balthazar

There was a good Skylark? I have been in a 61 many times and it was not that great of a car. the era of the Skylark was 65-72. Mostly 65-67 and 70-72. It was a nicer Chevelle. Special / Skylark pulled Buick out of the sales fire in '61 and after. Buick was #3 in '55, #9 in '60 and back up to #5 by '65. These Skylarks were Buicks, not 'nicer Chevelles'. Or were Chevelles 'crappier Skylarks'? Not everything General Motors has done can be distilled into tweaks on Chevrolets.

Funny, Chris- today I was at the swap meet and was only motivated to shoot 4 different vehicles. This was one of them:

I of course kno where you're coming from Sixty8, but if there hypothetically was a 2011 Hudson Hornet, it'd still be a lame insult to the heritage of the original. Thusly, this does't bother me. There are only so many original, non-alpha-numeric, car-appropriate names left without repeating discarded monikers. A picture thread of Hudson Hornets sounds great, BTW. These cars are tough as hell, I was >thisclose< to making my first car a Hudson Pacemaker coupe.

Not dissin' the car pick-up, bud; I really like (most of) them. With Chevy dropping the Elky for '61 and Ford bumping the Ranchero to the itsy bitsy Falcoon for '61, the market for another full-sized 'Elky' wasn't there in '60 (when the trigger pull for the El Catalina would have shown itself). Yes, the Ranchero stumbled along as a compact thru the '60s, and the Elky returned for '64, but this was a F/S proposal, and in that, the numbers from '57-60 didn't support another one. At least; that's my take.

Take the (Pontiac??) split out of the grille and you have an Impala.

They're also likely the top 3 color choices in the RWD mainstream category- every BMW or mercedees I see is black, white or grey/silver; there's no reds, greens, browns or blues out on the road (light enough not to be taken for black in dim light). The overall modern automotive color palette is depressingly conformist and limited.

^ I meant it as 'to bore'; as if the car was some sort of boring machine. I like the snout on it. No; the Airex is merely a sketch. Pretty cool, tho.

>>"Pontiac decided not to dive into the waters dominated by Ford and Chevy because it was wrestling with a fickle marketplace and was trying to figure out its own brand identity."<< Wrong wrong wrong. The direction was cemented & consistent since the '57s came out, and it started before that MY. By the time production P-59 sheetmetal was available for PMD to craft the El Catalinas, there was no 'identity searching' going on. What IS significant is, the Ranchero was dying on the vine in '59, and the El Camino was dead after the 60MY. The market just wasn't there. • • • This car has been known about in Pontiac circles for decades. Great to see it finally done, tho. 2 were reportedly built, the other AFAIK is permanently MIA.

A better shot of the 1940 Airex Radial: A pretty cool 'boring' car: I'm liking the interior, too. General shapes/ radiuses/ lines I gravitate to: ( ^ early '59 Buick proposal)

Have seen zero sprinter ambulances in my area- all are heavy duty trucks.

I know it's a cargo box, but it looks staggeringly cheap.

It's nothing like secret documents RE the Manhattan Project or anything... but there are some folk interested in this sort of thing. Can I leave it as 'some historical hard data that suggests a different catalyst for the motivation of a serial killer' without getting into long paragraphs? After the initial 'author bashing' comment, subsequent posts have been getting good feedback & appreciation in an ongoing thread in that circle of interest. What I learned in 'shopping' this around is that Wikipedia disallows what they call "original research", or anything you cannot site an online source for the info. That's informational incest, IMO. Publication certainly does not guarantee accuracy. I'd eventually like to get this into wider circles of discussion and correct the published accounts.

^ Agreed.

Sweet Merciful Crap; that's flawlessly gorgeous !! You roll up to any function/gathering in that and you'd turn every head there. Note the unconventional center glovebox. Love it.

My core attraction to automobiles is '57-64 (even tho this encompasses a distinct shift in styles). And full-size; the intermediates were 'de-engineered' from the big cars; why water things down? But my 'Eve' would be something along the lines of these; low & long, fat-fendered, with 'food processor' detailing. It would HAVE to be unique, not production : The one on the right: The bottom one:

You mean; the following GM's lead here?

Is that LM200 a Guigario design?

This is the era (early '70s & up) where Chevy unfortunately exercised a 'Cadification' of their big car's front ends. Such has been verified as intentional by GM insiders. The result was a heavy contraction of the stylistic range of General Motors... which may have peaked with the '80s Fortune magazine cover. GM Styling was really scraping the bottom of the barrel in this sad era.

"Maserati should have had an SUV in 1985; this is too little too late."

I think a lot of people are going to be thinking a lot about what they're going to be thinking when this comes out, and a lot more people are going to be really surprised at how much thinking they did and how they were not so surprised to find out it was less than they thought. At first.

Maybe BMW is looking for more transmission options, they certainly used plenty of GM automatics before, and more & more of their cars are ditching manuals...

Once I accelerated in the GP with some critical component missing there, and the hood flew up- but all it did was jettison both hood springs out to either side; the hinges did not overextend and there was no damage. Found 'em in the ditches and reinstalled them.

Guess I relive a bit of this every 9/11; my wife was in NYC that morning. I didn't kno exactly where until nearly noon and I didn't hear from her until 3PM. It's hard to even try and fathom the horror of being trapped in the WTC floors above the plane strikes...

^ Wiki says '96 was the last year for both the Century & Roadmonster wagons.

Buyers these days are heinously ignorant of engine technology. BMW owners never pop their hoods, rapping at the giant plastic engine shrouds, explaining the invisible double-humpity-hump-hump cams. The OVERWHELMING majority buy on reputation & image, not intangible mechanical bits. This is not to say it doesn't play a minor, periphery influence, but it doesn't sell cars in & of itself. Ocnblu is right; results trump the spec sheet, because at least that is tangible.... tho this takes time to manifest itself in blind loyalty. In other words, the majority of buyers here are buying a "BMW", not a 'DOHC, VVT inline 6'. Look no further for verification than the 75% of 1-series buyers (and 40% of 3-series buyers) whom BMW themselves admitted bought their car for it's FWD technology.