In our Cash For Clunkers open thread a few weeks ago, I made the point that the decimation of older cars is a profoundly sad thing--that these oft-overlooked cars are precious, non-renewable resources. I went further by making the observation that, for instance, Chevrolet isn't producing any more 1991 Chevy Caprice Classics and every example destroyed is an inexorable step towards a world in which we have none left.
One commenter responded to this deeply profound wisdom with the comment, "GM isn't making any more terrible 1991 Caprices? Hallelujah!"
Hold on, now. Sure, the 1991 Caprice inspires a vague sense of nausea in most people, but I love it. This generation of Caprice is the last direct descendant of the great massive rear-wheel-drive Impalas and Caprices that proudly owned the American road in the second half of the 20th century. It's the kind of huge, comfortable, relaxed cruiser that used to be right in Detroit's wheelhouse but that has been completely out of vogue for the last 20 years as the world has focused on overstyled trucks, small economy cars, and the today's omnipresent, hyper-aggressive sports sedans.
These Caprices became somewhat famous because in 1994 it could be ordered with the LT1 high-performance V-8 in standard, wagon, Impala SS, and police/taxi trim. The resulting high-performance monstrosity is a lust-worthy beast--I spend way too much time browsing listings for thrashed high-mileage ex-police LT1 Caprices--but this post is meant to commemorate the sedate plain-Jane sedan that I knew and loved in my adolescence.
I was fortunate enough to live in the same household as a '91 Caprice; I still remember celebrating when, after a decade-long string of execrable Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras, my Dad finally scored a Caprice company car. I remember watching in awe as he (seemingly in need a few tug boats) slowly navigated the leviathan into our garage. Impossibly shiny, painted in sinister jet black and with just a few splashes of chrome, it looked mean. Or, at least, about as mean as a car with skinny tires, a freakishly long rear overhang, and rear-wheel skirts can look. I'll admit that now it looks a little gawky, but at the time it was smooth.
Actually, I'll go a little farther than gawky. To today's eyes, the styling looks a little ... well, perhaps deformed, like a model car slightly melted by a mischevious boy with a Bic lighter. When I first saw the '91 Caprice, I predicted it would revolutionize large-car styling in the same way the Ford Taurus did, which turned out to be a hilariously awful prediction. The automotive world reacted to the Caprice's styling with bemused disinterest and went about its business in the 1990s making ovoid cars that were significantly more anonymous.
I'm not sure what to make of the Caprice's rear wheel skirts--they're either a cool quirk or a bizarrely baroque affectation. Chevrolet thought better of them, dropping them from the sedan after only two years of production. My dad, forced during the winter months to thread tire chains under the skirts, was not particularly amused by them.
An unkind friend of my father's dubbed our car "The Meatloaf," a nickname that I found offensive at the time but strangely applicable now. Like a meatloaf, the Caprice was supremely satisfying but not exotic--it was pure automotive comfort food. Big, smooth, and soft, motivated by a big slow-turning V-8, the Caprice was like nothing so much as a motorized Barcalounger, made to inhale long stretches of American interstate at an effortless 80 mph. Performance? Not really. Handling? No thank you. The Caprice knew its role, and it performed it proudly.
I loved it dearly, and I miss it still. The car only stuck with us for a year, soon to be replaced in its company car duties by a succession of Ford Explorers, but I loved it dearly and I miss it still. I even still have the introductory cassette tape that came with the car.
The top photo looks like an original press photo, but I found it on KitFoster.com; the second photo is from a recent classified ad here in the greater Seattle area.
Those words opened the original "Star Trek" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" TV shows, and also closed my favorite Star Trek movie, "Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan." Whether spoken by James T. Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, or Mr. Spock, they have an almost ethereal quality of their own.
Released on June 9, 1989, "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" was supposed to be the last film featuring the original cast, but fans' reaction to the production left quite a bit to be desired. If I may be so bold, it even left a black hole in many hearts.
I remember a late-night TV joke that the next movie should be called "Star Trek VI: The Apology". But STV:TFF is really a quite logical story, once the plot line is better understood. The movie was directed and co-written by that man with a life, William Shatner (note from Chris: that link is well worth checking out, though it might strike a little close to home here at Car Lust HQ. The full skit is here).
"Star Trek V: The Final Frontier" may be the least-liked film of the series, possibly because the audience did not mind-meld the connection between our friends on the USS Enterprise and what was happening down here on earth in the late 1980s when the script was written. At the time, televangelists were falling from grace faster than a lazy, fat, drunk lady of the evening playing a stolen slot machine. A few even went to jail.
To parallel their plight, STV:TFF presented a fictional futuristic prophet whose message was also a bit far from the truth. Captain Kirk summed it up when he asked the "Almighty,", "What does God need with a starship?" Or, for that matter, what does He need with a pickup truck?
"I know this ship like the back of my hand."
Certainly not a starship, the 2009 Nissan Frontier has no transporter, photon torpedoes, or invisible energy shields. But it does have two available engines: a 4-cylinder with 152 horsepower, or a V-6 with 261. Sorry, neither will get you up to warp speed, you'll just have to settle for one-quarter impulse power.
All Frontiers sold in America are made at the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tenn., where I used to work. To my chagrin, production started on the truck after I left, so I never saw one coming down the line. The first-generation Frontiers were known to be very carlike, but the present truck is much more brutish. It has also grown into a mid-sized pickup, sharing the Nissan F-Alpha truck platform and many body components with the Nissan Pathfinder, also built in Smyrna.
"I don't want my pain taken away, I need my pain!"
The first modern four-door pickup I ever sat in was a Frontier in 2000, before the Super Crew and Sport Trac were introduced. But I was disappointed then, and now, that the rear doors on the Frontier are really just ¾-doors, not quite the width of the front doors. To me, they look a bit truncated ... abbreviated ... even narrow. A Horta could never pass through these portals. I was hoping that this would have changed on the second generation, but it did not. Nissan has a few styling quirks, like the oddly-mounted outside rear door handles on the Pathfinder, that make their way from body style to body style. I guess this is one of them.
In STV:TFF, Mr. Spock surprised us with a half-brother, Sybok, brilliantly played by Laurence Luckinbill, who just happens to be married to Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's daughter, Lucy Arnaz. Desi & Lucy owned Desilu, where the original Star Trek TV series was filmed.
I have read that the "God Planet" name "Sha Ka Ree" was an abbreviated pronunciation ofSean Connery, the first pick for Sybok's pointed ears. But he had been contracted to film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and was not available to play the Vulcan.
Just like Spock, the Nissan Frontier has a half-brother, the Suzuki Equator. Both are built on the same assembly line in Smyrna, share the same backbone, heart, and DNA, yet differ somewhat by facial and body features. The Suzuki version, like the Frontier, comes as either an extended cab or crew cab model. These days, regular cab pickups seem to be dying faster than an Enterprise away team member wearing a red shirt.
"Maybe God is not out there, maybe He is in here... the human heart."
STV:TFF may not be us Trekkers' favorite Star Trek movie, but I'll never forget the campfire scene where Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy, sipping on some 23rd Century black-labeled Tennessee whiskey, sings "Row, row, row your boat." Captain Kirk also joins in, reminding us again why he is a ♫Rocket Man♫ and not a singer. The group also asks why, after all the time they spend together in outer space, do they stick together while on vacation, and why don't they have families. Later, Kirk replies that they are a family.
Pavel Chekov and Hikaru Sulu were also off in the woods together, perhaps spending some quality "family time" of their own, and got lost. I still wonder how they could communicate with Uhura via radio, but could not be tracked. Was there not/will there not be some form of GPS in the 23rd century? Mr. Scott should take a look at those communicators!
Someday, Nissan will replace the Frontier with another truck. When the last one rolls off the line, I hope the folks in Smyrna will set their phasers on "Fun" and have a party, banner, and pass out T-shirts to celebrate its success and retirement. Maybe the theme of the day will be to honor "The Final (Nissan) Frontier."
--That Car Guy (Chuck)
The Sybok image is fromStarTrek.com. All other photos in this post are from Wikipedia. Some information is from "Star Trek Movie Memories" by William Shatner.
At separate times, I met Walter Koenig ("Chekov") and James Doohan ("Scotty") right after this film was released. May both our favorite Star Fleet Engineer (Doohan) and Doctor (DeForest Kelley) rest in peace.
It's a quarter after seven on a late August morning. There's a light fog with the promise of a sunny day later. Tom Petty's "Refugee" is playing on the car stereo, and all is right with the world.
I brake the GTI to a stop at the intersection. There's no traffic coming from the left, and nothing but open two-lane road to the right.
Let's turn it loose.
Ease off the clutch, make the turn, and then hammer the gas pedal.
Yeah, but, it don't really matter to me, baby . . .
The turbo sings high harmony to the race-car melody coming from under the hood. We're up over five grand on the tach almost before I know it; clutch in, second gear.
Everybody has to fight to be free . . .
Up to third gear now.
You see you don't! Have!
Fourth gear. Yee-haw!
To live like a refugee!
At this point I'm howling along at a speed that's a bit north of prudent for this road, and there's some traffic ahead. Best exercise some restraint. Put it in sixth, back off the throttle, and let the speed bleed off.
(Don't have to live like a refugee)
Do I like my GTI? Oh, yeah. I like it. A lot.
As I've written in these pages before, my first true automotive love was my 1985 Honda Civic CRX. For most of my adult life, I've been trying to find a car that has a similar combination of efficiency, driving dynamics, solidity, personality, and just plain rightness--and maybe a few more horsepower. In the late summer of 2007, at the end of a complicated four-month cross-shop, I found a car that fit the bill--a GTI Mk. V. This was slightly ironic because back in the day I had originally wanted a GTI Mk. I, but just barely couldn't afford it.
The Mk. V GTI, introduced in the U.S. in the 2006 model year, is the hotted-up version of the fifth-generation Golf/Rabbit hatchback. It looks as if someone took the previous generation Golf (itself an evolution of Giorgetto Giugiaro's Mk. I) and ran it through the wind tunnel a few times. The basic Rabbit-y shape and styling cues are there, but everything is rounded off and raked back in the interests of cutting the drag coefficient. I like my cars a little more creased and folded, so the new shape took a bit of getting used to. The one major flaw I see in the styling is the blackout treatment of the bumper between the headlights, which combines with the black honeycomb grille to give it an Audiesque schnozz that really doesn't go with the rest of the car. (The new GTI Mk. VI has a redesigned front end that corrects this flub.) At some point, I may have the center of the bumper repainted gray to match the body.
Inside is a very spacious cabin rendered in super-dark near-black plastic, with brushed aluminum trim inserts. The cloth seats are upholstered in a plaid pattern lifted straight out of the Mk. I GTI. The seats themselves are comfortable and well-bolstered. Your humble narrator can fit his large self as comfortably in the back as in the front, and the trunk holds more than you'd expect. Fold the rear seat down, and the cargo capacity is prodigious. The build quality is excellent, and the car feels indestructably solid.
The layout of the driver's position is superb. The steering wheel has little bulges that make perfect handgrips, located at the classic "10-2 position" they taught you in driving school. The shifter, stereo, and other controls are conveniently located. The instrument panel is one of the nicest I've ever seen. It lacks a boost gauge, but makes up for it with a clever multifunction computer screen which displays instantaneous and average MPG readouts and a whole bunch of other data I've never accessed, warns you when you're running out of gas or window fluid or have low air in the tires, and even reminds you when it's time for scheduled maintenance. The only ergonomic complaint I have is that the wiper controls are a little quirky--you have to turn off the rear wiper in order to use the washer in the front.
The GTI is powered by a 1,984cc turbocharged, dual overhead cam, direct-injection four-cylinder engine. This engine produces 200 horsepower at 5,100-6,000 RPM, and 207 pounds of torque at 1,800-5,000 RPM. That nice wide power band means that the GTI has good pickup. Even when loping along in top gear, you've got maximum or near-maximum torque available at the flick of your right ankle. If there's any turbo lag, or any hesitation in the drive-by-wire throttle system, my senses aren't good enough to detect it.
My GTI has a six-speed transmission. The reviewers all say that the optional Direkt-Schalt-Getriebe twin-clutch automatic is the greatest thing in drivetrains since sliced bread, but I got the six-speed because (1) I wanted a traditional stick shift in the family for my sons to learn to drive on, (2) the DSG was another $1,200 or so that I didn't feel like spending, and (3) I like shifting my own gears. The manual tranny is a joy, with a smooth clutch that's easy for beginners to learn on. I do think six speeds is overengineering it a bit, though. Five would have been enough. I really haven't found much use for fifth gear apart from hypermiling in residential subdivisions. (25 MPH in fifth is about 1,200 RPM, good for 40-50 MPG on a flat road. Eat my dust, Prius!)
For those interested in acceleration--aren't we all?--VW claims a 0-60 time of 7.2 seconds for a GTI with this powertrain. The test results published in the buff books ranged from 6.1 to 6.5 seconds. Mid-sixes seems about right. There's more than enough power for freeway merges and other affairs of normal driving, and there's plenty in reserve for when you want to make your passengers go "Ooooh!" or embarrass the poseur Trans Am in the next lane.
When it comes time to reverse the process and bring the GTI to a stop, you have at your disposal the best brakes I've ever experienced. Press down on the pedal and the big red calipers stand athwart the laws of physics, commanding "Stop!" In car magazine road tests, the 70-0 braking distance is somewhere around 160 feet, which is darned impressive.
The steering is precise, with plenty of road feel--I didn't realize until I read the owner's manual that it's got power assist!--and there's no noticeable torque steer under acceleration. Lateral grip is somewhere around 0.85g, depending on which magazine did the testing. The stiff suspension means that you are aware of every bump, crack, and expansion joint in the pavement. It's not a rough ride, but not a soft one either--but this is a small price to pay for the GTI's driving dynamics.
Take the GTI down a squiggly back road, and it's a blast. The car is extremely agile and responsive for its 3,200 pounds. It stays flat in the corners and goes where you point it, and there's plenty of power for accelerating out of each bend. Various electronic stability nannies are watching over you, but they are unobtrusive in their ministrations. You just zip along the straights and toss it into the curves and sing along with "Refugee" or "Radar Love" at the top of your lungs and wonder why other cars can't do what this one does. You are further tempted toward hoonery by the GTI's personality, which is half uber-competent German engineer and half mischievous teen-rebel leprechaun. The GTI wants to play, and it can handle anything you throw at it.
I should say something about fuel economy. The EPA rates it at 21 MPG city, 29 highway, and 24 combined. I was trading in a Mercury Grand Marquis, and since the Mercury barely broke 20 MPG downhill with a tail wind, that would have been good enough for me. In actual daily use, I get between 28 and 29 MPG--even though a GTI is not designed with fuel efficiency as its primary objective and I'm not "driving green" by any means. According to the trip-average function on the car's computer, we got 33 MPG coming home from South Bend, a four-hour freeway run mostly in sixth gear at the speed of surrounding traffic. Had I cut my speed down by five or ten miles an hour and made a conscious effort to hypermile, I could have pushed that number higher. The GTI is so darned efficient that even if I were to drive around trying deliberately to make my carbon footprint as large as possible--mashing the gas pedal hard, upshifting late, laughing at speed limits, cackling "Die, polar bears! Die!" as I do my part for global warming--I would still get 25 MPG!
I know VW's reputation for fanatical German quality has been a bit tarnished in recent years, but so far my GTI has not let me down. I'm approaching the 50,000-mile scheduled maintenance as of this writing, and have had no mechanical failures. Zero, zip, nada, none. Two years after taking delivery, the car is still as tight and rattle-free as the day it left Wolfsburg.
Volkswagen had two series of commercials for the Mk. V GTI. The first encouraged you to "Make friends with your Fast," where the "Fast" is a small gremlin-like creature meant to symbolize your desire to drive the GTI flat-out.
VW even went so far with the gag as to mail me my very own Fast, identical to the one in the commercials, within a couple of weeks after I bought the GTI. The Fast came with a separate owners' manual, which is an absolute hoot to read.
The second series of commercials combined hip-hop style and German-engineered nerdness:
There seems to be an unwritten rule that GTI Mk. V owners have to wave to each other. I first noticed all the friendly waves I was getting about two or three weeks after I got the car. I'm not sure what it means, but I think it's an indication of just how happy a GTI can make you.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go enjoy a little quality time with my Fast...and my dog.
When Car Lust asked readers for personal stories about "that" car, it was difficult for me to narrow it down. Truth is, I have an emotional attachment to every car I've owned. Even cars I haven't owned. At eight I cried when my dad sold the old Chevy 3100 farm truck that my grandpa bought new in '51. Even cars that weren't really cars. My childhood Sears go kart, Honda Trail Z50 and Honda SL125 occupy every bit an honored place in mymemory as any of my cars, and I still get a rush whenever I see one.
But on to the cars: First was this '69 Chevelle, which I bought at 14 with hay baling money and windfall 4-H pig profits. By the time I had a valid drivers license I had added air shocks, headers, a Holley 4bbl carburetor, the fat Mickey M60s on Cragar S/S wheels. With a wheezy 307 and Powerglide it was easy pickings for the the big cube muscle cars that dominated the Dazed & Confused parking lot at my rural Iowa high school. But it was popular with the girls, and was the site of my first "meaningful experience."
Robert Williams once said that customs are for getting girls, and hot rods are for getting rid of them. Having lost one too many clandestine blacktop races with my chick magnet Chevelle, at 17 I swapped it for this '67 Pontiac LeMans. Contrary to the bland "326" fender badge, it sported a 421 SD TriPower and M21 from a '64 Catalina. It would have been the fastest car in my high school if not for my brother's '70 Chevelle SS 454 LS-5.
College beckoned, and with it more sensible cars to park in the dorm lots. Those include a weak smog-choker '73 Nova SS, a '71 VW Bug, and an '85 Mustang 5.0 whose payments necessitated a two year diet of mac and cheese dinners.
When Grandpa died in '88 he left me the last car he ever bought, a red '76 Malibu coupe with only 18k on the clock. With marriage, there came the requisite succession of rational appliance cars and minivans which my kids customized with spit-up and spilled Cheerios. But even when they were little I endeavored to keep a frivolous fun ride on the side. There was the '69 Karmann Ghia convertible I bought from the original owner. When my infant daughter had colic, 2 a.m. rides in that Karmann seemed to be the only thing that would calm her down. That was followed by a '65 Corvair Corsa convertible with the 180-horsepower turbo.
As the kids grew I returned to my first car love, hot rods. As far back as I can remember I have always been obsessed with rods and customs; building countless plastic model kits, collecting the magazines, worshipping at the altar of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. It's a religion I inherited from my dad, a 50's hot rod greaser, and my grandpa, whose first car was a sporty Apperson Jackrabbit roadster. Some years back I bought this '59 Impala Sport Coupe from a Missouri acquaintance, which you can currently see cruising around the DFW Metroplex.
Later, these two: a '66 Buick Riviera lowrider and a steel '23 Model T roadster. The T was an early project of Orange County builder Rudy Rodriguez who has gone on to build a few cars for ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. With a 300+ horsepower Chevy 350 and a curb weight of only 1,500 pounds, it is easily the scariest, white-knuckle-est car I've ever owned.
Hot rods and customs are the ultimate distillation of personal car taste, and each says something about its builder. In 2005 I finally had the chance to put my own ground-up imprimatur on a car. I located a rusty 1931 Ford Model A coupe in a barn in western Illinois. 20 months later, my pal Drew Didio and I finished it. The coupe is a homage to the custom street/show rod style of the early 60s, most notably Detroit's Alexander Brothers. At last count it contained pieces from 15 different cars, including a junkyard '59 Pontiac that contributed the 389 mill and dashboard.
But as every car fanatic knows, there is only one real basis for a hot rod: the 1932 Ford. The Duece. Bade by the gods, made flesh by Henry and Edsel. What Robert Johnson was to the Blues, the Deuce is to hotrod-dom. I recently had the chance to make good on a lifelong promise to myself and buy a steel Deuce 5-window body and frame. It's an old Chicago street racer from the 50s/60s, and Drew and I are currently resurrecting it with help from my 13-year-old gearhead son. The motor will be a blown '65 Corvette 327/365 hitched to an M21 4-speed. This will be the "keeper," the one I plan to drive to the Deuce Centennial in 2032.
I originally planned to be buried in it. But after my son's protests, I told him, "okay, you can keep it. Just lay a nasty burnout at the funeral."
Iowahawk, otherwise known as David Burge, writes political satire and essays on the glories of hot rods, lowriders, and other expressions of automotive art at http://iowahawk.typepad.com/.
I just have to mention my Mitsubishi Galant VR-4. It was sold in the U.S. in small numbers (3,000 in 1991-92, I think) and in Japan and Austrialia (where I am) in a similarly restricted way. It was very much a sleeper car--I owned an original 1988 Japanese-delivered model that was imported into Australia.
Overall, it was such a fun car to drive--all-wheel-drive, a 2-litre turbo, and it was built to cruise in comfort. Various optional extras were had on some models--cruise control, climate control, sun roof. The Japanese-delivered model also had a larger intercooler, dual-runner intake manifold, and funky electric folding mirrors.
The AWD drive system wasn't particularly high-tech. Open diffs front and rear (unless you were lucky enough to get the RS model from Japan which had a limited-slip diff in the rear) and a viscous-coupled centre diff that normally provided a 50/50 front/rear split but would (under slip) deliver up to 70-percent drive to the rear. That made for lots of fun in the wet--four-wheel power slides are the bomb.
The other unusual thing about the car was that it had four-wheel steering. Over about 45 km/h (28 mph) the rear wheels would steer in the same direction as the front wheels but only by about 3 degrees. It was a love/hate thing--some people disabled it, some people didn't mind it. Personally, I don't think it helped the handling, but it didn't adversely affect it either. Given that the standard steering rack was 2.5 turns lock-to-lock it didn't really seem to matter.
Plus, it was practical. You could pack four people into it (five if you squeezed) and their luggage--cruise around for the weekend and when you put the right foot down, it would always respond, regardless of how much weight it was carrying. Overtaking on country roads was bliss.
Common mods were better wheels and tyres, bigger turbo and intercooler, better brakes, and better suspension.
I miss my VR-4; I always had a smile on my face getting out of it. It wasn't perfect, but it was just right.
I've enclosed a couple of photos--one of my car in a filthy state (got to use it on gravel roads, after all - right?) and one from a track day we had a while back before I sold it.
Robert Williams once said that customs are for getting girls, and hot rods are for getting rid of them. Having lost one too many clandestine blacktop races with my chick magnet Chevelle, at 17 I swapped it for this '67 Pontiac LeMans. Contrary to the bland "326" fender badge, it sported a 421 SD TriPower and M21 from a '64 Catalina. It would have been the fastest car in my high school if not for my brother's 
Submitted by Brettski for 
The other unusual thing about the car was that it had four-wheel steering. Over about 45 km/h (28 mph) the rear wheels would steer in the same direction as the front wheels but only by about 3 degrees. It was a love/hate thing--some people disabled it, some people didn't mind it. Personally, I don't think it helped the handling, but it didn't adversely affect it either. Given that the standard steering rack was 2.5 turns lock-to-lock it didn't really seem to matter.
Submitted by Iowahawk for Our Cars Week
But on to the cars: First was this '69 Chevelle, which I bought at 14 with hay baling money and windfall 4-H pig profits. By the time I had a valid drivers license I had added air shocks, headers, a Holley 4bbl carburetor, the fat Mickey M60s on Cragar S/S wheels. With a wheezy 307 and Powerglide it was easy pickings for the the big cube muscle cars that dominated the Dazed & Confused parking lot at my rural Iowa high school. But it was popular with the girls, and was the site of my first "meaningful experience."