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Spotted October 11 This was some kind of restoration shop / salvage yard and I was driving by The old: an Edsel Ranger 1 - angled, front 2 - front 3 - rear The new(er): I don't know what this is, but it might be fun to drive 1 of 2 2 of 2

Can’t drive anything these days. And that’s ok. Here’s some Mach E pics from today.

Spotted October 10 I was driving down the road and I saw this car parked on a lawn in a smaller town. With rectangular lamps, simple cubes in the grille, and it not being downsized, this is either a '75 or '76. The glass sunroof seems to be holding up fine. Just not sure I'd want to feed 500 cubic inches on the regular! I think the canted lower part of the opera window looks great. So do the Cadillac inscription on the rearview mirror and the tufted leather seating. An era gone by. I think this sort of car gave Pontiac a run for their money with regard to "wide track!" This sure is a wide vehicle and in fairly good shape for its age. When fins were fins. Just right. Not crazy fins from the late '50s and early '60s. And not tame fins that were on Cadillacs in the '90s and beyond. Aside from the strip gauge, I love the way Cadillac organized their dashboards. The A/C vents ran across the upper part of the dash, and there was another ledge just beneath the cowl with small gauges, warning lights, and the Cadillac emblem. It probably helped inspire the more pronounced "ravine" dash that came along in the '90s and which I really enjoyed looking into for over 10 years. Linear cowls and "ravines" on GM dashboards. Good times.

Saw a new WL JGC L for the first time up close, front looks good. Hood and sides seem too flat ( I like the creases of my WK2). Not sold on the rear either. This one was a Summit. Also saw a sharp black ‘65 Mustang 2+2, and a Pro Street style ‘73 Buick Gran Sport. Dark blue w/ huge rear tires, giant bubble hood scoop, STGE 1 license plate. Great rumble.

Another Sunday drive. Out in Ashtabula County again, saw two more covered bridges…cooler, wetter weather but scenic. Not much fall color. Crossed the Pymatuning Reservoir into Pennsylvania and went to Conneaut Lake. Nice roads, great scenery. Saw a CJRD dealer in the middle of nowhere with probably a dozen new Jeep GC Ls on the lot. Saw a red and white ‘64 Dodge Custom 880 2dr on a small town used car lot.

I should be checking out this thread more. It's cool so that one doesn't have to create a new thread nor feel they have to put something in Random Thoughts - - - - - "ODE TO THE FIRST GM COLONNADES" This "catalogue" is all about how much I like this series of intermediate cars sold by B-O-P and Chevrolet from 1973 to 1977, with special emphasis on 1975-1977, which aged like a fine wine. With their long hoods, shorter trunks, and opera windowed greenhouses, set off by landau or full vinyl roofs, not to mention the typically creased backlite, I thought these were a stroke of genius. With rear wheel drive, weight coming in at close to 4,000 pounds with V8 engines, many exterior colors to choose from, and many interior schemes in terms of seating arrangements, dash configurations, and such, they conceptually seem like dinosaurs today. But for anyone who experienced these cars, and even got to drive them, they probably have a place in your heart and are a source of good memories. They were also, for the most part, reliable, and people kept them for a long time. Today, buying one in good condition does not come cheap. * the photos were obtained from the internet - with some of them coming up toward the top of searches - and are fully intended for fair use to share with our small community of like-minded folks * Mostly, I am focusing on the coupes with 112" wheelbases, which had sedan versions running on 116" wheelbases CHEVROLET Malibu Classic, Malibu, and Laguna The 1977 Malibu Classic was probably the best looking of the coupes, which looked better after receiving rectangular headlamps in 1976. The 1977 head the cleaner vertical grille over the diamond pane effect of 1976 grille. Chevy did a good job with handling the stacked lamp effect on these cars. The Malibu had the safest dashboards and interiors, and the dashboards were very logical. They could be boring with the strip speedometer (seen here), but circular gauge packages were also available for this same pod. A large clock, or blank, was also seen in the top RH bezel in the dash. Seating was usually bench seating, though this one indicates the novel swivel bucket seats that were available for a few years. PONTIAC Grand Le Mans, Le Mans sport coupe, Le Mans, and Grand Am This is a sleek 1976 Grand Le Mans coupe sporting the trademark Pontiac rally wheels. I'm showing this 1975 Grand Le Mans coupe because, for being the last year for round headlamps, it sported a nice front grille with those inset turning lamps. Every discernible car in this photo is a GM product! This is a 1977 Grand Le Mans coupe, with a similar rear fascia to the M.Y. before. The Le Mans series had fastback lites, as did the Malibus, leaving the creased ones to their slightly larger Grand Prix and Monte Carlo cousins. You either liked the pinched rear trunk effect or you didn't. The same would apply to PMD's unique offering of optional rear wheel opening skirts on these intermediates (shown above). Pontiac probably had the most interesting dashboards of the quadruplets. This vehicle was up in Canada and has NO A/C. Check out the climate control panel, but it does have a rear defroster toggle. This one has the instrument gauge cluster, with a tach that would otherwise be a clock, or blank. Here, a clock was placed low, right above the shift lever and the cursive emblem "Grand Le Mans." The top of the console is slightly slanted toward the driver. Here's a full view of the dash. It's shared with the Grand Prix, where the telling feature might be the steering wheel and especially GP's larger armrests that carry across and sweep upward on its larger coupe doors. Bench seating and 60/40 seating was available. This is what the most up-level seating in the Grand Le Mans looked like. Here, the armrest implies 60-40 seating. This same scheme, in different colors, could also be had with very "plump" bucket seats up front in the GLM model. This is really interesting: base Le Mans and Le Mans sport coupes were treated to a more sedate dashboard. There would be no strip gauge, but much less of the circular effects. Many of these option choices could have been viewed as wasteful. OLDSMOBILE Cutlass Supreme, Cutlass Supreme Brougham, Cutlass Salon, Cutlass S, Cutlass 4-4-2 While not a great color, in my opinion, and '77 not being my favorite year, this photo really captures the great stance of the Cutlass Supreme (this is a Salon) that made America fall in love with them. This is a 1976 Supreme and the year in which over 500,000 of these were sold. For 1975, designers worked some magic with the grille of the Cutlass Supreme and Salon (this is a Salon) so that it leapfrogged the 1973 and 1974 models in terms of looks. The turning lamps inset into the grille look great. This is a 1976 interior for a Salon coupe with its bigger and more comfortable bucket seats. The tiny seat belt warning pod atop the dash meant this had the full instrumentation package. This is also a 1976, but in a Supreme coupe, where a bench seat with an armrest was the norm. There were many velour and vinyl choices. White vinyl seating was seen with many trim colors, including the once only lime green of 1976. It would appear that the swivel bucket seats might have ended in Cutlass the year before, in 1975. These don't swivel. This is a 1977 with the Brougham interior. You can see the cushions attached to the seats. Broughams were set up in 60/40 mode up front. With all the money they made the year before, I guess they had enough in the piggy back to make some final year changes to the dash - you see rectangular A/C vents for the passenger, as well as the clock placed between them. There is also a bull nose type ridge defining the top of the IP for the driver. I'm not so sure I liked these changes. I liked the 1976, and 1975, Cutlass Supremes more. BUICK Regal, Regal Limited, Regal S/R, Century, Century Limited, Century Special Here's a 1976 Regal coupe (no fender badge, so 350 V8) from a still from a movie from the '70s. The front end was simple and nicely done, as were the subtly finned rear tail lamps possibly taking cues from the Eldorado. This was a big enough departure from its 1975 predecessor. I'm only showing this because of the V6 fender badge. Throughout this series, the use of V6s was the out-of-the-crate "odd firing" versions. It was always fun(ny) to see these, especially when on an even larger sedan. Some people bought them - I don't know who well they fared. Had they been converted to "even firing," they would have been much more compatible with this caliber of car. Outfitting the car with a V6 shaved off about 200 pounds. While this may be a 1975, this is a sweet photo. Again, the front grille is nice enough, with the Regal crest in both the hood ornament and the front fender. This has the Limited interior and the landau roof works great with this car and its rally wheels. Their use of enamel dove gray showed it was the division right below Cadillac, and Buick was the only one to have a finely upholstered gray velour 60-40 interior showing that, again, it was the closest to Cadillac. Compared to the Cutlass Salon, very few Regal S/Rs were made. The idea was the same as the Salon, as seen from its nicer, bigger bucket seats, steering wheel, and console. Kudos to this car for the very unique trestle shifter in the console. In the very basic Regal and Century, the base dashboard was a little weak for a Buick. It was closer to the one in the Chevrolet in both finish level and statement it was making. Compared to Chevy, there was more chrome and some nicer switches. It detracted from the car's being a Buick. - - - - - SEPARATE MENTION More so than intermediates, the next two cars were more personal luxury coupes than conventional mid-sizes. Since Olds and Buick had Toronado and Riviera, respectively, these could be seen as more reasonably priced Chevy and Pontiac personal luxury coupe options - on 116" wheel bases - to put a "pocket Toronado" or a "pocket Riviera" into the driveway of Chevy and Pontiac buyers. These two cars had even longer hoods and could only be had with V8 engines. CHEVROLET Monte Carlo This is a 1977, which I thought had slightly nicer details in grille than 1976. They didn't cost much more than a Malibu and, for the money, were a substantial car. Whether or not you bought one had to do with whether you were comfortable with a Chevrolet or instead wanted one of the higher priced GM marques. PONTIAC Grand Prix This is a 1976 Grand Prix LJ and, in its changeover to rectangular lamps, did a fairly provocative job with its front end. In my opinion, it looks a fair bit better than the 1977 Grand Prix, where the turning lamps are inset between the two rectangular lamps. An interesting fact is that 350 V8 engines (by the four divisions!) were the norm in all the 112" wheelbase mid-sizes and the Monte Carlo. Grand Prix was a latecomer to this stable, finally bringing on a 350 V8 in 1976 and even going with a 301 V8 in the similarly sized 1977 version. There were never 6 cylinder engines in these 2 cars from 1973 to 1977. - - - - - The V8 engines in these cars: All divisions produced a 350 V8 for their respective cars. From 1975 onward, bigger V8s for Chevy were the 400 and the 454. For Pontiac, they were the 400 and the 455. Oldsmobile had the Rocket 350 and the Rocket 455, with the Rocket 403 only available in 1977. Buick never had 3 V8s for these cars - just the 350 and the 455. In terms of smaller V8 engines, Chevy brought in the 305 in 1976. Oldsmobile brought in the smallest of the bunch, the Rocket 260, in 1975. Pontiac shared the 260 that Oldsmobile produced, putting it in some LeMans models. Pontiac added their own 301 V8 in 1977, and it was available in both LeMans and Grand Prix models. All of these smaller engines stuck around for downsized models that would be forthcoming. The six cylinder engines in these cars: Some divisions stuck to their roots. Chevy used only 250 c.i. inline 6s in their Malibus. Buick used only their 231 c.i. V6s in their Regals and Centurys. Oldsmobile and Pontiac paralleled each other with engine usage. They both used the Chevy inline 6 as the base engine in 1975 and 1976 for cars as nice as Cutlass Supreme and Grand LeMans, but they switched over the 231 V6 for 1977. - - - - - There's a lot here because this covers half a decade, hundreds of thousands of GM cars sold, and models of cars that strongly spoke to Americans at that time. I hope you enjoyed the photos and verbiage in this chronicle of the colonnades that initially took America by storm and for which Americans quickly signed on the dotted line.

An interesting mix today I’m going to be posting more to the Cheersandgears Instagram, so follow there if you aren’t already. https://www.instagram.com/cheersandgears/

At my bank. Guy had a full-boat handlebar mustache.

Don't see these on the road too often.