1985 Chevrolet Caprice Estate Diesel - Highway Robbery

Although by 1981 GM had all but worked out all or most of the kinks in them, the bottom line was any car back that was diesel-powered was a dog. And by 1985 when this impeccable Caprice Estate was new and shinier, gas prices had flattened negating most of the value proposition the improved mileage of diesel engines provided. "No-go but good mileage" worked only as long as gas prices seemed to be headed to five bucks a gallon.  

At first glance it would seem that General Motor's soft-balled development of their diesel engines as there were so many issues with the first batch of them made between 1978 and 1980. For the record I'm referring to the Oldsmobile 350 cubic-inch V-8 and not the later 4.3-liter V-6's (there were two versions; one for rear-wheel-drive cars, the other for front-wheel-drive). The V-6's, while hardly powerhouses, were much better engineered and assembled than the early 350 V-8's. Fun facts, there was also an Oldsmobile 260 cubic-inch V-8 (1979 only) that had much of the same maladies the 350 had.

Truth was development of the diesels, done by GM's long gone Oldsmbile division, began in 1973 and there was copious R&D done on them; just not enough. Couple that with GM's inherrant cost-cutting and undertrained dealership service departments and GM had a public relations fiasco on their hands right up there with the Corvair. A second generation Oldsmobile diesel 350 was introduced for 1981 but by then the die was serverely cast; diesels meant "bad". So bad that there wasn't a domestic automobile powered by a diesel engine sold in this country until 2015 when Chevrolet made a diesel engine optional on their Cruze. 

How this "oil-burner" has made it to 2021 in what appears to be original condition is a bit of a head scratcher. 

This is a shot of the odometer and, again, from the looks of things this appears to be the "right-mileage". Perhaps no-one wanted to use "grandpa's wagon" after he passed because of the diesel engine; yet no one wanted to part with it. That's as good a tale as I bet the real story is. 

Grandpa's wagon here is for sale outside Pittsburgh at one of those "sign-now, pay-later" lots with an asking price of $9,995. You know those dime-a-dozen lots dotting street corners in every rust belt town from Buffalo to Detroit; they're fronts for high interest used car loans. Hey, as long as it's legal. But asking ten-grand for this seems like, warning, pun incoming, highway robbery to me.  

We take engine performance for granted today but back in the 1980's if a car had good power, and we're talking "good-enough" power not today's over-powered "power" that even Nissan Versa's have, it was hedonistic. Figure zero-to-sixty in this thing would take roughly eighteen-seconds and that's about as slow as the Society of Automotive Engineers (S.A.E.) would allow a vehicle to accelerate back then. More fun facts: the Cadillac Seville diesel of this era takes the cake as the slowest-to-sixty vehicle ever sold; 19.5 seconds. The catalytic converter on my son's 2003 Chevrolet Malibu wore out recently clogging exhaust flow and while the engine ran fine, its pick-up reminded me of slow cars from 1980's. 

Somewhat similar to the rush to "electric's" that we have going on today, the diesel engine option on these things wasn't cheap. And amortizing the extra cost of the diesel engine over time, to me what with the drivability of these cars so relatively severe, has never seemed worth it. So, what's to become of our Caprice here? Part of me wishes I could inherit it and put a crate engine in it; this would be a bad-ass sleeper. However, dropping ten-grand or so to purchase it and then spend another five-to-six- to make it what it "could-be" sounds as foolish a spend as someone in 1985 opting for the diesel option on this thing in the first place. Sorry, grandpa. 

 

1982 Mercury Cougar Station Wagon - Please Don't Call It a Cougar

I've never been able to begin to understand why Ford glued "Cougar" to a Ford Granada station wagon for 1982. And only 1982. There had to be solid good reasoning behind that, right? 

To me it was insult on top of injury seeing that for 1981 Mercury perched a four-door Cougar at the top of their mid-size sedan pecking order replacing the late and certainly not great Monarch. The Cougar two-door, essentially a badge engineered Thunderbird, stuck around. Such as it was, it least it was still technically true to at least what it was going back to 1974. While that was a far cry from even what it was from even 1971-1973 to say nothing of what it was from 1967-1969, it at least wasn't a station wagon. Yet. 

Mercury's previous mid-size wagon was the Zephyr wagon which while they continued to make the Zephyr two and four door sedans in 1982, there was no wagon version. For 1982 the Ford division came out with a Granada wagon replacing the Fairmont wagon; maybe someone thought a Merc version was needed to help amortize costs?  Ok. Fine. Again, though, as a Cougar? 

Granted, "Cougar" didn't exactly hold the same cache that Thunderbird did but still, for a model nameplate that was at one time on par the Ford Mustang and then the Thunderbird, it seemed to me at least as a serious demotion for the model. Then again, the passionate cries of fans of something are rarely heard. Ford claims it listened to the Mustang faithful who clamored for Ford not to replace the Fox-body Mustang with what became the Probe but I've always thought that public relations nonsense. Then again, whom are we mortals to question the marketing and product planners at an automobile company. 

The incessant model changing wasn't just at Mercury either. Ford tweaked and altered model names on so many of their vehicles in all of the divisions back then that you'd almost need an excel spread sheet to keep track of it all. It only got worse as the Cougar sedan and wagon became the Marquis in 1983 and what had been the Marquis became the Grand Marquis. Got that? And that was just at who gives a damn about Mercury too. Over at Ford, for '83, what had been the Granada got a face lift and became the LTD and the previous LTD became the LTD Crown Victoria before becoming just plain old, Crown Victoria. Not going to go there with Lincoln. 

For 1983 Cougar returned to its rightful position in the division as a personal luxury car albeit one that once again was little more than lightly disguised Thunderbird. 

If I've learned anything about working for large corporations is that there are scores and scores of people who have to justify their paychecks. Many of them are notorious for acting or looking as thought they're busy when in fact all they're doing is looking busy. They're really not doing much of anything. I 'd put money on all the deck chair rearranging Ford did back in the early '80's on it being a bunch  of yahoo's just trying to justify their existence. 

About the '82 Cougar wagon, in fairness, it was all together not a bad transportation conveyance. Built on the same platform that Ford build more than half its line up off of, that being the Fox-body, it handled well, despite its relative diminutive size was quite spacious inside and was actually reasonably bolted, screwed and glued together well. Sure, it fell down on itself on the details and don't get me started on it built with only Ford's wheezie 3.8 liter, carburetored V-6, but it got reasonably good gas mileage.  

Just, please. Don't call it a Cougar.