1976 Chrysler Cordoba - More Proof The World has Gone Crazy

If I had my druthers, whatever druthers are, I'd have a Chrysler Cordoba in my garage. I had a '75 when I was a kid and I loved it. Well, I loved having it; they're hardly the worst cars of the era but far from great so my affection for them is driven wholly by nostalgia. This '76 here popped on my Facebook Marketplace feed the other day and if we need more proof the world has gone bonkers, the asking price on it is $6,500. There's more to this than meets the eye at first but that's a lot of money for forty-five year old rich, "Corinthian" leather that needs a lot of body work and has a set of period incorrect rims on it. Tires don't even match.  

My '75 was a "360 2-barrel" car with a 2.4 rear end. And I thought I was all that and an eight pack of "pony bottle" Miller High Life. 

This thing is a little different. And then some. That's a Chrysler 400 with a performance cam, flow master exhaust, a gigantic high-rise intake manifold with who knows how big a four-barrel carb, apprently some head work has been done along with exhaust headers and a 3.91 rear axle set up. You know, in case someone needs to pull down some redwoods. 

But oh, this body. So, basically, this is an engine with a Chrysler Cordoba attached to it. If the owner has receipts for what was done to that honkin' motor this might be a decent deal. Get it for closer to five grand or less to make it even sweeter.  

No shots of the interior which you'd have to imagine is in just as bad shape as the body. And these cars are not what we refer to as catalog cars meaning you can just order what replacement parts you need online. 

I'd have left the body alone and not attempted to do well-intended DIY patchwork. Who doesn't love a sleeper rat rod?

 

1969 1/2 Ford Maverick - Establish-Mint

Her name was Helen Davis and she was my first real serious crush. Problem was she was my third-grade teacher and although she was very young, she was still a good twelve-to-thirteen years older than me; there was no way she'd "wait" for me. Adding to her mystique and cool elan, she allowed us kids to call her "Helen"; I was too shy around her to call her anything but "Miss Davis" but talk about early '70's progressive. Anyway, I adored her and her light green Ford Maverick that looked just like this well worn 1969 1/2. 

Ford introduced the Maverick on April 17, 1969, five years to the day after it's kissin' cousin the Mustang debuted. While actually out-selling the original Mustang in its first six-months of sales, contemporary road test reviewers tactfully eviscerated the new small Ford for it's soft suspension, slow steering, poor visibility and springy seats that sat the driver too low. While they were impressed with the around town performance of the six-cylinder engines, they weren't impressed with its 20-miles-per-gallon or so fuel economy.   

Frankly, I've always thought "Maverick" was an odd name for a bone-stripper economy car; ads like this played to the name of the car as opposed to what the car actually portended to be. Love the paint colors choices. Anti-Establish Mint? That's funny to see especially today.

In a way Miss Davis' Maverick was the quintessential young school teacher's car. Somewhat practical and nimble, it had a bigger trunk than that on a Datsun, was way more maneuverable than an LTD or Torino, had a dollop of style that even an eight or nine year old could appreciate and they were very affordable.  

Halfway through the third grade, my beloved Miss Davis suddenly became, "Mrs. Blohm"; pronounced "blome". As you can imagine I was semi-heart broken and what's more, the school's principal insisted us kids refer to her as "Mrs. Blohm" and not "Helen". Damn establish-mint. She had no problem with kids still referring to her as "Helen", though. 

I still called her "Miss Davis". 

 

1966 Chevrolet Impala SS - Most Excellent

As so often happens, one blog needs to another. My recent soliloquy about the Plymouth Sport Fury the crossing guard drove who helped me and thousands of other kids get to school back in Oceanside,  New York, jogged my engine block about the 1966 Chevrolet Impala SS convertible that my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Katzenberger, "Mrs. K" for short, drove. It was a darker shade of red than our illustrative stand-in here and had a black top with black interior. 

I did not have the same affection for her that I had for my crossing guard but I held her Impala in similar regard. Both cars a welcome respite from my father's dreary, rental grade '68 Ford Ranch Wagon.  

If you are what you drive then I found her Impala SS even more vexing than my crossing guard's Fury; the flashy cars out of step, in my opinion, with the persona of both people but in particular the dour Mrs. K. Then again, outside of the gross manly-man stereotype, much like being able to judge which side of the political spectrum someone may stand on based purely on their physical appearance, it's impossible to say one car is appropriate for one person and not another. However, as I later found out the Fury was my crossing guard's husband's car, I never found out if the Impala was Mrs. K's or not. She was so terrifying and intimidating the less I had to deal with her the better; I restrained from such mundane chit-chat about her car with her.  

For 1966, Chevrolet had four different full-size models based off General Motors new-for-1965 "B-body" chassis. At the bottom of the range was the Biscayne and moving up the pricing ladder was the Bel Air, Impala and Caprice; Caprice had been a Impala trim in model-year 1965 and was as luxurious as a Cadillac. Well, almost. 

If you want to split hairs, the Chevrolet Impala SS was technically a separate model from Impala although it was, at least in base model trim, an appearance package first and foremost. The image of Chevrolet's vaunted SS badge was in its infancy at the time and they had yet to fully flesh out what it was all to mean. For example, the standard engine on an Impala SS was Chevrolet's 235-cubic inch, 155-horsepower  in-line six cylinder. By the grace of the car gods only 900 six-cylinder Impala SS' were built in '66; a mere .007 percent of Chevrolet's total 1966 production of a staggering if not mind-boggling 1.6 million full-size automobiles. Throw in Chevelle and Nova sales and we appreciate the scope of Chevrolet's dominance in the mid-'60's. 

The largest, most powerful engine available on a 1966 Impala SS was Chevrolet's 427-cubic inch V-8 making 425-horsepower. Mrs. K's Impala SS had what most '66 Impala SS' left the factory with - a 327 and an automatic transmission; that transmission being GM's "Powerglide", two-speeder. Hey, who said all muscle cars where actually muscle cars? 

I don't blame you for perhaps scoffing at how I can recall such mundane details; especially seeing that these memories are pushing fifty-years old. However, when you're enamored of something as much as I was of that car, you remember such minute details. I couldn't help but study every square inch of her car seeing that she always parked it on a street that was on my way home. The big, low slung Chevy was also a stark reminder, an educational beacon of hope and despair, that she was always there.  

Although I did quite well in her class, Mrs. K scared the daylights out of me much in the same way my mother did. Tall, severe looking, strict, exacting and humorless, her booming, theatrical voice kept most of us in line for fear of being reamed out. Several kids would put their heads down on their desks and covered their ears when she would go into one of her tirades regardless if it was directed at them or not. One time she laid into me for chewing gum in glass; I swear I didn't sleep for a week afterwards. 

Ironically, my mother found her to be a bully and said as much to her face during one of several parent-teacher conferences. My mother also took exception to Mrs. K's chain-smoking and coffee guzzling during the meetings. Hello, pot. Kettle over here. Mrs. K did, though, consider me one of her brighter students with a penchant for history and writing; she recommended after school tutoring for my less than adequate math skills. That never happened lest I spend more time with a woman who made my stomach do backflips. Or worse. 

Through it all, though, I believe I came through the fourth-grade less scathed than most of my fellow classroom-cellmates. I attribute that to my mother who I found, sadly most of the time, equally as difficult to deal with; consider me me battle field trained. However, there were upsides. Mrs. K's grading of papers of mine that she found exceptional with her signature "Most Excellent" still etched in my mind giving me a boost of "intellectual confidence" to this day. "Most Excellent" a term I still use to describe things I determine to be exceptional. 

1970 Pontiac Firebird - Buy One, Don't Restore One

Before my feed of delightful old cars on Facebook Marketplace slowed to a crawl this 1970 Pontiac Firebird popped up. This patina rich old pony is about an hour so south of our triple-wide here in Cleveland, Ohio with an asking price an eye-watering $2,500. 

Aside from the ridiculous asking price, this is a $250 junker back in my day, it's condition highlights the weather extremes we get here; hot and humid summers and, on occasion, brutal winters. The weather extremes here reek havoc on roads and buildings to say nothing of what they do to cars if they're left out in the elements. . 

That $2,500 asking price is a lot of money for something that even the poster of the ad on Facebook Marketplace claims "needs everything" and is not a Trans Am. No VIN posted so I can't check to see what it had originally or what it was. Formula? Esprit?  

It's not even numbers matching.  Ad says there's a "1973" 400 engine in it along with a turbo-hydramatic 400 transmission. '73 Esprit's came available with two Pontiac 400's; two and four barrel versions. 

Seems like $2,500 for this not unlike paying a king's ransom for the right to hit yourself in the head with a hammer. Repeatedly. Body work alone could be fifteen-grand; personally I'd leave it as is and make a rat-rod out of it. Engine rebuild or crate engine another five (at least). Twenty-five hundred for a transmission rebuild, fifteen-hundred for the rear end, couple of grand for front and rear suspension work. Interior, wiring, at least five more. Throw in another twenty-five hundred for miscellaneous I mean, fresh rims and tires will set you back twelve-hundred. Redoing the air conditioning is going to cost $3,000. Holy smokes we're around forty-thousand dollars for a $2,500 car. 

Making this another prime example of its always better to buy a restored car than to restore one. 

1971 Plymouth Fury - A Perfectly Wonderful Way to Start the Day

When I was very young my father worked as an executive for Burlington Industries based in Greensboro, North Carolina. He rarely talked about what he actually did save for a time or two that he joked about someone as color blind as he was being in charge of ordering bulk amounts of fabric in varying color shades. 

He work out of their Manhattan office and decades before "Zoom-calls" could even be imagined, at least once a month, sometimes more, he'd fly to Greensboro for meetings. He'd cab it to LaGuardia or Kennedy and sometimes Newark from our home in Baldwin, New York and most often times he came back so late at night it was easier if not safer for him to rent a car. One of the more memorable "company cars", as he called them, was the time he came home in a block long and block wide, dark green Plymouth Fury convertible just like this blue and white one here. Seeing my father left Burlington in 1972, chronologically my memory of that car syncs up. I'd guess that "company car" was a 1970 or 1971 model. 

After the Plymouth's return to "full-size" convention for '65 and subsequent lovely reboot in '67, they came with these brutes that even a big car lover like me was like, "what is this"? And that was more like  "what the hell is this" as oppossed to, "what is, this?"  

That big Plymouth was part of Chrysler's 1969-1973 "fuselage" look. The fuselage look was allegedly a subtle cylindrical shape reminiscent of an  airliner. That doesn't even become readily apparent even after that's directly pointed out, does it? To me these hulks looked as though the designers made only peripheral changes to a huge block of clay and called it a day. These cars made even early '70's full-size Ford's look like GM designs in comparison. 

All Chrysler full-size models on the Chrysler C-body chassis got the fuselage treatment. My father's "company car" Fury riding on the "shortest" wheelbase at 120 inches. The Dodge Polara rode on a 122 inch wheelbase, Chrysler s on a 124 meanwhile the Imperial had a 127 inch long wheel base. To make maters worse, all big Chrysler's looked so similar, save for, arguably, the Dodge Polara, it was hard to tell a Plymouth from an Imperial. 

That wasn't that unusual seeing that as far back as the late '50's Chrysler advertising highlighted that all  Chrysler's were, more-or-less, simply trim levels of the same basic design. 

As a wee-nipper all but living for the mornings when I'd see a "company car" in front of the god-forsaken Ford "Ranch Wagon", the time my father brought home that gigantic Fury was a morning I'll never forget. 

It was a beautiful, sun-splashed fall morning with a little bite in the air and my father was to drive my brothers and I to school. My brother Kevin is ten-years-older than me and sat up front with dad meanwhile I shared the back seat with my younger brother, Chris. Sitting in the back seat of the foreboding Plymouth, I puckishly asked my father if he would put the top down. 

Amazingly, seeing how little time we had for such frivolity and how chilly it was that morning, my father obliged. He and my older brother undid the latches on the windshield, my father flicked some switch and a cacophony of motors, gyros, servos and leprachauns started whirring and the top lifted towards the sky. I was delighted. 

Only problem was, my dear old dad never saw a detail that he paid attention to. No sooner did the roof start to go up that it got snagged on a tree limb; the motors fighting against the tension of the big branch. When my father realized what was happening he went to put the roof back down but the branch cracked and the canvas roof jerked up past it; the branch dropping not only sticks and twigs into the car, but what was left of its dewy leaves and who knows what other "tree-crap". Amazing that the roof didn't get punctured. With the broken tree limb hanging over the center of the car with the canvas top half open, my father had no choice but to put the top all the way down and move the car out of the way. 

With the top down, I was memorized how different the world looked sitting inside a car with the roof off; everything was different and was somehow...better. The sun was shining more brightly, the leaves on trees more colorful. I asked my father if he'd drive us to school with the top down and he ignored me thus snuffing out my joy. Now he was running out of time and with a car full of tree junk he'd have to clean out before returning the rental and it being so chilly he had to get the top back up. Problem was when the roof came back down onto  the top of the windshield, the roof was out of alignment and wouldn't latch down. Seemed the convertible top's frame got bent when it got bound up against that tree branch. 

So I got my top-down drive to school. Froze my butt off too but for those few fleeting moments, I was living high on the hog. My father mumbling sarcastically under his breath that it was a perfectly wonderful way to start the day. 

As far as I was concerned it most certainly was. 

1964 Rambler Classic - Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

I wanted more for my father than for him to be driving the 1961 Rambler Classic that was the first car he had that I remember. Something even like this 1964 Rambler Classic. Don't get me wrong, this is certainly no '64 Buick Wildcat but then again, it's whole lot better than my old man's Rambler. 

In hindsight, that's probably because this '64 Rambler looks like it could have been penned by the stylists at General Motors. 

I mean, seriously - look at this grill. Where have we seen this before?

Slightly longer than a Nova and much shorter than a Chevelle of the same vintage, the 1963 and '64 Rambler Classic's were not only perfectly sized but they were a better looking Chevrolet than any Chevrolet at the time. All of AMC's weird styling sins of the past washed away in one fell swoop. 

Of course they botched it come 1965 and did little to fix it for '66 but at least for a couple of years they got it right. 

1967 Pontiac Bonneville - A Full and Happy Life

The wife and I literally ran into this 1967 Pontiac Bonneville last weekend at the entrance to the Pull-A-Part yard in Cleveland. 

We come here quite often "pulling-parts" for our various aging sleds and I've never seen anything this old here before. Maybe that's why it's prominently on display like a museum piece. 

Pontiac had two wheelbase lengths for their (unnecessarily complicated) full-size lineup for 1967. The Catalina, 2+2, Ventura and Grand Prix rode on a 121-inch long wheelbase while the Executive and our top-of-the-line here Bonneville was under pinned by a 124-inch long base. 

Although, from the looks of it, from it's vinyl\rubber-ish seats, to crank windows to no air conditioning, I don't see why and how this would be a top-of-the-line anything. Oh, but it does have the optional and oh-so-rare interior mounted spare tire. Note no headrests and there are no seat belts in this car either; nothing to stop us kids from hanging from the back of the front seats on long drives. Are we there yet? 

At almost 223-inches long, this car is seriously getting "up-there" in terms of overall length. Amazingly, cars got even longer in the mid-1970's, the longest Pontiac breaching 231-inches long before the Great Downsizing Epoch started in 1977. 

Before the five-mile-per-hour, government mandated "safety-bumpers", it was common to see barges like this with bumpers mangled from repeated taps on trees, sign posts, cats, dogs, monkeys and other cars. Interestingly, the luscious chrome ribbons fore and aft are in great shape save for pitting and being filthy. 

License plate frame in the trunk here tells us this was a Pennsylvania car; they don't use the salty brine down there they use up here to keep roads safe in winter. It's great stuff to keep roads free of ice but eats cars up.

Ghoulish photos of what appears to be an elderly, hospital bound woman surrounded by loved ones a stark reminder this car had a life at some point. And judging by the smiling faces I can make out in some of the photos not ruined by moisture and mildew, a fairly full and happy one. 

Makes me wonder where this big old thing has been during its time as a useful appliance. Seeing the flat spots on the tires it appears it had been sitting a good long while. Despite that, it would appear it's re-storable; there's very little rust and the frame appears to be pin-straight. But four-door sedans like this are hardly ever brought back to life. 

400 cubic-inch "Pontiac V-8" with no doubt a two-barrel carburetor. I bet with some fresh gas I can get it running. 

1967 Plymouth Sport Fury - Time Flys

Well, you know what they say - time flys when you're working from home during a pandemic. It's back-to-school time already and that said, and with my recent soliloquy about a 1965 Plymouth Sport Fury fresh on my mind, it jogged my engine block about the 1967 Plymouth Sport Fury driven by the crossing guard who used to help us kids not get killed on the way to our elementary school back in Oceanside, New York. I'll use this fairly well-worn but still achingly cool white-on-red '67 as a illustrative stand-in for the dark green on black '67 our crossing guard drove. 

Her name was Mrs. Baer and she was one of those unflinchingly kind human beings that we seem to only know when we're very, very young and we're lucky to have known such people. She wore a dress uniform that looked like something you'd see in a documentary about women in the military during World War II and she parked her big Plymouth Sport right there at corner of Fortesque Avenue and Foxhurst Road. Even back then when I was what, seven, eight or nine years old I found the juxtaposition of someone who dressed so authoritatively driving something so out-of-this-world cool and fantastic as that car to be fascinating if not enthralling. I couldn't get enough of it. 

Plymouth got back into the "true" full-size game in 1965 when they introduced the new Fury I blogged about last week. The first reboot of that car was these '67's. Although only three-and-a-half inches longer, they looked much bigger because of the coke-bottle styling. 1968 Fury's look all but identical to the '67's and, full disclosure, Mrs. Baer's may have been a '68. 1969 brought about the awful "fuselage" era of full-size Chrysler design. I didn't like them them and I like 'em even less now. 

One day I stayed late at school and when I as walking home I noticed Mrs. Baer was not at the corner of Foxhurst and Fortesque. Terrified at the prospect of crossing such a dangerous intersection on my own, as narrow as the streets are, traffic was quite heavy, I set out north on Foxhurst with the plan to cross whenever I saw a break in traffic. No sooner than I decided that, Mrs. Baer swooped by in her big Plymouth and picked me up and drove me home. She was still in her uniform and said she saw me in her rear view mirror as she was leaving her post and thought that I could probably use a ride home. It was after 4 PM and it was getting dark already. 

 To say I was delighted to be inside her car was an understatement. We got to talking about it and she said she didn't know much about it; it was her husband's car. She thought it too big and hard to handle but she didn't seem like she had any trouble with it. She dropped me off at home and I waved to her as she drove off. Humbling to think that memory is now pushing fifty-years old.