1964 Jaguar Mark X - Begin Again

My wife Janet and I watched the 2014 Mark Ruffalo, Keira Knightly musical comedy-drama "Begin Again" on Netflix recently. She liked it but didn't love it, I found less to appreciate about it aside from its somewhat accurate insight into the music recording industry in the mid-twenty teens. I thought it so lost and pretentious that the even transcendental performances of its wonderful cast, that included a 1964 Jaguar Mark X, couldn't save it from being a fluffy, soulless, and unsatisfying musically driven version of "When Harry Met Sally". 

"Begin Again" is about Dan Mulligan, played by Ruffalo, a down and out record company executive who becomes professionally smitten, although we're led to believe not personally so, with Gretta James, played by Knightly, an aspiring singer he runs into at an open-mic night while he's on a massive, and I mean massive bender. The rest of the film deals with Dan attempting to produce an album featuring Gretta and, well, guess what happens next! And, no, not that. 

We never find out, though, why Dan drives, of all things, a big old Jag. It's a prominent set piece in the film, but it's never disclosed why, of all fifty-year-old cars in the world, he drives something so offbeat. Oh, I know. The Mark X is just like Dan -somewhat alluring, inherently talented but innately flawed and unreliable. Err, I don't think the producers dug that deep. I bet they found it when scouting shooting locations up in Toronto and it fit the bill for what the director of the film called for; a car for Dan that was left-of-center. If that's the case, jump well done. 

If anything, the Mark X adds a dash of elan to Dan even if that mystery is happenstantial. To most people, cars are appliances to get them from point A to B, us car wonks want to believe there has to be something more than needing transportation behind why some people drive cars we construe are more than utilitarian. Most often, that's not the case. For all we know, one day Dan may trade the Mark X in for a Hyundai Sonata.  

The Jaguar Mark X, or "Ten", was Jaguar's big, range-topping saloon, that's Brit-talk for sedan, from 1961 to 1970. From 1965 to 1970 it was known as the "420" to highlight a bump up of displacement from 3.8- to 4.2-liters, but it was essentially the same car. 

Mark X's and 420's featured much of Jaguar's latest technology found on the E-Type sports car which was also new for 1961. Dual-overhead-cam, inline six-cylinder engine, four-wheel-disc brakes, monocoque or unibody construction, double-wishbones up front and an independent rear suspension. Pretty heady stuff for the early '60's. It's styling, though? Beg to differ all you want and from some angles, like the brochure shot above, the design sort of works. From others? Well, an E-Type or Keira Knightley it ain't. 

Jaguar broke their own molds with the Mark X's "pontoon" body, much of its ethos, Jaguar would emulate on their sedan designs for much of the next half-century. Jaguar replaced the Mark X ultimately with the far comelier XJ-6\12 they debuted in 1968; the XJ and Mark X were sold side-by-side through 1970. The Mark X replaced the very long in the grill Mark IX that dated back, in large part, to 1948. 

With its odd proportions and being relatively elephantine, the "X" wasn't for everyone. It was intended to be competitive in North America, but it was too expensive over here for what it was - a big, heavy, thirsty Brit with American car like build quality with a questionable design. While more affordable in England, the Mark X didn't do well there either because "petrol", as they call gas, then as now, is way more expensive than it is here. 

Given what it was up against even before we consider the subjectivity of its appearance, the big car that wasn't big enough for America and was too big for England, didn't stand a chance. Jaguar sold less than 25,000 of them over ten model years. 

"Begin Again" is set in New York and The Big Apple makes several and very clever cameos. Technically, "Begin Again" is tight as a drum and very well acted. It's the screenwriting where it blows its head gasket.

The Toronto based owner of the Mark X in the movie originally leased the car to the film's producers. He later sold it to them so they could use it for promotional purposes. 

2017 Toyota Camry XLE - It's Been Such a Pleasant Autumn

 

Hopefully our mechanic can figure out why my wife's 2004 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder GTS is overheating, I for sure cannot. If not, we're in a pickle. Not only do we loathe car shopping, but we have no idea what we'd even like to get. In an attempt to combine practicality and performance, I thought a Saturday afternoon kicking the tires on this 2017 Toyota Camry XSE would be time well spent. 

Granted, Janet, my wife, wasn't thrilled with the possibility of going from her sporty, little Eclipse to what is a big grocery getter, but car guy here, my thought was she'd fall in love with the way it rode and handled and how feature rich it was for the money. Although to make $18,500 work for an eight- going on nine-year-old, 75,000-mile Camary would require some mental gymnastics for me let alone Janet. 

Things went south immediately as our salesperson swung the car around for our test drive. Turned out they had mistakenly listed the car in Cars.com an X-S-E when it was an X-L-E. Big difference. The XLE is a "luxury" car, the XSE is supposedly as close to a BMW like sports sedan as a Camry could be. I let our very nice although somewhat robotic salesperson know that I wouldn't have driven the better part of an hour for a Camry XLE; not his fault of course but he wasn't the first used car salesman to glaze over when they realize they were dealing with a car nerd. 

We agreed to a spin anyway but not before we noticed the car had a number of scratches on it, some fairly deep. That and it was filthy. Best was, our sales guy came with us on the test drive. So much for turning I-77 into my personal Autobahn. 

The car started and ran fine; it has the same monster V-6 that's in my 2009 Toyota RAV4 so it galloped along strongly. The air blew cold, the power driver's seat had plenty of adjustment and the steering column tilted and telescoped so I could get comfy. It was packed with all the latest techno doo-dads that our Eclipse and RAV4 do not have; uou have no idea what a novelty a backup camera still is to us. The looks we get from salespeople when we get goofy over them makes us feel like we're Amish who escaped the compound. 

My issue with the car, aside from its Walter Mitty meets Ziggy sheet metal, was its handling which was just shy feeling as though I was driving bathtub half full of water. That and the brakes were surprisingly not up to modern snuff. I give Toyota hall passes on just about anything I construe as "questionable", but I wondered if there was something wrong with the brakes on this car. Janet refused to drive what she referred to as something her grandparents would own. 

I didn't mince words letting our sales guy sitting out back we would not be buying this car. Still, back at the dealership, he dragged us through the proverbial dog and pony show of sitting us down and discussing our "needs".  When he fired up the dealership website to do a search of what we might want, I knew it was going to be twenty- to thirty-minutes before we got our butts out of there. 

Then the way-too-young-to-be-the-manager-guy came over, I guess, to inquire why we wouldn't be buying this car. He explained their "forever warranty" program to us, as if I'd buy a car based solely on a warranty that I had to pay extra for. You know how that goes, you pay a small fortune up front for what was sold to you as a comprehensive warranty when in fact it's not. After you arm wrestle with the third-party warranty company over coverage, you pay a $500 deductible. That's if you're lucky that when you need the warranty, the company backing it is still in business. 

We scooted out of there and hot-tailed it to our next appointment which went no better.  Well, I did find that 1981 Corvette I blogged about but aside from that, that was pretty much a waste of time. Detailed blog on that experience upcoming. 

I sure hope our mechanic can fix the Eclipse. It's been such a pleasant autmn so far. 

PS - the dealership updated the ad for the car we test drove making it an XLE. 

1972 Lincoln Continental Coupe - The Good Doctor

 

On the blue collar block I grew up on back on Long Island, somewhat oddly, there lived a young pediatrician and his family, and it was obvious they were loaded. Not only did they live in the only post-War house in the neighborhood, but they were constantly improving it. In a day and age when window units were still a novelty, they added central air conditioning, automatic, in ground sprinklers, an alarm system, a fully finished basement, a fully modern kitchen with a microwave oven and so on. And The Good Doctor drove a Lincoln Continental coupe like this 1972. 

Therefore, these cars have always been "money" to me. What's more, he and his family were wonderful people, even my cranky parents liked then, and I learned it was possible to be rich and successful and be graceful and elegant; traits that aren't always mutually exclusive. I was enamored of the big Lincoln and humbled by it at the same time; I would feel small next to it, and in more ways than one. 

These Lincoln Continentals replaced the famous and distinctive "suicide-door", 1961 to 1969 Continentals. Come 1970, gone were the rear-hinged doors, the four-door convertibles and the unibody's and in their place were these dressed up, long wheelbase Ford LTD's that had a more than their fair share of General Motors design ethos in them. 

Made sense since despite the uniqueness of the previous Continentals, Cadillac kicked their tailpipe at the box office year in and year out. Well, as they say, if you can't beat 'em...

In many ways, though, in terms of creature comforts, these cars were the equal of anything Cadillac had to offer. With regards to richness of materials and giving off the aura of wealth and prestige, they had it hands down over Cadillac. Lincoln tried harder but they made little more than a dent in big daddy Cadillac sales. 

Lincoln built these hard top Continental coupes through 1974, the oh-so-boxy, 1975-1979 pillared one's pale in comparison to these dreamboats. I'm a GM girl at heart but there are a Ford or two I wouldn't kick out of my garage. I'll take a Continental like this one with it's smaller, pre-1973 safety bumpers please. 

The Good Doctor and his family moved off of our humble little street in the mid-1970's to a much tonier zip code on the Island's North Shore. I don't recall if he was still driving that big Lincoln. I know by the time they left he had upgraded his wife's car to a Mercedes Benz. 

1969 Plymouth Road Runner - Horse (power) of a Different Feather

Plymouth updated their "B-body", intermediate line for 1968 with new styling for the coupe only GTX, and full-range (coupe, convertible sedan and wagon) Satellite and Belvedere. There was a new model too that was a bone stripped, pillared two-door bereft of most creature comforts even a Belvedere buyer on a budget would opt for. As spartan as it was, under the hood was a different story. Stuffed with either an exclusive version of Chrysler's "RB", 383 cubic-inch V-8 or the mighty 426-CID "Hemi", what they called "Road Runner", after the Warner Brothers cartoon character that had been around since 1949, it was horsepower of a different feather. This Bring-A-Trailer find is a 1969. 

This isn't any run-of-the-mill '69 Plymouth Road Runner either - it's the holy grail of Road Runner's, one of just 194 built that year with the "Hemi" and a factory installed Hurst four-speed manual transmission

Now, before you go scootin' off to Bring-a-Trailer, know that the bidding is done, and it sold for $140,000. Whoa. That's big bucks for what is, ostensibly, a taxicab with a street legal race car engine. No power steering on this one either. Not my cup of anti-freeze but apparently there's plenty of people who feel differently. 

So, what exactly is this thing? 

Originally billed as a return to the muscle car in its purest form, the Plymouth Road Runner was a factory built and factory warrantied performance car; a car performance junkies would have built for themselves so to speak. You could get the Hemi and Hurst four-speed in the GTX, but that car was heavier, far more feature laden and was heavier. Consequently, it was more expensive. 

Despite the memorable albeit goofy name, the Road Runner was unapologetically all stuff with little fluff and through the Malaise Era, the stuff of legend. These days, its five-second zero-to-sixty and quarter mile times in the "high-fourteens" are just another day at the trailer park. 

Again, with the Hemi and Hurst four-speed, this Road Runner is one rare bird. No doubt its scarcity and condition drove the bidding as high as it did. Jay Leno is fond of saying that his favorite old cars are ones that are "original and unrestored", this one is "number's matching", but it underwent a comprehensive restoration in 2015. It's not even in the "Bronze Fire Metalic" it was born with. So, a hundred and forty-grand for a what, in my opinion, is a recreation seems like a lot of money but what do I know. At least it's not a clone. I prefer the "fuselage" Road Runner's Plymouth built from 1971 to 1974. 

Pristine, original and unrestored '69 Hemi Road Runners have sold recently for more than $300,000. So, who knows. This might be well bought for the person who's writing the check for it. 

1965 Buick Riviera - The Big House

Grafton, Ohio is a small, rural town roughly twenty-minutes southwest of us here on the far west side of Greater Cleveland. Around here, Grafton is known for one thing, the medium to minimum security jail, or being politically correct, "correctional facility" that houses upwards of 2,000 inmates. I can't help but feel the preening eyes of the perps on me as I drive down Avon-Belden Road, the paved cow path that snakes through the jail's sprawling campus. I assuage the creepy feelings by humming the theme to "Cops" to myself. That and mumbling, "...if you can't do the time, don't do the crime". 

The Big House in Grafton is also home to this lovely, 67,000-mile, 1965 Buick Riviera that's currently for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $34,900. 

Introduced in 1963, the Buick Riviera was General Motors' second salvo at the four-passenger, Ford Thunderbird introduced in 1958. GM's first attempts at a personal luxury car like the Thunderbird, the 1961 Oldsmobile Starfire and 1962 Pontiac Grand Prix and Buick Wildcat, essentially dressed up 88's, Catalina's and LeSabre's, nice as they were, weren't nearly as distinctive as the Thunderbird.  

The Buick Riviera, though, checked every box and metric on the then current wish list of personal luxury buyers. Distinctive styling? Check. Unique and gorgeous interior? Check. Powerful engine? Check there too. 

At first, these cars weren't intended to be Buick's but a relaunch of the LaSalle, Cadillac's companion make GM put to pasture in 1940. When the LaSalle idea was stymied, head designer Bill Mitchell offered it to Cadillac and then Chevrolet who both turned it down. Oldsmobile and Pontiac showed more interest but wanted to alter the car's design, only Buick took the car lock, stock and barrel. They chose to call it, "Riviera", a moniker Buick first used to denote their hard top models going back to 1949. We have to remember that back in the early '60's, GM's myriad divisions were more like separate car companies owned by the same conglomerate. They were able to operate with an autonomy that's hard to fathom now. 

With a 360-horsepower, 401 cubic-inch V-8 with two four-barrel carburetors and Buick's Super Turbine 400, that was added in 1964, a Buick Riviera was serious luxury GT. Still, it was clobbered at the box office by the Ford Thunderbird by nearly two-to-one. Why? Combination of things. 

First off, it was too expensive for young performance buyers and lacked the flash and dash of the Thunderbird. It was deemed to lack the elan important to Cadillac buyers too. Nonetheless, the Riviera was a fine car in its day although it occupied an all too narrow a niche in a limited market. 

General Motors didn't get the personal luxury car recipe right until they introduced the mid-sized Pontiac Grand Prix in 1969 and Chevrolet Monte Carlo in 1970. By then, Ford had turned the Thunderbird into a caricature of itself too. 

Details in the Facebook Marketplace ad for this Riviera are scant. It's a numbers matching, mostly original car, which scares me some, air blows cold which is a plus. Average retail on these is $22,900, high retail $54,400. Seems the seller hopes to split that difference. I love these cars and this no doubt a more prudent buy than something less expensive that would need significant cash spent to make it what this one is already. 

If there ever was one, this '65 Riviera for sale in Grafton near the jail, is the perfect gangster car. If you chose to rob your own bank and spring for it. 

1971 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe - You Can't Get Hurt by What You Don't Play

The Big Chevrolet's were all new for 1971 and bigger than ever. While just an eighth-of-an-inch longer overall than the 1970 models they replaced, and a scooch less wide, a 1971 Impala was nearly eight-inches longer than the first Impala in 1958 and more than a foot-and-a-half-longer than the seminal 1955 Chevrolet. And the seeming year-in, year-out bulk up wasn't so much by plan, as Car and Driver's Patrick Bedard put it, but by a lack of restraint. It didn't matter to me; I was all of six-years-old when they came out and thought they looked fantastic. I still do. Especially the two-door coupes like this 1971 Impala Sport Coupe that popped up on Facebook Marketplace. Asking price is 15-grand. Gulp! 

Might seem funny to call something like this a "sport" anything, but from 1958 through 1979, taking 1976 off, the Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe was an important part of Chevrolet's lineup even if there really wasn't anything "sport" about it. 

What distinguished an Impala Sport Coupe from lesser Impala two-doors was its rear windshield or what some automotive cognoscenti refer to as its "back light". It was either wrap around, bubble-like or, in the case of the downsized, 1977-1979 models, angular, truncated and just plain bizarre.

Chevrolet also offered what they called the "Custom Coupe" that featured a more formal, almost notchback style rear window; I will not call it a "backlight". Above is a 1972 Custom Coupe. Essentially a debased, two-door Caprice, the "Custom Coupe" was sold alongside the "Sport Coupe" from 1968 through 1975. The Sport Coupe taking a siesta for 1976 before reappearing in 1977 through 1979. The Custom Coupe was "sunset" after 1976. 

Given a choice between a "Sport Coupe" and a "Custom Coupe", I'd take the "Custom Coupe". I prefer the "Custom's" inverted convex rear window and I love the subtle nuisance of the sculpted trunk lid. I think it looks "sportier" than the Sport Coupe too.  

With regards to this car, average retail on these right now is around $10,500, which seems fair, high retail is $18,000. At 15-large, seems they're splitting the difference.  I don't know about this thing. Sure, the body looks great, I love what appears to be the factory hue on it, no idea if it's a repaint or not but you would almost have to assume it is, but look at the rear end - why's it sitting so low? There's no mention in the ad that it has an air suspension or the rear coil springs, no leaf's back there, have been chopped or are broken. 

What really scares me is the rebuilt engine. Poster of the ad brags Holley EFI has been an added, it's got AFR heads, which are freakin' expensive, Howard Rattler cam, long tube headers, Borla exhaust, 3.42 posi-traction and on and on. Someone's got bucks in this thing. However, unless there's receipts and any warranty is transferable, I'd walk, make that run away screaming. Fifty-plus year-old engines were never meant to be as high stressed as todays rebuilds can make them - this could blow up as easily as movie theaters make popcorn. I'd rather buy this car with the tired old 350 it was born with and go from there. 

As we say in music radio, you can't get hurt by what you don't play. Same is true when purchasing an old car, you can't get hurt by what you don't buy. If I were you, I'd keep looking for something that's way more original. 

1998 Buick Riviera - People in Cleveland, Ohio Can Be Very Funny

This 1996 Buick Riviera popped up on my Marketplace feed today and it made me laugh. People up here on the "North Coast" can be very funny even if they don't mean to be. Give me a second or two and I'll tell you why this one made me chortle. 

Buick's first "Riviera" in 1949 wasn't a model in and of itself but a designation to denote their hard top models, cars that had the profile of a convertible without being one; actually, they were convertibles with a steel roof attached. The first Buick Riviera introduced as separate model was the legendary 1963 that every Riviera afterwards paid some homage to. Even if some iterations just used the distinctive "R" logo. I

Introduced for 1995, these cars were built on the same platform the 1995-1999 and 2001-2003 Oldsmobile Aurora were built on. Fun facts, there was no model year 2000 Aurora.  

I've always been a fan of these cars. I love every line on them, although, while somewhat interesting looking, I found the dash design not befitting the extravagant exterior. I found these cars, comfortable, roomy, sure-footed and, everything being relative, the supercharged versions I thought were very fast. I'll also say they were quite the quantum leap forward from the suck-wodian 1986-1993 models. More fun facts, there was no 1994 Riviera. 

The poster of the ad for this one claims it's in very good condition with no rust. Asking price is $2,800. Have to wonder why it has at least two flat tires, though. Anyways, there's only one teeny-tiny problem with this car...

It needs a steering column. Heavens to mergatroids, what the heck could have happened there? Looks like the sucker just plum broke free. 

Like I said, people in Cleveland, Ohio can be very funny. 

 Very good condition no rust no mechanical problems only needs a steering column