Toyota Solara Convertible - Alta Cocker

Seeing that for all intents and purposes my favorite vehicle type is all but none existent these days, it would have been somewhat fitting had I been run over by the Florida tagged, red, 2004-2008 Toyota Solara convertible driven by an Alta Cocker in the parking lot of the open-air mall near our home the other day. For the record, if I was to be taken out by a personal luxury car I would prefer it to be a 1970's Chrysler Cordoba, Chevrolet Monte Carlo or Pontiac Grand Prix. It was a gorgeous albeit somewhat chilly summer day and Grand Pa, decked out in a golf attire, rolled through the crosswalk oblivious to the signs warning motorists to stop for pedestrians. What's more, with the top and windows up and no doubt the Tony Bennet wafting through his cabin, he didn't hear my profanity laced tirade that bounced off the over styled body of his Solara.

Incidentally, "Alta Cocker" is a Yiddish expression often used in a derogatory manner to describe people of a certain age. Usually an old man. My apologies for perpetuating stereo types but if the moob-hugging golf shirt fits so be it.

Yeah, yeah. We all make unconscious mistakes every now and then and cutting Grand Pa some slack, he probably was completely unaware that he nearly killed someone. Or at least injured them severely. I'll apologize for my public display of profanity, it's just when it comes to my life and limb I tend to get a little heated under the collar when some out-of-towner in a clown car almost impales me with its front end.

Despite the fact they check nearly every box on cars I hold near and dear, I've never been a fan of the Toyota Solara. Especially these "second generation" 2004-2008 models. Toyota pushed out these Camry-based coupes between 1999 and 2008 in two "generations".

The half-baked 1999-2003 models (above) are fairly interesting with their tops down much in the same way an early '70's GM "B-body" convertible does but with the top up forget it. Forget the fixed roof versions too.

These 2004-2008's look like they got caught in a taffy pull and lost. Especially the convertibles where the lack of a fixed roof makes the rear end hang out like an overweight person who's sans pantaloons. Yes, there was a coupe version as well that's only marginally less zaftig looking.

The Solara wasn't Toyota's first foray into the world of a two-door Camry. Back in 1993, Toyota offered a coupe version of their then new Camry but it was really nothing more than what it was; a Camry for  people, err, like me, who wouldn't be caught dead in a four-door sedan. Well, the problem was, as you can see, it was nothing more than a Camry four-door with two less doors. This one here even has a spoiler to tempt me even more.

When Toyota relaunched Camry for 1997 there was, mercifully, no coupe version but the first Solara, above, rolled out two seasons later. An at the time the Japanese answer to the Oldsmobile Cutlass that no one was asking for. Well, some asked and those quickly found that sliver of buyers.

Solara convertible sales were so bad back in the day that Toyota had a two year overstock of the blasted things; as late as 2010 you could still buy a "new" 2008 Solara. Seeing that Toyota hasn't made the Solara in twelve years, the mere concept of a four-passenger coupe or convertible seems as outdated as a typewriter or a VCR. The idea had its fans in the 2000's but here at the beginning of the not-so-roaring 2020's, these types of cars are dinosaurs driven apparently by living fossils. Look, I ain't no kid so I get it. I drive a 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

I quickly gained my composure and shrugged off my near death experience although I was embarrassed as I always am at my Turret's syndrome like tendency to bark out profanity when I'm startled. In hindsight I don't think it was thatclose; I think his oblivion to his surroundings is what annoyed me most. I've never been the most understanding of clutzy, clueless "elders" and I've long believed folks should be road-tested as they get older. Statistically, the youngest and oldest of driver's are the most likely to be involved in accidents. These days, the young simply don't drive and some older drivers are an out and out nuisance.

The fact that today there are no four-passenger convertibles that are even remotely affordable put a chill down my spine as well. Not for the fact that I would want one, but it was telling that a vehicle type that was somewhat of a mainstay of my childhood, you know, the "family-sized" convertible not to mention the personal luxury car that could sit a young family comfortably, has become extinct. Except of course for well-preserved examples like the one that Alta Cocker drove, made me feel old and out of sync with current trends and morays.

Slipping behind the wheel of my nineteen-year old Chevrolet Monte Carlo didn't make me feel any hipper or younger. Granted, I quickly shrugged it off like I did my near death experience but still. No one likes to feel older than they are. 

1973 Chevrolet Corvette 454 "Barn Find" - Hide My Checkbook

 

The third generation or what is now known colloquially as the "C3" Chevrolet Corvette is as famous for perpetuating if not embodying and exacerbating a certain stereotype as it is for it's "Flash Gordon" plastic body. To us fans of them we often times find ourselves rowing against preconceived notions exhausting ourselves as we attempt to defend our vehicle choices to those who think we're having some sort of mid-life crisis. Even within the comforts of the like minded there's lively discussion about whether the early "3's" were better than later models. Which takes us to our "bard find", 1973 454, 4-speed car here I found for sale on Craigslist. If ever if there was a car caught in between, it's a 1973 Corvette.

What makes the '73's unique from other "C3's" is their bumpers. Sound trivial? Not really when it comes to early to mid 1970's cars sold in the United States. Starting in 1973, all new vehicles sold  here were required to have bumpers that could withstand a five-mile per hour impact without the vehicle suffering any damage. Again, that might sound inconsequential but the end result was often times garish chrome logs that seemed like afterthoughts on existing designs. On the 1973 Corvette, Chevrolet covered up the front bumper with a rubberized polyurethane housing. While many would say that it worked aesthetically, much like today's cars, these bumper covers can't withstand the impact of a slow moving child's bicycle without requiring surgery and a total respray. Somehow they were federally compliant. While the mandate called for the safety-bumpers on the rear of cars come 1974, the rear end of cars was exempt for 1973. Thus, the 1973 Corvette has a rubber nose and the '68-'72 Corvette's delicate and equally useless dual chrome rear bumper.

No. That will not buff out. And you either love the '73's or you're at best ambivalent towards them. Personally, I'm not a fan of the party up front business in back or vice versa mantra going on with the '73's. I'm an all or nothing kind of girl preferring the small bumperette '68-'72's or even the 1974 - 1982's with their fully covered bumpers. Any charms of the imbalanced design of the '73's is lost on me. While the '73 Corvettes have their fans, apparently I'm not alone with my malaise either given that values of '73's are a good third less than '68-'72's. Yes, values of the '73's are a good third more than anything after 1973 but less is still less.

Which takes us back to our '73 bard find here. Now, the owner or the lister of this car  wouldn't be the first person to think they were sitting on a pot of gold with their old car but let's be reasonable. Yes, it's a 1973 Corvette with a 4-speed and 454 but...it...needs...everything. Body work, paint, engine, interior, suspension. With any old car it's always best to buy a restored car than to buy a basket case (like this) and fund the resto yourself because you'll never get your money back on it. Or even come close to breaking even. And in the case of this thing, the point of entry is so out of this world ridiculous that you might as well move onto something else. In fact, anything else.

Sidebar - being the proud owner of a 1977 "C3" that's currently not road-going, not piling stuff on top of it as a makeshift shelf takes some discipline. So, to that end I understand the stuff on the car but only to a point. This isn't the first old car on CL I've seen that's for sale that's also been turned into a makeshift junk drawer. Or table.

The good here is this is a 1973 Corvette with a 454 and a 4-speed. The bad is the that's about the only thing this has going for it. If you're wondering, it's been repainted in the 1978 twenty-fifth anniversary Corvette color scheme. Makes no sense here in 2020 but doing my best to look at this car through a late '70's lens, the paint job must have been an attempt to update the look of it; the older chrome bumper Corvette's, even the '73's, looking old and stale in comparison to the later models.  Oh, did I mention this thing also hasn't run since the first term of the Clinton administration?

I love the Trumpian hubris of some Craiglist and Facebook Marketplace listings and this listing is right up there. The owner claiming that in Hemmings Motors News these big block cars are selling for between thirty-five and eighty-five thousand and that's why he doesn't want to hear from you if you're not coming with an offer of at least twenty-grand. Somebody, please, hide my checkbook.

Much has been said about cars in the early 1970's losing much of their punch having their compression ratios hacked so they could run smoothly on no-lead gas and emission plumbing robbing horsepower as well. That's true  to a some extent but Chevrolet was able to keep the horsepower and torque thieves away with the 454 engine they put in the 1973 Corvette.

The beast that was RPO code "LS4" was still knocking down two-hundred seventy five horsepower and three-hundred ninety-five foot pounds of torque in 1973. Those are net numbers too. While the mighty LS7 454 available in the 1970 was rated at four-hundred sixty horsepower, keep in mind that's a gross horsepower rating. Starting in 1972 manufacturers went to net horsepower ratings which were approximately forty percent less than the gross ratings. So, subtract forty-percent off the the mighty "LS7" and we get...two-hundred seventy six.

If you're interested here's the listing. Ask them if for an opening bid of twenty-grand if they'll throw in all the junk. 

1969 Ford LTD - Small Town USA

I think I find this 1969 Ford LTD appealing because it looks like something GM could have done. It's currently for sale at the same Ford dealership that the only buyer it's ever had bought it from back in 1969. Only in small town USA. 

Up until 1978 all big Ford's and Mercury's rode on the same chassis that was new for model year 1965. Those big Lincoln Continental's with the "suicide-doors" didn't share the chassis until 1970. Ford sliced, diced, kneaded and bobbed the design constantly no doubt to stay at least in pace with General Motors incessant changes. The end result being the oafish LTD of 1974 through 1978. infamy. I've said many times before that with the rarest of exceptions designs don't get better looking the more the designers futz with it. To be fair, GM's big bumper, pillared sedans from 1974-1976 where pretty god awful too. Ford sorta, kinda got it right for a brief while with these tasty designs.

Well, as right as Ford got things back then. Save for a Mustang or Thunderbird here and there, they didn't do much right design wise in the thirty plus years after World War II. That period of form over function coming to a screeching halt with the Great Downsizing Epoch that GM started in 1977. Sorry, Ford's 1979-2011 "Panther" LTD\Crown Victoria's never rowed my land yacht. To give credit where it's due, I'm also a big fan of the 1968-1969 Mercury Cougar, the Continental Mark's II-V and 1966-1967 Continental's but I'm focusing on Ford's today and not FoMoCo's myriad other divisions.

The Ford LTD, just like the Chevrolet Caprice, was a bit of an odd duck seeing that it portended to be a luxury car. What started out as a trim level on the 1965 Galaxie, it became it's own model line come 1966. Again, very similar to what Chevrolet did with the Caprice as Carpice was at first a trim level of the Impala before superseding it. The LTD luxury aura wasn't really slathered on until these all-new-for-1969 models rolled out complete with vacuum actuated head light doors. You know a car is luxurious when the headlights are covered. So, if the Ford Motor Company's least expensive division was selling a rather well equipped luxury model what was left for Mercury and Lincoln to peddle?

Oddly enough, while Mercury got a retooled Marquis for 1969, that, subjectively, lacks any of the clumsy charms our Ford LTD here has and could be construed as it's homely sibling, Lincoln didn't get a new Continental until 1970. And as bad-ass as those cars were, well, the hard-top two-door models where, they were really nothing more than gussied up LTD's. In a world where you would think riches would trickle down, the bubbling up of luxury must have been a stretch for many a Lincoln faithful. Especially after nearly a decade of the uniquely wonderful suicide-door Continental.

Our subject here hails from lovely Marion, Ohio. Marion is one of those irrepressible small towns in north-central Ohio, maybe an hour or so northwest of Columbus, where everyone knows everyone, nobody locks their front door, everyone goes to church on Sunday, all the boys are handsome, the girls are all pretty and everyone who was born there lives there and dies there. Even those who stray off and go to school at Ohio State or Ohio University come back because the cost of living and the wholesomeness of the lifestyle is just so gosh darn good. If they don't come back at first after school they do eventually.

The online ads for it make no bones about the odometer rolling over; it reads 39,000 + now. Back in the olden days odometers only had five digits because one-hundred thousand miles on a car was an unfathomable distance for an automobile to travel. And a mark of shame for their owner if they drove something "that old". Over the years the interior and the top had been handsomely redone. The paint is original. Sadly, no pictures of the Ford "FE" 390 V-8 appear in the ad. Asking price is a tad high at $9,986 but reasonable for a time capsule in this sort of condition. Any full-size GM two-door of this vintage in this shape would have two to three times the asking price. The reasons for that I will have to drill into in a subsequent blog dedicated exclusively to that subject.

You have to wonder what will become of big, old-school American iron like this seeing that kids today have so little interest in cars in general to say nothing of ill-performing old barges like this. I'm lucky that my older son is somewhat interested in cars but you just know some guy in his fifties is going to swoop in and grab this. Maybe for less than the asking price. Let's hope so. My son wouldn't be caught dead in this. 

2003 Mercedes Benz SL500 - Her Sweet Siren Charms

 

I don't think I want to know anyone who would be immune to the allure and the charms of a Mercedes-Benz' SL. An automobile in any of its various iterations that has a mystique, in my humble opinion, far more magnetic than just about anything this side of a Ferrari or Lamborghini. Corvette? Please. Even the "C8" is a boy racer in comparison even to an aging lion like this 2003 SL500 although it is a far superior automobile.

Mercedes-Benz doesn't change their preeminent two-passenger sports car with "planned obsolescence" in mind. Since the legendary gullwing SL300 of 1954 debuted they've only rebooted it seven times with each new model a seismic improvement over the watershed model it replaced. The 2003 SL was Mercedes-Benz' first new SL since the game-changing 1989 model and was a remarkable advancement in terms of engineering and after more than a decade of cold, austere block-like designs across their entire range, aesthetics.

So, forgive my wife and I for whimsically dreaming about purchasing this 2003 SL500 that's for sale near my office in bucolic Youngstown, Ohio with an asking price a, ahem, mere thirteen-thousand five hundred dollars. Keep in mind that this stickered for nearly ninety-grand when new. Holy depreciation, Batman.

If you seriously consider thirteen-five "mere" money then you are truly fortunate especially seeing that this seventeen year old car is rapidly going on being eighteen. Although it has only sixty-five thousand on her majestic Teutonic heart and later examples of the same car are listing for twice the asking price, this could be a good deal. Could. Be. The asking price is still high enough to make diving into it a bad idea if anything were to go wrong with it. And with any old car not to mention an old Mercedes, there's plenty that can go wrong. This car not unlike buying a cheap fixer-upper in Youngstown; cost of repairs could easily exceed the cost of the house itself.

Even doing the work myself would get expensive. For instance, an Arnot Industries remanufactured body control strut runs seven-hundred and fifty bucks at Autozone. Yes, at Autozone! Of course these are special electro-mechanical struts with some sort of space-age magnetic hydraulic fluid that plug into a central computer all in the interest of making the driver better but really are there to semi-automate the driving experience. And, again, seeing how old this car is now, what happens to all that gee-whiz stuff when it starts to get old? Well, it needs to be replaced and, again, many replacement parts are very, veddy expensive.

This car has an available four year warranty too but those can get really pricey and I've been burned by them in the past. They're usually not backed by the manufacturer which means you're at the whim of the insurance company to cover the costs of repairs. And they're not in the business of paying for anything and everything customers bring in for service either. One time the company I bought an extended warranty from went belly-up too. Thanks, but no thanks. Word to the wise, avoid after market extended warranties. If you get a warranty on a used car best bet is to make sure it's factory backed.

From a seat of the pants perspective, the numbers on this car aren't that impressive either by today's standards. Forty-four hundred pounds hauled around by only a five liter V-8 with a piddling three-hundred and two horsepower V-8. Don't get me wrong, back in the day those were mouth wateringly exotic numbers but in an age now where speed is a commodity zero to sixty in six point one seconds just ain't gonna do it. Gas mileage is SUV terrible too and you have to consider the hassle of putting up with a car that carries just two-passengers and has very little trunk space when the oh-so-sexy clamshell top is retracted. There's not much room there when the top is up too. By the way, none of the pictures in the ad for it had the top down. What's up (or not down) with that?

And what's with the AMG badges? 2003 SL500's that were AMG's were actually SL550's and came with a heavy breathing turbo boosting horsepower to four-hundred and sixty-nine and torque swelled to five-hundred and sixteen foot pounds. They also had "V8COMPRESSOR" badges above the gills on the front fenders, could go zero to sixty in four point six seconds (that's more like it) and top out of two-hundred and eight miles per hour. THIS here ain't no AMG, she's a poser. Which on some level is sexy in and of itself. A saucy girl who pretends to be something she's not? You kidding me? Let's go!

Still, the other day I couldn't resist her sweet siren charms and I went to take a look at her in the flesh. Or sheet metal. There she sat seeming a whole lot less sexy and glamorous in the pot-holed lot of the dealership on a muggy, rainy afternoon in god-forsaken Youngstown, Ohio. Reminded me of meeting aging rock stars back in the day - sort of wrinkly, overtly flawed and...ordinary. A scratch or two here and there. She looked all of her seventeen-years rather than the economically prudent perfection we see under the  florescent light-bulb lit studio photos in the on-line ads. And the first thing I noticed was the driver's door window was closed on top of the weather stripping instead of being inside it. Damn me for not photographing that. Certainly not the most expensive thing to fix on a Mercedes, not the least expensive either, but seeing our date started out on that foot I pulled my mask off immediately and all but jogged back to my car and drove off before any sales person had a chance to  come and talk to me.

A check of the available online Carfax revealed that two of her four owners had been involved in accidents bad enough that they appeared on the report. The Carfax "Car Fox" mascot recommending that whom ever buys the car have it inspected by an auto body expert. I'll say.