1965 Rambler Marlin - BOGO

 

If you're into the offbeat two-fers, well, friend-oh, today, you're in luck. For sale a stone's throw from the old triple-wide out here west of Cleveland, Ohio, we've got a BOGO of sorts here with not one, but two 1965 Rambler Marlins you can take off the seller's hands for $2,000. He will not separate. 

Neither are running but the black one is the "tighter" of the two, the blue one was bought as a "parts car" to help fix up the black car. The owner came to realize he was in over his head and is trying to cut his losses. Be forewarned, though, cars whose manufacturers no longer exist and don't have an underground network of sorts for parts and resources are what we call "orphans", and their owners are, for the most part, on their own. These aren't O.G. Ford Mustangs or another automobile named after a fish, the Plymouth Barracuda. 

So, what were these things that are an odd combination of semi-Ford Mustang cool and '50's sci-fi movie weird? Simply put, the Marlin was American Motors attempt to tap into the burgeoning youth market in the mid-'60's. 

By the early to mid 1960's, American Motors, or AMC, formed in May of 1954 with the merger of the Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson Corporations, had an image problem - their cars were seen as out of touch with the times, dated, dull, and frumpy; Ramblers were for the terminally and unapologetically unhip. My old man had a 1961 Rambler Classic when I was a kid, and I was mortified by it. Especially living in a neighborhood awash in a sea of flashy Chevrolet's, Buick's and Ford's. I can still hear the flaccid blaaat of its soulless six-cylinder engine droning on endlessly, my father's knee on the bottom of the big steering wheel while he used both hands to light a cigar. Yes, while moving with me unbuckled in the front passenger seat. 

Taking a page from Ford and Plymouth's playbook where their "sporty" compacts were built on the chassis of the yeoman like Falcon and Valiant, respectively, AMC built the Marlin using much of their new-for-1964 Rambler American. 

The American was a significant step forward for AMC, stylists eschewing much of the quirk-for-the-sake-of-quirk, oddball-ness that been the hallmark of Ramblers before and after the merger. The new American was dutiful and conventional looking. They were perfectly inoffensive. Perhaps too much so. I'd stop way short of calling them handsome. 

The Marlin had two problems. The first was its styling. Attempting to do a fastback, which was construed as youthful, AMC executives insisted it not only seat six, but the rear seat passengers should also have ample head room; a "3+3" if you will rather than a "2+2". 

To pull that off and be aesthetically pleasing would be a challenge given the diminutive dimensions of the Rambler American. The end result was a rear roofline that's an attempt to be all things to all people, you know what happens when you try to make everyone happy. AMC did little to differentiate the Marlin from the American forward of the doors. 

 

Sorry, a Ford Mustang 2+2, on the left, it ain't. It's not even a Plymouth Barracuda (right) that despite Plymouth not changing much of anything on its Valiant aside from a massive rear windshield, is far more pleasing to look at. 

Although Marlin's had optional 289- or 327-cubic inch AMC V-8 engines, unlike the Americans that were saddled with six-cylinder engines only, Marlin's had the same underpinnings American's had. That meant mushy springs and shocks, slow steering, woeful brakes. Doesn't matter how much the V-8's were, power is nothing without control. 

On our Marlins here, the parts car has AMC's 289 V-8 that at least turns, the black one has a seized up 232-cubic inch six. 

Marlin sales were abysmal. AMC moving just 10,000 or so for 1965, less 5,000 for 1966. 

AMC rebooted it for 1967 basing it on their intermediate sized Ambassador. Despite the larger canvas making the "3+3" concept perhaps the best it could be, it's still "off" in the way 1966 and 1967 Dodge Chargers are, AMC sold a scant 2,500 Marlins for 1967. they, warning, deliberate pun incoming, threw the Marlin back in the water for 1968 and beyond. 

Although I'm not a fan of these cars and most anything American Motors came out with, it would be a shame to see these two Marlins hauled off to the scrapper. Best we can hope for is someone who's got a Marlin they're restoring, and they can use parts off these cars to complete their project. Or get the black one running by any means possible, perhaps even rat-rot it, and call it a day. 

1972 Chevrolet Impala Custom Coupe - Where I Draw the Line

Most two-door, 1972 Chevrolet Impala's I come across these days are Impala "Sport Coupes" not "Custom Coupes" like this one. The only real difference between the two is the rear window; on the Sport Coupes it's rounded, bubble like almost as an homage of sorts to the Impala Sport Coupes of yore. These Custom Coupes have convex rear windows that I prefer.  The difference sounds minute, it's not though when you see Sport and Custom Coupe side by side. 

Poster of the ad for this on Facebook Marketplace is asking $6,000 for it. Rather than get into the weeds about how I don't think it's worth a fraction of that, I'd rather luxuriate in the photographer's serendipitous use of the thin winter sunlight out in Wichita, Kansas. 

The relative darkness puts an additional patina on everything we see. Right down to what's left of the Chevrolet "small block", 400-cubic inch V-8 that hasn't been turned over in forty-years. I've driven Chevrolet's of this vintage with this engine and, everything being relative, they pull these big cars quite well. 

The interior is the big problem here. Ad says it's "mousy". That's a gross if not apt description. This picture is so good you can almost smell the little varmints. They've chewed up much of the wiring too. 

In my opinion, 1972 was the end of the run for the Golden Age of General Motors design that began, in earnest, in 1949. For 1973, federally mandated safety bumpers were required up front that changed the look of all cars, the Chevrolet Impala included and not for the better. Prior to '73, this car included, it seemed designers could do as they please in the interest of sales; after '72, they had to be concerned with pressing matters they never had to deal with before. 

That's why many of us draw the line on what's a "classic car" and what's not at 1972. I know I do. Everything after 1972, with some exceptions, of course, are just cars. 

1978 Cadillac Eldorado - 26 Cents A Pound. Such a Deal.

Here we have what one of the last of the big boys, a super clean, 19,000-mile Cadillac Eldorado from 1978, the year before Cadillac shrink-rayed it. This one here for sale on Marketplace less than an hour southeast of The Old Triple Wide outside Cleveland, Ohio. Asking price is $19,000. Figure a dollar for every mile it's got on it or about 26-cents per pound. Such a deal. 

Poster of the ad claims to be the third owner of this brute and it was in storage for a number of years before they bought it. Sounds like an estate sale or "barn find" to me and they're trying to make some bucks on it. Nothing wrong with that. Unless you're the buyer and you find out afterwards you overpaid for it. Prices on these it what appear to be solid shape pegs this priced fairly. Poster of the ad says it's mostly original and that scares me to some degree. 

Thing is, who'd buy this thing? I'm as "car guy" as they get and a Cadillac man too but even I'd chafe at this thing. It's just too damn big. What's more, I'm past the age of wanting something nostalgic and forgiving its sins. And this car has a lot of sins. It'll handle poorly even if the suspension is up to snuff, be oh-so-difficult to maneuver and families in Kia crossovers will blow by you like you're standing still. Did I mention single-digit gas mileage? It'll run you over a hundred bucks to fill it up. 

To that end, I don't get these cars anymore. I did back in the day, mind you but now I like to have my oldies or weekenders do more for me than just look good. And don't get me wrong, this old boat looks great. I love the color combo. Lovely. That GM grey paint has a tendency to oxidize and turn white, no word if this is a repaint or not. The bumper filler panels are pristine too. 

Under the hood this one has Cadillac's new-for-1977, 425-cubic inch V-8. Making all of 180-net horsepower, again, you're not going anywhere fast in this thing. It'll crank out 320 foot-pounds of torque and with a 2.73:1 drive ratio, it'll pull off the line decently. Thing is that this porker will tilt the scales on the dark side of two-and-a-half tons. Move over, gramps.

Cadillac's first came out with an Eldorado in 1953 to help celebrate their 50th anniversary. More or less a fancied Coupe deVille, in 1967, Cadillac made the Eldorado front-wheel-drive sharing its trick "United Power Plant" with the Oldsmobile Toronado. It was redesigned in 1971, our '78 here is part of that 1971 rebooting. From 1967 to 1970, Cadillac heralded the Eldorado as being a sports-tourer of sorts, the 1971 to 1978 were more like fluffy parade floats. 

 

 

1977 Ford Maverick - The O.G.

This 1977 Ford Maverick popped up on Marketplace recently and is very similar to my 1974 Mercury Comet I had as my first car from February 1982 through June of 1983. The 1971 to 1977 Mercury was a lightly disguised, badge-engineered version of the O.G. Maverick. Here you thought the Ford Maverick was an adorable little trucklet. Nope. Back in my day, this was a Ford Maverick. Now get off my lawn. 

The similarities to my Comet run more than sheet metal deep. The front passenger side floor is rotted out on this car as well, poster of the ad says the driver's side is rotted out too. Imagine my horror when I realized my floors were melting. I first noticed my carpeting would be soaked when it rained, then a friend put his foot through the floor playing air guitar. "Ah, dude, something's wrong with the floor of your car! Yeah. I'll say. Thanks, pal." 

Thing is that my car was all of eight- or nine-years-old when I discovered it was a rust bucket. This thing is knocking on the door of the big five-oh. Good for you, little guy. Although, have to wonder how long those floorboards have been wasted away. Poster of the ad says, euphemistically, "she's rusty but still trusty." 

These fancy cast rims were available on Mavericks and Comets later in the production run, my Comet didn't have them. This car only has them on the front, but he's got two more that don't have tires mounted on them. Speaking of the front, poster of the ad claims the front brake lines need to be replaced. He'll do them for you if you want, no doubt jacking up the already absurd asking price of $3,500 for the whole kit and kaboodle. Good thing the floorboards are rotted out so you can "Fred Flintstone" it if the car won't stop on your way home. 

When Ford first introduced the Maverick in 1969, it was a two-door door only, a four-door built on a chassis with a longer wheelbase was introduced for 1971. Mercury dolled up a Maverick as their Comet starting in 1971 rolling it out with two- and four-doors, there was no Maverick\Comet station wagon. Useful as the four-door was, all the design charms of the two-door went over the proverbial fence. 

Maverick sales were strong at first, Ford moving nearly 600,000 of them in an elongated 1970 model year. Before Ford introduced the similarly sized Granada in 1975, a car built on the same chassis that had DNA in it going back to 1960, they sold more than 250,000 of them each year. Ford sells maybe half that number of the current compact truck Maverick each year these days. 

Dean Martin and his Stutz Blackhawks - You Want Fries with That?

A Stutz Blackhawk owned by Dean Martin was in the news recently when Bing Crosby's grandson, Philip Crosby Jr., claimed Dean damaged it driving through a McDonald's drive thru in Santa Monica, California buying food for him. Crosby told the anecdote to media outlets while promoting his involvement with the Bing Crosby estate. He didn't personally remember the incident as he was only four- or five-years-old at the time in happened in either 1976 or 1977.

Story goes that one-day Phillip, his mother and Martin were out in Martin's Stutz when young Phil complained he was hungry. Martin found an open McDonald's with a drive thru but had difficulty maneuvering the very wide car through it. Philip didn't elaborate on the extent of the damage, but he did intimate it was rather severe. 

Phillip's mother, Peggy, met Dean Martin shortly after divo0rcing Phil's father in 1972. Despite the twenty-three-year age gap, they dated for a number of years. Phillip Crosby Sr. was the third son born to Bing Crosby and his first wife, Dixie Lee. 

                                     

Before we drive up to the next window, what in the name of Ronald McDonald was, or is, a Stutz Blackhawk? 

To being with, the Stutz Motor Car Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, was the result of the 1913 merger of the Ideal Motor Car Company and Stutz Auto Parts Company. Stutz specialized in building expensive sports and luxury cars like this 1914 Stutz Bearcat. The low-volume manufacturer built less than 40,000 cars before going out of business in 1937. 

Fast forward to December 1963 to when famed automobile designer Virgil Exner wrote an article for Esquire magazine imagining what dormant automobile brands like Stutz, Pierce-Arrow and Duesenberg would look like as "modern cars". New York investment banker James O'Donnel, who had always wanted to get into the car business, helped bankroll Exner's vision. 

The, umm, end result...was the Stutz Blackhawk which debuted at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan in January 1970. Keep in mind that at the time, the 1930's, what some refer to as the "Golden Age of the Automobile", was only forty-years hence. Nostalgia is nothing new. It's also never been inexpensive. 

At $27,000 each, Blackhawks were the most expensive cars in the world at the time and deep pocketed celebrities bought them in droves. Dean Martin bought three, fellow Rat Packers Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra had theirs. Elvis Presley purportedly had five and was allegedly seen driving one the day he died. Evil Knievel, Johnny Cash, Lucille Ball, Robert Goulet, Jerry Lewis, Tom Jones, Billy Joel, Elton John bought them, even the Shah of Iran couldn't resist its, ahem, charms. If you're familiar with Liberace, should come as no surprise he had one. 

Blackhawks cost so much because they were hand built by artisans and craftsman at Carrozeria Pardane in Modena, Italy; those guys don't work cheap. They began by using the chassis of a 1971 Pontiac Grand Prix. The Grand Prix' were shipped overseas where Pardane removed their bodies and interior and hand built new ones. 

While there's a familial resemblance to the exterior of the Pontiac Grand Prix' the Blackhawk was based on, the interior was so completely overhauled that it has no likeness to the injection molded plastic insides the Grand Prix donor would have had. Disparate parts from different manufacturers were used to help make it "luxurious". 

The door handles, seats and gauges were from Maserati, the rear glass from Ferrari and the switch gear was supposedly custom made in France. The stereo was built by the Leer Jet corporation; the interior gold is 24K gold plating, the dashboard is solid wood. The trunk is lined with mink; the carpet is real fur. The wheels were the first 17-inch rims ever fitted to a production car, Firestone making specific tires for them as well. Most surviving Blackhawks today have aftermarket wheels because there are no tires made today that fit the tall but narrow rims. (This Stutz Blackhawk interior is not from a Blackhawk owned by Dean Martin as the shot above was. I used for illustrative purposes.)

All Blackhawks were made with side pipes, but they were ornamental. The pipes making an already very wide car even more so, no doubt making it difficult for a driver of a Blackhawk to nestle closely to the clown face at a drive thru. This 1972 Blackhawk is the one Martin sold to Buck Owens in 1974; given the timeline of the incident, this couldn't be the "drive thru" Blackhawk. Most likely it's the one Martin is standing next to in the faded older photos.

Nor is it this 1974 Blackhawk Martin wrecked while driving, sorry, "drunky" sometime in the mid-1970's. After this accident, Martin transferred the DRUNKY plates to his Rolls-Royce. 

The car Phillip Crosby Jr. is referring is probably this 1976 Blackhawk, sold recently at auction for an undisclosed amount. We see on this car the ornamental side pipes are even more of an appendage than on the '72. The "exhaust pipe" is all but tucked under the door reducing ground clearance significantly. 

All Blackhawks came from the factory with a plaque on the dash denoting their original owner, here's the one from the '76 Blackhawk. "Umm, sorry about your car, Mr. Martin. Would you like fries with that?" 

1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am - Cool Like Fonzie

 

Back when I was at Oceanside High School on Long Island, New York in the early 1980's, you drove something like this 1976 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, you were cooler than Fonzie. If you were a junior you looked like a senior; if you were a senior, you looked like you were in college. Just being seen in one validated you and made you look like someone going places. Even if mommy and daddy or your friend's parents wrote the check for it.

Although Oceanside was (and is) a fairly affluent community that rubs elbows with some of the wealthiest communities in the country, no kid at Oceanside drove a Corvette to school; there were some things out of reach for even the coolest and richest kids. Firebirds, Camaros and Mustangs were far less expensive, could be had with less powerful engines thus cheaper to insure. Explains why personal luxury cars were so popular as first-cars back then. Naturally, I drove a four-door, 1974 Mercury Comet. Oh, the pain. The pain. 

I lived on the literal "other side of the tracks" in a part of neighboring Baldwin that happened to be in the Oceanside School District. Had my parents bought a house another couple of hundred yards to the east I would have gone to Baldwin schools. Nothing wrong with that, just that Baldwin wasn't nearly as monied as Oceanside was or appeared to be. 

Good news is, if you weren't "cool" back in high school or want to return to those halcyon days of yore when you were or thought you were, just fork over $54,575 for this redhead for sale outside Columbus, Ohio and you can be like Fonzie again. Or be as cool as Fonzie since no one could've have worn Arthur Fonzarelli's t-shirt back in the day. 

Yeah, fifty-four-thousand, five-hundred-seventy-dollars. The kicker is, it's not unreasonably priced. Meanwhile, a 1976 Corvette in similar shape would sell for roughly half that, a 1976 Camaro would go for similar money to the Corvette. 

How and why is that? Well, as us older Gen X'ers get on in age, some long for the trappings of our youth. Since no kid drove a Corvette, it makes sense, well sort of, that the cars the cool kids drove, or we aspired to drive would command top dollar. 

That would explain, to some degree, why mid-'70's Corvettes go for as little as they do, and Chevrolet did not sell a version of the Camaro in 1975 and 1976 comparable to the Trans Am. Still, $55,000? 

No doubt, in addition to nostalgia and this car's relatively pristine condition, it's not museum quality incidentally as we see here that something's not quite right, what's driving the price on this through the T-Tops is it has a 455-cubic inch Pontiac V-8. 

1976 was the last year the big engine was available in any Firebird although the big mill was down a good hundred net horsepower from what it had just a couple of years prior. Chevrolet had discontinued offering the Camaro with their 454-cubic inch V-8 after 1973, on the Corvette it was dropped after 1974. 

Us car guys and gals, who never really grew up, like big engines. Even if they are emasculated shadows of what they had been. This is the best picture of the engine they posted. 

Even with a four-speed manual and 3.23:1 rear end, Road and Track recorded a 1976 Trans Am going from zero-to-sixty in 8.4-seconds, that, friend-oh, is far from fast. Your turbocharged, three-cylinder crossover today would smoke this thing. A 310-net horsepower, 1973 SD-455 powered Firebird Formula or Trans Am might give you a run for the money. Personally, I prefer more from my "oldies" than just a nostalgia piece, hence, my weekender is a 1991 Corvette convertible. Not only could it run circles around this car, but it also cost me a fraction of what the asking price is for this. 

General Motors late and sometimes great Pontiac division built four-generations of Firebirds from 1967 through 2002, and a "Trans Am" from 1969 through 2002. The cars were very similar to Chevrolet's Camaro although marketed as being somewhat more upscale. Trans Am's were named after the Trans Am racing series. 

Seems nostalgia, which is nothing new, can be very expensive.