Automotif DLXX...

These straight-out-of-camera monochrome JPEGs of a droptop BMW M4 make it look pretty butch, I think. Shot with the Nikon D800.

Automotif DLXIX...

A couple of newlyweds having a grand old time waving from the back seat of a Sandshell Beige 1962 Ford Thunderbird last weekend. The photo was snapped with a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

It's only lightly cropped from the full 16MP resolution, so it should embiggenate nicely.

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Automotif DLXVIII...

This 1970 Chevelle SS looks like it's down to party. It sounds like it, too.

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Automotif DLXVII..

Any E-body sighting in the wild these days is kind of a big deal to me, and spotting a 1970 Challenger RT in Lime Light with a 440 Six Pack is a very big deal indeed.

Tasty.

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Automotif DLXVI...

Continuing the second generation F-body theme from yesterday is this late Seventies Z28. The hood is an '80 or '81, the fender vents say '77-'79, the grille is '78-'80. The air dam and fender flares didn't come alont until '79, so if I were to hazard a guess, it's a '79 with a functional '80-'81 cowl induction hood rather than the original hood that came with a dummy non-functional NACA duct.

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Automotif DLXV...

A 1979 Pontiac Trans Am in Sundance Yellow, the last year for the 400... although the "6.6 LITRE" decal on the shaker scoop says this one's actually an Oldsmobile 403.  

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Automotif DLXIV...

Initially I thought this might be the Mercury Monterey I saw in the Broad Ripple Kroger parking lot back in 2017, but examining the photos, it sure doesn't appear to be.

This one has a single exhaust and is a faded Silver Turquoise Iridescent, while the other is Peacock and has dual exhausts. Also, the side mirrors are different.

Wild to think that there might be two of them in the area.

Automotif DLXIII...

You don't see a '62 Corvette out just tooling around every day, that's for sure.

Spotted this one at lunchtime on Saturday, rolling through SoBro and enjoying the sunny, temperate early autumn weather before we turn the heat on again for the week.

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Hot Rods of Summer

This past summer has been an unusually good one for classic hot rods.

Automotif DLXII...

1965 saw the debut of an all-new Galaxie at Ford. It had much more sharply-creased styling and vertically-stacked quad headlights.

It was available as a two-door coupe or convertible, as well as pillared or hardtop sedan, with each version coming in several levels of trim. In 1965 you could get your Galaxie 500 converible in either the regular flavor or the more bling-y Galaxie 500 XL form. The badges on the rear fenders of this '65 ragtop in Vintage Burgundy tell us it's an XL.

The base motor in an XL convertible was the then-new 289 2-barrel small block V-8, called the "Challenger" in Ford ad copy and rated at 200 SAE gross horsepower. The next step up was the 250-horsepower 4-barrel Thunderbird 352 cubic inch FE big block V-8. Power-hungry buyers could opt for the 300 horsepower 390 or the 425 horse 427 "side-oiler" big block.

The smaller two engines only came with the 3-speed Cruise-O-Matic slushbox, while the 390 could be had with an auto or a four-on-the-floor, and the hairy 7 Liter only came with the manual.

While the car magazines of the time all focused on the wild-eyed 427 monsters, the majority of Galaxie XL ragtops had the base motor or, like this one, the 352 FE mill.

This one was photographed with a Canon EOS-1D Mark III and an EF 28-70mm f/2.8L zoom lens in July of 2022.

Automotif DLXI...

While the '46-'48 Dodges were mostly prewar Dodge D-22's with a light cosmetic makeover, 1949 saw the first true postwar lineup from Dodge.

You could get your '49 Dodge in one of three flavors. Lowest on the totem pole was the stripped-down Wayfarer, only available as a two-door coupe, business coupe, or roadster, all on a shortened 115" wheelbase. The top of the line model was the Coronet, which came in the whole array of coupe, sedan, convertible, and wagon styles.

In the middle was the Meadowbrook, which only came as a 123.5"-wheelbase pillared sedan. They were fairly popular, moving ~90,000 units and accounting for nearly a third of the marque's sales that year.

For 1951, the Meadowbrook received an entirely new, more modern-looking front end. Due to Detroit's production being focused on vehicles for the Korean War, the '51 and '52 models were pretty much identical.

Under the hood could be found Dodge's "Get-Away" flathead inline six. It displaced 230 cubic inches and, breathing through a single Stromberg carb, was rated at 103 SAE gross horsepower. 

The only transmission choice was Dodge's Gyro-Matic, which was just the Dodge brand name for Chrysler's Fluid-Drive. Not a true automatic, it was a 3-speed manual with a torque converter. The clutch and column mounted shift lever were needed to select among the gears, but you could come to a full stop and start off again without having to use the clutch.

The upper three photos were taken in August of 2021 using a Hasselblad Lunar and Sony Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* 16-70mm f/4 OSS zoom lens, while the one below was snapped with a Nikon 1 V2 and 1 Nikkor 18.5mm f/1.8 lens.

Automotif DLX...

Volkswagen's Scirocco, a sporty coupe based on the Golf platform, had gone through a couple generations when it was supplanted in the lineup by a burlier replacement, based on the Mk2 Golf/Jetta, the new VW Corrado.

Introduced to the US market for the 1990 model year, the Corrado was a burlier, more pugnacious-looking ride than its predecessor.

Whereas the second generation Scirocco had been a graceful wedge, carrying over the general aesthetic of the Giugiaro-penned original, the Corrado looked like someone had stepped on a Golf and then gotten it mad.

It was definitely a more serious ride than its predecessor. You had to pay extra for the swoopy engines in the Scirocco, because in the '80s German automakers acted like 4V heads were special unobtainium and priced them accordingly, while the Japanese companies were sticking DOHC fours in every secretarymobile. The base '87 Scirocco motor was an 8V 1.8L four rated at 94 horsepower, and you had to pony up another $2,300... one fifth the base price of the car ...to upgrade to the 127-horse 16V version.

In the new Corrado, on the other hand, even the base motor was a 1.8L 16V unit, now rated at 134hp. Corrado buyers who wanted to party could order the G60, with had an 8V 1.8L sporting a scroll-type supercharger, intercooler, and 158 SAE net horsepower.

 

In an eight-way comparison test of sporty four-cylinder 2+2 coupes in 1992, Car and Driver gave the Corrado G60 a 5th place finish. The supercharged motor powered the stubby VW to a 7.5 second zero-to-sixty time and a 15.9 quarter mile at 87 mph. With a 130 mile per hour top speed and a 0.81g skidpad performance, these were decent numbers for an early Nineties sporty coupe

When they first came out, I wasn't a fan. They looked so much bulkier than the sleek Scirocco they replaced, but the shape has aged well, and I love the eccentric engine options and funky details like the retractable spoiler.

The one in the photos was snapped in the upper valley region of New Hampshire in April of 2015 using a Nikon Coolpix P7000.

Automotif DLIX...

By 1981, Volvo had been selling their buttoned-down, sober Swedish sleds in the US for a couple decades. Unless you were into niche motorsports like ice racing or rallying, they weren't generally anybody's idea of sporty cars, either, but for the '81 model year, the Swedes slipped a cheater card into their hand.

Starting that year you could order the four cylinder in your 200-series Volvo with a turbo bolted to it. The turbocharger took the B21F 2.1L SOHC four cylinder from 107 SAE net horsepower and bumped the output nearly twenty percent, to 127 horses (and becoming known as the B21FT in the process.)

That 127 horsepower figure may seem paltry to modern ears, but anything with a three-digit total was doing okay there in the worst part of the Malaise Era. It handily outmuscled the 116hp 2.8L inline six in a Toyota Celica Supra and the 118hp 255 cubic inch V-8 in a Mustang Cobra.

Road & Track tested an '81 GLT Turbo sedan and got a zero-to-sixty time of 10.2 seconds and a quarter mile of 17.5 at 79mph, both figures shaving a full second off the time for the normally-aspirated car.

The GLT package also came with sporty Pirelli tires on five-spoke alloy wheels, a tasteful chin spoiler, and beefier roll bars front and rear to bolster a stiffer suspension. Other than the wheels and a couple little "Turbo" badges, there was no external cue to let the Celica Supra or 924 driver in the next lane know he was about to have a really embarrassing day.

This Richelieu Red '81 GLT Turbo wagon was photographed in July of 2020 using a Nikon D7000 and 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom lens.

Automotif DLVIII...

From the 1972 through 1982 model years, Chevrolet sold re-badged Isuzu Faster mini pickup trucks in the US as the Chevy LUV. It nominally stood for "Light Utility Vehicle", but also for how you'd feel about their fuel mileage and ease of driving and parking. Get it? Yeah, it was too precious.

Anyway, thanks to the infamous Chicken Tax, the Isuzus had to be imported without a bed attached, in what's called "chassis-cab" configuration, and assembled here. By the early Eighties, both GM and Ford, who was doing the same thing with the Mazda B-series as the Ford Courier, realized "Hey, this is America. The pickup truck is practically our national vehicle. Surely we could design and build our own mini trucks?"

Thus were born the Chevrolet S-10 and Ford Ranger, which quickly came to dominate the mini truck market in sales numbers.

The '83 long-bed S-10 Durango in the picture is an example of a vehicle class that hardly exists anymore. Riding on a 117.9" wheelbase, the long bed had a 7'6" cargo box and the whole truck weighed something like 3,000 pounds and had a half ton cargo capacity.

Testing a 1982 short-bed S-10 with the V-6 and a 5-speed manual against an '82 Ford Ranger and Dodge Ram 50, Car and Driver declared the Chevy the winner. The 110 horsepower 2.8L V-6 pushed the little truck to sixty in 11.7 seconds and through the quarter in 18.1 at 75 mph. Top speed was 96 mph which I can tell you from personal experience felt plenty fast with those agricultural underpinnings. Its current descendant, the Colorado, is a "small" pickup that weighs some 5,000 pounds, stretches nearly eighteen feet between the bumpers... and can only be had with a bed that's six-ish feet long.

This S-10 was photographed in November of 2017 using a Sony a-7 and FE 50mm f/1.8 lens.

Automotif DLVII...

Few cars are as iconic as the classic "Tri-Five" Chevies, the full-size models from Chevrolet in '55, '56, '57. While the Bel Air, especially in its 1957 coupe form, gets all the ink, the 150 and 210 were the most numerous.

The 150 was largely intended for fleet sales and quite spartan, but the 210 was basically the standard variant; the Bel Air was as deluxe a Chevy as you could buy in those days, but most of its options could also be had on a 210.

The 210 could be had with either the 235 cubic inch "Blue Flame" OHV inline six, rated at 140 SAE gross horsepower, or the (still relatively new) OHV small block "Turbo-Fire" V-8 in one of three states of tune. The base V-8 had a 2-barrel carburetor and 170 horsepower, or a buyer could opt for the 205 horsepower single 4-barrel "Power Pack" or the dual-quad 225-horse "Super Power Pack", complete with a lumpy Duntov cam.

Road & Track tested a 1956 Chevy 210 2-door with a 205 horse Power Pack V-8, a three-on-the-tree manual transmission, and 3.55:1 rear end and it returned a 9.0 zero-to-sixty time and dispatched the quarter in 16.6 seconds at eighty miles per hour. The 4-bbl small block would push the 3,380 pound shoebox all the way to 111 miles per hour before being defeated by the built-in headwind.

Price as tested was $2,064, which comes to just short of twenty-four grand in constant dollars.

This Calypso Cream 1956 210 pillared sedan would have been somewhat slower, and was photographed in September of 2021 using a Hasselblad Lunar and Sony Zeiss Vario-Tessar T* 16-70mm f/4 OSS zoom lens.

Automotif DLVI...

If the Jaguar XK-E, properly referred to as the "E-Type" in the land of its birth, isn't the best looking car ever, it's close enough that it's not worth having a big argument about.

Launched in 1961 as a replacement for the increasingly archaic-looking XK150, the XK-E used an aerodynamic body envelope drawn from the design of Jag's successful D-type race cars, rather than the old narrow hood and separate fenders of earlier roadgoing Jaguar sports cars.

Under the hood was the XK inline six from the XK150, with dual overhead cams, and cylinder heads with hemispherical combustion chambers and two valves per cylinder. In addition to the DOHC head, the E-type featured other technologies that were still pretty exotic for the time, including independent suspension and disc brakes at all four corners.

The 3.8L XK engine was bored out to 4.2L starting in October of 1964 for the '65 model year, upping performance even more. At the same time, a 2+2 was added to the lineup to complement the FHC (fixed head coupe) and OTS (open two seater).

The Series 2 XK-E, exemplified by the Cream colored Fixed Head Coupe in these photos, debuted for the 1969 model year with a slew of changes, most (but not all) of which were to accommodate increasingly stringent US emissions and safety requirements.

Dash controls were redesigned to be less likely to cause injury in crashes and front seat headrests were added. Externally, the plexiglass covers came off the headlamps, side marker lights were added, and the enlarged wraparound rear bumper required the taillights to be relocated lower, beneath the bumper.

Under the hood, the triple SU carbs found on the home market E-Type were replaced by a pair of 2-barrel Strombergs, causing rated horsepower to drop from 265 to 246 SAE gross on U.S. market cars.

Road & Track tested a '69 XK-E FHC against a Corvette, Mercedes 280SL, and Porsche 911T in June of 1969. With a base price of $5,775, the magazine's test car added wire wheels, tinted windows, A/C, and an AM/FM radio, bringing the as-tested price to $6,495 and curb weight to 3,020 pounds.

The Jag managed a zero-to-sixty time of 8.0 seconds and a best quarter mile of 15.7 at 86 mph on the way to a top speed of 119.

This one was photographed in October of 2024 using an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens.

Automotif DLV...

In the mid-Seventies, Pontiac's wagons were positively enormous cars. For 1975, you could get the Safari, based on the Catalina sedan, and the Grand Safari, which was derived from the plusher Grand Ville Brougham and distinguished by its woodgrain flanks and deluxe interior appointments.

Both rode on 127" wheelbases, and cast shadows over 19 feet long on pavement that groaned under their 5100-plus pound curb weights. This Pinemist green Grand Safari has rectangular sealed-beam headlamps, first allowed in the US for '75, and the Grand Safari model was discontinued for '76, so that narrows down the date range pretty well.

With a station wagon of this length, unloading the 105.7 cubic foot cargo bay in a small garage or other confined space could be tricky, so GM engineered a clever two-piece power-operated clamshell tailgate arrangement. The upper glass half and the lower metal tailgate would slide into the roof and floor, respectively, at the touch of a switch.

Under the hood, the base motor was 185 horsepower 400 cubic inch small journal Pontiac V-8 with a four-barrel carburetor. Optionally, a buyer who needed more towing oomph could spring for a large journal 455 4-barrel, boasting 200 SAE net horsepower and 315 lb-ft of trailer-yanking torque.

After the '76 model year, Pontiac's big wagons got downsized, and a 1977 Pontiac Grand Safari rode on a 115.9"wheelbase, shared with the Chevy Impala/Caprice B-bodies. No longer needed, the complex, bulky, and heavy Glide-Away tailgate was axed, along with fourteen inches of overall length and half a ton of curb weight.

This one was photographed in June of 2023 using a Nikon D700 and 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G zoom lens.

Automotif DLIV...

In 1979 disco was showing signs of its impending demise, and so, by all indications, was automotive performance.

The big block American V-8, already strangled by lowered compression ratios and emissions reduction systems, had all but disappeared from most American performance cars, with the 6.6 liter in the '79 Trans Am being one of the final holdouts. The fuel crisis sparked by the Iranian revolution, as well as increasingly stringent Corporate Average Fuel Economy mandates would come for it, too.

Into this world came the 1979 Corvette, distinguishable from the '78 model mostly by its lack of 25th Anniversary badging. Under the hood, a less restrictive exhaust gave both the base L48 and optional L82 engines a 5-horsepower performance bump over the previous year.

That base L48 350 small block had an 8.2:1 compression ratio and was rated at 195 SAE net horsepower, while the L82 gave the buyer an alloy intake manifold, higher-lift cam, 8.9:1 compression, and 225 horsepower. Both could be had with either a three-speed auto or four-speed manual, and an L82 customer could also opt for a close-ratio 4-speed.

While the Corvette was still one of the quickest and fastest cars you could buy in America, that was damning with faint praise in the depths of the Malaise Era. Car and Driver tested an L82 'Vette with the 4-speed and optional 3.70:1 rear end and only managed a 6.6 zero-to-sixty time, while the quarter mile took 15.3 seconds at 95 mph. The car would pull all the way to redline in top gear, which resulted in a maximum velocity of 127 miles per hour.

All this could be yours for only $11,951 dollars in 1979 money, or roughly fifty-two grand in today's terms.

The Black 1979 Corvette in the photos, with the Red interior, was photographed with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens.

Automotif DLIII...

Chevrolet's fourth generation of Corvette debuted in January of 1983 as an '84 model, replacing the C3 'Vette, a.k.a. the Stingray, which had enjoyed an uninterrupted fifteen model year run.

With the introduction of the Tuned-Port Injection L98 350 Small Block V-8 in 1985, it brought performance back to the model line, after the dismal 200hp "Cross-Fire" dual throttle body injected 350 of the '82-'84 models. In '89 the clunky Doug Nash "4+3" transmission, needed because the Borg Warner T5 of the era wasn't up to the torque of the L98, was replaced with a proper ZF 6-speed manual.

Finally for the 1990 model year came the ultimate factory C4 Corvette option, the ZR-1.

GM had acquired Lotus in '86, and they proceeded to design a new 5.7L V-8 that shared nothing but its displacement and the spacing of its bore centers with the existing Chevy Small Block. An all-alloy DOHC 32V motor, it was largely built by Mercury Marine before final assembly and installation at the Corvette plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Known as the LT5, it was rated at 375 SAE net horsepower and 370 lb-ft of torque.

Car and Driver's test ZR-1 bolted to sixty in only 4.5 seconds, which was legit supercar territory in 1990 and still not too shabby today. It dispatched the quarter in 12.8 seconds at 111 miles per hour and topped out at a buck seventy-five. These wwer Ferrari and Lamborghini performance numbers, but with a GM warranty and a $51,500 price tag, roughly $124k in today's coin. Only 3,049 ZR-1s were produced that first model year, one of which is this Bright Red example.

They were subtle, too. The only external cues that this wasn't a regular 'Vette were those super meaty 17" rear skins (315/35-ZR17s mounted on 11"-wide rims) and a convex, rather than concave, rear end that had four squarish tail lamps rather than the traditional round 'Vette units. Of course, since most other cars would only be viewing it from the rear, maybe it wasn't that hard to spot...

(For 1991, all Corvettes got the convex rear, but the nose and fender vents mark this as a 1990 car, so it's a ZR-1.)

It was photographed in March of 2023 using a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and an EF 70-200mm f/4L IS zoom lens.

Automotif DLII..

By 1990 the life cycle of the Chevy Camaro's third generation was drawing to a close. Work was already underway on its replacement. Meanwhile, Chevrolet's sponsorship of the International Race Of Champions had ended, and so the sportiest Camaro reverted to the old Z28 moniker.

In order to juice sales for the final couple model years, Chevy released the 1991 Camaros early, only about halfway through the normal run of the '90 model year.

The 1991s featured some minor styling changes to spice them up, especially for the Z28 model. There was a new, more aggro ground effects package, with a bigger chin spoiler and cosmetic "scoops" on the side skirts. The Z28 added a big elevated rear wing and non-functional "power blisters" on the hood. Since there was no longer room in the spoiler for the third brake light, it was moved to the top of the rear window, on the inside.

The base motor on the Z28 was the LB9 tuned-port 305 small block, rated at 205 horsepower, with either a 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic gearbox. Ticking the G92 Performance Enhancement Group option box got you a 5-speed manual with a 3.42 rear end and bumped the output of the LB9 TPI motor to 230hp.

The hot ticket for laying down the big numbers in the quarter with a '91 Z28 was selecting the L98 5.7L motor, which put out 245 horsepower, and getting the G92 3.42 rear end. This dropped quarter mile times to 14.3 seconds at 95 mph, according to Musclecar Review magazine, making it one of the few F-body configurations that could run with the 5.0L H.O. 'Stangs of the time at the drag strip.

This Ultra Blue Metallic '91 Z28, which would have had a base MSRP of $15,445 when new, was photographed using a Nikon D7000 and 16-80mm f/2.8-4E VR zoom lens in September of 2020.