Posts from ‘Plymouth’
1963 Ford Country Squire wagon
So much has changed in American culture over the past decade or so, but there’s at least one time-honored tradition that appears to be holding on just fine: the classic car show. From low-key summertime cruise nights to high-profile concours gatherings, people young and old love to get together and enjoy special-interest vehicles of all stripes. And some car shows, such as those produced by the Goodguys Rod and Custom Association, get big—really big. Goodguys bills itself as “America’s Favorite Car Show,” and every year the company produces an ambitious nationwide schedule of large-scale car shows that take over fairgrounds-sized venues. The events are two- or three-day extravaganzas that typically attract 3500 to 6500 vehicles and 35,000 to 100,000 spectators per show. Put on your walking shoes!
Classic Car Ads: Cheap Cars of 1983
Cheap Cars of 1983
Affordability is a relative thing. But odds are, if a manufacturer is sharing the price of a product in advertising, the thing being sold is probably a good deal. Of course, in the case of automobiles, the listed base price is subject to any number of asterisks and fine-print notations—especially back in the Eighties, before regulators were paying especially close attention to auto ads.
Classic Car Ads: Coupes of 1981
1981 Ford Granada
My dad was a coupe man, though I cannot say he owned coupes on purpose. He was a bargain hunter, and a car’s door count was less important than its price. Nonetheless, my sister, mother and I never complained about having to squeeze into the back seat. For the most part, my dad’s Chevrolet Nova 2-door, and multiple Oldsmobile Cutlass and Pontiac Ventura coupes, offered sufficient rear-seat space, provided you didn’t mind negotiating the path past the folded front seat—and for the most part, we didn’t mind.
Forgotten Concept: Plymouth Pronto
Plymouth Pronto
This is an installment in a series of posts looking back on show cars that we feel deserved a little more attention than they got. If you have a suggestion for a Forgotten Concept topic, please shoot us a line or leave a comment below.
1983 Cadillac Seville
The song “Driver’s Seat” would be British pop band Sniff ‘n’ the Tears biggest hit. Released in 1978, the tune would chart in several countries, and would provide period top-40-radio listeners with a needed reprieve from the disco music which then dominated the airwaves.
1941 Ford, and a clown
I don’t know when it was that stand-up comics began telling clown jokes. I want to say I was fully an adult before it was brought to my attention—by those stand-up comics—that the whole clown thing is pretty weird. I recall a local shock jock dedicating considerable attention to the whole clown-as-a-career thing.
1964 Mercury Marauder
Say the word “hardtop” and any vintage-auto enthusiast knows what you’re referring to: a closed-roof car with a pillarless roofline (i.e., no door posts to break up the flow of the styling). Though there were earlier examples of the basic concept, General Motors kicked off the hardtop as we know it by introducing a pillarless-coupe body style in its Buick, Cadillac, and Oldsmobile product lines midway through the 1949 model year.
1972 Plymouth Fury
Question: What would large-coupe drivers of the Seventies and Eighties drive today? Answer: Not large coupes, because there aren’t any. I suppose there’s still the Bentley Continental and the BMW 8-Series, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here.
1959 Dodge Custom Royal Lancer
As far as colors go, pink is a relative newbie. Per Wikipedia, pink was first used as a color name in the late seventeenth century. As a car color, pink’s use has been sporadic at best, though for a brief moment in time (really just the mid Fifties into the early Sixties), pink cars were all the rage.
1971 Imperial LeBaron
If you trust Wikipedia, the Cord 810 was among the first automobiles to sport hidden headlamps. As far as design trends go, that’s a pretty auspicious starting point. For the purposes of this gallery, we are making a clear distinction between hidden headlamps—those found in or near a traditional grille–and pop-up headlamps along the lines of those found on the early-generation Mazda Miata or RX-7.
