1975 Oldsmobile Starfire - More Questions Than Answers

My wife spotted this the other day at a used car lot when we were down in Akron and, mistakenly,  I first thought it was a Chevrolet Monza. However, as we got closer to it I saw that it wasn't a Monza but an Oldsmobile that wasn't so much the Monza's corporate cousin as it's corporate clone. This, friends, is an Oldsmobile Starfire. 

I hopped on the dealer website and found it's a 1975 and they're asking, hold onto your bell bottoms, $14,995 for it. No, the "1" in front of the "4" is not a typo. Even if it was I'd think asking five-grand for this would be a stretch.

Can't fault the dealership for asking that although if someone was to spend that much on this I'd like to know what other questionable financial decisions they've made. NADAGuides.com pegs this at around $1,800 - that's high retail too on a car that's presumably in showroom condition. This thing might be in good condition but it's far from perfect. 

 

Contrary to what some may say, these cars were not General Motor's salvo at the first gas crisis that struck in the fall of 1973. Timing would suggest otherwise but seeing that it takes upwards of three-years for a manufacturer to bring a car to market and with these cars debuting in the fall of 1974, that timeline doesn't work. 

So, these cars were well on their way to market when the gas crunch hit and were actually GM's response to the Ford Mustang II. The Pinto based Mustang II, what I refer to disparagingly as "The Deuce", was a result of plunging sales for the bigger is not better 1971-1973 Mustang and the entire cooling off of the muscle and pony car market. Not to mention America's growing interest in smaller cars. Got to hand it to Lee Iaccoca or Henry Ford II, aka the other "Deuce", or whomever thought of it, Ford caught lightning in a bottle when they rolled out "The Deuce" just as the OPEC oil embargo started in October 1973. 

Based on the Chevrolet Vega\Pontiac Astre or GM "X-body", there was vile rumor and speculation that these cars were, much like the Mustang II replaced, in literal and figurative sense the Mustang, to replace the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird. Whether that was true or not, legend has it an internal lobby at General Motors saved the Camaro and Firebird. With the Mustang all but gone, GM had the "sporty-car" lane all to themselves and enjoyed quite respectable Camaro\Firebird sales for the rest of the '70's. Chrysler getting out the game after 1974 no doubt helping GM as well. 

What's most curious about our white-on-red fastback here, aside from the absurd asking price, is that General Motor's bothered with it in the first place. Oldsmobile was General Motor's middle-middle brand of middle-priced offerings that included Pontiac just below it, on the blurry if not infernal GM pricing ladder, and Buick just above it. Why they felt the need to market an Oldsmobile and Buick version of these cars, heck, let's throw Pontiac into the mix as well, is a marketing question for GM that us mere car-geek mortals will never be able to get an answer to. Especially seeing how similar all of these were to each other and how they abandoned the compact car market for all their divisions save for Chevrolet after 1964. 

The Oldsmobile Starfire moniker first appeared on a convertible show car in 1953 and from 1954-1956 it was placed on convertible 98 models; all Oldsmobile 98's for 1957 were "Starfire 98's".  They brought it back in 1961 when GM marketed a convertible Oldsmobile 88 with bucket seats and console as presumably a strike at Ford's very successful four-passenger Thunderbird. Pontiac followed suit in 1962 with the Grand Prix, Buick as well in '62 with the Wildcat. All construed to be full-sized sports cars, a notion that was fairly oxy-moronic at the time and never really gained sales traction. 

There was some variance under the hood between the Monza and the Starfire. Chevrolet Monza's came with Chevrolet's 2.3-liter, overhead cam inline four-cylinder engine as the base power-plant, yes, the same 2.3 of Vega infamy, meanwhile a 4.3-liter version of their small block V-8 was available as a...power option? With all of 110 net brake horsepower, hard to fathom there was any real performance gain with the V-8 over the inline-four; especially since V-8 Monza's only came with automatic transmissions. 

Oldsmobile and Buick's versions of these cars, the Buick was known as the Skyhawk which was not to be confused with the Buick Skylark which come 1975 was a Chevrolet Nova clone that had been known as the Apollo for 1973 and 1974, were powered by Buick's new\old V-6 engine; freshly bored and stroked to 3.8-liters and making about as much poke as the Monza's 4.3-liter V-8. I say new\old because in the late '60's, GM had sold Jeep the tooling to the Buick V-6 they came out with in 1962. They bought it back from Jeep in the early '70's. 

We can only speculate as to why GM bought their old Buick V-6 back from Jeep. Jeep probably could have used the cash and it must have been less expensive to buy an existing engine back than to come up with another one. GM most likely needed another engine for these cars since the engine they were allegedly supposed to have, the Wankel Rotary, proved problematic, unreliable and was difficult if not impossible to get EPA emissions certification for by the time GM needed them. 

That's probably right on the money knowing what I know about such things. Another question for the GM gods that I'll never get to ask. Speaking of questions, I probably ask if the dealership in Akron that's selling this thing thinks they can get fifteen-grand for it. But what's the point. Still fun to think about. 

 

 

1977 Cadillac Eldorado - The Wife Hates Big Old Cars

Came across this 1977 Cadillac Eldorado on, where else? Facebook Marketplace recently. It's posted by the same guy who listed that '71 convertible the other day and he's asking $6,500 for it. I guess he collects these things which is cool. Weird too. It's appears to be in such great shape that it almost seems like a steal. According to Haggerty, 1977 Cadillac Eldorado's in "excellent" shape are valued at nearly $21,000; good condition around half that, "fair" about half of that which is about the asking price of this. NADA values are a different ball of axle grease seeing they list one of these on the high retail end at under $15,000, average retail is around $9,400 which is about right I think. Keep in mind Haggerty is primarily an insurnace carrier and they are very, very generous with their evalutations of classic vehicle worth. Trust me on this one, they make you feel all gooey and warm inside about the value of your classic because the more you insure it for, the higher your payments to them.  

These cars are unique because of what they are and what they aren't. What they are is the last of the gigantic, domestic, premium, personal luxury cars. GM started the great downsizing epoch in 1977 and while they shrunk all their other full-size wares, the front-wheel-drive Eldorado and similar Oldsmobile Toronado were spared the plasma cutter. At least for a couple of model years.

What they aren't was convertibles. Well, in fairness, the front-wheel-drive Eldorado was available as a coupe going back to 1971 as well but 1977 was the first year Eldorado was not offered as a convertible. That make a difference in the value of the fixed-roof models? Not really. More importantly, though, the 1977 Cadillac Eldorado got the "smaller", 425 cubic-inch Cadillac V-8 all the other Cadillac's got save for the Seville that made due with a fuel-injected Oldsmobile 350. 

Still, the Cadillac 425, all but indistinguishable from the Cadillac 500 it was allegedly based on (sorry, no under-hood pictures in the listing) was the largest engine General Motor's put in a passenger car that year, for 1978 as well before Eldorado met the shrink ray for '79. This is of course back in the day when GM's myriad divisions were still manufacturing their own engines. For the most part. That edict was slowly changing in the mid to late '70's and through the '80's as each division came to use the same engines. It's actually only in the last ten years or so that GM hasn't at least made some sort of proprietary engine for Cadillac. 

The 425 may have helped improve mileage on the deVille and Fleetwood, that and their losing a good half-ton of curb weight, but it did little to help the Eldorado at the pump. Rough EPA estimates, which were as generous back then as Haggerty is on evaluating classics today, pegged highway mileage at 9.4 miles-per-gallon. Performance wasn't affected that much which, much like the Cadillac 500 it replaced and the 472 before the 500, is a testament to the engine's monstrous and flat torque curve that peaked at a diesel like 2,000 rpm's. 

So, if you wanted a big car in 1977 but it had to be a GM, this was your only choice. This '77 Eldorado a meaty ten-inches longer than a still gargantuan mid-size "colonnade" Buick Regal, Olds Cutlass, Pontiac Grand Prix or Chevrolet Monte Carlo. That of course changed as GM mid-sized cars became upsized compacts for 1978. The Ford Motor Company didn't start downsizing until 1979 and for a couple of years they wisely attempted to market that fact aggressively; but if you're a GM loyal like yours truly, nothing else will do. And the "little" Coupe deVille couldn't row my boat either. 

The Cadillac Eldorado moniker had been around since 1953 when Cadillac introduced a special two-door convertible model to help commemorate Cadillac's 50th anniversary. Eldorado was a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive model, as all domestic models were back then until the introduction of the rear-engine Chevrolet Corvair for 1960. For 1967, Eldorado became a front-wheel-drive automobile sharing it's power-train configuration with Oldsmobile's Toronado (that debuted in 1966). Starting in 1966 through 1976, the Buick Riviera shared the frame and body-shell of the Eldorado\Toronado but eschewed it's front-wheel-drive. If you've ever thought those Rivera's actually looked like front-wheel-driver's but they weren't, that was why. 

Unlike almost all front-wheel-drive cars manufactured today where the engine is transversely mounted, the Toronado\Eldorado engine was longitudinal, like most cars of the day were, but the gearbox was mounted next to the transmission driven by a heavy-duty chain. The gearbox output shaft pointed forward sending power to a slim planetary differential and then via CV-jointed half shafts to the front wheels. The arrangement was remarkably compact and was referred to as the "Unitized Power Package", or "UPP". In my opinion, it was one of the more remarkable engineering accomplishments for General Motors in the 1960's. Engineering that, unfortunately, was applied to the wrong car at the wrong time. Did Eldorado buyers care that their dreamboat had front-wheel-drive? For sure some did but by and large do you think they did? 

When GM downsized the Eldorado for 1979 they used a similar setup to drive the front wheels. The packaging of the power-train entirely in front of the firewall allowing for a spacious "hump-free" interior same as it did on the previous model but it technically made more sense seeing those cars were for all intents and purposes "intermediate" sized automobiles. The "UPP" going into the GM engineering dumpster come 1986 when they, dare I say, "fatally downsized" the Eldorado complete with a transverse mounted V-8 that in itself was an interesting if not solid effort but was nothing like the UPP.

 

If this guy wasn't so far away, Toledo is a solid ninety-minutes west of where I live, I'd be all over this guy test-driving his Eldorado's and asking him all sorts of questions about why he's got at least two of them. And why each is going so cheap. If you look hard at these photos you'll see that this oh-so-'70's brownish-orange Eldorado is not perfect but it appears to be in real good shape. 

The wife hates big old cars like this so it's not worth my time and aggravation to take the trip to kick the tires. You're reading this for a reason - you're interested in these cars and are tickled by this one, comment below and I'll do my best to hook you guys up. Just swing on by my triple-wide so I can take a big old front-wheel drive in it. 

 

1997 Subaru Legacy Outback - Too Good to be True

This 1997 Subaru Legacy Outback came into my midst over the last couple of weeks and it seemed like a dream come true. A seemingly lightly if not gently used Subaru driven by a little old lady in Cleveland, Ohio with a barely broken in one-hundred and one thousand miles on its clock. All-wheel-drive, a plucky "boxer" four-cylinder engine, automatic, leather seats and air-conditioning that blows cold and I could have it for $1,500. Well, you know what they say about something that appears too good to be true. It usually is. 

This car could serve multiple purposes. It would be my commuter vehicle, it would also replace our beloved but deteriorating 2006 Chevrolet Tahoe as our "family-car\Lowe's and Home Depot hauler" and our younger, semi-bohemian son could use it as well. Or impress his equally bohemian friends with it. Apparently Subaru's have a similar following that Volvo's have. Or had. This sort of vehicle is not my cup of tea but beggar's can't be choosers and besides, it's a Subaru. They're indestructible, right? 

She wasn't perfect, though. How could any twenty-four year old car with an asking price of $1,500 be? I noticed on the test-drive that the exhaust was a tad loud, the brake pedal travel was a longish, the date stamp on the tires read 2008 and when occasionally making turns, it seemed jumpy and skidded somewhat as though there was something up with the all-wheel-drive mechanism. Again, it's a Subaru. It couldn't be anything serious. 

With a body in this kind of shape and any issues I could uncover seemingly easy fixes, I enthusiastically told the owner, who's a friend of a friend, that I'd take it but I did want to have a mechanic check it out to be sure. Somewhat amazingly the vehicle owner, who bought it from that little old lady about six or eight months ago, was more than obliging with my request to have it checked out. 

I had told my wife that I would probably end up spending at least another $1,500 to get the it into tip-top shape but, unfortunately, the darn thing flunked it's physical. Big time. The biggest problem was that "skipping" issue that turned out to be a bad rear differential. That in and of itself not such a bad thing but the mechanic at the shop wished me luck finding either another differential specific to that version of the Legacy or even finding parts for it. And if I did find a differential or parts, figure about $1,800 all in. Gulp. The exhaust was shot behind the catalytic converter, wheel bearings were bad and they're not the bolt in type you'd find on a Chevrolet or Ford, they're pressed in. Great. That means expensive. Sorry, I'm not about to invest in a mechanical press let alone learn how to use one. 

Tires were dry rotted but I knew that already; brakes needed to be done too. So, between the rear end, exhaust, wheel bearings, a recommended timing-belt swap and what I figured needed to be done already, my $1,500 Subaru was going to run me, all in I guesstimated, between $5,500 and $6,000. 

The upside was the interior was gorgeous and very comfortable, the AC blew cold and thanks to tons of undercoating, the body was in remarkable shape for a twenty-four going on twenty-five year old car that's spent its entire life in salty Cleveland, Ohio. 

In the end I just couldn't do the mental gymnastics to justify dropping three times what I spent on a car just to make it right. So, we're back to square one. And just to make things even sweeter, our fifteen year old Tahoe's ENGINE COOLANT HOT warning lot popped on yesterday. At this rate, I just might have to use our '77 Corvette as a way to get to work.  

1962 Land Rover Series 2 - Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Some folks go nuts for these things. This is a 1962 Land Rover "Series 2" and blame the "city boy" in me for not fully appreciating it's rugged industrial design. A man-ish, brute like design unabashedly if not unapologetic-ally inspired by World War II American Jeep's. However, as with most old trucks or whatever this is officially classified as, technically it's a cross between a car and a farm-tractor,  I don't see what many see in a vehicle that has the road manners of a golf cart. 

If you're so inclined, this one might be somewhat of a bargain at $4,000 seeing that in good condition these can go for over fifty-grand. Blimey. Our Shelby, Ohio (hour or so southwest of Cleveland) based Series 2 here, the seller also noted it's a LWB (long-wheelbase) has a homemade "hard half-cab" and has been sitting for a while. The seller doesn't go into detail about how long "a while" is or was but judging by the half moons of mud on the tires me thinks that "while" has been a very long time. Amazing those tires can hold air too. Seller claims the frame is solid. Well, if they say so. 

From back here we can see just how homemade that "hard half-cab" actually is. When new, the cab was open into the bed area. On the lower bed walls, the area is boxed and supported two to four upholstered jump seats. As practical as these things allegedly were, with this compromised bed area I don't see how that was really possible. Might be good for hauling troops but mulch? Not so much.  All that garbage on the floor of the bed no doubt material from the canvas covering that would have gone from the top of the cab to the back of the bed. They not clean this out to show off how authentic this is? Literally and figuratively, this thing is a mess.   

At the risk of oversimplification, if I may, the "Land Rover sttry" is an interesting tale of unforeseen opportunity meeting circumstance. What is it they say about necessity being the mother of invention? 

After World War II, Rover, which was a builder exclusively of luxury automobiles, along with the rest of the British automobile industry, was in a state of dire financial circumstance. What's more, with the British government doling out limited resources, they could only supply Rover with enough steel to build approximately 1,100 automobiles. However, if they were to produce a practical vehicle that could be used to help the worn torn country rebuild, they'd provide them with more material. Thus the practical, go anywhere and do anything "Land" Rover was born. The "land" in "Land Rover" implying the vehicle was to work the literal land. 

With a body built of aluminum panels kept flat and straight to ease of assembly, a fully-boxed iron frame and a four wheel drive mechanism inspired by American Jeep design, much to Rover's surprise, what was supposed to be a stop-gap vehicle became a smash hit. Ultimately, the Land Rover came to outsell Rover automobiles by some two-to-one. Rover also imported hundreds of thousands of them to markets like Australia and Africa at a handsome profit. That tells you why when you go on "safari" or watch an action adventure moving in the jungle, chances are you're going to see an old Land Rover and not an old Chevrolet Blazer, Ford Bronco or whatever. No manufacturer over here save for Jeep was producing anything like it until the mid to late 1960's. 

I don't "get" these but that's not to say I don't appreciate and respect those that do. I think this is way too far gone to be worth even four-grand but I could be wrong. Comment below if you're interested and I'll do my best to hook you up with the seller. Happy doing whatever it is you do with these things. 

 

1992 Buick Riviera - Flint, We Have a Problem

Although I had a 1982 Riviera that was the worst automotive purchase of my life, actually, forget "automotive", it was the single-worst purchase of my life, despite my loathing of the damn thing because it broke constantly, to this day I appreciate it's handsome, retro-inspired styling. I gave my '82 away for a song after less than two-years of owning it because it was just too damn unreliable and that hurt big time seeing how much I time and money I spent on it and it was not inexpensive to purchase in the first place Still, I look at any 1979-1985 Buick Rivera, particularly convertibles like the one "Seb" (above) drove in "La-La-Land" (great movie btw), and I'm smitten just as I was when I first got mine all those years ago. Smitten, of course, until the hunk of junk snake bit me for the first of many, many times just a month after I got it. But I digress. 

Today's automotive soliloquy, however, is not about that gorgeous piece of crap I owned years ago but about the heaps of pure disgust that replaced them, Buick's infamous 1986-1993 Riviera's. Our oh-so-'90's blue on blue Riviera here is from model year 1992 and is yet another gem I found on Facebook Marketplace. With an asking price a mere $2,500, seeing the shape its in, low mileage and my wanderlust for cheap old cars in showroom condition this would beg for my attention except for one thing - even after all these years I still find these things so revolting looking I can't even think about just calling on it for a test drive. And it's like less than fifteen minutes from my home too.  

My disdain for these these "new-Riviera's" runs deeper than the fact they were such a departure from not just the iteration of the brand that I owned but from every General Motors personal luxury car of yore that I loved. Runs deeper as well than it was  so small, tiny even although that certainly didn't help matters. Nope, frankly, the biggest issue was that, quite simply, they're so damn ugly. My '82 may have been a falling-apart jalopie but it at least was a good looking pile of trash. This thing? I'm not going to go into a pretentious design study of it but safe to say, aesthetically, it was a disaster. 

GM quickly deduced they had a problem on their hands with these cars and attempted to up-size them but the half-baked grafting on of sheet metal for 1989 did little to dissuade my opinion of them. That extra sheet metal, that did wonders for this car's corporate siblings at Cadillac and Oldsmobile, doing little more than just exasperating a ridiculous if not absurd design. 

Don't take my disdain for these cars as gospel either. When sales crater up to seventy-percent year over year after a model is reintroduced, objectivity be damned, something went seriously if not fatally wrong. Flint, we have a problem. 

At least GM tried to do something about it but they had cooked their golden goose. Even by the time they rolled out the Riviera they should have rolled out in '86 in 1995, the market had changed wholesale. Well heeled buyers looking to impress the Jones' having moved onto luxury import makes and models or worse, sport-utility vehicles. And we're talking several model years before Ford introduced the first domestic luxury SUV, the game changing 1998 Lincoln Navigator. Just like that, personal luxury cars, premium or otherwise, became niche products. 

Buick got out of the personal luxury coupe game after 1999, Oldsmobile had bailed after '92. Cadillac, bless their hearts, held in there through 2002. Hey, if you're interested in this comment below. Perhaps I can hook you up. Just don't ask me to go with you on the test drive. It's would just be too painful for me. 

1971 Cadillac Eldorado - Nice To Think About

Another day as we say and another Facebook Marketplace gem. This time by way of relatively nearby Toledo, Ohio we have this 1971 Cadillac Eldorado convertible and I can't tell you how much I want to call on it to at least kick the tires in person and take it for a spin. While I'm at it ride on that swing set and hobby horse too. Of course I won't as the idea of doing so is most always more fun than actually doing it. I'm not into wasting anyone's time either. Still, fun to think about it. If it were a tad closer I might think more seriously about it but I have better things to do than drive three-hours round trip to joy-ride some old hoopty I have no real intention of buying. 

One of the most compelling things about this car is it has an asking price of a scant $6,500 and the only thing the seller claims it needs is a paint job. Well, to do it right that would not be cheap not but if that is all this needs, with a three to four thousand dollar paint job, all in for around ten-grand this might not be a bad investment. Challenge of course would be recouping expenses; in particular if I bought this with the intent to flip it at a profit. These cars in fair condition are valued by Haggerty at some $12,500 but nine times out of ten I've found those values to be generous. Makes you wonder why this one would go for so little. Then again, that hour and half or so traipse west might just answer that question for me. 

The first Cadillac Eldorado was introduced in 1953 as part of Cadillac's fiftieth anniversary celebration. Named by a Cadillac employee, through 1955 all Eldorado's where convertibles; a hard top model was added in 1956. The Eldorado was built on Cadillac's C-body chassis through 1966 and was switched to General Motor's E-body for 1967 sharing it with the Oldsmobile Toronado and Buick Rivera. Whereas Buick chose to keep the running gear of the Riviera "conventional", meaning front-engine, rear wheel drive, Cadillac chose to adopt the front-wheel-drive, "Unitized Power Package" that Oldsmobile used on the Toronado; only difference being Cadillac used their proprietary V-8 engine and not the Oldsmobile engine. There was no convertible Eldorado for 1967; the first time there was none since the model was introduced in 1953. 

That lack of a convertible Eldorado changed with the literal "big-reboot" for 1971. Cadillac overhauled their entire lineup for 1971 and along with a new deVille and Fleetwood line, Eldorado was changed significantly as well. Although less than an inch longer overall, the new Eldorado rode on a wheel base more than six-inches longer; no doubt the bump in wheelbase was to enable the optional convertible top to fold down on top of the rear deck of the car and not take up much if any space in the trunk. The Eldorado was the only convertible offered in the Cadillac line starting in 1971.  

In my opinion, these Eldorado's are one of the few automobiles that actually looks best in convertible form. Fixed room versions are pillared and the look, again, through my goggles, is awkward, clumsy and extremely bulky; I like a big car but even I have my limits. These are not svelte automobiles and along with the bulging rear fenders, a lovely if pointless throw-back styling detail that went into the dumpster on the 1973's, made the cars look even larger. The convertible top helps to trip the over all bulk of the design and add at least some sort of sporting elan to the whole thing. 

While the previous models were hardly "sporty" in terms of their road manners, Cadillac softened the suspension settings on these cars for an even more cloud-like ride. Riding like a cloud does a car no favors when the going gets choppy or twisty but Cadillac determined that kind of super cushy, floaty ride was what their target buyers wanted. They probably weren't wrong with that assessment seeing that folks with money back then grew up with cars that rode like farm implements with hard rubber tires or steel wheels. Couple that with primitive roads, and cars like this Eldorado riding on smooth pavement must have been dreams come true. 

These cars shared most of the same dashboard layout other also-new for '71 Cadillac's did; sadly, a wretched affair of hard, life-less injection molded plastic and hard plastic. The leather trimmed interior it shared with other Cadillac's was also inferior to the plusher high quality vinyl found in Buick's and Oldsmobile's. So, what did buyers get with this car that made it worth the substantial tariff to own one? If they weren't into the subtle brilliance of the torque-steer squashing front-wheel-drive hookup and the styling, not much more than perceived prestige and "pride-of-ownership" as you showed off you could afford it. 

That sort of thing doesn't row my boat but it sure did for people of my parents generation, what Tom Brokaw refers to as, "The Greatest Generation". My mother in particular was steadfast convinced to the day she died that there was something truly special about a Cadillac. That may have been true at one time but by the 1970's that sentiment, clearly, was not grounded in reality. 

Still, I'll take this car simply because I like it. Of course I won't but it is nice to think about. 

 

1962 Mercury Meteor - Out of the Box

On paper, "out-of-the-box thinking" sounds great but there's a caveat; it's actually pointless if said "out-of-the-box thinking" is not actionable. The Ford Motor Company's "mid-sized" 1962 Ford Fairlane, the white car in the brochure still above, was actionable out-of-the-box thinking although we can quibble over their execution of it; that point all but mute seeing how many Fairlane's Ford sold before GM came with a gaggle of intermediates in 1964. Chrysler never really had one although if you want to split hairs, their 1962-1964 full size Dodge and Plymouth's models were technically "mid-size". Up until '62, domesitcally, only Amercian Motors offered anything so construed as a "mid-size" car so, the smaller on the outside and not all that much smaller on the inside Fairlane was pretty radical "new-think" for one of the Big Three. Speaking of boxes, wouldn't love to know what was in the box she's unwrapping? 

Why Ford product planners felt compelled to come with a version of it for their Mercury division is a question us mere mortals will never get a concise answer to. They festooned "Meteor" to it, a model nameplate previously used in 1961 on a lower-priced alternative to the Mercury Monterey, and it sold so poorly through 1963 that not only did Mercury not have an  intermediate for 1964, they abandoned the mid-size segment altogether until 1966. 

Who knows why this car sold as poorly as it did; subjectively, it's certainly no homelier than the Fairlane that Ford sold over three-hundred thousand copies of in 1962 alone. Then again, perhaps it is. It's hard to say if it really as awful looking as I may think it is since, through my foggy goggles, I don't think the Edsel was as ugly as folks make it out to be. Toilet seat front end styling and all. The Edsel a victim of bad timing as much as anything else. 

You could say the Mercury Meteor is a microcosm of everything that was wrong with Ford's middle child through most of it's tortured if mostly unremarkable eighty-two model years of existence. That being Ford never figured out what to do with it seeing that at any given stretch of time from 1938 through 2010, Mercury was either a dressed up Ford or dressed down Lincoln. In the early '60's, Mercury was clearly a fancified Ford. That in and of itself not a bad thing but Ford designers struggled mightily to disguise Mercury's as more, as dressed up Ford's, or less, as dressed down Lincolns. Meanwhile General Motors did, for the most part, such a good job of differentiating their myriad makes and models that to the unaware, one could think that there was no DNA shared between, for instance, a Chevrolet and a Buick. Especially back in the early 1960's. 

Mercury slotted the mid-size Meteor in size and price point between their Comet, a longer wheel base version of the Ford Falcon, and the Ford Galaxie based (and lightly disguised) Monterey. What's more, the Meteor was based on the Comet's longer wheelbase, Falcon sourced chassis but with a slightly wider body. This slicing and dicing of chassis archetecture seeming very similar to what Chrysler did in the '80's and '90's with the "K-car". And all along you thought Lee Iacocca was an innovative, out-of-the-box thinker. 

When General Motors came with their game-changing intermediates in 1964, what they called the "A-body", it was proprietary and shared nothing with GM's full-size and compact chassis'. While far more expensive to do than  "simply" stretching a platform like a piece toffee, GM's mid-sizers never had the clumsy and ill-proportioned lines that plagued Ford's intermediates. Then again, it may be unfair to blame the engineers for what Ford designers were responsible for. 

All is not lost, though. The size of this big-little car, as opposed to little-big car, is far more sensible and manageable than the dreadnaught Monterey and it does have some unique styling touches or doo-dads that are worth noting. The little meteor ornamentation on top of the front fenders complimented by the rear rocket taillights are decidedly cool. Problem is if you have to replace them, if you can find them anywhere, prices for them will be, warning, intentional pun incoming, out-of-this-world. The damn fender skirts, that the Fairlane never came with, should be removed and burned and whomever came up with the idea tarred and feathered.  

Even the name of the car is worth mentioning above and beyond Ford's annoying habit of leaning on alliteration to name their Mercury models; some Ford models too. Much like Ford naming their top-of-the-line model "Galaxie", the Meteor was meant to capture the buying public's then fascination with all things space race. 

However, this car was a Meteor wholly in the figurative sense. While meteor's enter the earth's atmosphere at speeds up to one-hundred sixty thousand miles per hour, that's why most burn up on entry, a Mercury Meteor with nothing more powerful than Ford's one-hundred sixty-four horsepower, 260 cubic-inch Windsor V-8 had trouble eclipsing (see what I did there?) zero-to-sixty in under twenty-seconds. 

Many a Meteor still running today have head an engine swap some time over the last sixty-years or so but there's little that can be done for styling that makes the cars look like a person who's lost a considerable amount of weight but hasn't updated their wardrobe. Again, that styling detail something General Motor's was able to avoid with their tasty alberit very conventional intermediates in 1964; cars that may not have advanced the state-of-the-engineering art of the automobile at the time but certainly defined a market segment as something a whole lot more than the rote appliance like wares that we have today.