Sixty8panther

Ben Gay? Never heard of him. Hey O.B. you ever blow bubbles as a kid?

Hahah... thanks guys. The BMW is one of only three cars I've blown the motor in. It may seem like that's nothing to brag about but if you saw some of my other "winter beaters" & demolition derby cars you'd understand why I say that. As far as the TWO accidents in less than a year... like I said, watch out for retards driving in the rain & disregarding stop signs or traffic lights. Random Shot of the day:

exhaust

Awesome. Maybe you will get to take the '51 LeSabre out for a quick spin around Detroit. Be careful though, some of the neighborhoods there are a bit rough I hear. The locals might try to steal your rims to mount on their stolen Cadillac Escalade.

Lamar: Thanks for the 411, but they tested the 2.5 Jetta, so it would seem to me they can't be THAT different. Whatever. Wait... did you say DRUM brakes? LOL My 1984 Maxima had 4-wheel disks. (as of course did my '84 M-B 500SEC) Even the 1969 Camaro had four wheel disks as an option. For the record, I've got nothing against rear drums, they have more holding power. I better pre-order that Bugatti Veyron I was thinking about buying before they decontent that car and I end up with a 1000hp car with 4-wheel drums.

It's not a hardtop, it's a fastback with a "Targa" style removable roof section. Yes I do love the lines of these, NO I would NOT take on in an automatic.

Wait, by "diesel" they mean turbo diesel, right? I've never been this out of the loop as far as the new car industry goes. Honestly, I have not picked up a new car magazine in about four years if not more... (outside of the Doctor's office) Modern cars just plain disappoint, and the few that kick ass are priced way out of my price range.

Another example of how dumb and irrelevant CR is and always will be. The Jetta comes in LAST place (out of 12) with the 2.5, but lop off the trunk, stick on a GOLF badge and it comes in 1st out of 10. Same motor, same everything except for a slightly modified body style. Does anyone consider this to be trust worthy (unbiased) reporting...?

Wow.... that is just awe inspiring. Good for her! P.S. The average 70 year old Toyota driver with automatic / electronic / assist this and that will at some point go through a store window because they confused the gas pedal for the brake. This lady manages to drive a 2 ton beast with power assist NOTHING at 100+ years old! "OMG but it's carburated & RWD, it has not airbags or ABS or traction control, oh the humanity!!!"

Thanks guys. It is nice to browse the forums and see familiar posts & new topics. I miss doing the trivia, posting updates on car shows & car spotting... Speaking of which, here's a current favorite of mine: an awesome, frequently driven 1933 Chevrolet Sedan, well dressed & quite stately with it's '34 hood ornament & side mount tires. I love this car to death, if I win the lottery I'm buying it for my "around town summer driver". The gentleman who owns it is an awesome guy too!

I don't think we have - but we should. Agreed.

You lucky ba$+ard. That is quite a story. I've played the "note under the windshield wiper" game before about two dozen times and usually it leads to nothing or disappointment. This is quite a car, I personally LOVE 3rd gen. Corvettes, and as Balthazar already said it's the chrome bumper early cars that look by far the BEST. My favorite year is 1969, I always said I'll someday make a clone of the Dayton Yellow ZL1, but that was when a 427 powered '69 Corvette that needed some work but ran & drove could be bought for about $8,000 - $12,000. Those days are gone forever. Good luck with this beast. It's truly an epic tale, I loved the whole thread, the suspense was not lost on me since I just found out about the car through facebook 4 days ago. ---- Just recently I left a note on a beat up & well worn Mercedes Benz 300E that would have made a good winter beater. The car had a FOR SALE sign on all four windows but nothing else. No phone number, no price, no contact info, no mileage.... nothing. The house it was parked in front of was for rent with no occupants. The idiotic ghetto-fabulous wheels did not bother me since I have a stock set of rims for that car as well as some pretty tasteful aftermarket rims, at the time I had not yet junked my wife's totaled 300E so I had many of the cosmetic pieces the car needed. [interior trim, tail lights, antenna, rear bumper cover etc.] I left my business card & wrote on it that I was interested in the car, "call or text any time" About three weeks later I get a frantic call on a Sunday morning, it's a girl asking me if I'm interested, I say yes, she says if I want the car to make her an offer on it then and there, over the phone, because other wise she's going to sell it to the person who is currently in her driveway looking at it. She's asking me to counter offer and will not even give me her asking price. I'm really pissed at this line of questioning and explain to her, I have not driven it, or even heard it run. Yes I'm interested but I'm not buying it 90sec. into a telephone call when my note for her is now three weeks old. Who does that? I told her I'd call her back if I was interested and hung up after a semi-polite "bye". I mean really.... I have not even sat inside the car, have not seen under the hood, never heard it run, obviously have not driven it, so my offer based on what I have seen would be pretty low. Perhaps 120% of what the car is worth with a blown motor &/or transmission since there's a very good chance there's something sketchy with it based on the selling tactics & the seller's common sense.

The best is yet to come however... I have some BIG plans for a sort of Frankenstein "Phantom" Mercedes Benz coupe. More on that later, first I have to sell the [m120] V12 powered 600SEL. It's been fun driving around in this beast but I only bought it because it was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing. I've driven it around and had my fun, soon I'm going to flip it for a small profit & move on to an even MORE rare & unique Mercedes Benz, but this one I will have to work hard to make it a reality. ---- For those who want to see some of those photos of thousands of others, or if you just want to see what I've been up to in my absence from C&G check out my Flickr .com photostream as it has been my new "home on the internet" as of the past two years. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cadillac_v16/ Hope all is well with all my friends on C&G, in the coming weeks I'll try to catch up with some of the older threads & major news. Good Night for now!

Thanks WMJ! I'll try to wrap this up with just one more post cause I gotta be at UPS in less than 5 hours & I also need to sleep. The aforementioned BMW 325e was a whole saga in and of itself. I pretty much got so pissed off at the car I decided (for once) to seek help and I brought the little e30 to a Foreign Car Specialist in my area. He & I have subsequently become good friends and I even do some work for him when he gets real busy. As it turned out the BMW was just a basket case and it needed a complete restoration, or at the very least a lot of electrical work. Instead of dumping good money after bad into that little coupe I decided to go back to my "roots" and get a cheap winter beater. Enter the "Grand Bizz Marquis" Hey, it was no Mercedes Benz S-class or even a BMW e30 but it cost $500, it was safe & comfortable and was 100% reliable! It also allowed me to figure out what the heck to do with my BMW 325 coupe. One day a few weeks after I bought & registered the Mercury I got a text message from Ross about one of his neighbors selling an e30 sedan for DIRT cheap. It was a sedan and the car was 2 years older than my 1987 coupe but it was also a manual (5-speed) and a huge percentage of parts would interchange from the red coupe. Well, it seemed almost too PERFECT, I would short-sell the Mercury, buy this blue 318i and use the red 325 as a parts car &/or sell that with an honest description of it's many quirks / issues. Less than 72 hours later I owned the BMW and things were looking up. I had a manual trans again which was just heaven on earth and the car's 1.8 liter four cylinder motor provided me with my first car that averaged mid to high 20s [mpg] in about three years! I had a blast with this car as my daily driver through all those nasty blizzards we got slammed with this past winter. I drove this car like I was Colin McRae while stupid drivers got stuck in their FWD / AWD Cars & pickup / SUV drivers spun out into snow banks and bounced off guard rails. Then on a cold & dark morning in March at about 4:00am I got up to go to UPS, fired up my little e30 sedan, or Sexpanther II as we started calling it, and as I drove away and worked the sloppy, abused shifter through its five gears I heard the dreaded sound of lower end wrap. The car had spun a crank bearing at about 157K miles. My total investment in BOTH of these e30 BMWs was under $2K including the work & maintenance I had done so i was irritated but not really all that surprised or pissed. Less than 12 hours later, as luck would have it, I sold the red coupe and almost broke even on it despite selling it as a "parts car / ambitious project" just 8 later I was on the highway in the sedan trying to nurse it through ONE more roadtrip when the motor pretty much detonated like a grenade. It was truly epic to see & hear... the car put up a tremendous fight as I kept popping the clutch to get it running again every time it stalled out... by the time it died for the last time the harmonic balance pulley had torn off, bouncing up & into the exhaust manifold & ripping it wide open for that "machine gun fight inside a cement mixer" sound. (Ross coined that phrase, he was with me since I was driving him to go look at a '77 Buick he was interested in) When the car exploded with one last epic backfire and the crankshaft ground to a halt, we heard nothing but the silence of the winter's night... the wind howling and the sound of the tires on the road as the car rolled to a stop. Without missing a beat my 2 y.o. daughter Amelia yelled: "ALL DONE!" This was one of the funniest moments of my life, her comedic timing was perfect. The '77 Buick turned out to be a rust bucket & the NEXT night I had my wife watch the kids while we went out and bought a 1970 Pontiac Bonneville four door hardtop, powered by the legendary 455. This car was later traded for more than we paid for it, which was $1000. Although the transaction was sort of unorthodox. We got $700 cash, a deer hunting bow & about $320 in silver coins. Next up is my super clean & rust free, (originally from California) "SUV" A 2wd, 454 powered 1991 Chevrolet Suburban. I bought it at a yard sale, it was too solid, straight & rust free to pass up. And now the grand finale: my new daily driver that I bought with the money from selling the 1959 Buick: a vehicle that cost as much as a Ferrari 348 of the same year: My V12 powered 1992 Mercedes Benz 600SEL.

Okay, so for those still reading this, that's TWO Mercedes Benz cars wrecked in less than a year. Both cases it was the other person's fault and in both cases they RAN a STOP SIGN in the rain. Seriously, I drive like a Grandma now when in an urban environment in the rain / snow. Not because I can not handle myself but because there's too many retards out there who consider traffic control signs / lights to be a suggestion, not to be taken literally. The good news of course was that I was NOT decapitated as I would have been in most cars. The fire fighters & cops all agreed, this exact accident usually ends with the car's driver sliced in half like a fresh tomato at the Olive Garden. The 300E, and its super-rugged A-pillars saved my life... I did not even hesitate to look for another Mercedes Benz, but this time I decided it was time to go back to a W126 hardtop coupe... this was NOT an easy task. 1st: Most clean, nice examples were out of my price range 2nd: Technically I was replacing the wife's car... although we share most of the fleet and she is not selfish this was to be HER primary whip, and we have two young daughters. so essentially I had to sell her on the idea that the TWO door hardtop Mercedes Benz I had picked out would make a great, practical FAMILY car. Here's the good news: She LOVED our 500SEC and always said someday she could see getting another. So without any further introduction, here's our 1991 Mercedes Benz 560SEC. It a bit high on the miles but runs & drives almost like a brand new car. I say almost because we need to install the new motor mounts (online $60 delivered to my door by UPS) and one of the two fuel pumps is getting a bit loud. Replacement cost will be approx $130, I do almost all the labor myself as always.

Sounds awesome. I've only driven a couple Porsche 911s and the one I got to "open up" was a dumb cabriolet so I was a bit apprehensive since a rollover pretty much = instant death. Unless I win the lottery the only German car in the top 10 "cars I must own" on my Bucket list is a Porsche 911, but it has to be a classic AIR COOLED one.

You guys DO realize that about 97% of those bull$hit prices in the "paper" are just "get you in the door" tactics, right?! Ever heard the saying "if it sounds too good to be true...." Perfect Example: a local dealer has some finer-than fine print stating all their prices reflect $3000 cash / trade. Honestly, not to be a d!ck but don't be so naive! There's NO free lunch.

That front overhang is not easy on the eyes. How's that work out when entering an inclined driveway?

Yes I am very much alive... for those who might have been wondering. Busier than ever, now a dad 3 times over. Since this is C&G and not a sewing circle, and since I do not really "social-network" all that much anyway I'll just fill you in on the car 411 and we can go from there. As of last year it finally happened... I LOST COUNT as to how many cars I have actually "owned" over the years. Including demolition derby cars & cars I daily drove as my own even though they belonged legally to a buddy &/or spouse, I have owned approx 61 vehicles. First the BAD news: as of just two weeks ago I no longer own the 1959 Buick LeSabre that I waited so long to acquire. It went to a good home, the gentleman who bought it is actually a police officer just a few towns away and he is just as crazy about the car as I was. His fiance stopped by and asked about the car and said both of them were in love with it. Well money talks & bull$hit walks.... he showed up with cash & bought the car on the spot less than 24 hours after my first conversation with him. Now for a list of my recent daily drivers: Most of you probably remember the 1984 Mercedes Benz 500SEC [German Market Gray Import] That car was sold to an Insurance Auction after it got a little banged up in a hit-n-run. Don't worry, I got the ba$tard's license plate & made his insurance pay. I also junked my wife's tired & beat BMW 735iL because of an electrical problem caused by the previous owner. (we got MORE than our money's worth out of it, over all that was a great car) To replace the M.B. 500SEC & BMW 735iL I bought a blood red 1987 BMW 325e coupe & 1993 M.B. 300E The 300E was a fantastic example of the Mercedes Benz pedigree, ran like a Swiss watch... more on that later... The BMW is another story. This car is now refereed amongst the Tight Whips Community as "Sex Panther" because as Ross put it: "60% of the time... it starts EVERY time." (if you're lost, watch the movie ANCHORMAN: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) Nothing against BMW, this was my blunder... I should have NEVER bought someone else's abandoned "project". Now back to the Mercedes Benz E-class 300 [w124] This car was awesome! It was not as exciting as the 500SEC or even the BMW 735iL but it was just amazingly well designed and built. I swear that car drove with 180,000+ miles like most cars drive / ride at 60,000 miles. You might be thinking "why is he using past tense???" Here's why:

It's only human nature. I went to a high school with tons of rich kids. Many were lazy bums and had no respect for anyone who was not in their "tax bracket" or somehow worthy based on drug use or what not. Several of these jerks & ice-queens had mommy & daddy buy them a new car at 16 or 17 years old. I showed up to my 5-year reunion in a 5 year old Cadillac STS that I bought for MYSELF with MY job. The only car I ever had a payment on, a 1997 Cadillac STS. It was a new car when I graduated H.S. in 1997 and it cost over $50,000 then, just five years later I was driving it and it felt good to park it in a sea of BMWs and Acuras that were paid for by a trust fund etc.

I will agree that GM needs to invest in the turbo-diesel end of the market!

Agreed Nick, I'd hate to own either a Civic or a Corolla but I'd take the Civic if I HAD to own one for some horrific reason.

I would love to own a nice clean '70 Chevrolet ANYTHING.... but I'd be quite happy with a 350 or even a 307 under the hood. For $125K I would be rockin' a coach-built car that was made before Hitler attempted world domination. Example: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Packard-Rare-Frame-Off-Restored-1925-Packard-2-36-Coupe-Eight-/280716618070?pt=US_Cars_Trucks&hash=item415c03a956

Name: Mercedes Benz 560SEC (1991) Date Added: 02 June 2011 - 01:42 AM Owner: Sixty8panther Short Description: W126 series 2 door hardtop. One of the most durable & safe cars ever made. View Vehicle