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.

1984 Oldsmobile Hurst/Olds Cutlass

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Aside from those BMW wheels (huh?) and the fire department wanna be pinstripes this is a pretty interesting car.

Back around the time when Oldsmobile made the ridiculous decision to make a small, front-wheel drive car and call it a Cutlass while continuing to make the same old rear-wheel drive car and also call it a Cutlass, they remembered an old gimmick they had tried before with moderate success: trying to make an automatic transmission fun to use.

Starting in 1983, you could order your Cutlass Supreme with the Hurst/Olds package, which had some pretty decent options, like a better flowing exhaust, 3.73s, and supposedly the 307 had some slight improvements.

The main feature though, were the Hurst “Lightning Rod” shifters. I’ve been watching a couple videos of them in operation and I really can’t see any benefit from using them at all, other than showing them off and pretending you’ve got a Lenco or something. They make for an interesting conversation piece though.

The Hurst/Olds was only made in this body style for two years, 83 and 84, and it’s really easy to spot the difference between the two years. 83s were black with silver rocker panels, and 84s had a reversed paint scheme. 84s also came with the 8.5″ rear end from the Grand National while the 83s got the 7.5. After 84, they started calling the car the 442 again. As far as I can tell, the Lightning Rods were only available in the 83-84 Hurst/Olds car though.

I hope that one day this car gets reunited with its stock wheels (for that matter, any old set of 15’s would be a major improvement) and cleaned up a little bit, but I’m still just happy that someone is keeping it on the road in any capacity.

AWD Civic Wagon

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Civic wagons are rare enough but the AWD version is even more of a treat. The manual cars actually came with a 6 speed transmission which had a super low gear to the left of first gear. I’m not sure why they didn’t just call the low gear “first gear” and rename the rest of the other gears to follow suit, but whatever, it’s still cool.

The reason for the low gear was because with only 100 lb-ft of torque, the D16A6 motor really didn’t have enough power to really do anything exciting at all (or get you out of a ditch, should you accidentally manage to do something exciting). I’m pretty sure the owner of this car doesn’t have much of a problem getting a little crazy though…

Yeah, someone swapped a K-series motor in there. Aside from all the obvious, well …dirt, it looks like a really clean swap too. I bet the thing is a lot of fun to drive, and it looks like the owner of the car isn’t afraid to take the car out in the desert and have some fun with it. Civic wagons in general sort of strike me as an “I really don’t give a fuck” type vehicle, and this one says it with more sincerity than any other Civic wagon you are ever likely to see, given that about 95 percent of them have been hastily converted to rusted hood, negative cambered-out dork cars.

Happy Birthday America!

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I may not agree with everything that goes on here all the time, but God dammit, I sure am thankful to live in a place where we have the freedom to do pretty much whatever the hell we want, including airbrushing ostentatiously patriotic tailgate murals onto our gigantic diesel trucks.

And you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Happy 4th of July!

Pontiac Bonneville SSE

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While it’s a shame that the 80s and early 90’s were the heyday of under powered front wheel drive cars, the limitations imposed on car designers at the time surely forced them to come up with cars that found other ways to be interesting. The eighth-generation Bonneville SSE is a great example of this. The SSE was the top of the line trim level for the Bonneville. It was essentially a handling/appearance/stereo package since the LN3 3800 was the only motor offered in the Bonneville starting in 1988.

The interior had some really interesting features. On one side of the dash was a driver information center screen that showed an overlay of the car and pointed out problems and maintenance information. On the other side of the dash was a similarly sized display that showed a really neat graphical compass, and the center of the steering wheel had controls for the stereo and a/c, which was a pretty advanced feature for the late 80’s.

Although the car wasn’t exactly fast, I’m sure it had enough power to keep up with most other cars from its time period, and with more style than most cars have today. It’s got just the slightest amount of body cladding to where it looks really sporty, but now with hindsight being 20/20 it’s pretty easy to see that it was the starting point for Pontiac’s plastic addiction that eventually spiraled way out of control in the late 90’s.

It may be just an outdated family sedan decorated like an 80’s sports car but I’d still drive one.

Three Car Pileup

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I took some pictures of this car a while back and didn’t think much about it, other than the fact that it was really bizarre looking. A couple months went by and I heard an interesting urban legend about a car accident. I think I might have something really special here.

The story goes that back in May 2002, just before graduation, a high school kid in a CRX was racing a kid from a rival high school in a riced out (burgered out?) V6 Mustang down Tatum at lunchtime when both drivers lost control of their vehicles and they ended up hitting each other before rear ending a third car, an Intrepid that was stopped at a red light. Both the CRX and the Mustang were such powerful vehicles that they were able to achieve race car-like speeds on the streets, so when they hit the Intrepid, the force was great enough that it actually was able to fuse the three cars together. The paramedics arrived and pulled all three motorists from the gruesome wreckage, pronouncing them dead at the scene.

The police showed up shortly after the paramedics. They had trouble identifying the owners of two of the vehicles. They were able to run the plates of the CRX to identify the driver, but it had embedded itself so deeply into the other two cars that the whole wreck eerily resembled one mangled, dilapidated vehicle. Even the paint had been blended together, further reducing what had once been three cars down to one singular automotive monstrosity.

As the police sat in their cars doing paperwork and waiting for the tow truck to arrive, something unbelievable happened. The officers reported that the car simply started on its own and began revving its engine at them, as though it was taunting them. They cautiously approached the car with their weapons drawn, assuming that there had been a passenger that had survived and might try to make a run for it. When the officers got close enough to see through the triple-dark window tint, they were startled to discover that nobody was in the car.

Before anyone could even say a word, the car is reported to have shifted itself into gear and took off down the street at an unbelievable rate of speed. The officers tried to pursue it, but the wreck, now believed to be sporting all-wheel-drive and the combined power of a CRX, a V6 Mustang, and a Dodge Intrepid was just too fast for them and it got away.

They say that sometimes, when a soul is unable to complete an important task on Earth, it can become trapped in this realm in a sort of infinite loop, doomed to repeat its final actions for all eternity. It’s been ten years since the accident now, but legend has it that every once in a while you can still see the wreck driving around near Tatum and Bell around lunchtime, revving its engine in a state of perpetual unrest and seeking closure by paradoxically attempting to race itself, neither winning nor losing. Forever.

But mostly losing.