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As I was coming down onto a bridge this morning on the motorcycle, a black, mint, final-generation Town Car made a long sweeping cloverleaf to come up and merge next to me. I know they were antiquated when new, but they still have a grace and presence that I miss in today's 2-box egg-shaped crossover designs.

Have a great PTO Robert!

Optispark is one of those things that GM got right just before they canceled it. These days, if you have trouble with it, the modern optispark replacements are rock solid and last forever. So do it, replace the water pump at the same time (because, why not? you already have to take it off) and drive another 300,000 miles

A Town Car L would be in my Dream Garage.

Neat...a favorite Aunt and Uncle had a tan '73 Buick Centurion 2dr and later a dark red '78 Electra 2dr. Rode in both as a kid.

I'm guessing it is someone that later achieved some level of fame, maybe a singer or actor. I don't recognize them. Pic looks like it's from the 1970s.

Ok, so who is that person in the high schol photo? His parents should have had much more sense than let him out of the house to go get his high school portrait with a Hersey's Kiss-shaped frizz ball on top of his head.

I would agree with him, this car is very masculine in its styling and character. Love this...

Last pic, this 65 is just badass Imperial...now back to EV's and the modern milieu

I suppose it is supposed to look like a gaming laptop inside. It seems marketed to that kinda crowd.

You mean 2026, right? I know. Ten to twenty years ago, we didn't have these thoughts. I can think of a few catalysts responsible for having moved us over to this sort of thinking, but we can't discuss these things here, so I'll let it go. As far as land yachts go, I like some of them. I wouldn't want to go too old on such a vehicle. I'd sure love a '75 or '76 Bonneville Brougham or Grandville Brougham coupe; however, that 400 or 455 would have to go and a 350 would need to go in. I'd sure love an '82 Delta 88 Royale (Brougham) coupe with the small Olds V8, but same line of thinking. But, on a more realistic note, the one's I'd come closer to owning would be a 2000+ Grand Marquis 4.6 SOHC V8 that was from one of the years with stellar Consumer Reports dots or a mid-'90s Caprice with the 200 hp (enough for me) Chevy 4.3 V8, Optispark and all - oh well. I think the Chevy would win because of my (previous) loyalty to GM and my having only owned all cast-iron engines thus far, which says "luddite."

I would love to do this trip, speaking of Europe. Think I may try to go to Europe in 2016. if the world survives that long. If not, cockroaches can dance on my dead body/grave. Can't worry about the future, just plan. Those big Fords kind of have a grace to them. yes, that is me actually saying that....don't faint. Absolutely. Can't wait for pics... Hezbollah and Israel not playing nice, Iran seems to want to fight, common sense is gone. Time to buy one of these land yachts I have been posting.....one with a points style ignition so I have something to drive after the inevitable thermonuclear electromagnetic pulse.

I have been searching the classifieds for these. Kind of actually digging them at the moment. I didn't know Europe had Tornados. Love the patina on this Country Squire.

I don't know how I've survived all these years with the 8.7 0-60 I have in my Avalanche. But I will say I rarely ever have to race it to get on the highway. It was more true back in the old days than today, but yeah, that's a benefit of pushrod over DOHC. The GM Pushrods engines, even the V6es, made really good torque at low RPM but ran out of breath at high RPM. It's a really unfortunate side effect that the boy-racer craze from the 1990s robbed us of some perfectly good engine designs because enthusiasts wanted engines that rev to eleventy even though the typical family hauler would be more efficient and more relaxed with a torquey pushrod. It's why the first few generations of GM 3-row crossovers (Traverse, Outlook, Acadia) are all absolute pigs on highway MPG. They constantly have to shift out of top gear to spin up when torque is needed, while pushrod wouldn't have needed to as much. It's telling that a Tahoe and a Traverse were capable of similar highway MPGs I don't know if the 4.3 V6 would have physically fit in the Traverse, but I bet it would have had better efficiency and similar real-world performance to the 3.6 Way back in the day when GM was putting out the giant 6, 7, and 8 liter engines, those were the ones that were all torque at low RPM. Even my weezy old 307 puts out most of its 250 lb-ft from 1,000 - 3,000 rpm. Red line was 5,000 rpm. It's not fast, but it will glide effortlessly up to 60 right along at traffic's pace only using 3 gears.

In the search, this also came up. I had forgotten all about this! He remained so cool through this weird event and his news delivery didn't derail for more than a second! So, they know who the college kid in South Carolina that did this was. This raises more interesting questions. Who put him up to it? What did the college do about it? What does his college transcript look like? Did/does he produce less testosterone after this event? And is he living a fairly normal life today?

@Robert Hall famous enough, and on TV, but not an actor or a singer @A Horse With No Name no asylums involved ... no to that one, but funny Meteoroligist Jim Cantore, but probably in the early '80s. Random linked thinking: A tornado takes down a sizable VIP yatch off the coast of Sicily. I didn't know there were tornadoes in the Mediterranean. Then, is Jim Cantore still on the Weather Channel and putting himself smack in the middle of hurricanes and tornadoes? Apparently he is. I used to watch the Weather Channel, but now I just use its app.

In a Land yacht frame of mind....my great aunt had a Buick identical to this but with a black vinyl top. Almost ended up being my first car. It's gorgeous. Enjoy.

My guess is that it is a clinical photo of someone who will grow up to live in an asylum, or at least post regularly in one on the internet. Balthazar hated colorized old film, but this one is cool.

Good afternoon ... ... no cheating

Last abandoned picture...

Conneaut Harbor on Lake Erie. Far NE Ohio.