1992 Cadillac Fleetwood Coupe - The New Old

General Motors let us Cadillac fans down big time in the 1980's. We understand they had to deal with German makes and models appealing to well-heeled younger ones but that's hardly an excuse for the series of engineering and product planning gaffes they dropped on us during the 1980's. Take their mid-'80's deVille pictured above from a 1985 Cadillac brochure for instance. Damn thing is so ugly even the yuppie models don't like it; she can't look at it while he's stupefied he bought it instead of a BMW 5-series. 

Seems like only yesterday when a smothering blanket of low-grade depression washed over my Cadillac loving, all of twenty-years old psyche when I first saw one of these. Remarkably, these sold well when first launched but when trade-in time came around Grand Ma and Grand Dad went elsewhere. Fear not. Although Cadillac sales melted consistently as the 1980's marched on interminably for General Motors they had "big" changes in store. Well, they had to do something. Any. Thing. 

For 1989 that something was their adding three additional three inches of sheet metal fore and aft (with no change in wheelbase) to the '85 deVille. They even tacked on tail lights cribbed straight from a "Brougham". While it appealed to Cadillac's core buyers somewhat as sales surged, it didn't do anything to dissuade a 40-year-old smitten with a Bimmer or a Benz to change his or her mind and buy a Cadillac instead. While I "got" what it was Cadillac was attempting to do and somewhat appreciated it even, I could tell that the design update was hackneyed and still suffered the ill-proportions the previous models had. Well, I said they had to something. 

The everything-old is new-again "bigger is better" axiom also gave rise to a new Cadillac model range they dubbed, "Fleetwood". They dug deep into tried and true Cadillac tradition with this thing; there hadn't been a Cadillac since 1976 with fender-skirts and the "Fleetwood" moniker had been kicked around at Cadillac going back generations to when "Fleetwood" was a custom coach-builder out of "Fleetwood", Pennsylvania. Prior to 1989, "Fleetwood" was a trim level on deVille models. 

Interestingly, the new-Fleetwood line also included a, be still my beating heart, two-door version. I found our stunningly mint condition subject here recently during a "cheap-car" search. It was for sale with less than forty-thousand miles on it's ticker for approximately $12,000. Yeah, I know - that's a lot of money for a twenty-eight year old Cadillac. You do get a quasi-modern front-wheel drive sedan with considerable V-8 poke and dual air bags but I hope someone got it for less than 10K. It's gone now and just as well. My wife would think I've really lost my mind if I asked her to go for a Sunday drive to just kick the tires on this thing. 

These 1989-1993 Fleetwood Coupes were really nothing more than a Coupe deVille with fender-skirts but if you have a proclivity to appreciate Cadillac design cues of yore you may actually like this. It's as though this a front-wheel drive interpretation of a 1977 rear-wheel-drive Coupe deVille and the design almost works. Almost. Works. Were it really falls apart is in being an adept attempt on GM's behalf to fight off the tony and even more expensive luxury imports. 

As I discussed before, these weren't terrible cars per se it's just compared to German makes and models they just came up way short in terms of driving dynamics. Said driving dynamics sowing the ground-work for their rise as prestige-nameplates. In more ways than one these cars were the best 1949 Cadillac's up to that point but the game had changed. The "Standard of the World" now had a standard it was judged against. This may have been a good "Cadillac" but it was not a good BMW or Mercedes-Benz. 

1993 Cadillac Fleetwood models were actually called "Sixty-Special" so as not to be confused with Cadillac's redesigned "Fleetwood Brougham".  

1974 Chevrolet Corvette - Charting the (C3) Changes

I found this 1974 Corvette recently while searching for parts for my '77. The Craigslist ad didn't have any information about what's going on here save for the owner saying he or she was parting this out. All in asking price is $5,000 which is absurd considering five-grand could get you a roller if not a running car. On the other hand it's actually quite reasonable considering what an NOS frame and birdcage would run you. Shut-up and take my money! 

What in the name of Zora Arkus-Duntov is going on here? Reminds me of the "hillbillies" I grew across the street from back on Long Island who did auto repairs and custom fabrication in their driveway. Sorry - "hillbilly" was my mother's derogatory term for them and it was a point of extreme consternation between the two of us that she would find me "over-there" all the time. Their custom fabricating often had dubious results, not unlike like whomever started to "update" this '74 into a later-model fastback. Surprise-surprise, they gave up.  

Not all is lost, though. Me being as easily inspired as I am this hulk has spurred me to take a brief stroll down a third-generation Corvette memory lane of sorts and chart the myriad changes Chevrolet put the "plastic-fantastic" through over it's fifteen year run. Changes that apparently goaded some, actually many, to trade in their old-Corvette for one of the "new-ones". Some of course eschewing the expense of a new car and attempted to plow into updating their old car on their own. How else to explain what's going on here? I mean, seriously, if this isn't a decades old project that had gone south, why would someone do this now? 

1969 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray with chrome bumpers front and back

Along with numerous ancillary changes, not all of them welcome of course, there were two significant and not-subtle changes in the appearance of third-generation or "C3" Chevrolet Corvette's from 1968-1982. Above is a '69 with it's signature chrome bumpers, modest yet quite tasteful rear spoiler and the "gills" from the Mako-Shark concept the car was allegedly based on. There's a lot of Pontiac Banshee in the C3 as well. 

1973 Corvette - note bumper cover up front, chrome bumper out back

The first big change was due to a federal mandate that all automobiles and light trucks sold in this country had to be able to withstand a five-mile per hour impact without damage. That edict required vehicles sold in 1973 had to pass muster up-front meanwhile the back end required some sort of buttressing or reinforcement for model-year 1974. Rather than attach large and heavy chrome bumpers fore and aft like they did on other makes and models, GM cleverly hid the energy-absorbing bumpers on Corvette behind rubberized covers. 

1977 Corvette with bumper covers fore and aft

While it technically got the job done aesthetically the reviews were mixed. Some lauded the update  while others abjectly hated them. Choose your poison. If you're in the market for a "C3" note how much more valuable the 1968-1972 "chrome-bumper" models are these days compared to the later "rubber-bumper" models. Values of "73's are less than '68-'72's although generally they're worth a bit more than the later models. Love how pin-straight that right-rear tire is on this '77 I plucked from a brochure. As if. 

1978 Corvette "fastback"

The second change came for model-year 1978 with Chevrolet adding a large rear window that transformed the rear of the car into a fastback of sorts. As part of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Corvette, this update came with a significant reboot of the interior as well. 

1979 Corvette L-82

Much like the bumper-covers, the look of the car was significantly different from previous model years and you either loved it or hated it. Of the four iterations of the C3, through my eyes, the 1974-1977 front end on the new rear for 1978 and 1979 looked awkward and unbalanced. Side note - Chevrolet offered a bolt-on "Pace-Car" spoiler on '74-'79's C3's. If I can find a picture of one in the flesh I'll update this blog - safe to say they're absolutely hideous. 

1980 Corvette with front end ground effects and integrated spoiler on the rear bumper cover

Come 1980, some ground effects under the front end and an integrated spoiler on the rear bumper cover gave the car an adroit duck tail reminiscent of the one on '68-'73's making the design a cohesive whole in my opinion. For 1982, the last year of the run for "C3's", that rear glass actually opened. As it probably should have going back to 1978.  

I'm the last person to scoff at anyone attempting to do something as ambitious as altering the overall appearance of a car but to do it well and make it appear seamless is an art form. I'm blessed with what I believe is a fair amount of mechanical intuition and what my father referred to as "Yankee Ingenuity" so on some level I'm actually jealous of someone attempting to do whatever it is they started out to do here. There's a reason why body-work in general is so expensive because so few do it well. 

Pride goeth before destruction as they say and no doubt some well-intention-ed person had to bite down hard to give up here. If I find this listed again I promise I'll reach out to whomever is selling to try and get some more intel on this. Cheers. 

 

2006 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS - The Last Monte Carlo

This 2006 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS popped up in a Facebook ad on me the other day and bit I on it. Despite it's age, a cloth interior and no power adjuster on the passenger side front seat, with a fairly minimal 62,000 miles on the clock and an asking price of $9,994 I did the mental gymnastics necessary to to convince myself that it would be worth my time to make an appointment to take it for a spin. These days, finding anything I like for ten-grand is a gift from the used-car gods. 

This car is part of the last run of Monte Carlo's that began in 2000 and wrapped up in 2007. When GM pulled the plug on them they didn't just end a production run on a venerable GM nameplate - they sealed shut a once stolid market segment that began, arguably, with the 1958 four-passenger Ford Thunderbird, that GM jump-started with the 1969 Pontiac Grand Prix and 1970 Monte Carlo and one that, good, bad or indifferent, defined 1970's domestic auto-mobilia. The worst was when GM stopped making the Monte Carlo it made nary a headline; the only folks crying afoul where ones, like me, who love personal luxury cars. 

For 2006, Chevrolet updated the 2000 model redesigning the dashboard fascia, ruining the idiosyncratic look of the original design in my humble opinion, and replaced the polarizing\oddly shaped sheet metal forward of the B-pillar's with the far more conventional if somewhat staid front end from the Impala. They had to massage the doors since the character lines on the previous model blended in with the fenders. Everything aft of the B-pillar remained the same. All that front end work doing away with a lot of the distinctiveness of the 2000-2005 Monte Carlo making "The Last Monte's" two-door Impala's akin to 1995-1999 Monte Carlo's that where four-door Lumina's. There's nothing wrong with that seeing that I've always thought the front end styling of my car, a 2002 Dale Earnhardt Monte Carlo, more than a tad cluttered in the designer's attempts to ape the lines of the swoopy, 1973-1977 Monte Carlo. Those cars you either adore or abhor. As pleasant and almost innocuous as the reskin was, us coupe lovers do like a little more zing in our meatloaf rather than our cars being just two-door sedans. 

The biggest difference GM made for these cars for 2006 was under the hood - especially on these SS models. This thing here stuffed with a transverse-mounted version of the GM LS3, 5.3-liter V-8 engine that I have in my Tahoe. Dubbed "LS4", to make it fit, GM cast a unique shorter block and crank for it and moved the starter mounting from the engine block to the transmission. Things are tight enough in my car's engine bay I can't imagine how difficult it is to work on this thing. GM put these into these cars through 2007, the Impala SS, Pontiac Grand Prix GXP and Buick LaCrosse "Super" from 2005-2009. 

If this car does anything right it's that it's fast. Really fast. Or feels really fast. And sounds great going fast too. Thanks to a mountain of torque at the slightest tap of the gas the big V-8 doesn't just move this car it catapults it in a way my son's 2017 Camaro with it's trick 3.6-liter V-6 and eight-speed automatic  doesn't. For the record this car has one-hundred and three more horsepower and a whopping one-hundred eight more foot-pounds of torque than the well-worn 3.8-liter V-6 does in my "Dale" so the difference in power, at least at first, that I felt to my backside may have been exaggerated since my car feels woe-fully under-gunned in comparison. For certain, learning not to launch the car like a fighter jet from stop-lights would be part of the fun of owning this. 

Through it all though, my take-a-ways with this car the other night were eerily similar to what I experienced years ago when I test drove one when these first came out - it's just ok. If that. Yes, it's fast but there has to be more to a "sporty" car than just being fast and\or good looking. It has to be rewarding to drive and the 2006-2007 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS is disappointing in ways that my car, as rusted and decrepit as it may be, makes me happy. My car continues to cajole and comfort me with  just enough edge to make it fun-to-drive. It's crudely satisfying in ways that this car attempts to be refined in; this overpowered SS anesthetizes rather than excites. Despite new struts and other front suspension hardware the dealership put into this car that they said would preclude any negotiation of the asking price, it's numb and loose - not a good combination for a car with "SS" badges all over it. This car may be fast as hell but who cares since it's not fun to drive. Yes, my car is a really old shoe but it's my old shoe and I love it for how it rides and handles more so than for the fact it's a sporty coupe. That, friends, is saying a lot. 

It's interesting how different this car is behind-the-wheel compared to Pontiac Grand Prix GXP's I've driven and loved that it shares so much DNA with. Whereas the GXP is an all-out blast to drive and feels like it encourages you to do things you normally wouldn't do, the Monte is soft and disconnected from the road. It wallows and swallows up bumps and rutted Ohio roads like a '70's Buick - who wants that? The Grand Prix is aggressive and responds like a go-cart - fun! It comes up short in the "gotta-have-it" department because it's a sedan; after all, I have my principles. From what I understand the Grand Prix GXP is fitted with Bilstein shocks the lower it and it has off-set, larger front tires than the rears but there's got to be more to it than that. And if there isn't, I'd be hard pressed to spend ten-grand on this car and immediately drop another two-thousand if not more updating the suspension and tires. The wife would kill me. 

Gas mileage would be a bit of a concern too. Even with a Grand Prix GXP.  I have a two-hundred mile a day commute (when I'm  actually in the office) so I really need something even more efficient than my Dale that gets a consistent twenty-five miles per gallon. Our Tahoe gets as little as twelve to thirteen miles per gallon around town and maybe cracks nineteen on long trips. The info center on this car said "21.1 AVG MPG" but you know those things are always calculated generously. Gas mileage propped up perhaps because the engine in these cars have "Displacement on Demand" that shuts off four-cylinders under light use to help save gas. I hate the feature because all cars I've driven with it stumble when the cylinders shut-off and on; my son's Camaro stumbles like crazy going between three and six cylinders and it's awful. This car didn't stumble so that tells me someone shut the damn "DOD" off. That makes driving it smoother although I'm sure gas mileage suffers. How much? I'll never know. 

In the end, I passed on this not because of the malaise-like seat of the pants handling but because of northeast Ohio's gift to cars and trucks - rust. Although squeaky clean compared to my Dale, I needed this car to be absolutely, 110% clean to really take it seriously and these tell-all rust bubbles reveal everything I need to know. That it appears someone had the gall to touch them up is telling to me too. Stay. Away. Just as well. 

I knew I made the right decision as I drove home in my rusting away old Dale Earnhardt. I feel many a road imperfection in the wheel and the the pot and chuck holes jar my kidneys just enough to keep me engaged with what's going on and make everything fun. The big-ole 3.8-liter V-6 may not sound as delicious as a V-8 but it pulls with all it's heart and I use every pony and foot-pound it has every chance I get. The big V-8 is excessive. Fun but it's too much; who needs that much power especially with as little tactile control of a car with so soft a suspension as it has. Besides, as they say, it's more fun to drive a slow-car fast. 

1973 Oldsmobile 4-4-2 - (Beware) The Tin Worm

Not sure why this popped up when I put "Corvette parts" into the search box in Facebook Marketplace but who am I to argue with Mark Zuckerberg's wonky algorithms? Something tells me he knows exactly what I would find interesting because sure as hell here I am lovingly blogging if not thinking quasi-serious about calling on this 1973 Oldsmobile 4-4-2. It's for sale near my home here on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio for a not unreasonable asking price of six-thousand dollars. That asking price all but too good to be true considering the seller brags of just thirty-four thousand miles on it's forty-seven year old ticker. Price is negotiable too making this old beast simultaneously alluring and disconcerting. What are they hiding? 

Originally denoting four-barrels, four-speeds and two exhaust pipes, by '73 "4-4-2" still denoted that  although the engine the four-barrel sat on top of and the optional four-speed backing it up wasn't quite the pot-whopper previous Oldsmobile "Rockets" were. Blame the EPA all you want for that but the reality was even if the "Big Three" had developed emissions gear that didn't impede engine performance, insurance surcharges on anything deemed a performance car would have made them unattractive for a vast number of potential buyers. So, our 4-4-2 here along with similar models from Chevrolet, Buick and Pontiac may have looked the part but they were mostly all "show" instead of "go".  Our '73 is powered by the Oldsmobile "Rocket" 350 V-8. If it was the 455 the block and valve cover gaskets would be blue. 

I'm smitten with this well-worn black-on-black '73 4-4-2; full disclosure, many find fault with these "colonnades", I happen to like them. A lot. Maybe it's nostalgia mixed with genuine appreciation for these big intermediates that are actually pretty swell riding cars. Throw in one like this with a manual transmission and fat sway bars fore and aft and, well, at least on paper, they're pretty good values. Breathe a little on the motor, shorten the rear end and you've got a real nice runner. Thing is you need to be careful and not dump too much cash into something like this because they're really not worth a whole lot. A '70 Hemi 'Cuda these ain't. Even if this car was in showroom shape it would still be worth a good third less than a comparable 1972 4-4-2. Compared to a '68 or '69 4-4-2 convertible they're worth about twenty-percent of what they're worth.  

Of this vintage "4-4-2" that Oldsmobile pushed out through 1977, these '73's with their small rear bumpers are my favorite. The '74 and '75's with their big rear bumpers as well as the '73's fronts are a turn-off. The shovel-nosed NASCAR inspired '76 and '77's are nothing if not bizarre. Still, I wouldn't kick one out of my garage if one happened to magically appear there. 

Gotta love these oh-so-'70's "Strato-buckets". They're not to give the driver ease of entry or vice-versa but to allow passengers better egress to the rear bench seat. They're fairly comfortable as '70s' GM seats go although the back doesn't rake (weird) and there's no power adjustment. They're cool but if you're of very average height, like me, you may feel as though you're sitting somewhat in a bathtub . I'm not a fan of that although I do love the seats. 

What scares me about this car at any price is that it's a "Cleveland" car and that means rust. Save for it's delightful patina, that I wouldn't change, you have to be concerned about rust on these things. Beef up the engine and what-not all you want and turn it into a genuine rat-rod but what's the point of that if the tin-worm has gotten into it? Trust me, once it starts it's all but impossible to stop it. And repeated attempts at it gets expensive very quickly. 

Get it up on a rack see what's going on. If it's clean, which I doubt, it might be worth taking a look-see or two at it. Here's the listing. Good luck. 

1952 Mercury Custom - (I Ain't) Crazy 'bout a Mercury

Alan Jackson croons in his 1993 country-hit, "Mercury Blues" that he's "crazy 'bout a Mercury". The song makes reference to a "Mercury Forty-Nine" and we see a 1949 six-passenger "Mercury Eight " six-passenger coupe in the video for the song that's similar to the one James Dean's character, Jim Stark, drove in "Rebel Without a Cause". "Eight" referring to the car's two-hundred fifty-five cubic inch, "flathead" V-8 engine. 

Although it goes by in the blink of an eye, about three-quarters of the way through the video we see the '49 with a "JAMES DEAN" license plate on its front end. Very cool.

We see several other Mercury's in the video but with the "b-roll" so dark and with  the constant, frantic edits typical of music videos of any genre, not to mention the degraded video quality on youtube, it's all but impossible to pin-point exact model years of the cars. 

There is this one good shot of the dashboard of a red, "suicide door" four-door  Mercury in the video but it appears to be a customized or after market dash. Safe bet to say, though, it's a 1949-1951 Mercury. While I'm a GM girl first and foremost, with regards to 1949-1951 Merc's, I get what the song-writers and Mr. Jackson were gettin' at when they say, "I'm crazy 'bout a Mercury". 

Just as well as today's automobile soliloquy is not about the Mercury's in the video per se but about this 1952 Mercury Custom. It's was for sale at a automobile consignment shop up in Grand Rapids with an ungodly asking price of some $15,000. The listing is gone now which tells me either the owner pulled it from the market or, remarkably, someone bought it. 

I mention the song and the video because, well, I love the song and Alan Jackson rocks, but it's safe to say I'm, "not crazy about this Mercury". If I just made the "not crazy" comment without framing it properly beforehand it wouldn't have the obtuse impact I hope it would have. 

I don't think that Alan Jackson or the song writers who penned "Mercury Blues" had this "Merc" in mind when they came up with the song. Especially in this color. Well, the writers couldn't have because they wrote the song in 1949 but I hope you get my point. Had the Ford Motor Company rolled this out in 1949 would a song have been written about it? Me thinks not. 

Alan's also a "car-guy" and if us "car-guy's" have anything in common it's that most of the time we tend to have similar reactions to particular models. 1949 Mercury's are "James Dean cool" whereas most other Mercury's, save for 1968 and 1969 Cougars, like our '52 here, candidly, were most definitely not cool. Throw in 1969 and 1970 Cougar's as "cool" because I'm feeling generous today. Most post-war Ford's as well lacked the elan that many GM designs had and post-war Chrysler's were even worse. Well, up until 1955 but that's a blog for a different day. 

After three very short model years in which Ford's self-baked middle child actually had an identity of its own, for 1952 they began badge-engineering Mercury's as re-bodied Lincoln's. From an operational efficiency stand-point, at least on paper, the move made sense. After all, Lincoln's were marketed as rivals of GM's luxury division, Cadillac, and what better way to amortize the cost of building the feature rich luxury-buyer targeted automobiles than to offer less expensive versions of them. Again, that works on paper. 

It would have worked better if the '52's didn't look like warmed over versions of Lincoln models that didn't sell well. If Ford couldn't figure out what to do with Mercury, they really had no idea how to make Lincoln's appealing to Cadillac buyers. 1950's Lincoln's were gross attempts to out-Cadillac Cadillac and were fussy and clumsy looking. Had they instead made the 1949 Mercury's Lincoln's instead would things have been different? The world will never know. "Crazy 'bout a Lincoln" doesn't have the same ring to it either.  

1950 Ford Custom DeLuxe Club Coupe 

1951 Mercury Eight 

1952 Mercury Custom     

1952 Lincoln Capri

Above we see the familial similarity in early 1950's Ford designs and the only one, in my humble opinion, that should and actually does get any respect is the 1951 Mercury Eight. Some say James Dean drove a '51 in "Rebel" but I've deduced it was in fact a '49. And as dorky as the '52 Merc is, the 1950 Ford here makes it look positively beguiling. The Capri here is does look somewhat elegant but it has none of the presence of a 1952 Cadillac. 

The axiom of "what's a Mercury" dogged the division from it's get-go as a competitor to GM's mid-priced models going back to 1939. Sometimes they were dressed down Lincoln's and other times they were dressed up Ford's. Again, save for the '49-'51's and, the Cougar;s Ford could never figure out what to do Mercury. That dogma plagued Mercury through its demise after the 2010 model year. 

I ain't crazy about this Mercury. 

"Mercury Blues" was written by blues musicians K.C. Douglas and Robert Geddins. 

1995 Chevrolet Beretta - At Least It's Red

I can't tell you the last time I saw a Chevrolet Beretta in general to say nothing of one in this kind of shape. It's a bone-stripper base model from 1995 no doubt either bought by an older person who used it sparingly or was bought, sold and stored sometime over the last quarter century. Funny, say, twenty or thirty years ago, if a twenty-five year old car came to the surface in this kind of condition it was gobbled up pretty quickly and at a premium. Especially if it was a coupe or a convertible. These days there's a gaggle of disposable old cars out there that are nothing more than what they are - old cars. Sadly, this Beretta is one of those cars. What there is of "value" in this thing is that it has a reasonable asking price and it's a used car it what appears to be good shape. Aside from that it's worthless.

General Motors manufactured the Chevrolet Beretta and it's four-door platform-mate, the Corsica, from 1987 through 1996. Both replaced the Citation in the Chevrolet lineup and were collectively replaced by the four-door only Malibu in 1997. Somewhat strangely enough, no other GM division sold a car that was directly related to the Beretta\Corsica although there was significant sharing of their running gear and structural components across several GM platforms. 

At least with regards to their outward appearance, I've always kinda liked the looks of these things in all their various permutations. You know, all those GT's GTZ', GTU's, Z-26's and so on. I like 'em with lots of useless, tasteless, tacky body cladding too. Give me some fat neon stripping to complete the '90's awfulness\awesomeness. That said, while I like the looks of these cars I never thought for a half-second of owning one. In particular one like this in its most basic, banal, rental-grade flavor. At least it's red. 

It's no surprise that I liked the looks of these cars given they were baked up in the same GM skunk-works that whipped up the somewhat similar looking 1993 vintage Chevrolet Camaro. However, while I've had three Camaro's of that vintage and I'm always looking for a low-mileage Z28 or SS that someone is desperate to get rid of, I don't care how well equipped or in what kind of near-showroom condition a Beretta out there might be, my name on the title of one is never going to happen. 

So, what happened to these cars and why were they so, after a short while, derided as much as they were? Named after, technically, the Italian fire-arms manufacturer and not to be confused with the Camaro Berlinetta, plain and simple, they were cheap, disposable and, again, cheap. While America loves a good value, if all of said value is ultimately perceived as being "cheap" then the value proposition makes no sense. Value is what made Japanese cars so hard to beat years ago - not only were they were affordable they were exquisitely assembled transportation conveyances. 

They may not have looked, subjectively, as handsome as this car does, but for the thirty-six to sixty month short\long haul, they were better values. Even if they were somewhat more expensive, as was the case of a comparably equipped Honda Accord coupe. While the Honda Civic was priced far more in line with a Beretta, our Beretta here is sized far more like an Accord. Over time that extra money spent for a debately less attractive car was a wash since the Accord (or any import) stayed screwed together and even from the get-go was a vastly superior driving automobile. 

They also didn't have the boorish interior that even our '95 here has. And this was a marked improvement over the interiors of earlier Beretta's. As much as I tried to dissuade him from doing so my younger brother bought a '90 Beretta GT brand new years ago and it had an interior with all the charm of a Tupperware bowl. Wait - not even a Tupperware bowl but a cheap knockoff of a Tupperware bowl. 

His car at least had the optional 3.1 liter V-6 and when you got on it, cheap-o plastic interior and all, it went pretty good. To add to the rental-car misery of our redhead here, it's powered by the rugged but rubbery 2.2 liter in-line four. Shoot, it's not even a Quad4. 

This is for sale at a Chevrolet dealership in Oregon, Ohio with a not-unreasonable asking price of $4995. It's in great shape and has only 60,000 miles on it's twenty-five year old clicker. In Ohio that  means no "e-check"! Such-a-deal. It ain't for me but you could do a whole lot worse with five grand for a used car. You could do better too. Get it for a grand less or get out the door all-in for as close to the asking price as possible and you will have done very well. 

Oregon is a suburb of Toledo; Toledo is often times referred to as "Detroit's sister city" as it's a factory town about an hour south of Motown. Toledo a good 90 minute drive west of downtown Cleveland.