Sixty8panther

1940s design, pre-war coupe, a REAL coupe: CHECK ./ Fat fenders: CHECK ./ Big-cube, honkin', built up Vee-eight under the hood: CHECK ./ Chromed/stainless/billett go-fast bolt ons: CHECK ./ Deeeeeeeeee-eeeee-eeeeep dish rears shod in M/Ts: CHECK ./ Can you guys excuse me for a sec... I need a cold shower. This kind of thread is why C&G is my home on the 'net despite all the threads about modern $h!boxes that raise my blood pressure & piss me off.

I feel another deep depression coming on.... Some of you may hate me for saying this, but I mean every word of it! If Cadillac switches to FWD then I hope GM just rolls over & dies. I'm sick to death of the garbage that this once great company keeps trying to shove down American consumer's throats. I LOVE GM like a family member and if a loved one or a closse friend had a terrible quality of life and they had ZERO will to live I'd wish for their pain to STOP. GM is, like it or not, in ICU, & if the Company turns into a vegetable we just need to pull the damn plug. Disgusting, wasteful & insulting are just a few of the words this thread brings to mind. If I'm ever terminally ill, in massive pain & unable to enjoy my family's & friends' company... unable to get any quality time & without hope of salvation I'd hope a good friend would just put a hollow point in my skull while I sleep, GM is getting there. We have a FWD $h!box on a whored out platform wearing "Impala SS" emblems, the Camaro, as much as it does KICK ass has been compromised and its many ZETA cousins/blood-brothers were either stillborn or are unavailable in the USA... I mean except for the Corvette, which is a WORLD class prduct but unobtainable to the masses and about as practical as a Trans Am with no back seat, then the SIGMA, ZETA & KAPPA trio are IT. This is what a century of progress has brought us to? A GM lineup of 95% FWD cars & "trucks" (crossovers)? You might think I'm being very harsh but actually I have no words, vulgar or otherwise, to describe how disgusted I am at even the TOUGHT of Kappa being killed after that pathetic, short run of only TWO products, one of them a Saturn no less. :flames:

Thank you sir. I always say, and I'm 100% certain about this: The '59 Buick dash is THE nicest of ANY post-WWII car. There's a few Caillacs & Chryslers/Imperials that come close but as far as production cars go the B-59 is it IMO. I miss driving the B59, I need to git my ass in gear & get the motor back together... I was just thinking this AM at like 4:15, as I loaded package 75 out of 1050 that I should set a realistic goal to get the B-59 back on the road.... right now the pie in the sky date is Halloween but there's a god chance I'll be out there in my driveway Christmas day, still turning wrenches.

Anyone got a time machine... seriously? I'm sick of 2008, and 2009 looks worse yet!

Wait.... am i to understand in this $3.65-ish/gallon world GM is considering cancelling a fun, sporty, ultra-bang/buck commuter car??? I'd say BULL$HIT but then again this is GM we're talking about so certain cretins in charge do the EACT opposite of what is logical. This news after just the other day I had a long discussion about what an AMAZING vehicle the B-body would/could've been if it got a redesign in the late 1990s & a new frame incorporating hydroforming & an optional IRS.

The R-class is the ONE U.S.-market Mercedes Benz from the past 30 years I think is both ugly and mechanically inferior... it is BY far the most unbecoming vehicle to wear the MB emblem right now. I'd be much more likely to buy a Smart ForTwo than this Faux-AMG edition Grand Caravan. Sorry, just being honest.

See now the one you posted is gorgeous but it seems every single early-80s Toro I have seen in the past 15 years was a scummy, rusted, dented piece of twisted metal, cracked glass & dry rotted pastic. Dressed up in chrome like the one you posted I will agree it's quite a looker. The whitewalls help too. I don't know why there's NOT ONE clean nice example of this gen. Toro in my neck of the woods.... There's plenty of '66-'72 examples and after that they are almost nonexistant until you get to the Trofeo.

Holy cow that Chevette is clean... If that was the manual (M22 beleive it or not!) it would be the ultimate economy car Sixty8 style... I'd rock that bitch exactly as is, getting what, prob. 28-30mpg! Well, I would have to do ONE thing to it: Rusty Jones sticker FTW! EVERY one of my beaters gets one.

For what its worth i 'd never crush one or otherwise harm it... Just saying the Rivi & Eldo are much nicer stylistically IMHO That anti-grille on th Toro looks like a the front of an APC... & that is both an insult & compemlent since the whole car has a cool Panzer look to it....

As Fly once said.... Czech mate! My hat is off to you CMG!

In his defense this was a gorgeous Bug, it was the late '50s, '57 to be exact, with the two piece window and fresh paint, spic-n-span inside and out and very well customised in the faux-1960s tradition, including a chromd-out Porsche engine.

I donno, the Toronado was pretty darn uuuh-gleeeee by the '79-85 bodystyle, it's the one case of an aftermarket parthenon grille being an IMPROVEMENT over the original factory nose... there's one in town.

Hmmmm.... very valid argument Oldsmoboi, so I guess in three or four years we'll see a Stude-packard... or Packard-baker. Mr. Lawrence, the "Old Man River" looking gentleman who sold me my '59 LeSabre had a '58 Packard winter beater it was rotted so bad it was almost unrecognizable... having been parked two years earlier, it was not a Hawk but a '58 Packard 2dr post (what ever it woud have been called) Looked almost like this: (except with 975lbs. of iron-oxide) If ever there was an ugly as sin 2dr hardtop from '58....

what a weird mix of cars though huh?

Sounds good to me! The Miata was soooo very successful because it was basically a british car with ALL the fun but 98% more reliability & mechanical pracrticality. I always thought Mazda should have offered a wenkel (rotary) in the Miata, as an option for those people so inclined.

Just a quick jab... :wink: you know if the Import guys saw a photo like this of a (Cadillac/Buick/Chevy) this same basic argument would be made... it would NOT be lighting or what ever other excuse you can come up with, it's obviously poor build/paint quality. Now THAT is funny... cause it's true! The new Pilot is about as handsome from head on as an inbred, crosseyed bulldog on crack... with a dunce cap. Aaand then you see that front overhang which answers the question "can it get any more unattractive?" with a clear & resounding YES IT CAN!!!

Rally Racing is def. one of my top-3 favorite motorsports! It's the exact opposite of nASScar, the cars are at least based on production bodies, not just tube chassis with a fiberglass body that somewhat, just a little bit, if you squint real hard, resembles a production car. I grew up in Slovakia in a town that was runover every year by a big swarm of race cars & fans for an annual race that culminated in a mini-pikes peek climb of sorts.

To each his own... but here's my argument for my chop: 1. that production window is tiny... dare I say almost non-existant, by the time you add in the black glue & plastic surround you're looking at like, oh... 17 square inches of glass. I really do not think that's much of an exageration either. 2. That fat, flat, heavy D-pillar looks gross to my eyes. Now THESE are nice D-pillars on a wagon:

[rant about lack of FIXED roof hardtop deleted]

I have collected hundreds, actaully THOUSANDS of "toy", model/kit/display cars in sizes ranging from 1:64 to 1:12 about 300 of them being 1:18 scale and about 75% of the rest being 1:64s... new cars never grab my attention, although of course I have the G5 Camaro in every color & variety they have made so far, but when a new casting is made of some '50s or '60s car I'm giddy like a school girl with candy in her pocket. NOTE to self: write to HW AGAIN to have them issue a '59 Buick of some sort/size... SOMETHING '59 Buick... and also '62 Skylark.

Great post. Funny how crazy, wild & over-the-top these cars were compared to today's concepts and yet they STILL managed to incorporate MORE of their fanciful, space age details into production than today's gell-tabs. I hate the mandated restraint that is considered such a MUST today... thanks to retards like Nader and Gore. A few observations: |The '53 Cadillac LeMans musta have looked very ahead of its time, what with the quad headlights & sharp-as-a-bucher knife tailfins adorning the rear. It looks about 8.5 feet wide in that photo! As far as the Pontiac Parisienne (53?) this is an example of a car that is very much an enigma... what a strange combination of style, detailing & oddball styling. But GM pulled it off, the car almost as if it COULD have been a production car from '54. I thuoght that the Olds F88 always looked so very frumpy and awkward, something about it was very 'off' in the photos from its recent auction where it brought in record million$. In this photo it is downright handsome, sleek and I'm seeing for the first time that the headlightshave wacky glass "bubbles" while the car does have quite a bit of details that do differentiate it from the Corvette. The '51 Buick Skylark-ish XP300 has a neat touch I never noticed until today: B-58 style fender-mounted (V) emblems just above the headlights. Sharp. aaaand last but not least, here's the '51/'52 LaSalle demostrating why hardtops are |WAY more slick and shapr looking than ragtops.... when the "rag" is UP, style is WAY DOWN! That ugly, bumpy,awkward roof ruins what is otherwise a gorgeous car.

Yes and no.... is a '50s Kaiser Traveler or Manhatan worth a lot more now than in 1968 when they were still plentiful as used cars? (relatively plentiful) Sure it's worth a lot more, but you're not going to retire on that $35,000 you MIGHT get at Barrett Jackson for a clean, straight copy at the right time, with the right buyer frenzy. Do I think an AMC SX4 is worth saving? Sure... I had one in my driveway for a short time, set up for a miget driver no less (I'm dead serious!) but aside from being worth twice the $1200 that a mint AMC Concorde from the same era is worth it's pretty much always going to be the red headed stepchild of collector's cars. Then again it WILL be worth (on and off paper) a LOT more than that Camry some dope will undboubtedly save ?& try to pass off as a classic 22 years from now.

wow.... this looks even MORE like the last gen. Camry & Solara. How sad, six years ago we had the Grand Am which had excellent brand recognition, good return buyers & a very unique look, it was not stellar, and the pre-Lutz SE "ribs" were tacky but no more so than the Mitsu Erclipse that the press just looooved despite its ugly rear end & "Chinese Audi TT" profile & nose... The Grand Am was a PONTAC, sure it was still FWD and my biggest gripe was the GT & manual trans. being mutually EXCLUSIVE!? But it was a god selling car that had a BIG following... so of course GM has to F*** up a good thing as usual. I bet there was a million people (potential customers) in '04 who walked out of a Pontiac showroom & over to {insert non-GM manufacturer here} scratching their heads saying "no more Grand Am...?"

Yup... nothing wrong with a '66 Belvedere 2dr post but it is basically a factory version of a stripped out Cobalt with a Z06 drivetrain. (FWD/RWD aside) Now since when is the Jensen, (which slipped my mind to be honesy) a daily driver...? I thought it was a project car you just piced up? I'm 99% certain that there's a cookie cutter car you plant your ass in everyday... a four door post something-or-other with a modern V6 or what not, or is the Jensen REALLY your grocery getter? NO ofense taken as far as the Benz, just having fun same as you but I'm just perplexed at why it would be considered bland and in what context... RWD + V8 + conservative styling + pillarless HARDTOP bodysyle =/= bland. Even a cheap, rusted '74 Celica hardtop with only a 4-banger and RWD & 99% unoriginal styling is not bland in a world of Accords & Camrys. :twocents:

hahahah... how could I forget about your crazy UK-USA hybrid? No matter if people call it ugly it's SOMETHING other than boring. While I wouldn't call it gorgeous in terms of styling it's def. cool as hell considering its' rarity, powerplant & near-exotic status in the weird/independant category....