2013 Mini Cooper Paceman S ALL4 - When More is Actually Less

Our older son just accepted a job with a financial planning company in Washington D.C. and my wife and I will help him move into his apartment down there next weekend. After that we're officially empty nesters which, in addition to us living in a three-thousand square foot home making no sense now, it makes our 2006 Chevrolet Tahoe more obsolete than ever. After we move him in the plan is to sell the Tahoe and replace it with a Mini Cooper. Preferably a Cooper "S". 

Mini Cooper's aren't for everyone and that's too bad. Looks aside, which is where most would probably draw the line with them, they're remarkable little performers. With go-cart responsiveness along with powerful engines, they're a blast to drive. They also drive much larger than they actually are although, even the biggest of them, do leave a bit to desire in terms of practicality. Well, more than a bit actually; such is the price you pay for a car that's so gosh-darn cute and puckish. Product planners at Mini are more than aware of that and over the years have attempted to offset that knock on their brand with myriad different "larger" Mini's like the Paceman model they offered between 2013 and 2016. My wife found this Paceman S (!!) on line for sale at a used car dealership out near my office which I just happened to be at the other day. I lovingly if not obligingly stopped by to kick its tires. 

Based on the wheelbase of the Mini Cooper Countryman, which is a funky little-big or big-little station wagon and classified as a crossover, our Paceman coupe here has an interior that's as spacious and comfortable as any two-door sedan like my 2002 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. It's not quite as wide as my Monte and requires the same absurd gymnastic routine to get into the back seat, but once you're back there it's remarkably commodious. 

This sumptuous, glove-soft leather, in a shade I found to-die-for and scented beautifully, adds a fairly generous dollop of hedonistic luxury to an interior that most oftentimes borders on overtly utilitarian in a charming, industrial design kind of way. 

Throw in optional all-wheel-drive, what Mini called, "ALL4",  and what you have, on paper at least, is a vehicle that could be all things to all people. However, it was a wise man who once said that the quickest way to fail is trying to please everyone. 

Even before I got behind the wheel I took exception to the front end styling of this thing not to mention it's odd stance to make room for it's all-wheel-drive gear. 

I love the styling of "lesser" Cooper's with their bulging, round headlights. adorable but tough stubby-ness and how low slung they are but the squarish headlights and semi-cross over stance of the Paceman negates just about everything I find alluring about Mini's. I might as well be driving some Hyundai or Kia CUV and save a couple of sheckles. 

Still, and maybe it's the handsome color, the delightful leather-lined interior and the fact it's a Cooper "S", I tried my best to convince myself that I could look past some fairly severe flaws and make this work This is, at the end of the day, a fairly awkward looking car or trucklette. 

If I was hesitant about this thing because of its exterior styling, the test drive sealed the deal. More like the no-deal for me. 

Some eight-hundred pounds heavier than a front-wheel-drive only Cooper S coupe, the Paceman S felt sluggish and numb compared to other Cooper's I've driven; save for 2015 and newer Cooper's with the 1.5-liter, 3-cylinder engine with the automatic. It lacked the right-now reflexes so many fans of them enjoy so much and the whole thing felt oddly tippy as well. 

Contemporary road test reviews pegged a Paceman with a zero-to-sixty time of "just" seven-point-three seconds; not slow by any means but a far cry from the six-point-two seconds a "regular" Cooper S does it in. Nine-tenths of a second might not sound like a lot of time but in terms of how fast a car accelerates, that blink of an eye under a second might as well be half a minute or more. 

Granted, had I not spent as much time driving other Cooper's of various model years and model types I might not know any better. It still went like stink and handled amply but not just as good as other Coopers. Damn those other Coopers for being so good. 

It actually felt like less the Cooper although, obviously, it was a whole lot more. 

 

1966 Volkswagen Kharmin Ghia - Gott Schrecklich

Most likely didn't do much for my opinion of these cars that the "hillbillies", as my mother derogatorily referred to the family across the street from where we lived on New York's Long Island, pulled the bodies off junked up VW's and hacked the chassis' for Manx Dune Buggy's. Nothing making you believe that something is less than what it's perceived as by seeing behind the curtain. These days, while a Beetle of this vintage can still be had quite affordably, same can't be said for a Kharmin Ghia like this freshly restored two-tone '66 that has an asking price of $35,000. 

The problem I had with Kharmin Ghia's, and to some degree I still do, was that I saw them first and foremost for what they were - fancied Beetles. Didn't matter to me that Ferdinand Porsche had a hand in engineering and designing them; Beetles were noisy, cramped, under-powered death traps. Any offshoot couldn't be much better, right? Then again, I'm someone who'd pay a king's ransom for a 1973 Chevrolet Monte Carlo meanwhile for a fraction of the cost I could have essentially the same car with a different body in buying a Chevelle. To each, as they say, their own. 

Volkswagen's Kharmin Ghia was a result of the VW's success with the Beetle. The cheap little cars sold well world wide and, since VW had long ago amortized their tooling and development cost, they made a nice profit on each one sold. In a move that was quite General Motors like, in the early 1950's, VW executives determined that to keep up interest in the Beetle they needed a "halo car" for their showrooms. Particularly here in the United States which was a critical market to them. 

Of course, they wanted to do it as practically if not inexpensively as possible, Rather than go through the expense of engineering an all new car, they, naturally, started with the guts and chassis of the Beetle. Problem was, production of the Beetle and Type 2 bus where at full capacity. Was sollen wir machen (what should we do?)

Contract outside the company, that's what. Enter Wilhelm Karman a coach-builder who custom built Beetles into convertibles. He commissioned Gigi Segre of the Italian design house Ghia to design a sporty coupe whose body would the Beetle's. What's more, Karman offered VW the use of his production facilities to build what was known as internally the "Type 14" but would later be called the "Kharmin Ghia".

The first Ghia's came ashore here in the United States in late 1955 and were an immediate hit. Dealerships couldn't keep them in stock and customer's willingly laid down handsome deposits and  waited six to twelve weeks, many times longer, for their cars to come in. And, in the end, pay nearly a thousand dollars more for a Ghia than then Beetle it was based on. Big bucks, or deutsche marks, back then. The Ghia was so successful that VW commissioned Kharmin to build another model that was styled by Ghia. 

That resulted in the, frankly, rather unusual looking Type 34 Kharmin Ghia which debuted in 1961 but was never sold in the United States. Above is a 1963. Looks like VW suits knew American car buyer tastes better than we ever imagined; this is an odd looking car in a East German "Trabant" kind of way. It's sort of cool and pleasantly familiar but also weird in not a good way. If you've ever seen one here  in the U.S, at some point someone had it imported privately. 

The Type 14 Kharmin Ghia was sold in the United States through 1974; the end of the line, arguably long over due, coming at a time when the U.S. government was mandating ever more stringent safety and tailpipe emissions regulations. Meanwhile the good old Beetle was sold here through 1979. 

I see these now and I'm smitten; not by this one per se since I find it's color scheme and fat white walls  gott schrecklich (god awful) but by its overall design. It's simply gorgeous. I now see past it's oh-so-humble beginnings and see it for what it is or was. The Kharmin Ghia, to me, not unlike the girl next door whom you always thought was cute but familiarity breeding contempt, you never gave her a moment's notice; not that she would reciprocate if she did. Turns out she grew up and did quite alright for herself. 

1978 Oldsmobile 442 - A Clone of a Different Color

In biology, a clone is defined, "as an organism or cell, or group of organisms or cells, produced asexually from one ancestor or stock, to which they are genetically identical". Remember Dolly, the sheep? She was a clone. In automotive circles, clones are vehicles modified to resemble one that is similar but by many accounts is quite different. For instance, a plain-jane, six-cylinder, 1964 Pontiac Tempest altered to appear as though it's a 389 cubic-inch GTO complete with all the trimmings, is a classic example of an automotive "clone". Oh, it may look like a GTO, it may drive exactly like one too but in the "numbers-matching", persnickety collector car universe, it most certainly is not. Years ago (car) clones where verboten but over the last twenty to thirty years, particularity with the advent of resto-modding, older cars rebuilt with modern components, clones are less the red herring they used to be. 

They're still not for everyone, especially ones priced at our near the cost of the "real" car it's emulating. Which brings us to our subject today, this 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais impeccably cloned and sort-of resto-modded, although historically incorrectly, into being, of all things, a 1980 Olds 442. Wow. Certainly this is one of the more unique clones that we've seen - especially done up as well as it is. I mean, if you didn't know this car did not exist in this body style for 1978 you'd never know. 

Over the years we've prattled on about our disdain for General Motor's 1978-1987 "A-bodies" but this thing here might be an "A-body of a different color". What kills any notion of it for us is that the owner has it listed for sale for $17,000. Yikes. Can't blame them for asking that much as it would seem they have quite a lot "in it" but we'd like to examine the noggin of the person who would pay anywhere near that for it. Yes, they fully disclose it's a"clone" but the dark side of twenty-grand for a clone of a, excuse me, a 1980, 442? That's beach front money for a car that's anything but beach front property. 

Now, as we've pointed out before, it's not that the shrunken GM "A-bodies", known as "G-bodies" from 1982-1987, where bad transportation conveyances; they were actually pretty good all things and the era considered. More than a foot-shorter and around eight-hundred pounds lighter than what they replaced, they rode and handled with an aplomb not seen before on a GM mid-size car. Hot-rodders like them too because they have full-perimeter frames and a huge engine bay that can swallow gigantic mills without having to modifying the hood. Blow the hood out and the sky's literally and figuratively the limit. They also had more genuinely usable interior room than the "big on the outside, small on the inside" blimps they replaced. Stylish and oh-so-tasty looking blimps but blimps nonetheless. 

Some deride that they were more "up-sized compact" than "downsized-intermediate" but that would imply that size was the end-all and be-all; although their being significantly smaller than the "compact" Nova's, Skylark's, Phoenix' and Omega's which they were sold next to for two-model years (!) certainly didn't help. Nope, the problem was actually quite simple...they...was ugly. The homeliest of the sordid bunch the Chevrolet Monte Carlo with the Pontiac Grand Prix a close runner-up. The Buick Regal was meh; the malaisiest of the lot in the height of the malaise era. However, the Oldsmobile Cutlass coupes where somewhat of an exception, save, of course, for the slant-back Cutlass Salon's. Buick's Century's shared the same hysterically awful body; 1978 and 1979 on two and four-door models, for 1980 on the Century Sport Coupe only. Thankfully someone upstairs thought better of it and banished it moving foward after 1980. 

"442" first appeared on an Oldsmobile Cutlass in mid model year 1964 when Oldsmobile cobbled together a sporty version of their new midsize two and four-door sedans as a literal reaction to Pontiac's GTO; it was more or less the Cutlass they sold to police departments. As if Oldsmobile needed to return Pontiac's salvo but back then GM's myriad divisions openly competed with one another. Sounds crazy now but it's amazing what you'll do when you have a near monopoly on anything. 

Originally denoting a four-barrel carburetor, four-speed transmision and dual exhausts, 4-4-2, Oldsmobile conveniently changed the meaning of the numberical acronym as they saw fit on and off again for approximately twenty model years. We won't count the 1990 and 1991 Cutlass Calais 442 as a "real" 442 although on a handling course it could slice any previous 442 to ribbons. 

Not that the 1978 "442" was real either based on what the moniker had previously "meant" but somewhat amazingly given it was the early days of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), Oldsmobile held onto the 442 for 1978 and 1979. But...and it was literally a big butt...they festooned "442" to, actually, more like glued "442" decals to -  a coupe version of the Cutlass Salon; if you look close enough to the righy side of the trunk lid just to the left of the right rear tail lens you can make it out. Mercifully, for 1980, "442" appeared, as it should have in 1978, on the notch-back Cutlass Calais as the 1979 Hurst\Olds was. There was no "442" for model years 1981 and 1982; the Hurst\Olds came back for 1983 and 1984 with the "442" appearing again for a last ride from 1985 through 1987. Again, we obnoxiously ignore the 1990 and 1991 442. 

Far be it for us to ask why anyone would go through the trouble of building this car but you have to hand it to them, this car is tight. This paint job alone couldn't have been cheap, unless they're a body shop person and did it themselves, and seeing this thing has a TKO600, 5-speed manual, which'll run you a good $2,500 by itself,  means they didn't skimp on the details. 

Well, maybe they skimped just a little although we don't know how long ago the engine swap was done but that blue paint on the valve covers does appear fresh. At least they kept it "all-Oldsmobile". The Oldsmobile 403, which was never offered on any 1977-1979 GM "A-body" let alone a Cutlass, was a good torquer back in its day, not so much a horsepower maker, but it's no modern General Motors LS engine. This engine was the replacement for the Oldsmobile 455 and was essentially an Oldsmobile 350 with a larger bore. A bore so large, in fact, that similar to what Chevrolet did with their "small-block" based 400 engine, the cylinders were siamesed. 

In a 3,400 pound GM "A-body" with a race car inspired 5-speed,  the 403's three-hundred twenty pounds of torque no doubt mean this thing can really go. Apparently the 403 has a "mild build" but there's no more info on it than that. No word on the rear end or suspension but with the 442's W-30 handling suspension, that our clone purportedly has, it may have made the most of a humble but adequate base suspension set-up. 

There's the issue of the brothel-red interor clashing with the handsome exterior paint job but it's not that out of the question that Oldsmobile could have offered a "real" 1980 442 with this interior\exterior combo. Still, clash is clash can and it might be the only serious ding we have about with this car aside from we feel it way, way overpriced at $17,000. The saying goes, buy a restored car -  don't buy a car and restore it. You'll never get your money back. Makes you wonder why some folks do but, bless their hearts, we're so glad they do. 

Gosh, so...how much would we offer for this? Maybe...ten grand? And that would be all the money in the world. Perhaps a little more if it had an LS in it and the rear end was built; "real" 1980 442's could be had with as tiny as a 2.56 back there. Certainly seeing what kind of shape this is in and being apparently fresh and all, at least the paint job if not the "mild-build" on the engine, if this was a 1973-1977 "real" 442, shoot, even a clone although that would be about as odd as this thing is, $17,000 would seem almost reasonable. For any 442 at that price in this shape before 1973 you'd pay probably close to $40,000. That's getting up there. 

If anything, whomever did this up is is an Oldsmobile person and we applaud a stellar effort of building a car Oldsmobile should have built in 1978 in the first place. Just don't ask us to pay the price of admission to own it.  

Olivia Rodrigo's "Driver's License" - Mercedes-Benz 450 SL

We've all been living under a rock to some degree for quite some time now but it would be hard for someone not to be aware of the song "Driver's License" written and sung by Olivia Rodrigo of Disney Channel fame. The spartan, seemingly simply produced teenage-angst heartbreak song has ear-wormed it's way into our collective psyche like few songs have over the last ten if not twenty years or so and it's remarkable performance on the pop charts is proof of that. One week on the top of the chart? Record label games and manipulation. Two? More of the same shenanigans. A song gets to three weeks up there and it might, just might be making an impact. However, when a  song about a girl who wants to celebrate getting her driver's license with a boy she's in love with debuts at number one and stays there for eight straight weeks, something's going on above and beyond gross music business politics.

   

All that said, this is a blog about cars and you're probably here because you googled something like, "Driver's License car" or "Olivia Rodrigo car" and ended up here. Well, thanks for stopping by. Seems there are plenty of folks who find blogs about cars featured in movies, TV shows and music videos interesting and they are among-st my more popular soliloquies. So, without any further adieu, let's get to "Olivia's car" which is...a Mercedes-Benz 450 SL. A car that, much like the song "Driver's License", was transcendental and game-changing. The exact model year of the car? C'mon, now. Can't give you everything you're looking for all at once. Read on. 

While the song, "Driver's License" is transcendental and the gifted ingenue that is Ms. Rodrigo as well,  the old Mercedes being in the video is, if anything, a bit of a head scratcher. As we've pointed out time and time again, car casting can be very important to any production but knowing much of the production of the video for the song was happenstance, seeing a 17, 18 year old girl or boy who's apparently just gotten their driver's license behind the wheel of such a car should\could mean everything. Alas, in the video for "Driver's License" it's nothing above and beyond an alluring, interesting looking set-piece. It might as well be the funky cool house featured in the video. 

Don't get us wrong - that's perfectly fine. What's more, we love the fact that Ms. Rodrigo has a dream of owning a "vintage, white Mercedes" and admitted she loved the car so much that during filming she wanted to drive off with it. Damn, girl, you go! Furthermore, snaps to her in an age when it's said, and we concur, that young people don't care about cars let alone getting their driver's license. 

Mercedes-Benz' fabled "SL's" are a series of sports cars the German automaker first put into production in 1954. The most famous of them, arguably, the gull-wing models of 1954-1957. The SL featured in "Driver's License" is part of the third-generation of SL's that debuted for sale in the United States in 1971.    

Many a Mercedes-Benz, particularly older models, are difficult to pinpoint exactly what model year they are because unlike domestic manufacturers, Benz and Cie and Daimler Motoren Gessellschaft made little changes to their wares from year-to-year. Those little changes making older American cars so easy to "spot". For instance, a tail-finned 1957 Chevrolet could only be a '57 since it differs so greatly in appearance from a '56 not to mention a '58 Chevrolet. That's not the case with cars like the "Driver's License" SL what with M-B's all but imperceptible changes made to the line over it's protracted seventeen-year model year run. Seven. Teen. Years. Wow. And folks got on General Motors years ago for pushing out the third-generation Corvette for fourteen years. 

Even the exact model of the SL in "Driver's License" is tough  to nail-down since there are no closeups of the trunk lid where the model badges for all Benz' are. All we have of the trunk are a couple of these scenes where Ms. Rodrigo is (inexplicably) hanging out of it while the car is moving (!!) thus begging the question, "who the heck's driving"? Did the boy she loves lock her in the trunk and she picked the lock and got it open? Did she, in fact, dump him because she realized he was an abusive psycho-path? It can be just as hard if not harder to break-up with someone as it is to be broken up with. Either way it's never easy. 

Seeing the car has the smaller, pre-safety era bumpers and not the battering rams that blighted most if not all automobiles sold new in the United States after 1974, we whittle the potential model years down to 1971-1973. We narrow the year further still since all SL's sold in the United States in 1971 and 1972  wore "350 SL" badges regardless of what engine they were equipped with. Back then, on many Mercedes-Benz makes and models, the numerical pre-fix before the model designation was in reference to the car's engine. In the case of the SL in "Driver's License", "450" is for a 4.5-liter, V-8 engine. Thus, drum roll...the Mercedes-Benz 450 SL in "Driver's License" is from model year 1973. 

This vintage of SL or "Sports\Super-Leicht (light), are as synonymous with 1970's wealth and extravagance as the Chevrolet Corvette of the time period was. While they're both two-passenger automobiles with sporting pretension, the big difference is that the driving dynamics of the SL was far superior than that of the "plastic-fantastic" and was a bell-weather of automotive engineering for decades to come. Well, at twice the price it should have been. About the only thing these SL's have in common with GM's rolling phallic symbol is their penchant to blow through a gallon of gas. 

If Ms. Rodrigo was to drive off with this car what she'd experience wouldn't be that much different from any new vehicle today; that's really saying something too. Their modern-ness a big part as to why they've "stuck" around like they have. That and the fact they're simply gorgeous.  

What makes a song like "Driver's License" stick around like it has? Good question. It sure stands out on whatever platform you may hear it on constantly with it squashed between the overly produced techno-synth whatever from the likes of Harry Styles, Dua Lipa and Doja Cat. Ms. Rodrigo's soaring vocal performance on lyrics that are, at times, uncomfortably if not painfully honest has a lot to do with it too. 

The pain she sings about so convincingly makes us want to give her a parental hug and a grilled cheese sandwich of assurance that everything's going to be alright. Even though those of us who've experienced profound loss of any kind know that they really won't ever be. 

1964 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk - One Rare Bird

Occasionally our New Year's Resolutions force us to keep them. Back in January I vowed to blog  about cars I don't really like or find all that interesting and to help me keep that resolution, this popped up on my Facebook Marketplace feed recently. It's a 1964 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk and despite it being a what some construe as a personal luxury car not to mention a coupe, two types of cars I adore, I'd never think of blogging about one of these were it not for my trying to be a better, more balanced car-blogger. So, away I go. 

Sadly, save for my quickly downloading these harried pictures, the ad disappeared in a blink of my eye before I could fully digest the little info posted about it aside from the seller claiming "everything was there". If they say so. These are not catalog cars - meaning anything you'd need for it is not available in a catalog or on-inline. And from the looks of it, despite what they said, this looks like it'll need a lot. 

This Studebaker Hawk is part of a series of semi-sporty looking Studebaker coupes, the first of which technically date back to a very handsome, almost General Motors like 1951 concept or show car. Some some decree these as the first personal-luxury car although that's debatable at least to the extent of whatever a "personal-luxury car" is defined as. The term itself is an oxymoron seeing that there was never anything personal about a personal-luxury car given they could seat, with varying degrees of comfort, up to six passengers. 

Seriously, though, if the four-passenger Ford Thunderbird didn't appear until 1958, a vehicle just as many give credit to as the first personal luxury car, the argument holds at least some validity. Although, of course, given that this vehicle type is all but extinct today, the point is all but mute.  

This being a 1964 Hawk, it's full name is "Gran Turismo Hawk" and is one, ahem, rare bird. In a world where it had to compete against the Ford Thunderbird, Buick Riviera, and to some extent the Chevrolet Corvette and Jaguar XKE, the expensive and quirky styled Hawk sold poorly; only an estimated 200,000 where sold in fourteen years of production. A struggling Studebaker ended production of these  in December '63 when they closed their South Bend, Indiana factory. The financially ailing company moved to Hamilton, Ontario where they made only one car, a four-door sedan they called "Lark". Studebaker closed its doors for good in 1966 and that was a shame, too. Studebaker had been around as a company since 1852; first as a manufacturer of wagons, carriages, buggies and harnesses. They first moved into automobile manufacturing in 1904. 

Frankly, save for this fiendish front end, there's a lot to like about this car but let's be certain, it's no '63 Buick Riviera. It's not even a 1958 Ford Thunderbird, not that I think those overwrought elephants on balloon tires are really anything to write home about. If you think this grill looks like the grill off of a then current Mercedes-Benz, you're not alone. First appearing on 1956 models, it was literally a Mercedes knockoff; even back then anything "Mercedes-Benz" was deemed elegant, glamorous, luxurious and the embodiment of class. It's a styling doo-dad that, in my opinion, looks completely out of place and fusses up what's otherwise a fairly cohesive design. 

Oh, but it had gotten worse. Come 1957, Hawks got, wings, err, bolt-on tailfins.  At least our '64 here benefits from a 1961 update that had designers ditching the damn things. The tops of these rear fenders still look somewhat tail-fin like though, the pointless chrome slathering doing them no favors either but these cars do look so much better than the 1957-1961 models; at least from back here.  Again, that grill. 

It's not all a total wash, though. This gigantic V-8 engine, which displaces all of 289 cubic-inches, no, it's not a Ford engine, got rave reviews for its stoutness and reliability. Overbuilt to near extremes, legend has it Studebaker engineers built it so well because they planned compression ratios reaching as high as 13:1 what with anticipation of stratospheric octanes for gasoline first developed during World War II becoming the norm. That never happened, of course, but these engines were ready for it if it did happen and were touted as being all but bulletproof. 

I've seen the occasional Hawk at car shows (gosh, remember them?) in the past and their owners always seem to be folks who are more into their car above and beyond appreciation of automobiles in general. That's fine and all. Sort of like how some people are Corvette and Porsche fans, for instance, and are not necessarily "car-people". In any event, if I find the ad again I'll see if they have any more information about it and post the listing too. 

1971 Oldsmobile F85 Town Sedan - Invisible

This beast popped up on my Facebook Marketplace feed the other day and of course I had to blog on it. Not sure what more I can say about a vehicle type I've blogged to death over the years but here goes. This is a 1971 Oldsmobile F85 "Town Sedan" and it's for sale near my home here in bucolic Cleveland, Ohio with a, I kid you not, asking price of $4,000.  

I'm not quite sure who or what the target market would be for a fifty-year old Oldsmobile four-door sedan that's not even a Cutlass. Yes, it's technically part of the Cutlass series but by 1971, what had been the model designation for Oldsmobile's "senior compacts" had been pushed to the bottom of the Oldsmobile pricing ladder and denoted their least-expensive mid-size model. However, as an old friend in the used car business used to say, "there's an ass for every seat". Perhaps the low-mileage and it being a "CALIFORNIA CAR" would be a selling point to someone up here. Although, four-grand for a car in Northeast Ohio would buy you a fairly nice, somewhat "old" but not fifty-years old, low-mileage driver. Who knows. Maybe a movie company would scarf this up as a set up piece. 

Of all of GM's wonderful 1968-1972 intermediates, the Oldsmobile's are my least favorite. Save for a two-door 1970-1972 Cutlass Supreme, so perhaps that fact drives my ambivalence towards this sorry old boat. Funny, how if it were a station wagon I'd be all over it, despite it being an Olds, especially with this patina but as this is, no way. Although I wouldn't mind kicking it's tires and stabbing the gas as hard as I could to see if the "350 Rocket" still had it or not. 

 Us car people are a fickle lot. I don't even bother trying to explain to my wife anymore what I see in one old car and don't see in another. Although, this car's invisibility to me helps me understand what folks who don't "get-cars" don't see in them either. My wife, bless her heart, does know me well enough that I believe two-door cars are good, convertibles are over-rated, five-door cars, as in stations wagons, are good too. Four-door cars are not good and should be drained of fluids and used as barrier reefs if not crushed and reborn. 

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It's not all bad, though. This '71 is a real time-machine that takes me right back to high school in the early '80's when I was shopping for my first car. I would have killed to have a V-8 powered sled like this in high school even if it had four-doors. Back then a finish-less, rusty, ten or eleven year old mid-size GM sedan would probably go for between a thousand and fifteen hundred bucks. I still wouldn't touch this now for that amount but it is interesting see something like this going for as much as it is. Is $4,000 really the present day $1,000? 

1962 Dodge Dart 330 - Mad Men

 

Back when I was growing up on Long Island, the folks who lived across the street from us had a 1962 Dodge Dart just like this but it in a darkish, almost military like green-gray. And I loved it. I think my affection for it driven equally by its distinctive design as well as for the fact that mechanically curious eight or nine year old me bolted like a Pavlovian dog across the street at the first utterance of it's hood-springs clanging like small church-bells whenever the hood was opened. Which, as I recall, was quite often since it broke down so often. 

Now, you may be like, "I thought Dodge Dart's where small cars...what is this?" Well, you wouldn't be wrong, exactly, as for many years a Dodge Dart did denote a small car, including most recently from 2012-2016. From 1960 through 1962, however, Dodge Dart meant big. "Dart" first appeared in the Dodge lineup in 1960 on Dodge's least expensive standard-size line below the also freshly chirtened for 1960 Polara and Matador lines. For whatever reason the slightly smaller Plymouth body-shell was used on a whole sub-series of Darts including, from top of the heap to "price leader", the Dart Phoenix, Pioneer and Seneca. Above is a 1960 Dart Pioneer festooned in all it's over-decorated, 1950's-esque finned and chromed glory. In case you're wondering, these cars were sales duds. 

What makes our '62 Dart here really special is it's part of Chrysler's infamous 1962 downsizing of Dodge and Plymouth "standard-size" models. Wait, downsizing in the 1960's? Wasn't that a late 1970's thing? Well, the answer to that question is the stuff of legend. 

The story goes that at an industry social function some time in 1960, let's imagine it was like a scene out of "Mad Men" with everyone dolled up, smoking, flirting inappropriately and getting plastered, William Newburg, freshly minted president of Chrysler, overheard Chevrolet executives discussing their new downsized lineup for 1962. Lest be made to look bad by Chevrolet, being "Mr. Proactive", Newburg promptly ordered the already finalized for production 1962 Plymouth and Dodge standard-sized models be scrapped for new and smaller ones. Chrysler division and Imperial models where spared his wrath. 

Again, like a scene straight out of "Mad Men", the problem was Newburg's intel was either wrong or he misinterpreted what he overheard in between noshes on chipotle crab corn dip. Not only was Chevrolet not downsizing, they were introducing an entirely new line of compact cars for 1962 to be known as the Chevy II. And...what resulted from a much-hurried hard-reboot at Dodge and Plymouth left a lot to be desired design wise. Although, frankly, you can blame nostalgia, perhaps, for some of my affection for these bug-eyed beauties but...I still find them oddly handsome and sized just right. 

With sales tanking, Dodge hastily rebadged the still ginormous Chrysler Newport (nee DeSoto) as the Dodge "880" in mid model-year 1962, technically making our Dart here a mid-size car. Year-to-year sales cratered by as much as twenty-five percent for Dodge (and Plymouth) and remarkably, Newburg didn't get his knee-jerk arse fired over it. No, sir. What did him in shortly after the introduction of these cars was an embezzlement scheme involving parts vendors that almost killed off the whole company. Nice. Chevrolet sales went up for 1962 almost as much as Dodge and Plymouth sales went down meanwhile the erroneous and clandestine info gleamed after two or three straight-up Manhattan's wreaked havoc on The Chrysler Corporation for the better part of the next twenty-years. Care for another baked pear, Mr. Newburg? 

The reaction to these cars was so bad that an immediate and near comprehensive do-over was ordered for 1963. Viewed as wildly successful based on the meteroic sales increase for 1963 vs. 1962, the reskin took a lot of the "what-is-that?" out of these designs but also, subjectively, whittled away most if not all of the distinctiveness of these cars that impish me loved; I still do. Again, my fondness for these might be somewhat skewed by my childhood facination with them but I don't see what folks see or didn't see in them. Crazy how fond we are of stuff from our childhood. Probably didn't matter what the car was that was across the street with its hood up, whatever it was would be golden through my eyes then as now.  

Dodge cleaned up their Dart model naming scheme for '62 as well replacing the silly Phoenix-Pioneer-Seneca non-sense with "Dart 440", "Dart 330" and just plain old "Dart". 330 and 440 having nothing to do with engine size which is somewhat ironic seeing that Chrysler introduced a 440 cubic-inch V-8 in 1966. 

Another silver lining was that Chrysler engineers used an enlarged version of their new for 1960 and quite capable "A-body" chassis that underpinned the compact Lancer and the "Valiant by Chrysler". This chassis went onto be called the "B-body" and went onto a fairly stellar and long career underpinning many a Dodge and Plymouth, some choice Chrysler branded models too, in the years to come. The Imperial division, which had been around since 1955, was dropped after 1975.  

You're not alone thinking our '62 here looks like a puffed up Lancer because, essentially, that's what it is. Although, it's funny; whereas the little Lancer, that would be the white car, I think homely as sin, the larger Dart I find to be a much better looking car. Even in red. Wouldn't be the only time a design looked better on a bigger canvas. Inverse is true at times but rarely. 

The Dart nameplate was moved down to what they had been calling the Lancer for 1963 and there it remained, on smaller cars, through the end of the A-body's rather lengthy run through 1976 when it was replaced by the "F-body", F is not for fun, incidentally, Dodge Aspen. What had been the 1962 Dart series was rebranded as "Polara 500", "440", with no Polara pre-fix, as well as a "330". . 

That family across the street didn't have that Dart for long. The father and his sons were mechanics and many cars that popped up in their driveway were beaters they'd repair and sell.  I don't recall what came next in the never ending driveway turntable of cars they had but that Dart has sure stuck with me.