WSIB: Back to the 80s!

• Ok we all know the drill…. 50/100/Infinity those are our price points. Avoid the obvious cars… What are the boundaries 1978 – 1994/5?
• We’ve said in plenty of prior episodes we have to be a little more elastic on the year ranges because some of the best cars from the 80s started in the 70s, but also carried through to the 90s. Case in point the Porsche 928.
• Since we’re going to debate the difference between: Hatch, Lift, Wagon, Shooting Brake and Sports Coupe; I think all of our “exceptions” are going to fall out of that discussion – so let’s go!
• More specifically… What is a Hot Hatch?
• The 80s was the era of “Homologation Cars” – thanks to WRC! 

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Break Fix Podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder how did they get that job or become that person.

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Heralded as one of the greatest decades in history when greed was good, Jordash jeans were worn above the belly button, hair stood on end with aid from Aquanet. Bands like Depeche Mode ushered in a new generation, and a next generation of sci-fi was also born. Cars were seen also as superheroes. This.

It’s the only time where there is a juxtaposition of both analog and digital. While a generation of Petrolheads were both living their best lives and early adopters simultaneously, the [00:01:00] malaise era might have been the start of the square bodies and round headlights movement. Oh, the eighties. That was the era of M T V Killer Bees body kits and a massive evolution in the automotive industry.

Where arguably some of the iconic cars of our generation were born and carry on through today. That’s right, Brad. And like all good, what should I buy? Episodes. We have some shopping criteria. This time we’re gonna settle a long standing argument about hot hatches. What is the actual difference between a shooting break, Liftback hatchback wagon, or a sports coupe?

Our panel of Petrolhead are challenged to solve that mystery as well as find our first time collector, the best econo box that will make their friends go, where’d you get that at? The next cars and coffee? Picking up where we left off The year is 1983 and there is no Corvette, but instead the world is introduced to G T I.

Joining us tonight are veteran, what should I buy? Panelists, our nineties expert, mark Shank, [00:02:00] Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine. William Ross from Exotic Car Marketplace, bow Tie Man and Square Body historian, mountain Mandan, and returning guest Jeff Willis, along with our executive producer Tanya.

Welcome to the show everyone. Let’s go retro. This is the real eighties on eight. Thanks Brad, all of us here. Either have lived with, enjoyed, or still own in eighties vehicles. Let’s set the mood with a little bit of a round table talking about our favorite personal eighties vehicles and maybe in our fleet.

And Dan, you’re limited to only one fair warning that you gotta pick your favorite square body out of all those years. So why don’t we kick it off with newcomer Jeff Willis. Well, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here in my fleet right now. I’ve got a 1980 Porsche 9 28. It’s straight piped. It’s totally got the race livery on it, but it’s all road legal pretty much.

So I’ll leave that to whatever you want to think [00:03:00] about that. We’ll have to scrub the recording. Yeah, right. California officials are on looking for you right now. The eighties are my jam. My very first car was a 1986 Camaro, and I know that we’re not supposed to talk about those, but other than that, I have a whole list of wish cars that I’ll be talking about at some point during the podcast today.

Another man of the eighties. Mr. William Ross. What you got for us? Well, I’m thinking of my current fleet that’s from the eighties, but I’m a big fan of the Fox Body Mustangs, but I like the fire leader Notchback, so my man. Nice. My man undercover, you know, low key doesn’t have all the flares, that kind of stuff on the GT version of it, but just a nice five speed, five liter notch.

Back. A little birdie told me you also owned a Fiero at one point. Heck yeah, I did. I had a fi, here’s how it started. My eighties pilot. My first car was a Mazda G l C hatchback, beat the living crud out that thing, jumping over railroad tracks and stuff like that. Then I moved to my Fiero gt, loved that car.

I think it was great, you know, a little go-kart. And then I had my [00:04:00] Mustang GT had an 85 GT free, you know, all the flares and stuff on it. So it was kind of nice hatchback, but had that through into college. So yeah, I had my fair share of fun stuff in the eighties. Tanya, my eighties car is in the photo right there and in my garage at the moment, 1985 Audi Coop gt, well maintained and fully restored on the exterior and the interior is pretty immaculate too.

Great car. Tanya. I gotta say, when you popped up and that little gt was sitting back there, my heart literally did stop for a second because I was practically raised in one of those things. My uncle was horse Audi dealership owner, and he liked the Audis ’cause they were a little more conservative. And so he always drove these gray or dark silver Audi four-door sedans.

And then one day he shows up with that. The year is 1987, the month is April and Uncle Howard is getting down in his seventies and he’s feeling youthful again and he wants to relive his second childhood. And that was the car. He was, by God going to do it in, [00:05:00] couldn’t get out of his own way thanks to an automatic transmission and being completely bone stopped.

But yours truly a fan of anything with two doors red. I was all over that car, like a cheap suit. So your car really stopped my heart for a minute. It did. And that’s number seven I think that we’ve owned of Audi coops in total. Between you are our quattros and the regular front wheel drives. So Don, since you went there, you are our resident DeLorean expert.

You’ve got an eighties car in your fleet right now. Yeah, I have this little DeLorean. It’s kind of the king of the eighties in my opinion. There’s a lot of cars out there quicker, a lot of cars faster, maybe even better looking. That’s debatable. I disagree with all of you. But anyway, yeah, that would be my perfect eighties car.

It helps a lot with clearing by sinuses up once in a while, you know, it helps a lot, so it’s good stuff. Then I guess the only other eighties thing I might have you guys be the judge. It’s a 79 Caprice, and then there’s a 79 Fiat. Both of them teeter [00:06:00] the Fiat because it came from the sixties really. That car started in 66.

It’s a 1 24 spider, but then you’ve got the Caprice, which started life really in 77 because it’s a brick. It’s one of the square caprices, but it spanned the eighties all the way to 1990 until it was put out of production. So it was the choice of cops and cabbies. Everywhere in the eighties. Yeah. I’ll give you that.

Don, I thought of you. I called my dad in preparation for this episode and I somehow, that sounds bad. I don’t know. Well, no. I said, dad, if you could buy any classic car from the eighties, what would you get? Mely outta his mouth. DeLorean. Well, you’ve had a couple eighties cars yourself, right, mark? Yeah.

Really just one worthwhile one. I had an 85 Porsche nine 11 Carrera. I had a ton of money put into it. I got it from someone who was in a bad spot in 2009 in the, you know, financial crisis. They were in the mortgage business. He had almost 60 grand in receipts and I bought it off him for 20,000. I put some money in it, and [00:07:00] I loved that car to death.

I’m a damn fool for forever selling it. Well, Dan, did you pick a square body or you got something better? Well, are we talking about favorite of cars in my fleet from the eighties? Either what you own or what you’ve owned, or what is your favorite of the eighties? Y’all know that I’m a sucker from my square body Chevy trucks, and I have one from almost every year of the eighties.

But I would say of my trucks, I’d have to say my 82 is probably my favorite because when my brother was killed, he helped me build that one. And as you saw, I finally got that back up and running recently. So I’m super excited to be driving that again. But the problem is, is it still drags the whole way out the driveway ’cause of how low it sits.

But it sounds so good. It does. It does. She’s pretty. Other than that, I would have to say my Grand Prix, because I’ve owned that since I was in high school. Soon the engine would be getting put back in her and she’ll be back alive as well. I would say have my fleet. It’s between those two of my favorites.

So Bradley, you know I, I thought about your 37 different cars you’ve owned over your [00:08:00] lifespan and I think you just had a brief flirtation, just like a one night stand with an eighties car, proper eighties car, didn’t you? No, I’m completely out of my elements. I was looking back at my list of 250 cars I’ve owned in my lifetime and not a one is an eighties car, not an 81.

Is that what you said? Oh wait, O okay, now I know where you’re going. I was gonna say, I do not own or nor have I owned an atheist car, but that apparently is wrong. You just reminded me that for a brief twinkle in your eye, owned an 81 horse, 9 24 turbo. 9 31 Turbo. Can I take partial ownership of that since it resided here for a little while?

That’s the case. And possession is nine-tenths. Then I never owned the car because it either resided at Matt Yips house or your house. In that case, I never owned a Porsche, but I owned it long enough to join P C A. You had tags the titles, ounces ownership. There you go. Yes. A brief flirtation with that 9 [00:09:00] 24 Turbo.

So there you go. Yes. Ran when parked. Ran, when parked. Never, never ran again. Well, like I said before, we’ve had tons of cars from the eighties over the years and whatnot. My personal favorite was actually the car drove in college. I was the second and fourth owner of this car. I had an 83 UR Quattro. They only brought 627 of those cars to the United States to begin with, and I was a stupid college kid that drove one every day and people were like, what is that?

With the jackknife fender flares that kind of set the E 30 M three, the 9 44, the RX seven, all those cars of that era copied that style that everybody wanted. Those jackknife flares from the u r Quattros. I will say that like all the other eighties heroes that I’ve driven, like R five Turbos and Camaros and things like that, you know, they sort of just don’t live up to the hype.

And we’re gonna talk more about homologation cars, I’m sure as we go through this. You know, that’s our trip down memory and lane for the eighties. But like all, what should I advise? We’re here to shop and spend other people’s money. So how do we [00:10:00] do that? You all know the drill at this point. We’ve got these weird buckets of money that don’t make much sense, so I think we’re just gonna ditch those all together.

’cause eighties cars have gotten pretty pricey. So the 50 a hundred, 150 is just whatever. But we gotta put some limitations around what we’re talking about. We’ve said before. We can’t pick the obvious choices. 9 44 is out 3 0 8. Ferrari is out. Iroc, Camaro is out. All that stuff is out the window. We gotta find the oddballs.

We gotta find the fun cars for our collector. We also have to settle this debate about the body styles of these cars because I think the eighties had one of the most diverse pallets in terms of body types to choose from. And we gotta figure out what the hell is a liftback, a hatchback, a fastback, a sportback, a shooting break, a station wagon.

Like what is the difference? Somebody explain it to me. I love arguing over the definition of a shooting break. I think that is one of the best to ridiculous argument to get in. I mean, Mercedes calls their wagons shooting breaks. In Europe, they don’t even call ’em wagons or [00:11:00] estates. They’re just the Mercedes shooting break.

Have you ever looked at the definition of a shooting break? I have a personal definition of a shooting break, which is, it’s a hatchback with no C pillar, right? If it’s a hatchback with no C pillar, It’s a shooting break. It’s got the A pillar on the window, it’s got the B pillar on the door, it’s got no C pillar, and then obviously the D pillar, ’cause it’s hatchback.

Like that to me is a shooting break. But isn’t that a liftback then? ’cause the Rocco is technically a liftback and not a hatchback. So if you want to get into the concave, convex nature of the hatch. But yeah, when it flattens out like that, I look at at it as the angle of the body line itself. So for me, I think a wagon is a three box design with a D pillar.

A hatchback is a shortened version of that, but the rear hatch is straight. It’s 90 degrees. I think we can all agree on that. But the controversy comes into your point about the shooting break, the lift back, the fast back, and William mentioned the notch back. And then you have a car like Tanya’s, a GT coupe, which is technically not a hatchback, a liftback.

[00:12:00] It’s got a funky little trunk. So it’s considered a sports coupee, but so is a 9 44, which is a lift back, like a Corvette and a cama. So it gets really blurry really fast. Well, the notch back was just a sedan. It just had a trunk. But what’s the other funky one with? That’s the hatchback. That’s the G D T hatchback.

So how is that? Or lift back? Yeah, I was gonna say right. When people talk about the notch, they talk about the sedan. It had a proper trunk. The rear glass did not lift. Well, isn’t a sedan, isn’t it four doors? No. Yeah. See it gets the eighties. Everybody was high on cocaine. Oh man. Right on. So, so, but with the examples you’re pointing out, they don’t because Rocco, I’m looking at these old Rocco’s, so it’s like a 9 44, you know, it doesn’t really have a D pillar, it’s just kind of moved forward and pulled down a Rocco.

Does there have to be some roundness on the back to make it a shooting break? I don’t know, but that’s the beauty of this particular decade in automotive history, is that there’s so many different body styles to choose from. We’ve never had that type of [00:13:00] proliferation again. We’ve actually consolidated down and there’s less and less wagons today than there ever has been.

Hatchbacks are sort of going away in lieu of SUVs, which are just giant hatchbacks on stilts and you know, things like that. So we have a lot to choose from. It really depends on what you’re into. And then obviously we can go pick up trucks, trucks, all that kind of stuff was also available at this time period.

It’s like a smorgasbord of different cars. So the question is, where do we take our prospective buyer? We only talking hatches. Oh no, I just wanted to clear up an argument. ’cause one day, oh, Brad and I at the office we’re going back and forth about is a Camaro a hatchback? And I’m like, no, that whole glass lifts up in the back.

But it’s not a hatchback, it’s a liftback. Just like a 9 44 is a liftback. When he says, we got into an argument, it was because we were trying to iron out details for a spec race in This is true in Forza, this is true. And we were trying to decide if we wanted to allow cars like the Camaros and the Mustangs in this spec race.

The determination was no, because they’re not [00:14:00] hatchbacks. They’re lift backs. I, I guess question is though, is this gonna be their only car? Is it just gonna be a fun car? I mean, utilitarian aspect of it. I mean, they’re gonna have to use this for all their daily activities or is this just gonna be, you know, something they can go have fun with?

I think anybody that’s buying an eighties car today is definitely buying it as a either showpiece or a tool around car. I don’t think anybody’s really buying an eighties car as a daily driver anymore. You know, not without considerable amounts of money. Talk to Daniel. Well, I love that you said Eric about the crux because on my list I’ve got the iconic Dodge Rampage.

Oh my god. And I’m telling you, Dodge Ramp is just like the old crappy little brats that were so popular and I love the heck out of those things. Those are utilitarian, right? They are. Yeah. Well, and remember too, Volkswagen had one too. The cad, the rabbit. Yeah. What’s cool about the rampage was on my list of forgotten.

I have a lot of Dodge on my list today, but, so Don, you know, as a, as a closet Chrysler nerd yourself. You know, we talk about the [00:15:00] TC a lot, which is on the Q platform. We’ve talked in the past about the K cars, which started in the seventies and things like that, but the rampage, although it looks like a K car, is actually on the L chassis.

It’s like its own beast, but the parts are interchangeable with the Omni and the Shelby. Mm-hmm. Which gives you this kind of little hot rod that you can build out of it, which is pretty cool. And that was my number one. I’m glad that you went that way because the Omni, obviously there’s one that had the Shelby badge on it and that’s, you know, something that’s collectible now.

But my number one that I would want right now in that same category would be the late eighties Dodge Shelby charger with the manual turbo. I had the uh, the Shelby Dakota g l h s and the charger on my list as well. Is the Daytona Z in that list too or is that just into the nineties? No, the Z was an eighties car.

The Turbo Z came out in 84. That was their very first hot Rod. Daytona was the turbo Z and then you had the Chrysler Laser X SE I think was their version. And that car [00:16:00] only lasted for two years and it went out of business and the Daytona took over. They had the Chrysler Conquest. Yep, conquest tsi, which was the same as the Mitsubishi ion.

Those were cool. That was the RX seven competitor. It was 180 horsepower or something stock. If you guys love that car. I know a gentleman down in Virginia up on his hill, he’s got acres and acres of land, but he’s got probably 120 of those cars just in various rusted out state. He’s got a couple of the race cars that did in that little celebrity race series.

With those. He is just got ’em all over. If everyone’s looking for one, let me know ’cause I can set you up this guy. ’cause he is just got hundreds of ’em sitting out in the field. Just in various stages of the K I was shocked how cheap they were on bring a trailer. What are they going for? So like the G L H S, the last year that Shelby Charger, they only made a thousand of them sold for 12 grand like a couple months ago.

The Chrysler C Ss X, which same drivetrain they made their version of that under [00:17:00] 10,000. The Omni G L H S, the collectible one is still under 20 easy. Some transactions at 15 grand. That was an over 200 horsepower car too, which back then is like, there’s a lot neck breaking. Yeah. Yeah. Front wheel drive and kind of insane.

And lots of torque steer too. It’s beautiful. It’s a good thing. Well, the partnership with Mitsubishi for the engines was what benefited them. ’cause if it wasn’t for that, that car would’ve been crap if they would’ve used one of their off the shelf engines. Well, the best part is the base Omni was using a rabbit engine, so they were also partnered with Volkswagen to develop that car.

So it’s sort of a weird marriage of three companies to make the omni work. Yeah, I, I spent a lot of time riding around in one in high school. My cousin had one. We beat the living hell outta that car. Before we go a little bit too far down the path and why I wanted to talk about the Daytona Z and, and there was an IROC version of that and a bunch of other stuff later, you know, just like there was the IROC Camaro is how far into the nineties mark are we allowed to take some of these cars?

’cause if we’ve argued before, some of the [00:18:00] best nineties cars started in the eighties and some of the best eighties cars started in the seventies. Do we have a sort of grace year that we can cut off for this discussion? Just for clarification, I think one of the best nineties cars you could have bought in 2017, are we talking about the Dodge Viper?

Yes. If it were entirely up to me, there would be a fair amount of leeway. Right? Like so for example, I would say a 19 89, 300 ZX Turbo is obviously a nineties car, right? Just culturally identifies as a nineties car like a rado would or, or a Supra or something like that. Yeah. And like I would say a a 9 6 4 for me, a 9 6 4 Porsche would be a nineties car, but came out in 89.

But on the same side, it’s like some great models were made towards the end in the early nineties. Right? So you’ve, you know, you got your Shelby Fox body, we had the GT 40 heads and everything. They made 91 through 93. There are definitely cars that kind of stretched out into the early nineties that I think identify as eighties cars if I can keep leaning on that language.

And [00:19:00] so I would tend towards setting a cutoff around probably 93 as like the last model year. And that’s when many of ’em transitioned to new body styles around the 93 or 94 timeframe anyway. Yeah, at least on, yeah, for a lot of things. Should we continue to pull on this Dodge thread just for a moment longer?

Don, do you wanna talk about the Miranda? Is that, is that on your list of vehicles? You’re not being arrested. It’s not the Miranda, it’s the Marata. What? Or is it the Marada Mar? It’s the Marata. Which was the Cordoba. Because remember the Cordoba has the Corinthian leather. Yeah, the Marada had vinyl.

Terrible, terrible, terrible. They were wonderful cars. As long as you didn’t wanna go, you know, anywhere, they were fine. Hey, I’ll tell you so down. You got prostitutes walking by you. You’ve got their attention. Trust me, they know that this is a classic car right here. So since we’re pulling that Chrysler Plymouth Dodge Thread still for a moment, I wanna touch on something that I’ve mentioned before, which is the [00:20:00] A M C Eagle four by four.

I still think that’s an interesting choice. It’s still in that weird period. They built that car into the eighties, even though it started in the seventies. But there’s another car that is just kind of classically eighties. And Brad, what do we think about the Jeep Cherokee xj? I’ve always loved the Xjs.

They’re, I think they’re good. They’re a great hatchback. The Xjs one of those things that if you’re not a truck person, you could kind of go the other way. Lower it, do some stuff. Blasphemer. No, no, never. No way. Why not? Why you could make a low rider Jeep though. Lifted. Lifted on 30 sevens. Take the doors off and send it.

That’s the only way those trucks live. ’cause the only way those hatchbacks live well with the generation of Jeeps. They weren’t really good until when they started putting the four liter in ’em in the late eighties. Yep. That’s what we’re talking about here. But I’m saying they made ’em earlier in the eighties, I believe, but it wasn’t until later eighties when the four liter became the powertrain and that four liter was bulletproof.

Yep. So Jeff, we’re gonna play the great Carac here. Can you [00:21:00] think where I’m going with the xj? I’m wondering if you’re going in the direction of something that’s a little more rare. The Dodge Raider. Oh no, I was gonna go down the Comanche path. So yeah, Raider being the, what was it? The copy of the Mitsubishi something or other.

It looks like a little, an affordable version of a defender almost. I love ’em. I like the Comanche ’cause it’s a XJ with a bed on it. And those are also super rare. They didn’t make a ton of those either. And then you could slam it down on the ground on bags and stuff. Brad, I’m not gonna lie. That would be cool if we’re going down this four by four Ss U V Pickup.

Ridiculousness road. I cannot watch the fall guy now without thinking of you. Okay. I watch the Fall guy every night. There you are with that big truck. Okay. Anyway. Can we get off the Jeep thing for a minute or are we still on there? Sure, sure. Okay, because I want to go someplace really, really weird. This thing popped in my head late at night during my insomnia attack, and when it came out I thought, my God, this is the.

Ugliest thing that’s ever hit four wheels, but it was [00:22:00] so ugly. I fell in love with it. I had to have one someday. I just had to, and then I found out it was made in Italy and had a Ford Drive train, and I thought, this is for me. This is perfect. Then I found out it was designed by Tom Sharda, who also designed my 1 24, and I thought, I’ve gotta have this thing someday.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to bring up to the board for potential consideration. The la what is that? Oh, LA yeah, the u v for SUVs for the people who are tired of Range Rovers and Jeeps with wood on the side. Wow, that is ugly. Jesus Christ. That was ugly. I rock your world. Do I not? You gotta love that.

The Wikipedia image, all the paints all jacked up, like they couldn’t even find a good one for the image on Wikipedia. I’ll tell you, growing up where I grew up, We had a dealership. It was a Porsche Audi dealer, and they took on the La Forza franchise. I remember riding down there with my bike. [00:23:00] They had four or five of ’em sitting there on the lot.

And I, I think the saddest part about the whole thing was about a year later, they still had those same four or five. Oh no. It was sad. Nobody was buying these cars. Cars and bids. Got the monitor as being ultra rare and rare and what, 50 bucks. I mean, what do they want for these things? I’m like, wait. Ultra rare.

It has a speed hump though. Look, look, it has a power bulge on the bonnet. It’s like an eclipse. There’s packing weight. It can lay some pipe. Oh, that’s terrible. Notice all the colors of the paint. That is awful. See in the back door? The front door, the hood. They’re all different to the kind of car I would buy to tow my youo around with.

So since we’re still talking about trucks, straight out of the Trias period is the gwa, you can’t get any more. I don’t know what decade that thing is. Can we bring that up in the eighties? Because that damn thing dates back to the forties, right? I mean that you stretch back. That thing really goes back.

It has not changed. They still make it the same way [00:24:00] today. I know, I know it’s the same thing, but is it a forties car? You can’t buy the same one. The thing about the GWA is it still screams eighties. In the same way that like the Lincoln Mark VII is the banker’s hot rod. You know, the kind of thing, it’s like, it’s got this certain stance about it that it is timeless, but it’s also kind of at that height.

It’s got that like bourgeois about it that makes it eighties, that it just fits in with the rest of the landscape. Right. And you can’t say that it’s not, you wouldn’t see a GWA in an eighties movie. I mean, it’s like, all right, cool. I, I think it fits. No, I think it works. I do. I, I don’t know. I have trouble with it because it goes back to the forties to me that, that that’s, you know, when I would test those at MotorTrend and I hated them, I did.

I gotta be honest, I hated those things because for me, the height and the width of me, when you sat in that truck, that was it. You were not going to slouch and get more comfortable. And I’m sorry. Back when I worked for MotorTrend, I drove a lot of Lincolns. I was used to slouching all the time. So this whole upright position thing, which is great for [00:25:00] certain German people, it didn’t work for me.

It just couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t get it out my head that this thing just reaches all the way back to the forties. It represents, you know, the war and yet they still keep building this stupid thing. Yep. And it is the worst thing in the world, off road. I don’t care what anybody says. I’ll put it to you this way.

Never. Ever Did we get one of these cars at MotorTrend that did not have that stupid little yellow triangle with the mation mark in the middle? Every single Mercedes, SS u V, doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the G wagon, the ml, any of them. They all had that stupid thing on there. We were always calling Mercedes, what is this about?

What is it? Don’t worry about that. Just, you know, just, just don’t write about it. Don’t mention it. It’s a brand new car. It has less than 300 miles on it. This thing is on, and we’re not gonna write about you. Sure. You don’t wanna just send us another one to prove that, oh, I don’t know. Maybe you built one that the light doesn’t come on.

Sorry, you hit something here. I guess because I’m getting pretty [00:26:00] emotional about this, I’d much rather talk about my Lata. My lata is much better. So the La Forza though, can anyone else look at that and not see a predecessor like the a Suzu rodeo? Because I see that, oh yeah, it looks like a weird Isuzu trooper.

Like no power bulge on a rodeo. Did Tom Arda have anything to do with any of those Jesuses? ’cause Arda designed that Laa, I guess the understanding was he had to use a lot of existing parts to make it work. So it was sort of like putting together like a Lego set from what, a a lot of factory. I mean, that thing looks like it’s out of the Eastern block.

Yeah, I know. I remember those stupid things were like 50 grand. I mean they were insane. They were cheap. No, and they were built on a Bronco chassis, which, hey, I’m a resident Ford guy here, but I love Broncos. Come on. When I came to Bronco for 18,000, why not just get the Bronco? I will say that yes, the Mercedes is definitely an eighties vehicle, but it just reaches back to the forties and I just don’t get it.

I can’t comprehend it. Will it make you feel any better, Don? That I almost burnt one [00:27:00] of them gwas to the ground in Albania when I was down there. Do you have video? I’d love to see video. No, I don’t have video unfortunately. Alright, draw me a picture. Someday the battery broke loose and like fried all the wires on the hood and smoke just started going everywhere and it was epic.

Oh no. That’s weird because a friend of mine literally just bought a brand new S some big shot four door, $500,000 Mercedes driving home from the dealership as a battery exploded under the hood. That’s what the bulge is for on the La Forza. Okay. Babo the room absorbs the blast. God’s not happy with the G wagon, but I have an alternative for you.

I had a feeling you weren’t gonna like that as an option, but think about our, our perspective buyer. You wanna buy something totally eighties, maybe it looks like a matchbox car has off-road potential and you don’t wanna get into the Jeep Cult lift in and big tires and all that kinda stuff. What about.

The Suzuki Samurai, they’re getting hard to find in decent shape. They are. If you don’t have to go on the highway, you’re all right. The geo tracker. Yes. Yes. [00:28:00] Jeff, you hit it. That is my dream. SS U V. I’m not kidding you. Oh, I love the geo. I was gonna say, I raised you a geo tracker, but Jeff just blasted straight through it like a gwa.

So Jeff is the GWA of the group, but yes, the samurai is fun. Just don’t turn quickly. Well, the same is true, the trooper. Right. It remember the motor week test? We had to put the bars on it so it wouldn’t roll over. Yes. You know another one that liked doing that with the Bronco two, which is absolute eighties, I don’t think.

Nothing made it to the nineties. I don’t know. Had those weird side windows. Yeah. The side windows go up into the roof a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Kind of like the The Land Rovers. Yeah. Yeah. They were terrible. They loved tipping over. Now I would love to have a Suzuki though. I would, and I think their very, very eighties.

I had a friend who had a girlfriend who had one. It was like a jungle gym on wheels. You were always just a little terrified when that thing was going down the road. No, I loved it. I thought it was great. Well, Don, lemme ask you this. Do you remember the Suzuki X 90, the one that came [00:29:00] later? Yeah. Yes. That was just more rounder.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was more of a sedan ish looking thing, wasn’t it? Yeah. Is that the one you’re talking about, Jeff? Yeah. But they touted it. They put pictures of it in front of big cat machines on the construction site. Oh Lord. Yeah. Terrible. Yeah, that thing was goofy. There were a lot of goofy SUVs that came out at that time.

I can’t remember too many of ’em, but that Suzuki was one of ’em that was, that was pretty weird. Bronco two, that was almost the same chassis as the Rangers at that time. Right. I don’t know what it was with the engines. Ford put ’em in at that time, but like from the factory, they came with a T to them.

It’s like you start up and it was sitting there just tapping and Ford was like, oh, that’s normal. That’s like the check engine line on the G wagon like they Todd I was talking about. Mm-hmm. But I, I wanna finish out this thought on trucks because then we can move on to really obscure stuff because I think trucks are an important part of the eighties.

We all fell in love with the fall guy and the square bodies and all that kind of stuff. And I, I don’t want Dan to take us on a three hour tour on the SSS square body. There’s two more that are on this list and I’m glad Mark allowed me to walk into [00:30:00] the nineties just a little bit. I hope I’m on the same wavelength as some people here.

I’m thinking G M C Cyclone. Oh, there you go. The cyclone and the typhoon. Those were awesome. Feels nineties to me. It does 91. It is, but culturally it feels nineties. It it eighties. S 10, though. That’s true. Isn’t S 10. I agree with Mark though, because I, believe me, I was thinking about the cyclone and the typhoon, both of them.

I love both of those vehicles. I resisted, I thought, no, I’m not gonna bring this up because. It’s a nineties car. To me, that thing kind of kicked off nineties performance. It really did. ’cause to come into the nineties, oh my god, they built this little pickup that will spank a Corvette with the right driver.

That thing is mind blowing. It really, really is a great thing about it. It held the record for Fastest Truck for one of the longest spans up until recently, as a matter of, but zero to 60 time was something like 25 years. Yeah. So I have one final one. This is how we get into obscure stuff. Does anybody know what the abbreviation, [00:31:00] R E P U stands for?

Mazda produced something called the repu, which is the Rotary Engine pickup. So it’s like a Mazda 2100 Ford Ranger, but rotary powered with the RX seven 13 B in it. So that’s kind of a neat thing. They do exist. You can import ’em from Japan. So if you wanna do something really off the wall and have a kind of interesting pickup truck, I think the Mazda repo would be something really cool to look into.

Are you pronouncing that right? Repo re repo repo. My repo got repoed. Yeah. Yeah. You know the nice thing too about the rotary Mazda pickups, they do go back to the seventies, breaking away from our eighties only discussion. That little pickup was around in the seventies with that rotary motor. If you’re gonna import one from Japan, you’ve got a big span to look for.

But how many of those things survived, especially living in Japan? Yeah. I mean, that’s a harsh, harsh environment for cars over there. That really is. Exactly. If individuals look of the repo, they could [00:32:00] also go for like the Toyotas of that generation. ’cause some of those small Toyota pickups had that similar look to them.

Oh, the tacos? Yeah. Mm-hmm. You have that 22 re and the 22 R. Those were fantastically powerful, high revving little four cylinders. They love, love, love to go. The Toyotas were fantastic. Well, the nice part about this time period and why I bring up a truck like the Mazda, is that we are outside that time limit.

We can really start looking at importing cars from Japan and from Europe, right. That we weren’t able to buy, let’s say 10 years ago. Right. We’re past that. So now they’re not even really gray market anymore. You can just bring ’em in for historic when they get here, that kind of thing. So it really opens up where the nineties, they’re still like on the verge of some really cool cars being able to come over outside of like Nissan GTRs and stuff like that.

So pretty much the pallet is wide open here. Mm-hmm. In terms of what we can bring to the United States from the eighties, which is pretty slick. But one of the cars that was on my list been a dream car of mine for a long, long time. [00:33:00] Alpine G T A. It was on my list. Anyone remember this car with the big headlights up front?

The one that says, I’m better than you because I’m French. It was on my list. It was on my list. Was it? Yeah. I’ve always loved those cars, you know, and I used to read of those British magazines back in the day. There were sometimes full page ads for dealers over in England and France, and they would specialize in these cars.

And I remember thinking, my God, that is the coolest looking car in the world. I just loved them. And they had a couple different variants. I don’t remember what they were. I remember the G T A though fit in the eighties. The next one was more of a nineties car. That’s why I stayed away from it. You have opened Pandora’s Box.

You have crossed the threshold into my territory. We’re talking about French cars now. Well, in that case, I’m gonna do a filibuster all about TC all night long because it doesn’t get better than TC period. That is an obvious choice. We’re not allowed to go there. Oh no. It’s been boycotted shit. If you’re gonna bring french cars into, for my generation, having driven one, when I was stationed [00:34:00] in England, that one of my troops had picked up.

The 2 0 5 G T I ambuja. Those were quick, powerful little cars and fun to drive. 1.9 liter, not the 1.6 liter. They had two. Correct. And Mark, you’re right on the money. I just talked to one of my guys recently. He’s trying to import a 2 0 5 rally, which is the one six, which is the one nobody really wants, but it’s still a heck of a lot of fun.

It’s again, outside of that statute of limitations. And then you can hot rod it because it’s a eo. So why not? If you love that body style and you can’t obviously afford a T 16, why not go with the base model? Right? The eight valve G T I is just as fun as a 16 valve sometimes. Yeah, I mean, it was a surprising number of transactions on Bring a trailer for those 2 0 5 GTIs.

I was looking at them as well, and I think the last one, it was in good shape. It went for 14 grand for 1.9, and you don’t have to deal with importing or bullshit like in the United States transaction. $14,000. That’s not bad. I know there’s one that Tanya and I appreciated from a really early episode We did [00:35:00] way back when when we reviewed the movie Lost Bullet, and in that they featured a Renault 21, and if you don’t know what that is, it’s sort of like competitor to the EO 4 0 5.

Really neat looking sedan, sort of hopped up, does have a turbo 2.1 liter, all that kinda stuff. So that’s a neat car. It’s been on my radar for a while. In the United States, there’s a Renault that people often forget about. I’m not talking about the LA car, which definitely screams the eighties. Does anybody remember the Fuego?

I love ue. The Fuego is a wonderful car. It’s another fine car to be broken down on the side of the roadway. It’s a car is ugly, don’t hold back. Let us know how you really feel. Yes. But, and the reason the Fuego is an interesting candidate is the fact that it was used for a Rene Spec series, an S C C A in the eighties, and Andy Pilgrim drove one of those cars and you can actually still find some of those X Reno Cup cars and they’re all Reno Fuegos because they were sold here in the state.

So it’s kind of [00:36:00] interesting if you want something that isn’t completely mainstream but was available stateside. Yeah. But the problem with that, and we’ve said this multiple times with other subjects, cars from foreign countries that make it to the US are normally their crap versions of cars. A hundred percent.

That’s the great thing about this, is now we can start bringing their decent cars in without all the headache. One final French car. Okay. And this is the only time that we’ll say this on the show ever about a Ciro end. I really like the bx. I think the BX is super cool. You know how I feel about French cars?

I’m all over them. I think they’re wonderful. I think they need to come here more frequently. It’s like Citroen’s attempt at making the Audi coop or the Rocco. It’s got that like boxy sportiness to it. That’s very eighties. But without the round headlight kind of feature of the BMWs, you need to specify that you’re referring to the four TC because the Citro and BX is a heinous wagon.

You’re absolutely right. That’s true. The four tc. For some reason, whenever I see cars, like they have like that rear fender skirt type [00:37:00] thing, it just makes me have flashback. ’cause the eighties versions of that looked ugly. But when they did it in the fifties and the forties with the fender skirts, they looked good.

Is this the car from Ronan that the 6.9 liter was chasing down the brown 6.9 liter? Yeah. Was chasing down a four door citra. And they were duking it out. And I gotta tell you, bullet be damned, that could have been the best car chase ever because you hear the throaty rumble of that 6.9 liter and you hear that screaming high-pitched opera coming from the Citro end.

Oh my god. They were both fantastic, but I don’t know if that’s the car you’re talking about. No, the Citro and Zanio was in Ronan. That’s the big car. Yeah. He’s talking about the Citro and BX four tc. Notice how the rear end of that car looks like the Chevy Bolt. You ever see that? I mean, with those gills in the C pillar, it reminds me of the coupe in the u r Quattro.

It’s got the same vent back there. It does. Okay. Yeah, it’s ugly, but I can see it. It’s a cool car just because it’s so ugly. It’s kinda like the La Forza, you know? [00:38:00] They’re so ugly. You just gotta love them. And I gotta give it to the French. They did a lot of hatchbacks. Okay. And because we didn’t get a lot of French cars here, we tend to kind of forget that because you look at the R four and the R five, and you look at all the ciro ends and the PEOs.

Every model almost came in a hatchback or liftback. Mm-hmm. At that period. And then the wagon version. So they kind of like, were the kings of that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. But we relate to the G T I because that’s what we got from Germany and the Honda C V C C and stuff like that. The Civic and the CRSs and all those.

Yeah. But the French really just, they leaned into the hatchback scene hard. So when I think hot hatches, my brain goes there again, as a first time collector, something to think about is maybe start looking at French cars and you’re not gonna see very many of them. No. At your next cars in coffee, that’s for sure.

It looks so good. In black, it looked like shit in white, but in black. Oh yeah. Much better. Much better. In black. I actually even like those wheels. They’re so bizarre that they’re awesome. And again, I won’t say that often about a ciro end. [00:39:00] So we can come back from France. We can put our brie and our baguettes and our burgundy aside.

What else have you guys got on your list? ’cause I, I do have some weird ones. Going a little bit to the left of the French, if I may. Two alphas G T V six. That always won my heart back in the eighties. One I thought was horribly ugly growing up, but today I absolutely can’t get enough of them. The Alpha GTV six and uh, the sedan, the 1 64.

The 1 64 is a really good looking car, especially if you can deal with that two-tone thing that it has going on. Yeah, yeah, we, we had a guy back in again, that dealer I told you about. They were the weirdest dealer, but they also sold Alpha to Mayo. So we had a lot of alphas in the town and one of the guys got it and actually he got rid of that two-tone.

He actually painted it all one color. So much better looking, so much better looking. But what I thought was funny was during that time, and here we go with the king of the eighties, I think basically any Mercedes sedan from the eighties is gonna be the king, but they too had that plastic body [00:40:00] bottom and then they painted on the top in the town I grew up in, all because of that one alpha, all the Mercedes onlys ran and they painted their bottoms to match their tops.

They looked so much better, they really did. But yeah, the G T V and the 1 64, I just thought they were fantastic cars and like you’re saying, you know, they were plentiful back in the day, but today not so much. You show up to a cars in coffee, you show up to any car show, it’s gonna be kind of the odd ball of the bunch.

Not as weird as a French car, but it’d be up there. Well, if we’re going obscure, one on my list that was really obscure that I found actually recently was a Ford Mustang McLaren M 81. Kind of one of those ho allegations that I think they only made like 10 or 15 of them. They were road legal. It was kind of to showcase the race team.

Those flares are really interesting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that was almost like the start of the wide body almost right before the wide body got popular. Yeah. And if you remember Jeff building on that car, and it’s on my list here, spray [00:41:00] the A S C, McLaren Capri. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Yep. And then just a little later, because the Capri was not selling very well, Ford slid it over to Mustang and it became the A S C McLaren Mustang that sold much better three years that they had it as Mustang, and two that they had it for Capri.

But those two cars, they sprang from that car that you’re talking about. That was the father of these cars that I had on my list. Because the Capri, the RS was basically like a hatchback Mustang. Right, exactly. They were the same car. Just one had a domy glass, a bubble hatchback. That was the Capri. Yeah.

And a blunted front end. It was a very blunt front end, whereas the Mustangs kind of leaned a little bit. It had a little bit of a rake to it. Same car. Yeah. Now that’s a good pick. That really is. My list is kind of organized here. That’s how crazy Swedish I got about it. But where I have the A S C McLaren that you brought up right below that, if you remember in the eighties, Eldorado, todo, and Riviera Yeah.

Were all offered in a converted [00:42:00] convertible. They were done by a s C. Now the Cadillac, there were 200 of them that were actually built by Cadillac, and for some reason Cadillac turned it back over to a s c. They didn’t wanna do it. Those are really fun. Now, right below that, you’ve got the Elante, the Rio of the tc.

Where I’m going with this, your A S C McLaren, the El Dorado Todo Riviera convertible, the tc, the Elante, or the reta. Those are all fantastically cheap. Yeah. For what you’re getting, the Elante and the TC are going up in value the quickest, from what I can tell. The A S C McLaren Capri. Are stupid cheap for what you’re getting.

Really the Mustang is worth a lot more. If you’re just starting out and you want some odd, weird car that’s actually kind of easy to get ahold of and extremely easy to service, you’re not gonna go wrong with any of those cars. You’re really not. And this is a really cool pick that Jeff has brought up about this M 81 Mustang.

And obviously that’s gonna be what people want, especially if you’re in the Mustang community. The people that know [00:43:00] about it, it’s got that particular orange color, all that kinda stuff. But that Capri version, what’s really neat about that is it hearkens back to the TransAm days and Lin James drove a TransAm Capri.

So if you wanted to deck it out and go back to the eighties, you could make a replica of her Ford Motorsport Capri, right? Stuff like that with those flares and that wide, it really is aggressive. That’s a cool car. I mean, I, I hate to say I almost like it better than the regular fox body, although you could probably take a fox body and build one of these if somebody makes the flare kit and all the parts.

That’s what I was gonna get at too, is actually they do. Oh, you can still get all the flare kit. You can get the interior, which had Ricardo seats, you know, these were two seat cars. The convertibles, I don’t know about the M 81. I’m assuming that was a two-seater car, because it was a racing car. You know, these convertibles I’m talking about, they were a little more relaxed.

They were a little more for the boulevard, you know, they were a Mustang. They could move, but they were converted to be more like the sl. So you have the two [00:44:00] seats, and then that little package area behind the two seats. They were full convertible. They had beautiful carpet. The Ricardo seats, they were upgraded in a lot of different ways.

The Damnest thing, to me, again, the TC and the alte of this genre. Are the ones going up in value the fastest out of all of ’em. And yet they built a lot fewer McLaren A S C cars. Yeah. Than either the, especially the Alante. They built quite a few of those. But the tc, they only built roughly 7,000 of them.

What? What did they build? I mean, I just saw the sheet because I was looking at it, it was low. I wanna say 2000 is all that was built of the Mustang and then the Capri was even lower than that because even though it was in production, it just didn’t sell well you know Jeff, you hit a winner there. You really did.

And I never thought about bringing the M 81 into it because that was just too extreme for me. But yeah, that is a kick butt car. Technically. The M 81 was from 1981. Yes. Oh. And if you look at the style, it really is build off that kind of seventies Mustang. It’s kind of crazy to think they’re charging [00:45:00] 25 grand with inflation in 2023.

Something like $90,000 for a car with 135 horsepower. Oh, that hurts. That hurts that. It was the eighties. It was all about flash, pizazz style. Look at the TransAm. Seriously. It just gets no flashy or no better than a TransAm of those days. The GTAs, those Oh perfect. Cars just perfect. Alright. Night rider.

All right. Michael Knight. Chill out there a second. Didn’t hang again. The cars were super heroes then too. The, what you saw on tv, like can you name a show? That didn’t have a chase scene or the hero or heroine drove some sort of car that you wanted. It was like a rolling advertisement every week between Magnum and Fall Guy and MacGyver and Falcon Crest and you know, heart to heart and all there was, oh geez.

The list goes on and on and on on these shows. Well, the ETE made me want a Corvette. I mean, I always fancied myself as face because I had the blonde hair and I just had to have that. The E team makes you wanna buy a Vandora van. Come on now. Oh yeah. Oh, that too. I want ’em both. I’m greedy. Are you kidding me?[00:46:00]

I’m a child of the eighties. I want it all and it’s all about me. But you talked about sophistication and all this kind of stuff, and there’s another car that was featured in a show every week, and kind of to go back to Magnum PI for a second, Higgins drove an Audi 5,000 and a 4,000. The big one, the 5,000 was always like their test bed.

We’re gonna put the most experimental stuff we can come up with in this land yacht and then subjected to the people. And if it breaks, then we’ll figure how to fix it from there. That, you know, it was kind of Audi’s thing back then, but the 5,000 is sort of underappreciated. And what’s cool about the 5,000, which became the 200 later and things like that is a V eight fits in there.

Just wanna let y’all know it was used in TransAm and in touring car and D T M and all that kind of stuff. The 5,000 can be turned into a beast. If you want to build a hot rod, but if you want a nice, luxurious and most aerodynamic car of the eighties, the 5,000 is an interesting choice. And since you’re a wagon guy, Eric, I was just looking it up.

They actually came in wagons. Yeah. The 200 avan dude, [00:47:00] it’s like a unicorn for me. That’s the top. Wasn’t the 5,000 also available as a wagon? Yeah. Yes there was. Yeah, there was. But the 200, the 200 is what you want because you get the bigger motor and the turbo and all the fun stuff that, that was the one my mom was actually interested in the Audi 5,000 wagon.

I remember that. And that, that was a terrible day in my family’s history because my dad and his anti foreign cars, all that stuff. And we went, me and my mom alone secretive. My dad couldn’t hear about this. We went to drive the Audi 5,000 wagon, and I’ll never forget the look on my mom’s face. She drove it around the block and put it right back on the dealer lot and thanked the salesman.

And we were leaving and I thought, okay, I don’t know what that’s all about. I said, we get in our car, which was a 78 Ford Country Squire, l t d boat. And so I asked her, what do you think? What do you think? You know, I’m all excited. I’m hoping she’s gonna buy a new car, you know? And she said, that was the most dreadful car I’ve ever driven in my life.

I said, you’re kidding me, but Uncle Howard. He goes, yeah, I don’t know how Uncle Howard tolerates those pieces of junk. I really don’t. Wow. I said, what was wrong with it? Well, it was terribly [00:48:00] slow. It drove really nicely. But you know the window and then that back end the way the rear rakes in like that, you lose all that cubic footage and the head room and your father with his height and there’s no way it’s gonna work out and blah, blah, blah.

I would blown away how badly she hated that car. I just, Hmm, sorry. Well, you know what she needed instead was a Nissan Pulsar nx. That was a cool car. The Inspector Gadget car, right? Yeah. You could take off that rear end and have the little hatchback or put it back and you’ve got a wagon and No, those are fantastic little cars.

I never understood that car. If I can really go boldly, We’re only the stupidest ever go. I’d like to go there now. Join me. You’re going to Britain? No, Germany. Oh, okay. Because there are certain cars that came from Germany in the 1980s that defined the 1980s, and I’m talking Crockett and Tubs shook ’em down every week.

The drug, Lord, with [00:49:00] their AMGs, their gals, their Lorenzos, there’s bottles and their tresco. Mercedes-Benz. I’m glad you brought that up because I know we talked to Mark about the 500 E, which was the Porsche collaboration for Mercedes, but I found a little gem that predates the nineties car. Yeah, but I found an eighties version of it that predates it called the Hammer.

Yes, the hammer was the a m G version. That was the beginning of it all. The hammer. That thing was incredible. I would go so far as to say any a m g car from the eighties is the balls. Oh yeah, pre-acquisition, they’re all very low volume. I don’t care what a m g you have from that era. And even the Alpena BMWs, they were much more sport.

Any, everybody thinks of the B seven, which in my opinion kind of ruined the Alpena brand. But if you go back to the eighties and nineties, they made some cool stuff. If you get like a B six, E 30 B M W, Alpena B six, like that is a very cool car. Any A M G from the eighties is a [00:50:00] very cool car going through the roof price wise.

Now those AMGs from the eighties, I mean they’re just getting obscene in value. Crazy money. Yeah. I mean if you remember back in the day, not too long ago, you could buy those, they’re was one in Palm Springs used to drive me crazy on the way into or out of town by the welcome center, which used to be an old gas station, and the guy was a Mercedes guy.

He. A three 80 SL or a four 50 SL A M G, and it was the real deal. It was all black, had the hard top still on it, had this black interior decked out dashboard. It was incredible. You know, when I was pumping gas, I went over just to look at it and one thing that really got my attention, you know, you think to yourself, oh my God, look at this ridiculous thing.

It’s a blacked out sl. How ugly. When you get close to those things and you start looking at the details that they use to make those cards, for example, that blackout treatment, it’s not all gloss black. If you look at the grill treatment, if you look at the little Mercedes emblem, you look at all that, it’s actually more of a matte finish.

It’s kind of a satin [00:51:00] finish. Yeah. They differentiated how they were gonna black out that car, and then when you look on the inside, people say they’re white. They’re actually a light, light, silver color material on the gauges that set it apart. You had your alpine stereo system, you had all this crazy stuff.

They were really highly detailed, but then of course you had the handling suspension, and if you could get ’em to modify the engine, you had all that much more. They were something else. But my point is, I remember that guy at the Shell station. He wasn’t selling, wasn’t selling, wasn’t selling. And then finally one day he said, yeah, he was interested in selling.

He said, well, how? How much do you want for it? You have five grand. Yeah. I said, okay, well, what’s wrong with it? He goes, well, you gotta rebuild the engine. You gotta rebuild the transmission. You gotta rebuild everything. And because it’s not straight Mercedes, you gotta find a specialist who can rebuild an A M G.

They’re thinking, oh, so that’s where the money’s gonna go on that car, you know? And now it’s gone. Somebody did buy it. It’s worth it now. It wasn’t worth it. Then the market value will pay for the repair. Yeah. Yeah, it’s crazy. And that’s a really good question ’cause William, you do deal in Mercedes as [00:52:00] well.

So I’m wondering, Don left one of the tuners off the list and that’s Braas and at that time, mm-hmm Braas was a big deal in the Mercedes community. So if you look at the market value there, would you rather have an early A M G or a Braas from that period? Me take a m g. Quality wise, Buildwise A M G was a step above vis, I think Vis was more aesthetics really than the kind of like motor net.

So I mean, not saying it was a bad car, but I would steer someone towards a m g. Now vis is obviously gonna have a little more rarity to it than a m G ’cause there weren’t so many. Yeah, I’d steer towards a m G for Brava. Really can’t go wrong with either. I would say two distinct ways of crowing into doing those cars, but I’d say a m g all day long.

And the rarity thing is relative, like the A M G volumes from that time were really, really low. Right? Oh yeah. You’re talking hundreds or thousands for those models, and many of them are under a thousand. Yeah. I mean, you could be in single digit production on some of those. A lot of ’em are only double digit.

I mean, some are only a couple hundred. That was [00:53:00] where it was taking them weeks to build a car. It wasn’t like they were cranking these things out by the day, took their time, building those things correctly. So yeah, the volume, you know, was very low. Kind of going back, like Don’s saying about the guys saying, well, okay, it’s only five grand.

Oh, you have to go through the motor transmission and stuff. A lot of those cars, they weren’t taken care of. They were at first. Then they used Mercedes that, you know, had a kit. So people didn’t take care of it. It drove into the ground. No one would take care of ’em. It got to the point, well, I’m not gonna put in 15, 20 grand into a car that’s only worth five grand.

So they just let ’em rot. It’s worth it now, but, and here’s a case in point. There was a company, they actually changed the trunk emblem, you know, it’d say 500 sel, and they changed it to 1000 sel. Mercedes asked them politely stop using our s e l logo. So they used 1000 and it was the initials of the guy who owned the company.

I think that’s what that was. And these 1000 SELs, you gotta think we’re talking 19 83, 19 85, somewhere in there. They were $250,000 to start. This is crazy money. And that’s why only the people who could afford [00:54:00] them were the sheik and the drug lords. To what you are saying, William, I’ve got a friend who collects these cars and one of ’em a tragic story, it broke my heart.

He gets a call, there’s a man in Beverly Hills, he just bought a house. They’re gonna tear it down and build a whole new house. But in the garage there’s this stupid freaked out looking. Mercedes, do you want it? And he says, well, yeah, yeah, I want it. I want it. Well, he couldn’t get it. The state made him junk it, and it was one of these 1000 SELs, so they gutted it.

He went over there with his team. He took everything he could off that car, paid the junk man for it, just in case he could get the state to change its mind and say, yeah, yeah, okay, we’ll give it a salvage title and you can put it back on the street. They never did. The car ended up going to the junkyard, but he still has all those parts.

But these cars had literally gold plated interiors. Mm-hmm. The leathers were completely switched out from what Mercedes used, and they were totally chained up. You had a TV and you remember back then they didn’t have the flat screens that we do today. They had [00:55:00] these big tube driven with glass front end, but they were positioned right between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat, so the rear passengers could watch tv.

They had two phones in some cases. I mean, it just went on and on and on. Literally the sky was the limit. And then the company, and I forget if it was Borrow or Trico, one of the two took the SS e C Mercedes and they turned them into. Ings and those were the ones to have. Those were the cars that were just mind blowing because what’s more mind blowing than a gulling door?

I mean, yeah, okay. That’s come from the DeLorean guy here. But seriously, when you put a 500 ss e c out there and you’ve got Gulling door, believe me, you are gonna let everybody know you are the last one. Next up, Don tries to sell us all a bricklin. We’ll just put a pin in that with these going doors for a moment, shall we?

I like this topic ’cause they’re an American version of this, right? So we’ve talked about Alpena, we’ve talked about, you know, a m G and Ravi, and let’s just say we talked about [00:56:00] roof and move on. We all acknowledge bringer trailers the easiest thing to search by price. ’cause they actually give you good statistics.

It’s also the high, probably the most overpriced market, but you can get some really cool. C four Callaway Twin Turbo. Corvettes. The sledgehammer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, okay, so the actual car and driver car that did the 255 miles per hour sold for 500 grand on Brier trailer, but the other Callaway Corvettes sell for like 50 grand and that’s kind of a pretty damn cool car for 50 grand.

It’s still crazy fast and very tuneable, very well set up. If you don’t want a Callaway, you can get a Lincoln filter. There’s like a bunch of different options. I mean, the eighties, I was thinking about it. There are so many names that pop into my head in terms of tuners or body kit manufacturers. You start looking at Zender and Rieger and Chem a.

And I mean it’s, the list goes on to lean and Roche and all these really cool on and on and on, and it’s like everything was like bespoke in the eighties in a weird way. It was [00:57:00] like, what are we doing here? I wanna roll this back because we’re still talking about Mercedes and I know there’s one that Tanya and I have talked about quite a bit, and I’m gonna take this back to Magnum pi, hence the whole get up this evening.

It’s the two 80 S l. Rick drove one of those on Magnum. It’s like this timeless Mercedes. It’s understated but classy, but also not super expensive like an A M G. He actually had a three 80. Tell me the difference other than the motor, it’s all the same body, right? Well, the two 80 ssl, that was a whole different car.

That was, you’re going back to 1971 with that car. I mean, unless there’s something in Germany I don’t know about. But to your point though, and this is where I’ll take your three A D S L, I was always a fan of the three A D S L raised in the eighties. Matt Houston drove one. The hearts had one that was the car to have.

The beautiful thing about the three 80 is this engine. Now everyone’s gonna laugh at me and say, oh Don, you don’t know anything about cars, because that was the weakest. Of the SLS ever except for, you know, the six cylinder cars. The four 50 SL could clobber it. A five 60 [00:58:00] sl please light years ahead of its time.

The three 80 was sort of the little kid who, you know, is the ugly stepsister that everybody kind of overlooks that today. For someone buying a first classic collectible car could be your strong point. You can get in a manual too. Yeah, it’s really rare that Mercedes had a manual and I think it’s one of the few, like a one 90 E.

Anyway, my point is because everyone poo-poos the engine and rightfully so. I get that the values are really, really cheap. Now hear me out, think of Ferrari. Porsche, they always tend to lead the pack on this. Well, I, I really want an 89, 9 11. I really want an 89 9. It’s gotta be the turbo. Gotta get the turbo.

Well, all of a sudden, everybody had the same thought, so they all started buying ’em. So the value started going up. So the next thing you know, all I can do is afford a nine 11 sc. Oh my God, I gotta get my sc, I gotta get an I S C. The next thing you know, the nine 11 SC is a $60,000 car and I can’t afford it.

So now I’m looking at what I think these SLS are gonna do the same thing. Your four 50 and certainly your five sixties are [00:59:00] stratospheric at this point. I think the three 80 is your safe bet. You’re gonna grab one of those and they will go up in value. Because everybody wants that body style. It gets to a point the engine and the performance don’t really matter after a while.

People just want the look, they want the enjoyment, they want all that stuff. I think you’d pick a really, really good winner by going with a three 80 s l if of course you don’t want a dc No, what can I say? You know, obviously I had a three 80 on the bottom end of it, but the one that I kinda like to step up, but it’s going into the four 50 S L C, you get the coup.

That’s a great car because it’s the hard top coup. I mean, it’s a gorgeous looking car. I mean, I really like those myself. I think it’s great. And you know, William, back when the SLCs were new, that was Mercedes’s most expensive model. Yep. Was that S L C? Yeah. It was the most premium car that you could get from Mercedes.

And today they’re, they’re cheap. Oh yeah. I think they’re sharp. That one almost probably didn’t have a manual on those, but do an engine swap. To do a transmission swap. I mean, it’s a fun, sporty car. It’s, you know, it’s small. It’s tight, you know, but I don’t know. I dig. I think they’re [01:00:00] great. Well, big thing to Don’s point is.

People looking to buy these cars. It’s not always about the performance aspect of it, it’s more of like the nostalgia. ’cause it’s the memories of those times, and it doesn’t have to be the fastest sportiest car. A big thing for any car buyers getting up in their forties and older. A lot of these cars we couldn’t afford as kids.

What we saw ’em. So, you know, you saw ’em on TV shows and stuff. You could’ve never dreamed as a kid of owning it. And now it is a possibility. That’s why the performance isn’t what matters. You know, Tanya has one right behind her and, okay, Tanya, all fairness. I don’t know what’s been done to your car. It’s probably freaked out to hell in high water.

But like I was saying about Uncle Howard’s Audi, it couldn’t get out of its own way. It really, really couldn’t. But man, I loved looking at that car. I did. And I actually liked driving that car. It was just a nice car to cruise around in. You know, look at the Ferrari 3 0 8 in its day. Damn nice performer.

Really nice performer. But it was just five, six years later, the Corvette had run circles around it and that’s just it. The eighties was weird because if you were making [01:01:00] 200 horse. You were like a God, and then it was like the Porsche had 2 25, right? You’re like, oh. And then yeah, Corvette comes outta left field with like 300 and change in the ZR one and all that stuff, and you’re like 300 now, dude, your grandma’s Camry has 300 horsepower in it.

It’s freaking nuts to Dan’s point. But the VR six was around since the late eighties when it was developed. The VR six made 172 horsepower. It was a hot rod in the Colorado when it came out. That’s all you need. I can merge with no problem with 125 horsepower. You know what I mean? It’s like why Miatas are fun.

They make a whopping like 102 wheel horsepower. They just give you so much. Feedback. They’re so analog and I think that’s what’s cool about eighties cars is like we talked about in the intro, there’s a lot of really whizzbang electronics because we were embracing the second space age, but the cars didn’t have any nannies.

They didn’t have any assists, could still get a manual transmission. They were far fagan. Right. The whole [01:02:00] campaign and the, the joy of driving, that’s what I look forward to every time I get into, you know, I’ll mark two G T I or I get into an old Ferrari or Porsche or whatever it is. It’s just, it brings me back to when driving was driving.

You can’t be talking on your cell phone and ordering DoorDash going down the road. You gotta drive well and yeah, you really do. And you hit that 200 horsepower mark. And isn’t it funny that Corvette, if I remember correctly, the, even the 82 Corvette was still I think at one 90, or was it at two 10? Had it broken 200 at that point, that was like breaking the stratosphere, getting to those numbers.

Not even close in 82, right? I think it was 180, 1 70. They said 200 horsepower at 4,200 RPM in 1980. Out of how many liters, Dan, their three 50 at that time was the standard engine had 200 horsepower at 4,200 RRP M. Okay. And is that the crossfire or is that the standard four barrel? Do we know? That would’ve probably been in 82.

That was the first year for the crossfire, the cross failure. They were only failures if you messed with them who didn’t mess with ’em or drove them. Yeah, or drove. Yeah. I was gonna say, [01:03:00] well, yeah, that’s up to you in the warranty if you’re gonna drive it. If you turned them on, they had maintenance issues.

Just don’t turn on. Then there’s the opposite of all this. Obviously, like you’re saying, Eric, the eighties was iconic for dial and the right smell of a car and the feel of it. But towards the late eighties, one of the last on my list is something that’s a sleeper. It’s the exact opposite. It’s kind of ugly.

Four-door sedan, 89 Dodge Spirit rt. Oh man, you just slid up Don. Here we go. 229 horsepower. Did the quarter mile in 14 and a half seconds. It was the fastest four door in the entire country and nobody knew it. So that made that cool. Yeah, and the funny thing about that car Dodge tried to promote it. They tried to sell it.

They tried to get it out there. And who was its number one enemy? The Taurus. S H o. Oh yeah. And for some reason everybody loved the SS h o, but not so much the spirit. And yet the spirit was a hair quicker, A hair faster. Well, and the [01:04:00] Ford Escort also had that, the RS Turbo something or other. The cozy, yeah.

That was a four door too that, I mean, it looked exactly like the regular four-door escort, but it would blow your doors off. Princess Diana drove one of those, by the way. I did not know that. Yes. It’s awesome. Yeah. Just full plate, 80 grand. Yep. At auction. Yeah. And everybody goes crazy over the Rs. Kazi, hatchback, Liftback, whatever you wanna call it.

The Homologated car. But that little sedan that Jeff is talking about, that’s a hot ticket item. And you can get those from England. Now, nobody wanted them, but if you wanna get a little weirder, Jeff, walk with me into the weird hall of fame. Oh no, here we go. 88 Nova twin cam. That’s where he’s going now.

’cause we have to have something from GM in there. No, no, it’s another Chrysler. It’s another Chrysler. Okay. The LeBaron. G T S. Oh, I remember those. I haven’t even heard of that. And that my friend was a hatchback and a four door. So it fits right in with this whole hot hatch thing. Wasn’t that the same as the Lancer or [01:05:00] whatever they had come out with, which was the Plain Jane version?

Yeah, I think they shared a lot of the same body. Yeah. We’re talking 1984 ish. 85 ish. Yeah. Chrysler had the G T Ss and it was this little hatchback, 2.2 liters, you know, the fortune cylinder turbo, like everything on a cake, art chassis. It was really, really amazing to watch this car. Zero to 60 quarter mile top end, hanging onto Crown Victoria’s, hanging onto Caprices, hanging onto the Grand Furies, all those cars.

And yet it’s doing it with. 28 miles to the gallon, especially if John Voight was driving it. Ah, John, right. There we go. John Voit baby. Do we have any Seinfeld fans in the house? Yes, right here. I know exactly what you’re talking about. And the funny thing, it’s not really a hatch. It’s like the original Audi A seven or something.

Is it actually a trunk? I’d never heard of it. I’m just looking at the pictures. It’s got that kind of stretched kind of lift back slash hatch type. It’s the lancer body. They shared that and they called it a LeBaron and they beefed it up. I remember as a little kid, and I think Tanya was a little [01:06:00] too young to remember, but we actually went to the local Dodge dealer.

He went and test drove a lancer At the time they were looking for a car for my mom or whatever, and he came back and he hated it so much. And I don’t know what possessed the salesman. And I’ll never forget this. He put my dad in a minivan. The Chrysler minivan was a big deal at the time by Coco’s thing.

Right. And my dad was like, get me the F out of this. And we went straight to the Volkswagen dealership and then bought the gray Rocco that we had like forever. I remember such a vivid thing. ’cause my dad was so like explicitly upset about being put into a minivan. It was just like, no way. No how? Right.

Well, you know, going on the four door hatch, one car I’ve always wanted, and you’ll be happy, Eric, it’s not a Chrysler product. Nowhere near it. Oh Lord. The Sterling 8 27, oh, and there was the 8 25 and the 8 25 sl. There was a bunch of ones that came here to the states that everybody forgot about. I like that because it’s the British Accord.

It’s literally a [01:07:00] Honda that they Reba as a sterling. I remember seeing those running around as a kid. They were neat. They were different. As one owner put it to me, everything Honda lasted forever. Everything sterling fell apart. The one thing I will give the sterling credit for is ushering in the Integra and the legend, because it opened the door for Acura once Sterling sort of failed here in the United States.

Then you notice right after the Acura showed up and everybody’s like, wait, wait, what is this? What’s, what’s this thing? I thought they both came over right around 87 and I think that’s part of what killed the sterling was Acura sales were so much higher Yeah. Than Sterling thought. That was how it went down.

But yeah, customers like the one I’m talking about who praised everything Honda or Acura and then poo-pooed everything. Sterling is a regular consumer. You’re thinking to yourself, okay, so the message here is just go buy the Honda and get it over with, or go buy the Acura and get it over with. It’s a quality car.

But yeah, and, and even that, I mean, if we’re gonna go down that direction, the legend or the uh, Integra, either one of [01:08:00] those car to be fantastic, what should I buy candidates? And one of ’em is a hatchback. And in that same realm, the original Eagle Talon, you know, since we talked about the conquest early on, that was another early all-wheel drive production car.

Yeah. And they were hot turbo, you know, shared with the rest of the Chrysler platform and all that. They’re neat cars. The later generation Eclipse Eagles are a lot nicer, but those early ones are still kind of cool. And when you see one, you’re like, as long as it’s not a Plymouth laser, you’re just like, oh, that’s really neat.

You know? Yeah. We had a friend who owned a Honda dealer, so of course everybody in the family except the mother who drove a Mercedes, everybody else drove a Honda. And I remember his daughter was my sister’s best friend. They’re still best friend, and they had a cabin up in a place called Big Bear, which is up in the southern California mountains and the road up there, there’s two main roads to get up there, and one of ’em is just kind of a switchback back and forth and back and forth.

It’s really annoying. The other one is the old more curvy road. That one’s a lot more fun. And I remember her going [01:09:00] up there one weekend. She had a five liter on her butt. She said, it was so close that in my mirror I could barely see the tops of the windshield wipers. So that’s how close these guys were.

And so she just kept pushing the little Honda, pushing, pushing, pushing. And she said it was kind of funny because you’d hit those curves and the Mustang would really back off. But the Honda, no problem. It just charged right through it. The Mustang had to back off a little bit and then regain ground on the straightaway.

Typical David and Goliath situation, but that’s another great one. The Honda Prelude, if you can find one from the eighties, it hasn’t been completely trashed. The Honda Prelude was a really, really nice wheel steering baby car. Yeah, those steering, yeah. Now I found one of those, and I don’t remember where, but it was gorgeous.

It was a four wheel steering, five speed red black interior. Si absolutely gorgeous. And yeah, it went for 60 grand. That’s insane. Obviously there is some eyes open to look for these cars, but like we were all saying, do [01:10:00] you really need the high performance? Do you really need the hot? Find one that’s just clean.

Find one that’s been preserved, go preserve it some more and enjoy it again. Show up to cars and coffee in a Honda Prelude. I can almost guarantee you’ll be the only one there. One thing that was big about the eighties is like you were mentioning, like they had options like four wheel steering, like the eighties I think was a time when they were trying to push boundaries with technology and concepts and stuff.

A lot of what we do is what should I buy? But I’m gonna throw out one of what you shouldn’t buy. During the eighties, the Cadillac had the 4.1 liter V eight in their cars that at that time had the cylinder deactivation, which, oh yeah. When you mentioned Honda, that was one of the things, probably like five, 10 years ago, Honda was promoting this variable cylinders type stuff thing like it was something new.

I’m like, Cadillac did that back in the eighties and it was horrible. ’cause the computer technology just wasn’t efficient at that time. And I worked on one, but it was like in so many of the different cars they had. My thing is if someone were to buy one of those cars, I would say yank that crap out of it and just throw natural aspirations car on there.

Yeah, it was a nightmare to deal with and trying to fix it. I spent weeks trying to get one [01:11:00] fixed one time and when I finally got it running, it still didn’t run as good as it should. My B M W does that now just all by itself. That’s a story for another day. Four at a time though. You know, the 4 6 8 was bad when Cadillac themselves ditched it and they thought, we’re not going back to this.

And what did they bring out after that? The 4.5 liter I think was after that. And then after that was a 4.9 liter. And then after that was a 4.6 liter, which was the North Star. I’ll tell you, I got a buddy who is to ante or actually Cadillac, what I am to Chrysler tc. He just loves these cars and what he is always told me is, yeah, the North Star is the sexy sister, but she has more mental problems than you can shake a stick at.

She said, really? The one you wanna do is get that 4.9 liter. He said that 4.9 liters absolutely bulletproof, but the four six is almost as bad as your four one. And I’ve met a lot of North Star guys and they swear by these things, but they also tell me that we, yeah, when they break, bring your wallet because it’s gonna put your B M W to shame.[01:12:00]

I wanna go back to the Honda conversation for a second ’cause there’s some interesting splinters here, especially ’cause you started with Sterling and we didn’t go down Merx or four Ti Ford, Sierra, Cosworth, that whole thing, which I find those cars fascinating and you can do vi eight swaps on ’em and all sorts of fun stuff there too.

And the Sierra Chassis’s great. Is there anything you can’t do a V eight swap on Ella’s Swap the world, my man. And if you can’t L’S swap a JAMA VR six in it, that’s the answer. But you talked about Honda and the obvious choice is A C R X, but that’s the obvious choice. So where my mind goes from there, and William hit on it, he said the 3 23 G L C, which a buddy of mine had a Mazda 3, 2, 3, and obviously the king of them was the G T X, the all-wheel drive.

Those things are super cold, they’re super rare, all that. But you can import them now from Japan if you want. Right? We have all these options, but it takes me down another road. It takes me down the road of Toyota and we can begin to talk about the starlet. We can talk about the [01:13:00] Corolla, FX 16. We can talk about even the second generation M R two, which came out in 87.

Not here in the US but it started coming out in 87, even though it’s a quintessentially nineties vehicle. But the m R two is in this camp. There’s a lot of really interesting things from Toyota that I think get overlooked. Everything from Toyota in the eighties was better than Honda. Just like today, everything from Toyota is better than Honda.

Oh wow, man. Oh. Sway. You had the Corolla G T S, you had the AE 86, you had the M R two, you had the nine other things you just listed. And what did Honda have? Thorax and the prelude and a civic. Woo. The civic wasn’t that great. Yeah, the Integra, they had the Celica. That’s true. And the Celica Supra, yep.

There’s a lot in that Toyota camp to look at. And for the longest time, Toyota got boring and there was nothing that was interesting. And now they’re interesting again. They seem to flip flop with Honda, where Honda got interesting and now Honda’s boring. And there’s also some really cool Toyota vans that you can [01:14:00] import from Japan right now.

Like the high ace, the high lux on the pickup side. There’s a lot of really neat stuff in Toyota. And remember Toyota reliability? They’re not burning the world down in terms of performance. But a Toyota from the eighties, I’d hop in and drive it tomorrow. No issues. Let’s not forget the Toyota pickup from back to the future.

That thing is sick. It’s still awesome to this day. I hate to say it, but being a Toyota pickup guy myself, I almost, almost would rather have that than the DeLorean. That’s how much I like that truck. That truck is a, I think the Roman votes, it’s all the thumbs up on that truck. That thing, those are still awesome today.

22 re four wheel drive extra cab. You show up at cars and coffee and that that thing will get swamped. Over a lot of things there. That thing is gorgeous. Those eat are sweet. It is interesting though what Tanya was saying. It’s interesting how Toyota and Honda always flip flop. I would like to throw out an idea.

I have my background on an R 32 gorgeous car. It’s entire production run. 89 to 94 is almost entirely in [01:15:00] our window here. They had two other generations that launched in the nineties. Your R 33, your R 34, or your more quintessential nineties car. So even though most of these were made in the nineties, if you look at it, it kind of looks like an eighties car.

Just styling wise. It looks like an eighties car. I think that an R 32 and everybody knows that’s the one you actually want to take to the racetrack if you’re gonna do it, would be a really interesting entrant into this category. I mean, right. I mean, Nissan had three generations of this car in the nineties, but this one I think I would argue, even though the 19 89 300 zx, I would argue was a nineties car, I could argue that this is kind of the king of the eighties that just kind of came out right at the end and defined the decade.

The poor man’s 9, 5, 9, here you go. This is what you do. Obviously it wasn’t for sale in the us but Mark is one of those. The Sylvia, is that one of those? The Sylvia is like the later two forties. Don might know this for the G T R, you know the great grandfather of that, the [01:16:00] Japanese prince? Yeah. Those were very, very nice cars.

My mom had the first and only Japanese princes in California. It was a 67 Japanese princes, and she said it was just trash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They, they really were kind of recycled beer cans. I mean, that was always the joke about old Japanese cars. I think that’s why today whenever you see one, it’s almost like, take off your hat and give it a salute, because this little guy survived and they were not meant to survive.

They were, I don’t know what the Japanese were thinking. If it was, they literally wanted them to fall apart or if they were thinking, no, we gotta get ’em together as cheaply as possible to beat the Americans. I grew up with 19 71 2 40 Z in the garage that, I mean, we replaced every body panel on that car.

Just like in a 10 year period, it was kind of, yeah, they, they rested coming off the assembly line and the dashboards cracked coming off the assembly line. I mean the ones that survive. That’s why I say whenever you see a Japanese car, you’re like, holy cow, where did that come from? That’s pretty [01:17:00] cool. Jeff, your mom had a print.

That’s pretty awesome. I wanna speak to the R 32 G T R. Go for it. I have instructing experience in one at Pocono and so I spent a couple days coaching one and I will say I was always in love with the R 32. I think it’s a fantastic car. It’s just every angle you look at it, to Mark’s point, it’s a little quirky.

It’s got that eighties field too, but it’s sort of nineties, but it’s sort of not, you look at the interior and you’re not really sure what period it’s from, but when you get in it, it’s a performer. It’s shockingly fast, like it’s deceptively quick and it’s very agile. A point and shoot. It’s super analog.

It’s screams eighties from a driving perspective and it was one of those moments where I could say I got in my hero and I walked away. Completely satisfied. Versus a lot of other hero cars, which have been just terrible disappointments. The R 32 was amazing, but everybody wants a G T R. I looked into getting one of these a long time ago.

’cause there’s companies here in the States, like in Florida [01:18:00] and whatnot that import these cars all the time. But if you turn your eyes to the uk, you can get the slightly tuned down version and then modify it later and get a G T S out of Britain. It’s all the same stuff. It’s all the same appearance package, slightly de-tuned motor, and they sell for a lot less and they made a lot more GTSs than they made GTRs.

Something to consider there. I also wrote in a four-door version of one of those, which was kind of funky, imported from Japan. Again, had some experience with these cars. If you can afford A G T R do it, they’re fantastic. Now to your point, mark, the joke is, The R 32 is the one you take to the track. The R 33 is the one you buy, your wife and the R 34 is the one you take to the car show.

That still, I think, holds true even today. The R 32 is the best performing out of the bunch. Going a little down Nissan Lane again, if I may, if there was a car when Infinity first came out, and I’ve always liked it. I always thought it was a cool car, but unfortunately not too many people did. And I believe it was called I [01:19:00] 30.

It was a little convertible four seater and it was a coop four seater. Yeah, I dunno if you remember those. I remember the I 20, but not the I 30. Oh, I remember the I 30. Me and daughter we’re the elder statesman here. So you are not talking loud enough. I can’t hear you. Is anyone in there? I don’t see you.

They’re a decent car. But man, they had some great motors in those. They were quick cars, you know? Was it the um, Q 45 was the large one. The I 30 was your, yeah, so I mean they had some decent stuff. It’s funny, Eric, you know, you bring up driving your heroes and you’re gonna be disappointed. I’ll tell you, they had the Q 45 T, which gave you the special wheels and the little arrow kit and whatever.

Anyway, I remember I got to drive one of those cutest priests. That thing was insane. It was one of those cars where you step on the gas and you’re gone right now, very spirited for a 4,500 pound car. But what got me about that car, and this is where it gets weird, it shifts into second and just as about to go into third, I floor it ’cause I’m stupid.

I couldn’t believe it. You [01:20:00] know, you hear about this, these hot rodders talking about, oh, I broke the wheels loose the second year. Lemme tell you something. That thing Fishtailed for a quarter of a block trying to catch itself. I was blown away how much power that car had. Now obviously that wasn’t what Infinity meant, that car to do, right?

It wanted it to have some guts that wanted it to be comfortable, effortless moving, et cetera. And those early infinities from the late eighties, early nineties were fantastic cars. Now a contender for that, and in my opinion, is a better car, is the SC 400 by Lexus. Mm-hmm. Which I’m not sure exactly what year those came out.

So it might break our 89 90 barrier, but somebody said something about going all the way to 93. So I’m. Banking on that for saving me. I see where you’re going there. And then in Japan, they had the Soer, I think it was called, which was like the same car and all that, which was available earlier. But going back to the Infinity for a minute, I kind of look at it and you know, you talked on other episodes about being a posr and stuff like that, and the problem with those early infinities is I’d rather have a Maxima, because the [01:21:00] Maxima, when I show up with a Maxima, it goes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I show up with an Infinity and you’re like, what? What is this? It’s like a rip-off Maxima, Ultima, whatever. It just I, I don’t know. It doesn’t speak to me in the same way that it does for you. So for the maximas of that generation, I don’t know why, but it became like everybody I hung out with at Call ’em the Crack Maxis because it seems like all the crack heads and crack dealers would drive Maximus.

Mm-hmm. No, last we just started calling ’em Crack Maxis. Yeah. You know, the Maxima was a great car. It was very powerful. It was called the four-Door Sports Car for a reason. If I’m not mistaken. I think it was the Maxima that actually encouraged Honda to decide fine. We’ll build a V six and put it in the Accord.

And the Accord quietly cleaned the Maximus clock. Yeah. In everything. And it never said we’re a sports car. It never said we’re performance oriented. It never said anything to that degree, but it was quieter, it was more comfortable, it had more features to it. It was more expensive, but it was a better car all the way around.

Even in handling, which is [01:22:00] hysterical because everybody knows those V six accords especially want a nose plow. They, Eric, what do you call that? Is that called under steer? Mm-hmm. When you turn the wheel and the car’s still going forward. Is that what that’s called? So they understood like crazy. That was my fear, Eric.

You were there. When we raced that Corvette in Pennsylvania with my wife’s accord, my big fear was it’s raining, the road is wet. If we gotta turn that wheel, we’re screwed. ’cause this Honda’s just gonna keep going straight. That’s all it wants to do. So I see what you’re saying about the Maxima, but I don’t know, I mean, I think we’d have to put that to a test because I think the Infinity would especially again, consider you are a little older than maybe the demographic we’re trying to talk to.

Yeah. What should I buy? I’ve got my first little bit of money here. I can buy something. If you tell to buy a Nissan Maxim, guess what? You’ve got a 20, 25 year old. Nissan Maxima. Okay. Kind of cool in its own right, but when you got the Infinity, you’ve got something rare, unique, but there was really nothing on that car that was Maxima.

It had a [01:23:00] bespoke V eight, it had a bespoke transmission, it had a bespoke interior. It was all. Infiniti, the Q 45, not the i m 30, the M 45. I like, that’s like the Brutus. Yeah. M 45 was good looking. I can’t let the Q 45 comment go though. Like obviously that car just needed a new tire. Like if you’re, if you’re like, if you’re breaking loose into going into third gear, I mean, yeah, right.

Well that thing was insane. I could not believe the power that car had. It was insane. They had 340 or something like that. Yeah, it had 300 plus horsepower in that thing. I mean, not back then. More like two 60, but fair enough. Well, they were all 2 47 on paper for a long time. Especially in the nineties.

Right. So well remember whether if some guy said that horsepower tells you how hard you’re gonna hit the wall and torque tells you how far you’re gonna push it, push it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I, I gotta tell you, if that infinity hit a wall, it’s gonna push pretty damn hard. That thing had nothing but torque.

Tanya’s point earlier about, you know, Toyota and Honda Flip-flopping, Nissan is in bed with Renault and they have [01:24:00] been for now 20 years. I sometimes wonder when I see an infinity on the road, I’m like, oh, they still make cars. Like they’re still doing that whole luxury thing of Nissan. But I feel like Maxima is due for a resurgence.

The Maxima has been around. You can buy a 2023 Nissan Maxima. Wait, they still make ’em? Yeah, they’re still in existence. My stand corrected. I think they have a branding problem. They have a branding challenge. They never stopped production and they haven’t stopped production since the first one in 81. I thought it disappeared.

It’s like the eighth or ninth generation are up to now of ’em, but it looks like the Centra Ultima, they all look the same now. So that’s why I don’t, I don’t even notice they’re doing the German models, sausages of different lengths.

That’s really good. Mark is absolutely right. Nissan has a major branding challenge and unfortunately so does Infiniti. Infiniti, when they got rid of that Q 45, that [01:25:00] first generation, that was it. They sort of slipped into obscurity. There was nothing left. It was like that comedian who has one joke and that’s it.

You know? It was crazy. It really, really was one of the best Nissan uh, sales pitches ever was the fact of the one where dogs love trucks. Yes, absolutely. Rolling on the whole Japanese thing though. If we can get off the Nissan train, the Lexus SC 400, the SC three hundred’s, the cool one, that’s the one with the two JayZ.

No one cares about the 400. What? The 300 is the dog. The 300 has the two JayZ. That’s all anybody cares about. And manual. Yeah, exactly. Get manual. Yeah, if you can find one. If you can find one. Yeah. Fair enough. You can swap it though. You could. But my point is though, the SC whatever, 400, 300, whichever one you prefer, that was a very, very nice car.

Very, very nice car. First day. And you talk about cheap, once again, you’re getting a car that’s gonna go three, 400,000 miles no problem. And you’re not paying very much to get into one. They’re fine, fine automobiles. And of course they got the big brother. If you want that mafiaa look, you’ve got the LSS 400, but we can go [01:26:00] the complete opposite of that.

If you wanna spend a shit ton of money, look like you’re going a thousand miles an hour and the car never runs, you can buy a Maserati by turbo. Did they make it after 83? It was 81 to what, 85 I thought, or 86, something like that. It was 86. That’s an eighties car, if there ever was one. Fair enough. Yeah. It, it really is.

I’ll give you that. Many of you have never heard of this car, and I forgive you for it. Don’t say zuzu impulse. We’re not talking about the impulse. It’s not happening. You mute yourself there, boy. Now we are going to talk about another Toyota. Oh, now you have my attention. Finest Toyota ever built. It’s all built by hand.

Don’t say starlet. The hot chi. Go no. Toyota Century. Oh yeah. That’s like the precursor to the Lexus that thing’s massive. They still make it. And in fact, over in Japan, they are still considered the e ching of Japanese cars. They, they blow Lexus on. It reminds me of the old Mercedes, like the grocers or whatever they were called.

The four 60. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, [01:27:00] yeah, exactly. Mirrors out on the winglets, the diplomat machines, right? Those, yeah. Well, the funny thing is, if you look at their history, they had V twelves, they had v eights, they had inline sixes. They had all these crazy engines. But what I always got a kick outta these cars is the Americans, especially, I don’t know about the Europeans, but the Americans especially, we love our leather interior.

Man. You give us a leather interior and we got ourselves a luxurious car till the end of time right there, the Japanese, if you want leather in that car, you not only pay a premium for it, you’ve gotta wait because they have to get the material, because otherwise you’re gonna get a cloth interior. In fact, that cloth is not just cloth.

No, sir, it is wool. Now why is it wool? Why even do cloth? Because it’s quieter. When you do the leather in that car, they only put it in the back because the person riding in the back doesn’t wanna have to hear the driver squeaking on their leather getting into the driver’s seat. That’s right. It’s, it’s actually pretty awesome.

Cars are amazing. In fact, there’s a great article, and I forget who wrote it, it was Car [01:28:00] Driver or somebody, but they toured the Century Factory and it is, you know, you talk about Bentley building their cars and Aston Martin and they’re in these little shops and they got these little hammers and they’re hammering away.

That is seriously the Toyota Century factory. You’ve got people who have been working there for 30 years. You’ve got people who have been apprenticing there for 10 because they want to work at Century. It is such an honor to work there. Their paint guy, oh, the paint is incredible on their cars. But again, going to that 25 year, we can import it over here.

Now the century falls into that school. It really does. I actually agree. I think that would be a really cool, cool damn import to grab would be one. I think I have a picture of one somewhere that I took in Texas on the road. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. In. There’s a guy in California, he imports those things.

Brings in a couple a year or something like that to resell ’em. That would be a fun car to have. And if you could find it from somebody who’s already specializing in importing it, that’d be fantastic. Right. So let’s take this another way. Let’s go [01:29:00] back to Jeff. Jeff, what’s on your list? I know you got a list.

Honestly, I’ve exhausted it there. Oh. Oh dang. ’cause I got a couple more. The other stuff that I had on here, everybody already mentioned and I’ve gotten through the, the whole thing. The only thing that I haven’t talked about is kind of the more obvious when you and I have talked, you know, I’m a Porsche guy and so the 9 6 8, the 9 2 8, the 9 4 4 turbo, if anybody mentions a 9 1 4, a 9, 2 4, I will poop in my hand and give it to you.

’cause those things are trash. Wow. Well I actually, Jeff, I’d like to see that. So nine 14, it’s like monkeys at the zoo. It’s like, for instance, the 9 4 4, you can still get a very decent 9 4 4 turbo. 10, 12 grand. Oh yeah. I think you’re better off. As we’ve talked about with Kevin Duffy, a 9 2 4 s or a base 9 44.

The 9 44 turbos are just plagued with problems. But I agree with you, they’re, they’re a beautiful body. There’s the whole rivalry between the second gen RX seven, the [01:30:00] 44 turbo. If I had my druthers and I was gonna pick a 9 44 turbo, I would get the last of the last and get a Cabrio lay and really just spend the money because they’re so cool.

And they were so limited production, and I think they’re better looking than the 9 68 convertible. 9 68 is a beautiful coop. It doesn’t make it work in the convertible realm. And the 9 44 turbo look really, really slick. And it’s just so different. But if we’re gonna go that way, kind of talk about convertible sports COEs.

There’s a couple British cars we’ve forgotten about. We could go down and venture X js. Well, not even that. No, I got a thumbs up from Don that we’re on the same wavelength there. You know me, I’m always, I’m always itching for warm beer and a lot of troubles, you know? No way. I think of a warm beer. I’m happy.

Well, if you like that, then you’ll definitely like the Triumph t R seven. No, my dear boy. No, those are rubbish. Oh, okay. Then if you don’t like that. What about the T V R [01:31:00] Tasman two 80 I, is there a way to turn off his microphone? Yeah, I got to drive a Tasman two 80 I, they’re really neat. They are cobbled together, you know, Handbuilt and black pool and the whole nine yards.

It’s a part spin car. Some of it’s Mercedes, you know, it’s a Ford Corina engine. The suspension is some borrowed thing from Lotus. You know, all this kind of stuff. They’re so unique. It’s a super light car. They’re actually kind of fun to drive. Again, very analog. If you like that wedgie convertible look and you want something different, the Tasman two 80, I don’t sell for a whole heck of a lot.

I know the guy that sold the one that I drove, it was like a dark metallic brown, which was a super interesting, very seventies color, but I think he sold it for like 10 grand. He wants something unique, something British and Ford powered, which means it’ll actually run T V R is something to consider. So for British cars, I know it’s not rare, but the Austin Minis were made through the eighties.

Yeah. And they started then went way [01:32:00] after. And if you want to talk about a car that’s plentiful for parts because there’s plenty of ’em out there, a bunch of my British friends hate the fact I always called it the British Volkswagen Bug. ’cause in my opinion, it’s what it was. It was, you know, easily built and everything.

The cool thing about those cars is they’ve got such history and prestige to ’em with the rally racing that they did, as well as the fact that one point in time, I don’t know if they still do or not, but I wanna say it was late eighties, early two thousands, they were still holding the fact that those cars could hold some of the highest Gs in corners for the uh, how well it gripped the ground of all manufactured cars out.

So something as cheap as that, being able to pull more Gs in some of these supercars and turns is amazing and having owed many of them and driven them, I can vouch for the fact they will hang in terms very well see. He made all his friends angry by saying it was the British bug. You should have told him it was the British Fiat 500 and seen how they got really upset.

We would be remiss not to talk about, I mean, if, I guess if you love maintenance the eighties through this [01:33:00] 93 cycle of Aston Martin, some of that stuff looks so much cooler than it once did. Yes. I mean, at least to me, the barrages and Vantages of that era, when I was younger, I thought that they looked like hot garbage and the DB seven was, you know, the first good looking car that Aston Martin had made since the sixties.

But as you know, grown up and times change or whatever, like I think they look pretty damn cool, pretty muscly, like really kind of sophisticated muscle cars, a very kind of niche of their own. And you can pick ’em up even just using that as pricing in the 50 ish grand range. And well then, then if we’re going on bridge, what about, you know, a Lotus, which one.

Esprit. The ultimate eighties cocaine car. Yeah. The Lotus Esprit. Is the esprit turbo. Really? An eighties car. It was designed to build the seventies. I think so. Culturally. Culturally, it’s, it was, and it was made until 2004 or something, but culturally, it’s an eighties car. Yeah. I put it as an eighties car.

It’s the Dodge Viper of [01:34:00] the eighties. You drive that around, someone’s gonna look at, especially someone that’s not a car, they’re gonna like go, wow, look at that. You know? It’s got very unique styling to it. I mean, it didn’t change much over its whole span of its life. I know. I’m a fan of them. I, I think they look great.

Even four cylinder, it still has got a little pep to it. I feel like there is a clear generational separation in the espree, and I’m not talking about the V eight esprees ’cause obviously they rounded them up. They made ’em very nineties looking, you know, all those kinds of things. But the early cars, up until like 84, 85 with the turbo esprees, they really changed ’em.

I think they got better as they got older until the VAs came out. There’s something weird about the early, let’s call it the James Bond Lotus with those kind of like ragger wheels that it came with and, and all that stuff. I, I’m just not a fan of those, to Mark’s point, what I call the second generation spree.

Definitely an eighties car, but it was still holding onto that wedge look of the jpa and the Kunta and like all that stuff that started in the seventies. [01:35:00] It’s an eighties car sports car, but a high supercar, I guess you could consider it at that time. Still too disco for me. Got a very unique sound to it too though.

Yes, that’s the one thing, it’s got a very distinctive sound of it and it’s fully submersible, which is. Pretty unique if you’re in a tuxedo. But if I have to pick between a Lotus Esprit and a Ferrari 3 0 8, 3 28, and I will go as far as to give Don just a little bit of runway here and say the Manal. I’d almost rather have one of those than the esprit.

Oh, I would too. I have a man than an esprit, honestly. Yeah, I think so. Just because of the maintenance factor. The rarity of the espree Crack a windshield and Espree, good luck. You gotta get ’em like made by some elf in the Midlands. You know, it’s, it’s not gonna happen. So it kind of scares me. No, that’s the Elfs are your friend.

They work for warm beer. Yeah, right. Well, you were wandering around York being like, can anybody make a windshield? Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. You know, there’s 1 97 year old guy [01:36:00] who used to work for, you know, British Leland that can do it. But the obscurity of the Lotus stuff has always scared me away from those cars.

And it’s still prolific today when you look at the Elise, like you get the slightest crack in that clamshell total, the whole car. That scares a lot of people. You know people. Oh, I love it. I love it. At least they have a problem. Is it? Yeah, there’s maintenance. I love to drive someone else’s lotus. They’re perfect that way.

You know what I mean? Best rental car ever. To Mark’s point, he was saying, we’ve gotten older and look at these cars the way they looked back then, it’s like they’re more attractive now. And I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that when they come out from the factory, a lot of these cars, they didn’t pop very much and it’s kind of dull looking.

But as times went on, people have painted different colors, put different wheels on ’em, done different things to them. That really brings out, I would say, like the true beauty of those cars. An example, I was looking at some of the, I think it was a vantage I was looking at online earlier. The pictures of it from the factory were ugly, but there was one that a guy cleaned up and everything.

I was like, it’s a beautiful looking car. But if you look at the factory picture of it, it was like, ah, that’s crap. It’s weird how it just, little things can make a car look so much better [01:37:00] and more attractive. And I just recently had that experience with one of the weirdest cars, the SOB 900 Turbo. There’s one running around that I’ve seen, you know, 90% of ’em are black and the whole nine yards.

And I drove one of those cars years ago and I thought they were quirky and weird and I just couldn’t get over the, the hot dog, Oscar Meyer Wiener mobile kind of styling that it has. But now I look at it and I go, those are really cool. You don’t see ’em anymore. They’re actually, the design language of the 900 was kind of ahead of its time.

It’s actually a really cool car. And that’s one I wanted to throw out there for people to consider is kind of look at the Swedes. If we give Don any more runway, we’re gonna be in this weird 8 57, 42 40, you know, going on about Boxy Volvos forever, the 9,000 CD. 9,000 CD sob. I was gonna let you go there because that’s a Opal Vectra, or one of those Rebag.

It’s a, so when I was stationed over, when a guy had one and I used to love messing ’cause on those, the ignition switches in the center. [01:38:00] Center, yeah. So we’d be going down the road and he come to a stop sign. I’d reach down and grab the key and pull it out and throw it out the window. Yeah. And he used to get pissed every time because he’d have to pull the hand brake, get out, get the key, get it back in, start up.

He was like, do not do that again. I’m like, what? But thousands as well. I actually owned one of those and it was a great car. The great thing about, it’s like in England, not many cars came with air conditioning ’cause it’s not common for ’em to have. That was one of the few cars when I got over there, had air conditioning.

I was like, I loved it. So everybody used to love riding with me. One of the summers I was there was one of the hottest they had in years and like old people were dying off like flies because of how much heat it was and they couldn’t handle it. And I had one of the few cars with air conditioning, so it was great for long trips and everybody used to love riding with me.

I was hoping somebody would trip over the SOB 9,000 landmine because if you look at the Vox halls and the opals that they were built on, no, he says no, it’s true. But if you look at Opal, which is a brand that was here in the seventies with Amman and a lot of other [01:39:00] cars, if you kind of reach back in the eighties and you start looking at the Vectra, the Collibra, the Omega, there’s some actually really neat opals in there that you could bring over.

Now because we’re again, outside of that statute of limitations for gray market cars, looking at some of these other German and British brands, it opens up some other options for collectors looking for something different. Yeah. And the Saab Volvo, either way you wanna go with it. Going back to your cars and coffees.

You’re probably not gonna see another one. Given the current audience of let’s say 20 somethings that are running around in those cars and coffees, they’ve likely never even seen a sob, 900, 9,000 or any of the numerous Volvos that have been built. You’re gonna have a car that’s gonna attract some attention, especially in the case of the 900, you’ve got a car that was engineered so strangely.

I mean the engine is in backward. What they were thinking, I don’t know if you’ve ever worked on one of their cars and I haven’t having seen enough of them. The accessibility is [01:40:00] absolutely incredible as long as you don’t have to do that water pump. ’cause again, that water pump is up against the firewall.

So if you’re gonna do a water pump, the easiest thing in the world to do is do a Porsche style and just drop the engine. Yeah, just pull it out and do the whole thing. Which unfortunately, that takes us to the maintenance regimen. And as we’ve been talking, a lot of these cars fell by the wayside simply because owners didn’t want to put the effort of the money into maintaining them.

But God, when did they build the first 900? Was that 81? It replaced the sonnet, didn’t it? Or something like that. Yeah, it did. And the sonnet was a weird one. You had a little V four, I mean, come on. That and a two stroke in some cases. Right. So it all depends on the year. Yes, yes. There’s some other weird ones on the list.

I’m just gonna mention ’em for people that maybe they wanna like research these cars. I know Don, you and I joke about the citation, especially the X 11 is the hot rod precursor to the Cavalier and all this other kind of stuff. Right? And then you have the Cimarron, the Cadillac version of that, you know, and I mentioned these Isuzu impulse, but also I think it was Jeff said early on about the [01:41:00] Bratt, don’t forget about the Subaru xt and then even the SS V X, right?

Because that sort of began in the really late eighties, early nineties. Oh, and don’t forget the Chevy Baretta. That’s another one that people forget about too. If you, you want Ooh. And the Lumina. Don’t forget the Lumina. No, no. We can all forget about the Lumina. But the Beretta with its 3.4 liter chain driven V six.

The Lumina no had a 3.4 liter with dual overhead grams. My friend, my car didn’t exist. Trash. They have the Lumina Z 24, 34, whatever was, yeah, the Z 34 was the Lumina. The Z 24 was the Cavalier. My mom had one of those. The convertible. Yeah, they were nice, weren’t they? Before we get to my final pitch here, ’cause I got a good one for you car that’s, that’s often overlooked from the eighties.

I wanna hear about Fiero ownership from an actual Fiero owner, because that is an eighties car, if there ever was one. I took credit car. I mean you obviously got no powers of that, but I mean, it was like a little go-kart, but you sat low to [01:42:00] the ground in that car. I mean, you were way down on the floor of that thing.

I’m six one and I had plenty of room in that car. Having space. That wasn’t an issue. I mean, obviously you are not gonna have much luggage space. You just have your passenger, that’s it. But very short, but wide. So I mean, being handled great, you know, I never had a problem. I mean, of course, you know, I was in high school when I had it, so trying to really kind of judge it based on other things.

I really enjoyed that car. If I ever came across one, I’ll look around if something catches my eye getting there, I almost bought one just to park in the garage to have another one. But the thing is, is like do I go with the GT that I had that had the notch back? But then they also got, the newer one was like they, was it 87, 88?

They had the, you know, they had the GLA on the back, the two M six. But then you had the more rare one. They had the indie firo GT with the hood scoop on the roof and that, I don’t, it was a lot of fun, you know, and I’ve seen people here and there, they’ve stuffed an LSS in them. That would be a fun little car to get up and go with it.

And it’s unfortunate. ’cause I know they had it in the works to [01:43:00] bring out a whole new model with that. But then they killed it off because something else happened. But you know, the next gen car that they were gonna come out with was gonna be spectacular. It was gonna be longer what? It was gonna be a great car, almost gonna say a Corvette killer type situation.

But that’s why it was killed. It was too much head to head with the Corvette. Yeah, that’s why it was killed. There was only room at GM for one, two seater sports car. And if you remember, the Fiero already had the mid engine thing going on. They were adding twin turbos to it. Chevrolet couldn’t hear this and the next thing you know, yeah.

Oh well Fierro has to go away. You don’t see that many of ’em out there anywhere. I mean the whole car was pretty much plastic anyways on the outside, you know? So your panels and stuff, it’s all your stuff underneath it. You gotta worry about rust wise that for four or five grand, you could probably hunt down a pretty decent one.

It’s gonna have mileage on it, but it’d be a lot of fun. Something unique. Is it true that it shared a lot of parts with the Chevette, which was basically just an opal cadet? Yeah, I think it did. I mean that car only had pulled all the pounds off like that. That thing wasn’t anything special underneath.

Yeah, I mean it was, it was a cheap car. I mean it wasn’t [01:44:00] expensive. I guess you say unique about it was, ’cause it was a mid-engine car. Even the six, it only had 140 horsepower. 138, something like that. It wasn’t gonna get ’em go. But I mean it was small. It was light. It didn’t need a lot of, the power to weight ratio was really good.

It did. Yeah. Again, if you’re looking at something that’s gonna be unique, stand out, add a cars and coffee and have some fun with, you could tweak it a little bit. If you want have something, you can work on it yourself. Four or five grand. You can have something that no one else pretty much has. You’re not gonna have your own Fiero section at any car event.

That’s for sure. My cousin had a Fiero and that was one of the first cars I ever worked on. I was doing brakes for, they had to twist out calipers so it didn’t go back in. I had never done one like I before. I’m trying to press the caliper out and it didn’t not wanna press out after calling some people.

’cause this was, you know, before internet was, you know, as easy as it is now during the dialup days. I reached out to a couple guys that worked at shops and they’re like, yeah, you gotta actually turn into Piston and as you compress it or it’s not gonna go in. See, you just hadn’t owned a Volkswagen yet.

If you did, you would’ve already known this. This is like common stuff. [01:45:00] Mark brought up something in the chat, and I think it’s the second banker’s Hot Rod, which is the B M BMW 6 35 and 6 35 CI and all those. I think those are, like you mentioned before, looking at them with new eyes, or I guess old eyes now.

I think rehearsal aerodynamic front end and low slung rear end. It’s actually quite an attractive car and I think the six series doesn’t get as much press as it should. I love those. They drive great, especially the O uh, I know it’s 6 3 5, but the M six series of those are fantastic too. I mean, you could get four people in that car if you needed to.

That’s a great car, because if you can get a Euro version, it’s got 286 horsepower, 256 in the US version on the M six, and even when you go down to 6 3 5, I think it’s only what, two 30 or two 20, I think horsepower in that if my memory serves me. So I mean, you don’t have a big disparaging, you know, range that in horsepower.

Those, I think those are gorgeous, sharp looking cars. I’m a big fan. They’re super aggressive looking now. Yeah. Like then you’re like, eh, [01:46:00] it’s A B M W, but now, you know, square body, round headlights and those wheels, it just looks menacing. You’re like, you show up at a traffic light, that thing. People are like, what the hell are you driving?

You know what’s in that thing? Yeah. I think that the 6 35 C Ss I came first. Right. I mean that was the first car they released that had that M one engine in it. Yeah. And that was the big deal. Like the c s I had the M one engine. Yeah, it was the 3.5 liter in line six. That car goes all the way back to the six 30 was the first one that they released.

And of course before that you had the E nine chassis, which is what this car is basically the son of E nine, which is your 2,800 C S I and the 3.0 c s i amazing cards. You, you know, when I was growing up, it’s funny, Eric, you say that, ah, they’re just BMWs this. Was one of my ultimate dream cars. You the My dream car list only has five cars on it, if I remember correctly.

And that’s still one of the cars on there. You know, it’s funny, I’d love to have an M six. Love, love, love to have an M six, having driven both of them, the 6 35 C S I [01:47:00] and the M six. Yeah, the M six is quicker, handles better, blah, blah, blah. The 6 35, there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s no shame in having a 6 35.

And I’ve driven the five speed and I’ve driven the automatic and there is a difference. The five speed’s gonna give you a lot more pep, but if you’re just into cruising and enjoying and having a nice little night out, there’s no shame in having that automatic and, and now they’re fantastic cars. They’re well built.

You’ll find these cars hitting 300,000, 350,000 miles despite. What Eric thinks of BMWs, but that’s only if they maintain them. And again, BMWs are notorious. They absolutely demand being maintained. In fact, these cards, if you look on the dashboard, they actually have this series of lights that go across and they’re, they’re like green, green, green, yellow, yellow, red.

And that’s your maintenance light. And when that red comes on, you’ve gotta get it in for servicing. Otherwise it starts going absolutely berserk. You have pulled up Mark, the one that I wanted more than anything. The brights in a bar red with the, uh, what do they call [01:48:00] it? Lotus Interior, I think they called that.

Yeah. And that, that is the one that I wanted one were to caution with a cars that I think is still a problem today. The factory wheels not the one that Mark has behind it. Mark has some b b s wheels on there, but the factory, 6 35 wheels were metric sized and there was only one maker who made tires for it.

And that was Michelin. I don’t know, that’s still holds true today. The back in the day, oh my god, those tires were a fortune. So most people just swapped out the wheels. They just bought a B B S set of wheels and they bought some aftermarket kind of wheel and they just put whatever they could find and put those tires on.

Wasn’t it T R X? Something like that? Michelin T R X thing was, yeah. Yeah, there was, yeah, I think you’re right. I think it was Michelin, T R X tires and they were the only ones that would fit that car. That gives you an idea of how well engineered that car was. Let’s name another car that wears bespoke tires.

Oh, the Bugatti. Yeah. So I mean, that gives you an idea of how much. Thought B M W was putting into these six series BMWs because they knew their target was [01:49:00] ta-da, the five 60 Ss e C, the 500 s e c, those big Mercedes, that was the market they were going for. And then that 9 28 showed up from Porsche and I was like, oh my God.

As if we didn’t have enough problems competing with Mercedes, now we’re competing with Porsche. Fortunately, the buyers kind of delineated themselves out and Porsche people with with the 9 28, et cetera. I think with the eighties though, in B M W, obviously people will always gravitate to anything E 30, especially the m threes and stuff like that, and the 6 35 instantly recognizable classic German muscle cart, but the one that gets forgotten and it is an M car and I think is good value for money today.

Is the E 28, M five, that thing packs a punch. It’s understated. Basically only came in black, so it’s perfect for me. It’s one of those cars that I’ve personally been in. Them driven one. They’re fantastic. Again, underappreciated. They just don’t have the same general seis. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, mark. People don’t look at this five series, the M five in the same way they do.

[01:50:00] Let’s say the M six, the eight 50, or even the E 30. At any rate, I think the E 28 is something to look at. If you start looking at the M fives of that, the E 28, you’re actually finding a very, very expensive car. If you find one that is cheap, always keep in mind the mantra that the cheapest exotic car is going to be your most expensive one.

The one that might be of interest. That does get overlooked, and I don’t know the chassis numbers. If you remember the movie Ronan, there’s a little, I think it was a PEO chasing an M five, that M five, but basically it’s like a 91, 92. It’s that rounded kind of body style of the B M W. Those are very underrated.

I think people even forget that they had the Ronan M five. They didn’t build too many of them. They were in the shadow of the E 28 that you’re talking about. And then of course later they built even prettier, better. M five. Yeah. Like the E 39. So yeah, if you wanna bargain from the family, that might be it.

One of the [01:51:00] things that dawned on me when we were talking about the e thirties, that was one of the first eighties cars I ever had owned and drive B m BMW was thinking ahead with that, for the fact that the fuel economy, ’cause I had a little sweeping gauge on the back and forth, depend on how much throttle you were getting.

The BMWs have had that forever. It’s never worked. Right. It’s super inaccurate and they keep doing it. It’s like tradition. Right. You know, keep refining that bad idea forever. It’s fun to play with it though. ’cause it’s like you, you just floored and it would drop down to zero and then you’d let off make it back up to like 50.

Dan, I’m surprised that’s coming from you. You’re the Chevy guy of the group. And even I know the Ford guy here that Mike Caprice has one of those little things too. It goes back and forth. To wrap this up, before we do our quick lightning round, I found one car and I’m, I’m surprised, Don, you didn’t go there.

And it dovetails right off of our muscle and malaise episode that we did. You remember I closed that episode out talking about the Ford Fairmont and how basically it was a, it was a wolf and sheep’s clothing. Yeah. You’re gonna go to the LTD lxs. Yes, yes. Yeah. That [01:52:00] is the continuation of that thread, that car.

Oh yeah. Understated, underrated, undervalued. You’re getting a more modern fox body right underneath of that L T D L X, right? That’s a car I would highly consider. They only built it for two years, 84, 85, and they only built just a little over 3000 for the entire run where that car started. I don’t know if you know this or not, but that would Bob Bond rent, who built that car?

Not Bob himself per se, but Bob’s team out of his school, they had these little lxs. They were trying to teach people how to drive high performance, which is impossible. When you got three students in the car, each who weigh roughly 200 pounds plus the driver, and they’re trying to get this six cylinder forward, that smog choked, et cetera.

There really was nothing they could do, but they realized that yes, it’s a Fox platform car. We could take the engine out of one of our mustangs, throw it into this car, and we’ve suddenly got a four-door hot rod. And they did. And for the longest time they didn’t think anything of it. They just had a training car that had [01:53:00] guts.

And one day some of the Ford executives came out to see the Bonder run, what was going on out there? What were they doing with our Mustangs, et cetera. And Bob himself took him for a drive in that lx. Before it was in lx, it was still just an L T d. He is rowing through the gears and they realize this thing got a V eight and five speed guys, do we build this car?

No, we don’t build this car. We don’t know where this car came, Bob, where’d this car come from? Well, let me tell you a story. And he told them a story. And the next thing you know, They’re going back to Dearborn and they’re coming up with a plan to build a five liter lx. And really what that was was a stop gap.

S h O and Taurus were being planned out. SS h o was on the very, very back burner, but they knew they wanted a high performance Taurus, but the Taurus was on the front burner. They were investing billions into building the tourists. This was a great stop gap. This was a way to show people, hi, we’re Ford and we do have performance four door sedans.

Check this out. And there it is, the L T D lx. But it was never marketed. Less than 3,500 were [01:54:00] built. I’ll say that. 3,260. And if you look at the one mark has that that car actually lives or lived, I don’t know if it’s still there, but that car actually lived in Long Beach. That car is where that car is from, and that is an original LX, L T D, but they pulled out the original carbureted.

3 0 2, and they put in an 89 5 liter from an 89 Mustang. Gave it a lot more horsepower, a lot more torque, et cetera. Then he did the suspension, he did everything. That car right there, the one that Mark has behind him, is an incredible, incredible reinterpretation. But here’s the beautiful thing, and again, we’re talking to people who are thinking about their very first collectible car.

Yeah. If you’re into the four-door performance, under the radar car, s h o is sell for twice as much. It’s incredible how many people want an Ss h o. They don’t even think about this car. Now, granted, the s h O is quicker. The s h O is faster. The s h O handles better. The s h O is more comfortable. There was a lot more [01:55:00] resources put behind SS h O than L T D lx.

It doesn’t matter. All these things that S H O can do, that this L T D can’t, because you know what an S H O can’t do? Is get a coyote shoved under its hood and you can’t this true, well, you could or, or you could spend $5 on that five liter and kick that SHO’s ass. Oh, a thousand percent. A thousand percent.

You could, you could, yeah, absolutely. Five, five liters. Seven. I’ll give you $10 total. It’s real world drive manual transmission all day long. You can beef up that V eight. The SHO’s downfall is that it was front wheel drive. Yes, it had the Yamaha and all that other stuff, and great, it would blow its doors off, but in the long run, that’s a better car.

That’s a better collector car. It’s a sleeper. It checks all the boxes and it’s right up there with that Mercedes we talked about as an awesome candidate for a prospective buyer looking at something from this time period. That was my final thought before we go into our lightning round. And what I wanna do is, I wanna pass this to Brad, who’s been [01:56:00] really quiet and say, would you buy anything off of this list?

Um, no. Uh, yes. I, I would, I would buy, uh, I have a short list of cars that I like. Okay. A Notchback Mustang 9 2 4 Ss bar. I expect that handful of shit to be mailed to Eric’s address. I can give it to you after the call. I’ll get it from him later. And then the cre de la creme for me is a 1986 G M C Sierra, 3,500 dually.

Oh wow. Very specific. But it’s the essential truck from the movie Lethal Weapon too. Martin Riggs used it to pull down a house on stilts. I wanna use it to haul mulch. So since Brad started us off, y’all get to pick one car from the eighties. Money’s no object. Whatever you want. One car from the eighties, what is it?

What’s it gonna be? Let’s go with Mountain Man, Dan Square body the block. Come back to me on this. I gotta think about what I would [01:57:00] buy. ’cause I already own so many eighties of what I want. Harley Quinn Square Body. Ooh, that’s an interesting idea There you are a bad, bad man with that Lotus Carlton behind you there, sir.

We’ll get into that later. So since we went there, mark, what have you got? Ah, shit. If I had to pick, you know I go back earlier in the conversation and honestly we’ve skipped it. We totally skipped it. We didn’t talk about it at all. It would be hard for me to pass on like an R five Turbo, Bruno Min Engine Hot Hatch.

Kind of like the craziest, never should’ve actually been built car. Yep. That was ever built. And if I’m thinking like a quintessential unobtainium eighties car for me as a kid, and admittedly there’s stupid, there’s six figure cars these days. A hundred percent. But you know, for me personally, I. That’s where I’d land.

You know, I do think the Lotus Carlton sneaks into our, because it’s based off an eighties voxel. Yep. Right. So it’s, it’s a very eighties platform. It was released in [01:58:00] 93, right on the edge of our barrier, you know, of course, it’s very distinct history. It was really my money and I had to pick, I do an R five, maybe we’ll do an episode about the colonists and the colonies and talk about Australian cars and British cars in more detail.

Another point, because we didn’t even talk about Holdens or the Falcons or any of that stuff that the Aussies had going on. It’s, you know, it’s like three hours is not enough. No, it never is. Well, that’s why we keep doing these, right? Can’t cover it all in three hours. So let’s go to William. Anything you want from the eighties, well say money’s no object.

Whatever you want, you get one choice. Just one choice. But I get my hands out F 40, just money. Hey, always count on William to go big money. Big money. William Ross. And then if it was gonna come down, say I’d go to M six or I’d go that, but then stepped out, I’d go to notch back, Fox Body Mustang, and then my firo.

Jeff, what have you got? If you could buy one car from the eighties, what would it be? Punta. And [01:59:00] if I was going more kind of normal, I’m really on that Dodge Shelby charger, the late eighties manual. With the turbo, they were considered butt ugly for the longest time. A lot of people still think they’re dog dooo and they’re cool now.

All, all of it. They’re cool. Now that a lot of those are coming in like the, the fox bodies that you guys have been talking about, all that stuff that was considered kind of secondary to the cooler stuff is now kind of becoming, I think like Dan was saying, more nostalgic now. And so some of the beauty is coming out in the nostalgia as well as what Dan also mentioned, some of the customization.

And so when you throw something under the hood that shouldn’t be there, that makes it go faster, that’s cool. You put new wheels on it, that’s cool. Fancy paint, all that stuff makes it really desirable. All right, Dan, he teed you up. Do you have an answer yet? He actually took what I was gonna say with the Kage.

’cause I was thinking about it. I was like, you know what? I was like, I really love that as a kid. Wait, are you serious? Like you would, you would [02:00:00] go for an Italian car? Yeah. That because, so here’s the thing is it’s a hard debate between that because the Kosh was awesome back in the day, but the F 40 I think is so much prettier.

I don’t know what it was about the Kosh. It was like, maybe it was just the way it was promoted back then. But it was like forefront right in our face. But the F 40 was more quiet about it. Dude, the Kunta was the centerfold in the magazine, right? I mean, yeah, it’s on the Trapper Keepers. Oh yeah, that’s right.

I had the tester Rosa Trapper keeper. That’s all I’m saying. All our young listeners are like, what’s a definitely no money limit would be one of those two because they were epic supercars of that era, and they’re just amazing cars. But I had an unlimited budget. I would definitely dump a lot more into more square bodies.

Oh Jesus. All right. They, they Now you just invalidated everything you just said before that. So there you go. Don, over to you. What do you got? And don’t say Chrysler tc.[02:01:00]

Not like ante baby. No, I’m kidding. Yeah, you know, I’m gonna join the Kunta Brigade because I’ve always been a Kunta guy. I’ve always loved Lamborghini. I love the FU attitude that comes with any Lamborghini. I got very little against Ferrari. I have some against Ferrari. But, uh, now I’m gonna, I’m gonna go with uh, Ash and one that we didn’t talk about that maybe we should have because they are reasonably cheap.

As long as you can keep ’em on the road. And that would be the mat Quattroporte. I love those cars. Yeah. They were a brick of a car. And if you could maintain ’em, they drove like no other. They were fantastic drivers. And then I gotta go back to my high school days, you know, dad, forgive me. ’cause we were raised Ford, but I have got to have an 89 Pontiac TransAm G T A with the bowling ball hubcaps.

Right? Well that’d be the 82. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the 82 would have the bowling balls, but the 89 would have those gold mesh. A B s. The remake of the honeycombs. It’d have a black paint job, hand, leather, [02:02:00] interior, the T tops and the 5.7 liter. If I could have, you know, things my way, I know William went high dollar, I’m surprised Mark didn’t just suddenly say 9 59 just to go.

Completely poor show that had, you know, in the chat there were things popping up like Launch Rados and Delta HF Tegra and things like that. Those are all awesome cars. And you know what? I am in the F 40 camp. I’ve seen many of them in person. I love those cars. They sound fantastic. It’s hard to beat the F 40, but because we are talking about the eighties and I still think the French are the king of the hatchbacks, you know, outside of the G T I and all that kinda stuff, I’m gonna lean a little into my favoritism of all things not Citra and go with the Bugatti E B one 10.

Ooh, nice one. Is that an eighties car? It is technically designed in the eighties. It came out in 90 91. I know, because it, it fits our criteria. I’m in the window right? It’s alright. I’ll give it to you. It’s French, it’s a supercar. Paint it not blue. It [02:03:00] looks like the Batmobile. It’s absolutely incredible.

The coolest, ugly car out there. I love them too. Those, these are great. I Those are fantastic. Yeah, I got to see one at speed and it, it left an impression on me, that’s for sure. I got to see one at Goodwood sitting next to a new Bugatti. It was pretty amazing and as a kid that car made a huge impression on me.

I still think of it as a nineties car though, just saying. Well, Brad, anything you wanna add on top of that before you take us home? No. All strong choices. I still stick with my pickup truck. Bring your garage or collection to the next level with Don Weber over@garagestylemagazine.com. Interested in purchasing an exotic car from the eighties?

And be sure to reach out to William Ross at the Exotic Car Marketplace. Thanks again to Jet Willis for coming back on Break Fix. Be sure to catch him on more episodes and pick up a copy of his book, human and the Machine and you’re guaranteed to catch Mark Mountain, man, Dan and Tanya on another episode of Break Fixx in the near future.

So stay tuned for that. Thanks again to our panel for another great, what should I buy today? That’s right. And like all [02:04:00] good. What should I buys? Except for I think the Italian one. We never really come to a conclusion, but we hope we left you with a lot of food for thought. Don’t take our advice. Take our advice.

It’s your money. Spend it how you like, but enjoy whatever it is that you buy. And remember that if you buy a car from the eighties, it’s gonna put a smile on your face. Well done, gentlemen. Yeah, good job. Thanks guys. Alright, we’ll see you all very, very soon. Thanks guys. Later guys.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about G T M, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at Crew [02:05:00] chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you. Hey, everybody, crew, chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that G T M remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

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