as hell. And I still do. I thought the suicide door Continentals strange as well but these things were even more out there - more out there in a Munster's meet the Adam's Family kind of way. That doesn't mean they weren't strangely cool. Listen, I don't understand what people see in horror movies but I respect their opinion and I press my face against the glass doing my best to see what they see. 

These big birds may look similar to the 1961-1969 suicide door Continentals but they're actually quite different. Yes, they may share some running gear and who knows what else but the Continentals where unibody, meaning the frame and body were one unit, whereas these cars were "body on frame". Body on frame automobiles tend to have a quieter, more cushy ride compared to unibody models and that played well to Ford's ever more luxurious aspirations for the Thunderbird theme. 

Tart the thing up with wonky and inefficient doo-dads like windshield wipers that face each other and clumsy and complicated head light doors all you want, if it wasn't for the crazy rear hinged rear doors, this car would be nothing more than an LTD. Buyers loved them, at least at first, because they were so different from anything else on the road at the time and they were willing to pay extra for all the schmaltz and glitz. Even if they were, if anything, fairly ordinary if atypical (for the time period) automobiles.  

The times, though, they were a changin'. The market for "personal luxury cars", got crowded come 1968 when sister division Mercury rolled out their inexplicably cool, Mustang based "Couger" and then GM one-two punched the whole segment with their 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix and 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Along with the flashy Buick Riviera, Oldsmobile Toronado and Cadillac Eldorado, these over-styled land yachts quickly became as outdated as saddle shoes and bobby sox. 

That, in a nutshell, summed up what these cars were all about - they were fashion statements. Nothing less and, sadly, nothing more. The problem with keeping up with fashion is that whatever you have right now quickly becomes obsolete. Ford ditched the suicide door Continental come 1970 and these Thunderbirds, there was a debate-ably more tasteful coupe version of these, went the way of the leisure suit come 1972 

1973 Cadillac Coupe DeVille - The Transitional Cadillac

My father's 1972 Cadillac Sedan deVille was an all out horror. It broke down all the time, got comically bad gas mileage, had no pickup, squeaked, shimmied and shook like nothing else and with it's dark blue exterior, black vinyl top and black leather interior was as foreboding as a hearse.  A girl I dated in high school called it "The Bat Mobile" and it wasn't meant to be complimentary. However, and for reasons that I've long given up attempting to understand, I'm drawn to the coupe versions of those vintage of deVilles in, of all things, brown and beige; two of the worst colors for a car ever but for, again, some reason, I find utterly delightful on these cars. Our Coupe deVille subject, resplendent in brown and beige is, and somewhat disappointingly so, a 1973 model.

I say disappointingly because starting in 1973, GM, Ford, Chrysler and AMC were mandated by the government to festoon their wares with "safety bumpers" that allegedly could withstand impact up to five miles per hour. Sure sounded like a great idea at the time.

TV ads for these things did a great job selling the benefits of these monsters that stuck out like an over sized stoop on a house. Not only where they over-sized, they protruded out further still because of the shock absorbers behind them. Again, sounded (and looked) like a great idea at the time and they were nothing short of a revelation since back then many a driver, my old man included, complained that the thin strips of chrome on their cars offered little protection in the event of a oh-so-minor accident. Problem was, this safety innovation came at the expense of styling. Quibbling about  it may have sounded trivial at the time but in the collector car world today, the difference in the value between a 1973 and 1972 "classic car" is seismic.

GM, in my opinion, did a better job than Ford, Chrysler or AMC of bolting the "safties" on, but there's not a car out there that was in existence already that benefited design wise from them.  The big chrome logs that added weight and even more length to existing designs would be required out back on all models starting in 1974. Go ahead, bash your car into a tree. It can take it!

At least for 1973, Coupe deVille was still a real hard top. GM put a pillar behind the doors on the Coupe starting in 1974 and it may have looked fresh and modern but in hindsight, like the safety bumpers, it ruined the look of the car. Subjective? Perhaps but one need only to look at the values of a even a 1974 "classic" versus a 1973 to illustrate my point. That pillar, if anything, did give some much needed solidity to a car that, even in showroom condition, was pretty loosey-goosey but these these cars needed a lot more than an aesthetic killing pillar to shore them up. Oddly enough, through 1976, Sedan deVille remained a hard top. 

That extra pillar, referred to by many as a "B-pillar", created somewhat of a cocoon for the rear passenger compartment and helped launch one of the more elicit '70's car design cues, "the Opera Window". Our '73 here has the airiness that I never thought much about until I drove a hard top Coupe and then a "pillared" one shortly there after. With the windows down, the pillared 1974-1976 Coupe isolates the driver from the rear passengers much in the same way the front of a limo feels boxed off from the rest of the car. To each his own but between the styling faux pas and the different driving dynamic, rigidity be damned, I'll take one of these, please. Battering ram front bumper and all. 

In many ways this 1973 Coupe deVille, much like technology today that's seemingly always in flux, was a transitional automobile bridging old and the new; it had the new age front bumper but was still a hard top. And these are the changes that are sheet metal deep; under the hood of these things there were even more "modern" changes like primitive emissions equipment that bogged down engine performance wholesale.

Still, to the unwashed masses, a Cadillac was still a Cadillac regardless of the bumpers or whether or not it was a hard top. In fairness, only the geekiest of their fans, like me, could actually tell the difference between a '71 and '76 not to mention the finer details of knowing a '72 from a '73. I love them all, actually, although, knowing myself, if I had one I'd grow tired of it pretty quickly. They are, after all, not exactly driver's cars and even as pure transportation conveyances, they weren't that luxurious.

2019 Chevrolet Equinox - Modern Day, Automotive Sadness

 

My wife reserved a "compact SUV like a Toyota RAV4 or similar" for our familial Christmas to New Year's romp in Southern California and Las Vegas. As is always the case, there were no RAV4's available, not that I was looking to spending a week with a CVT, so we had to choose between a "similar" Hyundai Tucson and Chevrolet's latest iteration of the "now" breed of bread and butter transportation, this oh-so-generic 2019 Chevrolet Equinox. Being allergic to the Hyundai brand, I, of course, made the last second split decision to have all of us dive into this Equinox. Our much anticipated family vacation, which may be our last as a unit given that our boys are now twenty-two and twenty-one years old, included the legendary and breath taking traipse from Long Beach, California to The Sin City; so I really got familiar with this thing.

I'll cut to the chase and elaborate more but I was really surprised at just how bland and mediocre at best this thing was. It looked innocuous and, no surprise really, it was. A bolt was missing from the tailgate and the constant squeaky-squeak-squeaky accentuated my contempt. Much to the delight of my car centric older son, I declared that our Chevrolet Equinox was the embodiment of modern day, automotive sadness.

From it's utterly inoffensive styling to sluggish engine, horrible blind spots to a park bench of a rear seat, I have to say that anyone looking for a vehicle of this ilk purchase anything but a Chevrolet Equinox. Especially one decked out in LT trim with the base 1.5 liter, "Ecotec" engine. 

Let's start with this "Ecotec" lump. While it's remarkable that GM is able to squeeze one hundred and seventy horsepower from just 1.5 liters of displacement, that doesn't mean it's adequate enough to haul a vehicle that weighs in on the dark side of two tons. Oh, sure, off the line it's sprightly and feels powerful, but when you need this thing to go "right-now", it simply doesn't. To make matters worse, this little bread box of a motor makes just two hundred twenty pounds of torque. And, sorry, that's "turbo torque" that's not unlike a car with a shot of nitrous - once it's out of breath you need to wait for the turbo to get "spooled up" again. 

When you're stuck in the madening melee that is SoCal traffic, you need something with right now! responsiveness you can count on. The Ecotec had me longing for my almost twenty year old Monte Carlo SS - yeah, that's how over taxed the Ecotec 1.5 is in the Equinox. Oh, did I mention that gas mileage in the high mid twenties is not considered "really good" anymore? 

It's not all bad. The front seats were comfy and supportive, it handled well enough for something on gigantic balloon tires, the brakes were touchy but powerful and reassuring, it was large enough to swallow all of our luggage and the styling, inside and out, was pleasant enough if a tad ordinary. 

However, overall, this thing felt so ordinary it actually felt less than what it was. I can only imagine the feeling of malaise someone would have driving this home after just buying it - and that feeling only gets worse as time goes on. Granted, not everyone brims with pride or dare I say excitement after getting a new vehicle, but those of us who do and have bought a vehicle or two (or three or four) that we were less than enthused about from the get go, we can tell you that you need to do yourself a favor and shop elsewhere. If you must have a GM then at least get an Equinox loaded to the gills or try out the very similar GMC Terrain or Buick Envision. You have choices - make sure you use them!