1951 Plymouth - New Years Resolution

I haven't written much about cars that came out before my birth year of 1964 like this 1951 Plymouth Cambridge Club Coupe. I think that's partly because I lack perspective although when I was a kid a family across the street from my family and I drove a 1952 Pontiac. I thought that big musty smelling tank was ugly and impossibly old-timey looking; it was like something out of a movie. Funny now to think that thing was only twenty-years old at the time. My daily driver is a twenty-year old Chevrolet Monte Carlo, my wife drives a twenty-five year old Lexus and we don't think they're that old looking. Maybe we're just kidding ourselves.  

What's more there aren't many pre-1960 designs I find that interesting to blog about. I find most of them, there are rare exceptions, about as interesting as today's glut of look-a-like crossovers. New Years Resolution number one - find more cars to write about that I really don't like. 

In many ways the first post war models that GM and Ford rolled out between 1948 and 1949 made Chrysler's first post-war efforts look as dated as what Elvis Presley did to Frank Sinatra and the like. Much of that we can blame on K.T. Kellar whom became president of Chrysler after Walter P. Chrysler passed away in 1940. His styling acumen ran counter to not only anything GM and Ford were doing but to Walter P.'s sensibilities as well. Kellar of the opinion that cars should accommodate people rather than the far-out ideas of designers. That auspice led to the edict that passengers should be able to wear a fedora comfortably while driving one of their wares like our Plymouth here. 

That explains the awkward dimensions of a car that appears to be taller than it is wider. Someone wearing a stove-pipe hat could drive this without having to remove it. Sorry, fans. This is one ugly car. 

It's amazing that there's just a decade between this thing and the "downsized", far-out, compact-based full-size cars that Plymouth and Dodge rolled out for model year 1961. I'm big fan of those crazy-arse cars. especially the '61's although Chrysler toned them down each subsequent year until they were more or less homogenized into looking like everything else on the road. 

More amazing than that, actually, is there's just six years between this Plymouth and the game changing 1957 models that sent General Motors into a literal styling tizzy. Even 1955 Plymouth models appear to be jet-age in comparison to this fuddy-duddy, three-on-tree flat-head. I wonder what buyers of this thought of Plymouth's that hurriedly caught up with GM designs later in the decade. Were they drawn to them or did they want their fedora back? 

 

Created by Walter Chrysler in 1928 as a better equipped alternative to GM and Ford's low-priced models, long gone Plymouth was a perennial number three in sales. Not a bad place to be. Sadly, while Plymouth held onto third-place even after they launched these cars as their first post-war models in 1949, they slipped out of third come 1952 and never really recovered. Chrysler dropped the brand after model year 2001. 

I found this for sale about an hour from our home here on the west side of Cleveland, Ohio with an ungodly asking price of just under $13,000. Here's the listing. If you're interested, comment below about what it is you find compelling about this car that you'd consider dropping that much money on it. I'm not judging, I'm just curious. 

2021 Ford Mustang Mach E - Lee Iacocca is Spinning in his Grave

Ford's new commercial for their Mustang Mach-E stars Chevy Chase recreating his Christmas lights scene from "Christmas Vacation". It's a very clever commercial for Ford's all-electric SUV combining one of the most memorable scenes from a Christmas movie classic with what some decree as the future of transportation conveyances. It's great fun and hopefully foretells a Super Bowl telecast this February chock full of similarly smart and creative commercials. 

That said, while it is a tad disconcerting to see how old Clark and Ellen have gotten, I'd love to do a Zoom call with whomever at the Ford Motor Company thinks it a good idea to badge an electric Focus as a Mustang. And a Mach to boot. Knowing corporate culture to the degree I do all I can say is probably some stuffed suit came up with the idea and a bunch of equally stuffed know-nothing's just  went along with the all-electric ride. Seriously, this is the worst idea Ford has had since the Mustang II. Lee Iacocca is no doubt spinning in his grave. 

Yes, I know. These are old-car guy statements that may make me appear as fossilized as Jay Leno but I'm of the opinion that Ford is making a grievous marketing mistake here branding what many would refer to as a truck as a "Mustang". Good grief. I mean, GM would never do this with Corvette or even Camaro. Bad enough "Blazer" is now festooned to a dressed down Cadillac XT5 but at least it's still in line with the vehicles utility based past.  

Understand that this thing being an all-electric vehicle has nothing to do with my being verklempt. While the technology behind the Mustang Mach-E might just as well be rocket science, branding this a Mustang is just another leg kicked out of the table of automobile manufacturers producing vehicles that people actually want as opposed to needing them. This fascinating thing might as well be a refrigerator or a dishwasher - after all it is all electric - and Ford has flushed away more than fifty-five years of Mustang brand identity and essence. How do you concisely explain to friends and neighbors that this is a "Mustang". You know what they say about once you start explaining. 

I get that Ford put their famous galloping pony on this thing to help create awareness and excitement for it. Ford hoping to make inroads into the burgeoning electric vehicle market now apparently dominated by Tesla; their ugly and weird looking SUV that could all but pass for this thing. However, it comes at the expense of more harm to the Mustang brand than the "Mustang II" did. 

I applaud the technology and apparently the Mustang Mach-E is a terrific performer although I think it's far too early in the gestation of electric vehicle development to consider them truly mainstream. The downsides to all-electrics are still egregious - limited range and challenges with charging. The Mustang Mach E, which is stupid-expensive, can only go a maximum of three-hundred miles per charge and takes overnight to boot up as well. Yes, you can fast charge it and get some limited range but compared to the gas-it and go of conventional vehicles, these electrics still have a long way to go in terms of proving their reliability and getting an economically efficient network of charging stations established. To say nothing, again, of the limited range of a vehicle that fully loaded will set you back around $70,000 when it's all said and done. Say that slowly and it sounds like even more money - seventy-thousand dollars. That's a lot of necks, Clark. 

Oh, and pick this bone - show me a cost analysis where an electric vehicle actually saves the owner money in the long run and is better for the environment too since the power you'd be using to charge an electric has to be generated somehow. Most often times, yes, even here in George Jetson like 2020 going on 2021, that power is generated using fossil fuels. To me, these things are not only robbing Peter to pay Paul, you're robbing Luke and John too since once these things are out of warranty, pity the fool who's got to foot repair bills for it. 

However, this isn't meant to be about my cynicism towards electric vehicles as much, again, as it is about the body-slam that Ford is doing to it's most iconic brand. I was just a kid when Ford rolled out the sad, "Pinto-based" Mustang II and even I could tell then the thing was going to be an adroit failure.  At least those weak-kneed little "II's" were more closely aligned with what "Mustang" meant than the Mustang Mach-E means. 

Mustangs of yore may have handled like they had square stone wheels, guzzled gas like a Cadillac and were gross polluters, but in terms of designs inspiring a devil-may-care freedom and independence, there was nothing like them. What's more they instilled buyers of hoary LTD's with a sense that although they didn't get a Mustang, the family-car they did get shared the same locker room if not some DNA as the bad-ass Mustang. 

Thank goodness the current Mustang (the car, not this "truck") not only lives up to the image of the iconic Mustangs of yesteryear but far exceeds them since they actually deliver in spades whatever image they're  portending. Oh, you may have thought at first that this Mach-E uses a Mustang chassis but that's not the case. The Mustang Mach-E shares only its name with it's alleged stablemate. And, again, the point of that being? 

Everything old is new again and history always repeats itself, isn't that what they say? Only this time Ford is screwing around with "Mustang", a brand so venerable that back in the 1990's, legend has it, that the Mustang-nation literally bucked so violently when news broke that their stead was going front-wheel drive that Ford acquiesced and thought better of it. What about now? How could this have happened? How it the name of Edsel Ford does the Ford Motor Company think naming this a "Mustang" is a good idea. Shoot, call it the "Model-E" playing off "Model-T" for crying out loud. 

I respect the technology in the "Mustang Mach-E" especially considering how far electrics have come in the last ten to twenty years. Just please, don't call it a Mustang. 

I'll go out on a limb here and all but guarantee that Ford drops "Mustang" on this thing by model year 2023. Mark my words. Make that "Mach my words". 

2003 Ford Mustang GT - Never Say Never

My anticipation was fervid in the early 1990's when news first broke that Ford would update their very long-in-the tooth Mustang with something that hearkened back to the seminal Mustangs of the 1960's. After a couple of model-year delays, coincidentally or not, for Mustang's thirtieth anniversary for 1994, Ford pulled the wraps off this thing and I was reminded of so many childhood Christmases when I was  heartbroken over not getting what I wanted for Christmas. Oh, don't feel bad for me; I've gotten over those slights and it's helped make me who I am today. Although, I've never gotten over the 1994 Mustang. 

Code named "SN-95", these Ford Probe like Fox-body Mustangs lacked the visceral appeal that all other Mustangs had, save of course for the 1974-1978 Mustang II's, and was certainly lacking in comparison to GM's wonderful and fresh 1993 Chevrolet Camaro and to a lesser degree their Pontiac Firebird. I emphasize fresh since today's pony\muscle car designs are all retro or throwback inspired and haven't been wholly updated in more than a decade. They're so familiar they're almost not just stale, they're getting moldy. 

All mostly forgiven come 1999 when Ford face-lifted Mustang injecting botox and collagen in the all the right places to create, my blog my rules, the Mustang they should have come out with back in 1994. Want proof I'm not alone with that sentiment? Mustang sales shot up nearly twenty-five percent year over year and they stayed at the 1999 level through the end of the SN-95's production run in 2004. 

Rarely does a manufacturer improve on a design with subsequent updating but Ford's 1999 reboot of the SN-95 wasn't so much an updating but a "do-over". The '99 successfully blending cliched Mustang design cues with a healthy dollop of a modern-esque design ethos that obliterated the hokey, cartoon-ish retro non-sense. If anything, these cars looked like an up-to date 1969-1970 Mustang. Underneath the car still rode like it had square wheels but damn, it sure looked tough in a good way. 

Our subject here is a 2003 not unlike a 2002 Mustang GT I came thisclose to purchasing years ago when my family and I lived in Dallas, Texas. A community whose weather is conducive to use of a sporty car as a daily driver. Well, on paper anyway.  

A Mustang a Camaro lover could love? Imagine that. Well, frankly, I didn't much care for the front-end rehash GM did to my beloved 1993-1997 Camaro for 1998 and, subjectively, the updated '99 Mustang was the better looker of the two. That's saying something given how much I loved the 1993-1997 Camaro and disdained the 1994-1998 Mustang. Legend has it there was a federal mandate in the late 1990's for manufacturers to move away from multiple headlights to singular ones and that necessitated the unfortunate plastic surgery to one of my favorite domestic designs of the 1990's. 

That didn't stop me from getting a Z28 instead of a Mustang in that wonderful fall of 2006; me eschewing the easier-to-live-with nature of the Mustang for the jackhammer explosiveness and styling wantonness of the Z28. Do I regret getting the Z28 and not the Mustang? Well, seeing that I didn't much care for that 2005 Mustang GT that I had recently, and it being a vast upgrade over the Fox-body "SN-95", suffice to say that as a daily driver, knowing me as well as I do, ultimately I know that I'd have all the same misgivings about it as a daily driver that I had about the Z28. 

I have to respect anyone who drove older pony cars as daily drivers and regardless of what part of the country they're in. Nowadays, Mustang, Camaro and even the Dodge Challenger have rides as supple and compliant as sedans and crossovers but "back-in-the-day", all-practicality aside too, man, those were some kidney smashing, obnoxious cars best taken in small doses. Kind of like that super-hot party girl back in high school. She was so much fun but not someone you'd want to spend a lifetime with. 

Although, like I said in my soliloquy about the day I got rid of my '05 Mustang, never say never. In the right part of the country with the right sized garage, I can't honestly say that I'll never own a 1999-2004 Mustang like this lovely, low-mileage and priced right GT. A 1993-1997 Camaro Z28 as well. Thing is, I won't make the mistake again of thinking either one is a suitable daily driver. 

1979 Cadillac Seville Opera Coupe - Hell Bent on Screwing Up

Years ago I "reported" to a guy, I can't stomach to say I "worked" for the ass-hat, who loved to chastise his staff after a screw-up by saying, "what they hell where you thinking"? Suffice to say, he was genuinely loathed, despised, ridiculed and vilified. He wasn't too fond of my subtle retorts to his "what were you thinking rants" that were intended to highlight the absurdity of his question; something always to the tune of, "I was hell bent on screwing-up, that's what I was thinking". We parted the deadliest of enemies and haven't spoken in over thirty years and I only bring him up to remind myself to stop-short of snap judgment whenever I see something as off-beat as one of these Cadillac Seville Opera Coupes. Our subject here hails from model-year 1979. 

To understand what this car was an attempt at being understand the time-period it first appeared in. Think about this - particularly if you're of a certain vintage (like me) to have a significant amount of time on your personal odometer to be able to fathom what a large amount of time passed feels like. When this car came out in 1979, 1939 was "just" forty years prior. Forty-years ago here in god-forsaken 2020 is 1980 and that doesn't seem like all that long ago, does it? I mean, it does and it doesn't but hopefully you get the gist. 

That table set, back in the late '70's, folks of the means to blow a small fortune on a frivolous automobile they construed as being as resplendent as the "Great Gatsby" cars that "The Rich" drove when they were young were probably drawn to these cars. That or they just loved the 1974 film starring Robert Redford and they wanted something that emulated the look and feel of the era. Seriously, how else to explain these things? 

It makes sense seeing that the "Jazz Era" was seemingly chock full of extravagant automobiles from the likes of Rolls-Royce, Duesenberg, Auburn, Pierce Arrow, Packard and others. By the way, the Great Gatsby was set in 1922 so the film versions, there were two, has a fair amount of poetic license in car -casting given the cars above from the 2013 "Gatsby" didn't appear until at least 1928. The blue car is an authentic 1933 Auburn, the yellow one a replica of a 1932 Duesenberg.SJ. The 1974 "Gatsby" took similar liberties as Gatsby is seen driving a 1928 Rolls-Royce. But I digress. 

Sad today that cars that are forty-years old are cars bumper-deep in the Malaise Era and are all but undesirable as conveyances of nostalgia. Well, they can be but rarely to acquire them do they require significant damage to the old nest egg to a point beyond reason. Everyone's nostalgia is unique to themselves and it's certainly nothing new. So, go ahead, pine for a 1979 Cadillac Seville Opera Coupe all you want. I won't judge. One in near-mint condition will run you around fifteen-grand. 

What's so "wrong" about these cars is not the concept, per se, but their execution. These cars were built by the long-defunct "Grandeur Automobile Company" of Pompano Beach, Florida from 1978-1984. There were a smattering of Lincoln Versailles conversions but most "Opera's'" were 1975-1979 and 1980-1984 Cadillac Seville's. 

For starters, the notion of turning a sedan into a coupe is not as straight forward as one might think. The 1975-1979 X-body-based Seville, think 1968-1979 Chevrolet Nova, was only offered as a four-door sedan and coupes as popular as they were in the '70's, left a fair amount to the imagination as to what a Seville coupe would have looked like. 

Here we see the biggest issue with these cars - oh-so-odd proportion. It's as if they took out the middle of the car and slammed it together and then stretched it out like a piece of taffy. Well, that's what they all but did. To give these cars the semblance of the Great Gatsby cars with their very, very long hoods and short decks, Grandeur chopped the front off the passenger compartment floor pan and moved everything back so the front seat is actually where the rear seat used to be. 

Look again - that makes total sense after it's pointed out. The relatively diminutive size of the donor Seville doesn't help proportion and balance either. This might have worked a little better if the starting canvas was larger. Maybe. Who knows. 

To make the front end longer, they boxed out a compartment in front of the radiator and elongated the  fenders and, of course, the doors. If anything, you have to respect the craftsmanship involved even if the finished product leaves much to be desired. A lot went into these things. 

Probably the single-worst part of these cars are these fake spare tire covers. This is no joke - this was a deliberate and important design element of these cars as what would these cars look like if they just had  stretched-like-taffy front ends? Now, back in Gatsby's day, many cars had their spare tires, note that's plural, stored in fancy cases attached outboard. A prime example of function-following-form. Or is that vice-versa? What would a Jazz Era car be without spare-tire cases? 

Most of the cars that Grandeur built were coupes but there were several sedans and convertibles. The convertibles, in my opinion, somewhat less garish what with the relaxed lines of the cloth top softening the formality of the Seville's rear roof line. In my humble opinion, the 1980-1984, GM "E-body front wheel drive "Opera's" were better looking than the 1975-1979's. That probably goes without saying as GM was going for some Gatsby-magic with those bustle-back horrors to start with. Sorry - my blog, my opinion. All in, between 1978 and 1984 there were approximately six-hundred built. The company was founded in 1976 and folded up in 1989. 

So, the next time you're so inclined to snap to judgment on something, anything, try at least to fathom  that whatever it is, a lot of thought and effort most likely went into it. Whatever it may be. After all, no one gets out of bed in the morning hell bent on screwing up. 

First published in 1925, The Great Gatsby is F. Scott Fitzgerald's third book and is widely considered the paragon of his career. It's exploration of the lavish wealthy lifestyle of the 1920's causes it to be hailed as the archetypal Jazz Age Novel. 

Mercury Cougar - Mercury Microcosm

The Ford Motor Company created their Mercury division in 1938 as an entry level premium brand that was, succinctly, to compete directly with General Motor's "mid-priced" triumvirate of Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick. It also was to bridge the sizeable price gap between their Ford and Lincoln brands. Almost from the get-go, though, Ford struggled defining what a "Mercury" was as most offerings  amounted to little more than either a dressed-down Lincoln, a gussied up Ford or as was the case with early Cougars like our '72 here, a literal hybrid of the Lincoln and Ford divisions. 

Can a mash up of a pony car and luxury car work? Frankly, no - although Ford's attempt to do so  started out pleasantly if not surprisingly well. Originally seen as a "gentleman's Mustang" the original Mercury Cougar for 1967, above is an ad for '68's, was a luxury-tinged if not themed, extended wheelbase Mustang with unique sheet metal and a oh-so-swingin' '60's interior. They threw in a dollop of performance pretense and the first Cougar sort of made sense as an American-ized Jaguar XKE. Ford even went so far as to bill the car for "the man on his way to a Thunderbird". Ok. If you say so. That axiom counter-intuitive since Mercury, again, was allegedly marketed one rung above the Ford division. Go up to go...down? 

To confuse matters more, Ford entered Cougar in Trans Am racing so it competed with Mustang not only in showrooms but on race tracks. That was quickly scuttled as Ford executives realized that racing ran counter to their attempts to cull Mercury as a junior executive brand not to mention usurping the cash-cow Mustang's image as Ford's premier performance moniker. Didn't help matters either that starting in 1969 Ford had a somewhat luxury slanted version of the Mustang they called "Grande". Furthermore, Ford deduced that Cougar sales were coming out of sales of Mercury's intermediate offerings and wasn't actually boosting Mercury sales. Poor little Cougar. You didn't stand a chance. 

Based on the Mustang, Cougar was strapped to Mustang's redesign schedule. That meant Cougar's unfortunate update in 1969 and then the 1971 crash and burn that our bronze beauty here was a part of. In vacuum, honestly, this isn't a bad looking car but cars aren't sold in vacuums and in a rapidly shrinking sporty car market, a sports-luxury car made little to no sense. Especially seeing that in addition to competing with the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, Cougar competed with the Pontiac Grand Prix and Chevrolet Monte Carlo. The latter GM models being first and foremost luxury cars with a hint of sportiness. That's important to note since most people, particularly all-important female buyers, value luxury, comfort and convenience far more than performance.  

Each subsequent update of the Cougar resulted in startlingly lower sales year over year and many executives at Ford, junior and senior alike I'd have to imagine, lobbied for dropping the moniker altogether after 1973. 

That's what they did, technically as they moved the Cougar nameplate out of the Mustang's lane and onto their intermediate chassis. Doing so gave Mercury a turnkey personal luxury car and it worked to some degree seeing Cougar sales rose dramatically from 1973 to 1974 although they never got back to where they were in 1967 and 1968. 

The herking and jerking of whatever a Mercury Cougar was supposed to be didn't end in 1974. While "Mercury Cougar" meant personal luxury car from 1974-1976, if you're of a certain vintage you may faintly recall Mercury's entire intermediate line was branded as Cougar's from 1977 through 1982. Complete with, yah, you guessed it, a 1982 only station wagon. 

Things settled down somewhat come 1983 as "Mercury Cougar" once again was, exclusively, a personal luxury car. And one based on the able bones of Ford's Fox-body chassis that it shared much mechanically and somewhat stylistically with the Thunderbird (and Lincoln Mark VII). However, whether ever fickle coupe-buyers became disenfranchised with what manufacturers offered or found other compelling options, through the 1980's and 1990's the market for personal luxury cars, pony cars too, withered. 

Ford discontinued both the Thunderbird and Cougar after the 1997 model year. Although, Thunderbird came back as an abortive retro-themed two-seater from 2002-2005. What was even more odd was the Cougar nameplate appearing from 1999-2002 on a front-wheel drive sports coupe derived from the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique. If you're keeping score, counting these little hatchbacks which were actually the best Cougars ever based simply on driving dynamics, there were five different iterations of what "Mercury Cougar" meant over the years.  

Could the Ford Motor Company have done anything with the Mercury Cougar to ensure it's viability? Well, it's all to easy to play armchair product planner and say what they could have or should have done. Same to be said for what they could have done with their Mercury division as a whole. For certain, if you're looking for a microcosm of the Mercury division and the struggles that Ford had with it, it's the Mercury Cougar.