Author Archives: Mike Ross

About Mike Ross

I love anything you can drive. But I love it even more if it has a small block Chevy or Ford motor, a turbo, four wheel drive, is a hatchback, or was made in the 80s. My ideal car would be a combination of all of these things, and I'm working on building a time machine so I can go back to the 80's and convince Chevy and Ford to collaborate on a twin-engine, single turbo 4x4 XR4Ti/Fox Mustang/Third Gen F-body and hide one in a mineshaft for me to recover in brand new condition. Look for a blog post about it just as soon as it happens. Or maybe it already did, and I've already posted about it in the future and the internet just needs to catch up with it. Okay, my head hurts, never mind.

Blown Gremlin

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You can usually find this Gremlin at the Pavilions on Saturday nights. I’ve never been able to find the owner of the car but I’d eventually like to find him and ask him some questions about the car, but for now, I’ll just go out on a limb here and assume that it’s really fast.

This car is weird, and I love that about it. I love the front end, the bare metal, the bizarre half back window and the motor, of course, but I find the interior especially cool. I like everything about it, from the screen, to the randomly placed ignition components on the floor, even the “gremlin” in the sheet metal of the dash. It’s just a really cool car. Enjoy the pics!

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Automotive Recyclers

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Something looks familiar here, right?

Let’s take a closer look…

Weird.

This is a Coachmen Aurora. I can’t find any information regarding what years they used Camry taillights, but I did learn that certain Winnebagos also used the same lights.

Apparently, more than one person on the forum I was reading has had their lights stolen from their RVs. I think this lends credence to the theory that every single Camry in the whole world has had one of it’s corners smashed. The owners are desperate for replacement parts because all of the Camrys in the junkyards have broken taillights too, so  they have resorted to stealing parts off people’s motorhomes. I’m really not sure how you would take one of those lights off from the outside though, so I really don’t know what to think exactly.

I’d like to know what other RVs use existing car’s tail lights. It’s definitely something I’m always going to be looking out for now.

Ford F-350 Centaurus III

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Apparently, this truck has nothing to do with the similarly named Bronco Centurion (one of which I keep seeing but never when I have my camera). The company that does the “Centaurus” conversions is called LCM and I can’t find much information about them at all. It appears that they mostly converted Chevy and Ford vans and Explorers though, and the F-350 conversions are said to be very rare, which I believe, since I haven’t been able to find a picture of a truck on the internet yet that looks similar to this one at all.

The actual conversion itself is pretty much what you’d expect from a typical conversion van, from what I’ve read. They are supposed to be really plush and luxurious inside, but I wasn’t able to get close enough to take a look. Looking at the outside of the truck, it isn’t hard to imagine how tasteless customized these vehicles are inside.

That fact that all the accessories on the truck were designed by the same company and professionally installed does make it look much better than most of the other hyper-accessorized trucks out there (why are there so many of them anyways?) I guess you could say it’s tasteless, done tastefully.

Tachy

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At first, I hated it.

But after thinking about it for a while- …Ok, so I still hate it, but I have to admit- I also kind of admire it. Now, before I lose ALL of what’s left of my credibility here, let me explain:

To me, this car has a certain level of honesty to it, because I would have to imagine that nobody would ever put decals like this on their Corvette thinking people would think they look cool (except maybe a 3rd grader). This Corvette, in contrast to all the kids with their “illest” stickers and anodized tow hooks, feels like a breath of fresh air.

Sure, it’s a terrible concept, executed poorly, and although why someone would do something like this is just beyond my scope of comprehension, at least it’s something tastelessly original. I like to imagine this car tearing ass around town, piloted by some sort of irony-loathing anti-hipster, scaring the shit out of all the actual hipsters in their shapeless Audis as they nod their heads disapprovingly at at just how unbelievably unhip this guy is, knowing that he knows it, and wondering how it doesn’t bother him.

 

Suzuki Forsa/Cultus/Chevy Sprint Turbo

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I think a new category should be added to Wikipedia’s list of automotive superlatives: “Least Powerful Interesting Car.” Before I go into too much detail about what makes this car so marginally cool, let’s run through a brief history lesson.

What began in 1983 with one car from Suzuki ended up evolving into an incredibly complex, multi-faceted web of badge-engineering spanning over three decades.

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