I was positive this was a Ford product when I first spotted it in the parking lot of Fry’s at 19th and Union Hills. But as I walked closer to it, I began to doubt myself when I noticed the wreath on the back. Continue reading
In January of 2009, myself and two friends purchased a 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Landau coupe for $600. Under the hood, it had a small block 350 V8 engine with a Rochester QuadraJet carburetor. The car ran but didn’t have much power. We were too focused on doing body work to worry about the engine at first.
I decided to take a look at the rebuilding the carburetor. A quick Google search pulled up several companies that offered rebuild services by mail – you send them your carburetor and some money and they send it back, rebuilt, in several days. The cost of these services was around $400 dollars – almost as much as we paid for the whole car!
Having ruled that option out, I looked at the cost of buying a Holley or other brand of carburetor. Again, the prices were way out of my range ($280 to $400). There was only one option left: to rebuild it myself.
I must confess that I have a newfound affection for fuselage-era Chryslers. Something about the way they look just looks “right” to me. From the headlamps to the tip of the tailpipes, I think these cars are just pure design gold.
I spotted this 1969 Chrysler Imperial sedan at Cars and Coffee in Las Vegas. It was parked a few rows away from the other cars, humbly minding its own business. No one paid it much attention, but I was smitten.
With less than a month to go until the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale 2013 auction, collectors are already murmuring about will be on this year’s list of vehicles. As always, you can count on there being dozens of survivor and frame-off restored, numbers-matching Chevelles, Impalas, Camaros, Mustangs, and other classics. I’m going to focus on some of the more interesting vehicles scheduled to cross the block in January:
If you haven’t read Trevor‘s piece on the 2013 Arizona International Auto Show, I would suggest you go ahead and read it first because it very accurately describes the experience of being at the show and driving the cars, but I figure I might as well chime in and give my take on the test drives as well.
I have to say that Mazda makes some decently cool cars in spite of the current trends happening today. But this is nothing new, Mazda has been on their own path for decades; as if their penchant for Wankel-designed rotary power is any indication. Mazda (a Japanese company) brought back the formula for the traditional British sports car in the late 1980s when most other manufacturers (namely the Detroit Big 3) were phasing out affordable, lightweight RWD vehicles in place of ugly and badge-engineered FWD econoboxes. They also helped Ford make small interesting cars when all Ford had was the Fox-platform (a decidedly awesome platform, though). Their most popular car (as far as some of the viewers of this site are concerned) almost phased out the fox body as the next generation Ford Mustang! And I’m sure that had it been a RWD Mazda platform, they’d have gotten away with it too. And to get back to present times: The next generation MX-5 Miata is to shed enough weight to get back to around 2,200 lbs and still retain it’s current horsepower rating. That’s hot rod engineering at work.
