1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer - Back in The Day, This Was Money

When I first started in radio in the mid-Eighties, I became friends with a young news anchor about my age who commuted "around the horn" in one of these from his home in Connecticut to our little station on Long Island's south shore. And he hated it. He thought it too big, too slow, too thirsty, far from the hippest looking thing on the road and certainly something not befitting of an up-and-coming newsie to be seen in. He preferred his mother's 1980 Mercedes-Benz 380SL. So, understand, that kid was born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth whereas I was born with a moldy sweat sock in mine. Still, we were good friends, and I couldn't get enough of his stories, told in a disarming, very funny, self-effacing way about how wealthy his family was. He also said the reason his dad bought the big Jeep was because he needed something to tow the horses with that he could also use as a family vehicle. Tow. The. Horses with? 

I loved that Jeep too. Not sure if it was because I actually liked it or because I construed it to be a trapping of the wealthy. Said trappings this poor old slob from the south shore's always found interesting. Probably a combination of the two. I mean, what do rich people spend their money on when they have more than they can spend in multiple lifetimes? 

Our subject here is a 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer, my friends was a 1983 Jeep Wagoneer. Starting in 1984, AMC built a smaller vehicle they called "Wagoneer", but they kept building these and added "Grand" as a pre-fix starting in '84.  

Three different manufacturers made these from 1963 through 1991. They were first built by Jeep Kaiser which was bought by American Motors in 1970. AMC was swallowed up by Chrysler in 1987 and they had little interest in AMC's cars; they were all about the "Jeep" moniker. Holy foresight, Lee Iacocca. Not sure it was all him making that decision but somebody at Chrysler in the late-Eighties had their eye on the ball. 

Chrysler replaced these with the game changing "Grand Cherokee" in 1992. The Grand Cherokee helping to spur the SUV craze of the Nineties that also helped create the, at the time, crazy weird, "luxury SUV" market that today is so commonplace. 

Ford launched their Lincoln Navigator in 1998 that did inexplicably well. GM answered with their first Escalade that was little more than a rebadged GMC Yukon in 2002. So, on paper at least, these brutes are the ancestors of every luxury SUV on the market today. 

Our subject here popped on Facebook Marketplace with a $55,000 asking price. You guys sniffing the Grey Poupon again? NADA values these average retail around $25,000, high retail $40,000. I find that amazing but that's what these things are going for. I totally get what someone might see in these things and you're going to have to "pay" for one in this shape but 55G? This one has a branded title and the 118,000-miles on its thirty-three-year-old ticker is not the actual mileage. You've been warned! You're going to pay through the nose to reupholster these front buckets too. Who knows what else it needs. 

Six month (later) update: it's still for sale at a dealership and the price has been reduced to a more palatable $28,000. Still too much in my opinion considering the branded the title. The mileage I can deal with but the branded title is a big no-no. There are no details in the ad why it is branded. 

Jeep brought back the Wagoneer and Grand Wagoneer moniker recently festooning it to a gigantic (and homely as sin) SUV that doesn't have a shred of the charm these things have. Funny how I see young families in those $100,000 Grand Wagoneer's these days and wonder how they make the payments on them as opposed to looking at them as trappings of the wealthy.  

That's the difference between old money, like my old friend's family has and the nouveau riche. Or folks wanting to be perceived as being wealthy. There's a subtlety there that today's super-expensive luxury makes and models simply don't convey. Through my foggy goggles, hipsters driving around in six-figure vehicles is just conspicuous consumption. "Look at me, I'm rich". Newsflash, kids. We don't care. 

Back in the day, these were money, and the rich didn't buy them to make it seem they were wealthy either. 

1986 Ford Mustang GT - Someone Else's Nostalgic Joyride

I found this '86 Mustang GT recently for sale down in Columbus, Ohio recently and it brought back a lot of nice old memories. 

I've joked for years now that I asked my wife on a second date because I wanted to spend time the "Five-Point-Oh" she had when we first met in 1988. It was a 1983 Mercury Capri RS with a funky bubble hatchback, but it was all Mustang GT aside from that. I don't recall why my future father-in-law up and sold it and I somewhat regret not buying it from him; janky hatchback and all. He let it go for a song. Probably just as well.

My wife and I talk about perhaps picking up a Capri or Mustang just like it, but I don't think we're really serious about it. As the wife of a "car guy", my wife knows as well as I do that there's a lot to consider and a whole lot can go wrong with an old car. For more on that, feel free to browse through my blog and see how much pain and discomfort our 1977 Chevrolet Corvette has given me over the years. 

If this '86 was a little closer, it's a good two-hours plus south of us, I might just burn a weekend afternoon to kick its alloys. A joy ride for old time's sake and the pictures for social media would be worth their "likes" in gold. 

Buy it? Well, its $12,995 asking price is not out of this world unreasonable like a lot of older cars are these days. NADA pegs this at $14,200 high retail, average retail $6,950. It has 118,000 miles on its thirty-six-year-old ticker, and it appears to be in great shape but the real deal killer for me is it's been in an accident. 

Seeing it lacks its badging on the hatchback lid here tells me, without seriously checking, that it was hit from behind. How bad was the damage? Would you drop the dark side of fourteen-grand on a car pushing forty with a less that perfect Carfax? For that money, I'd keep digging. 

This car does have its strong points, though. It's an '86 which means it has the 200-horsepower, port-fuel injected "5.0" that also makes 285 foot-pounds of torque at 1,800 rpm. Those numbers aren't impressive today but back then they were astounding and seeing how light these cars are, they could really go. My wife's Capri had a Holly four-barrel "5.0" that made 175-horsepower and 245 foot-pounds. Compared to my 148-horsepower, 700-pound heavier '82 Riviera I was driving at the time, her Capri was a cruise missile. 

This has an excellent Tremec five-speed manual too. These cars were always much friendlier daily drivers than their nemesis, the Chevrolet Camaro were too. Not that I'd use this as a daily, but it's nice to know you could if you needed to. 

I might lobby the wife for this if it was half the price but at the asking price, let it be someone else's nostalgic joyride. 

 

1985 Ford Mustang LX Convertible - I Wish I Could Be That Kid

This 1985 Ford Mustang LX convertible got caught in one of my cheap car search nets recently. 60,000 miles or so on its thirty-seven-year-old analog ticker and an asking price of $7,900. Seems a tad high, honestly, but that's this used car market these days that while softening somewhat, don't hold your breath that prices will return to "normal". That said, what price would seem reasonable for this well persevered oldie? 

Certainly, if there were "Five-point-Oh" badges on the front fenders and beefy alloys and real tires on it the price would be at least a third higher. Shoot, despite this awful, milk toast color, I'd be all over this myself if it was a "5.0" in this condition. Especially at this price. Then again, if it said Five-point-Oh on the sides, with the kind of mileage this has and priced at $7,900, I'd insist on making sure that there was, in fact, a god's green earth 5.0 under the hood. 

Yeah, back in the day, some people did dress these up to look like the vaunted 5.0 Mustangs that not only terrorized Camaro and Firebird owners but went tailpipe-to-tailpipe with Corvettes for a stint in the mid-Eighties. Never made sense to me knowing that 5.0 Mustangs had very high theft rates then but live and let live. Whatever rows your boat. Or stable.  

Ford offered the Mustang in three guises for 1985: LX, GT and SVO. A power convertible top option was available on LX and GT models. Said "Five-Point-Oh" engine, which denoted Ford's 302 cubic-inch V-8, was available on LX models but our subject here comes with Ford's 3.8-liter, sequential-fuel-injection, 120-horsepower, "Essex" V-6. I know. I thought it was a V-8 at first too but I checked the VIN number. Ford's 2.3-liter, "Lima" four-cylinder was the base engine in non-convertible LX models. 

For my money back in the day, if I had any, I'd have opted for a Mustang LX convertible with the Five-point-Oh. As much as I'd find a stick-shift fun, knowing what traffic was on Long Island thisclose to Manhattan, I'd have opted instead for the automatic. For '85, Mustang's with the 5.0 and an automatic got fuel injected "high output" engines that made a very respectable, for the time anyway, 180-horsepower. 5-speed Mustangs got the carburetor equipped, 210-horsepower engines. Don't laugh or smirk. These cars weighed just a tad over three-thousand-pounds and stuffed with the 302, could do zero-to-sixty in around six seconds. Even today that's pretty darn quick. 

Ah, the stuff of dreams. For me anyway. I couldn't come anywhere near a new one of these even a standard issue one with a V-6. God, those fake wires are hideous. And, yes, they're factory issue. 

What's to become of this one? Gosh, good question. For sale up here in northeast Ohio, chances are it's been well preserved because convertible season up here is only slightly longer than pool season is. So, it's either going to someone who likes convertibles and is looking for a cheapie although, honestly, it's not a great car. The build structure is only so-so, it's pretty slow and it'll ride and handle like a truck with square wheels. My 2004 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder GTS it's most certainly not. Swapping in a proper engine and making the suspension right doesn't make financial sense either. 

Would be a perfect first car for a kid who just got their license, though. I kind of wish I could be that kid too. 

1990 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible - Not "The Gotta Have It" it Needed to Be

 

Like I mentioned in my soliloquy about a 1986 fourth generation Corvette last November, I like C4 convertibles. I like them a lot. So much so that I've put myself on a quasi-serious on-and-off search to find one. To that end, I found this 1990 last week for sale down in Akron. Just 39,000 miles on its thirty-two-year-old digital ticker and what I deduced was a more than reasonable asking price of $13,995. My wife agreed to come along for a looksee south to kick its tires. I promised a round on the links afterwards so that helped convince her. 

I was a taken back by her reaction to old red here; she was smitten. Big time. So much so that she mouthed silently to me, "I want this" as we sauntered around it.  She added that she liked this better "than our car" referring to our 1977 Corvette that we've had for ten-years now. 

I liked it too although I stop short of saying I like it better than our '77. C4's aren't everyone's cup of tea and I'm not the biggest fan of them either but there is something about the convertibles that's very "Hollywood". Throw in ones that have the optional and very expensive removable hard top, like this one has, and you've got a cross between Scarlett Johanson and Sophia Vergara. They're still no C2 or C3 convertible, but the removable or droppable roof does whittle away most of the design sins of C4's. 

Chevrolet built these fourth generation Corvettes from 1984 through 1996 incrementally improving them every two to three years or so. Convertibles came along starting in 1986. For 1990, the dashboard was redesigned, and the driver's steering wheel now had an airbag. 1990 Corvette's also benefitted from the 5.7-liter, 240-horsepower V-8 engine, code-named "L98", that replaced the dubious "Cross Fire Injection" engine of 1982-1985 infamy. And the L98, while less powerful than the "LT1" engine sold in Corvettes from 1992-1996, was less problematic too. 

Somewhat ironic then that what made our test drive less than earth moving was the L98 had a very noticeable misfire. So much so that it muted a considerable amount of the engine's performance. I could tell the engine still had some serious poke, but it's hard to tell how much gusto the engine actually had. 

While this car wasn't nearly the disappointment that '86 last fall was, after a fairly long test drive, my takeaway was more "meh" than "I must have this thing". And the culprit for my ambivalence had more to do than a phlegmy, out of tune engine. A lot of my sentiment stems from that after my rebuilding of the front and rear suspension on our '77, it rides like new now. Sure, this car handled better, actually much, much better, but not to the point it made our '77 weak-kneed in comparison. Well, on the street at least. On a track it would be a different story but who takes their car on a track anyway? The brakes didn't grab with the tenacity that our '77's do either. They worked fine in Caprice or Impala kind of way but they didn't have the kind of herculean grab I would expect.

We thanked our salesman for his time and for him to give me call when the engine's tuned up so I can take it for another spin. Even if I found it flawless, I wasn't about to say, "shit, I'll take it"! Part of me was thankful the car was somewhat of disappointment; it not only made my getting out of the dealership easy, I also don't have to be concerned about making a decision or divorcing ourselves from our '77. 

On the way back north for a round of golf my wife said, appropriately, that with regards to taking a C4 convertible for a serious spin, "I got it out of my system". She was so right. I still want a "C4 convertible", but this pretty red head didn't make me want to rush into anything. Despite what Covid has done to the used car market, $15,000 is still $15,000 and that along with the little things here and there didn't make it the "gotta have it" it needed to be. 

1989 Ford Taurus SHO - The OG SHO

Holy smokes. A 1989 Ford Taurus SHO with only 73,000 miles on it for sale for $6,999 down in Columbus at one of those drive now, pay up-the-ying-yang later used car lots. No job? No credit? No money? No-no-NO-problem! So, why isn't old car guy loving me rushing down I-71 to gobble this thing up? 

Well, for starters, I don't need it. The wife and I are down to "three-dailies" since our boys moved out and along with our 1977 Corvette, we still have more cars than we need. Just so you know, we've had as many as six daily drivers and it's so nice to have so few cars out in the garage now. If that sounds rather hillbilly, well, what can I say. If the brake shoe fits, I might as well wear it. 

Furthermore, despite the world-changing, seminal significance of the OG Taurus SHO, so many different cars that can suck its four-doors off have come and gone since it first burst upon the world thirty-four years ago that it's become an all but obscure footnote in automobile history. And I'm not going to buy something like this just to bore someone to tears lecturing them about how historically significant it is. 

Lastly but not leastly, I've always thought "first, second and especially third-gen" Tauri, that's no typo I meant to write "Tauri", homely if not ugly. I didn't care for the "jelly-bean" look back then and I care for it perhaps less now. In my humblest of opines, Ford didn't sort out Tauri's styling until 2000. 

That's not to say I won't take a proverbial trip down memory lane and reminisce about the Taurus SHO, which is pronounced "S-H-O" and not "show". "S-H-O" denotes "Super High Output" which is in reference to its Yamaha designed and built, 3.0-liter, iron-block, aluminum-head, DOHC, 24-valve V-6 that makes 220-horsepower and 200-foot-pounds of torque. 

Those numbers are no big deal now but back in the day, as they say, that was a dizzying amount of power from a fairly modestly sized, normally aspirated, V-6. And in particular, one stuffed into a garden variety grocery-getter. 

The Yamaha V-6 was apparently deemed so powerful that Ford didn't offer an automatic in the SHO until 1993. And the manual it was sold with was a notchy five-speed built by Mazda. Ford certainly did a lot of outsourcing for this car. I have no idea what's going on with the rear suspension on this car; that certainly ain't "O.G". 

First-gen "SHO's" could do zero-to-sixty in 6.7-seconds and match the then current, Fox-body, 5.0 V-8 Mustang GT in the quarter mile and top speed. In hindsight, it's less remarkable that the Taurus SHO could perform as well as it did as how spectacularly mediocre the Mustang was. 

The best thing Ford with the SHO was in quelling torque steer and other fun things that occur when an inordinate amount of horsepower and torque is set spinning through the front wheels. Ford did a spectacular job of modifying the front and rear suspensions to smoothen out most front-wheel-drive improprieties and at the end of the day, created a sweet and dare I say contemporary riding automobile. 

Drive one of these today and you'd be hard pressed to not think it a more modern ride. However, kids, back then, this was one remarkable riding and handling automobile. Forget how fast it was. Power gets old real quick if you have no control. 

These cars set the world back on its rear tires because it could perform as well or better than cars costing two-and-half-times more than Ford charged for them back then. Still way more than I could afford at the time or was willing to spend, but the value proposition was insanely good if you had the means to drop twenty-grand on a car. 

Despite what I don't see in these things, it's got two too many doors as well, the crack-historian in me finds it somewhat a shame such a significant car is now nothing more than a cheapie used car that will have difficulty finding a buyer because it's got a stick-shift. With an automatic, it might just make for a wonderfully off-beat first car for a high schooler or college student. Just do yourself a favor and pay cash for it. 

 

1971 Plymouth Road Runner -Tiiiim-Berrr! There Goes My Bank Account

Sometimes these things find me. Last Sunday, I had innocently sauntered back behind this mechanics garage near my home outside Cleveland, Ohio, to get a closer look at the five-to-ten-acre lot that's being cleared for, of all things, a self-storage facility. Imagine my delight when I saw this 1971 Plymouth Road Runner, one of my all-time favorite MOPAR's, just sitting back here like a patient waiting for the doctor to pop into an examining room.

Just like that my attention went from lamenting how a mini forest was being obliterated to slobbering over this ancient Chrysler B-body. I like all 1971-1974 Road Runners but these pre-1973 safety bumper models are my favorite. What's something like this worth? And what would I pay for it if it was? Seeing how insane this used car market is, to say nothing of how hyper inflated the market is for "classic" cars, I'd say at least $7,500. 

Yeah. As if. I did my research and I found I was way off. These things, like many a pre-1973 anything, are worth a literal boat load. NADA pegs this low retail at $13,750. Average retail $37,600, high retail $60,900. Tiiiiim-berrr! There goes my bank account.  

Nothing looks particularly scary about this thing that money can't fix. Not the puddles of coolant, oil and transmission fluid underneath it. Not even the blue plastic semi-tarps telling me the interior is probably stinky and full of mold and mildew; I didn't open either door as I have to assume there's cameras everywhere back here. Although, that small Philips head screw in the bezel right there tells me this car probably didn't get the TLC it should have over the last fifty-one years. How could anyone do that? Sorry. Fanboy me talking as I think this one special car.  

Chrysler's late and on occasion pretty good if not great Plymouth division built what they called a "Road Runner" between 1968 and 1980. They paid Warner's Brothers a licensing fee to use the cartoon likeness of their Road Runner. Wylie E. Coyote too in certain applications. So, if you've ever wondered, the cartoon came first. A special horn could blurt "Meep-Meep" like the Road Runner did when he was taunting Wylie in the shorts. 

At first a "stripper", performance orientated two-door sedan based on the Belvedere, for 1971, Road Runner was redesigned using Chrysler's at-the-time current fuselage design ethos and shared its sheet metal and underpinnings with the also new for-'71 Satellite two-door. Unlike the 1968-1970 boxy, Belvedere based Road Runners, the 1971-1974 models didn't share any sheet metal with their four-door versions. While still a "performance" car, the bargain basement pricing along with the bare bones axiom was discontinued. Along with the swoopy sheet metal, Road Runners became more elaborately equipped, dare I say "luxurious". 

Funny, I've never been a fan of full-size Chrysler "fuselages" but there's something about these intermediates I love. Enough to drop more than ten-grand on one's that a basket-case? Oh, of course not. 

Sadly, these sold poorly. Chrysler, while not nearly as tiny as AMC. was nonetheless all but a niche purveyor compared to Ford and GM and it's said their loyal, conservative proletariat were not fans of these cars. What's more, insurance premiums were skyrocketing on anything construed as a performance car not to mention emissions and safety regulations strangling the fun out of everything too. They were terrible on gas as well but Chrysler was deep-sixing these cars long before the OPEC embargo happened in the fall of 1973. 

For 1975 only, "Road Runner" was based on the new-for-1975, personal-luxury-car themed Plymouth Fury two-door that was essentially Plymouth's version of the Chrysler Cordoba. Chrysler-Plymouth dropped the Fury based Road Runner after 1975 using it as a trim package on the new-for-1976 Plymouth Volare that slogged through the end of the Seventies in relative obscurity if not infamy. 

Something tells me someone bought this, and had it trailer-ed back here so the shop can go through it telling the buyer what it needs. Along with its mechanicals needing to be sorted, it'll need glass work, a paint job and who knows what on the interior. Despite being fairly rust-free, not a given up here in northeast Ohio, the bill to get it at least to "average retail" is going to be steep. I'd say at least., all in, $40,000. What with the purchase cost, I'd have a hard time getting my head around the value proposition of this car. And someone dropping the dark side of $50,000 on something like this is going to want it original and unrestored. 

As they, the emotionless experts say, don't buy an old car and then restore it, buy one that's already been restored. You'll never get your money back. Especially these days. 

Fun fact, despite what the Warner Brothers cartoon series would have you believe, Coyotes are actually twice as fast as road runners. Coyotes have been timed up to forty-three-miles per hour. The fastest road runners can run approximately twenty-miles-per-hour.