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WSIB: Classic & Collector Cars!

We get ideas and suggestions for show topics all the time, and recently someone asked us to revisit the idea of “purchasing your first classic car” – never looking to turn down an opportunity for a hearty debate, we said Challenge Accepted! – And you know what that means listeners… it’s time for another fan-favorite WHAT SHOULD I BUY? episode! 

As our listeners know all WSIB’s have Shopping Criteria : but it unravels very quickly when you take into consideration all the different genres and eras of “collector cars” – Are we talking pre-war, post-war, muscle car, malaise era or something more modern? – so this begs the question “what exactly *IS* a collector car?” And with the help of our esteemed panel of guests we think we can solve this puzzle and come up with some great suggestions for the first time collector car buyer. 

  • Model A Ford

All of our guests have been on the show before, and have experience in the classic car, prospecting and investor car markets. So please join me in welcoming back to Break/Fix our panel of petrol-head juggernauts: Mark Shank from the 90’s WSIB episode, Don Weberg from Garage Style Magazine, Rob Parr from Collector Car Guide and Chris Bright from Collector Part Exchange. 


In our discussion with the WSIB Panel, we cover topics like: 

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Notes

  • Best pre-war classics
  • Best post-war, pre-gas crisis classics Euro or Domestic
  • Best Muscle cars
  • Underappreciated or Hopeful classics > Prospecting
  • Classics for under $50k – Affordable Classics
  • Classics between $50-100k – Investments

and much, much more!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports related.

We get ideas and suggestions for show topics all the time. And recently someone asked us to revisit the idea of purchasing your first classic car. Never looking to turn down an opportunity for a hardy debate. We said challenge accepted. And you know what that means, listeners, it’s time for another fan favorite.

What should I buy? Episode. That’s right Brad. And as our listeners know, all what should I buy is have shopping criteria, but in this case it unravels very quickly. When you take into consideration all the different genres and eras of collector cars. Are we talking pre-war, post-war, muscle car, the malaise era or something more modern?

So this begs the question, what exactly is a collector car? And with the help of our esteemed panel of guests tonight, we think we can solve this puzzle and come up with some great suggestions for the first time collector car buyer. [00:01:00] All of our guests tonight have been on the show before and have experience in the classic car prospecting and investor car markets.

So please join me in welcoming back to Break Fix our panel of Petrolhead Juggernauts, mark Shank from the nineties, which did I buy? Episode Don Weber from Garage Style Magazine. Rob Parr from Collector Car Guide, and Chris Bright from Collector Part Exchange. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Thanks for dude, thanks fun, we’re honored.

You all even want to come back.

Well, as everybody knows the what should I buy as RF fan favorite, they’re a little bit more of a happy hour style, a little bit more casual. So tonight’s big debate is the first time classic car buyer. So who wants to take a stab at defining what a classic car is? Now in the intro we said classic car and collector car.

Are we using these terms interchangeably? Because they’re different. Are they? If you read Nik, they come out with articles all the time. These are the next future collectors cars. Or just because it’s a classic [00:02:00] car doesn’t make it a collector car. And just because it’s a collector car doesn’t make it a classic.

My business is named collector, part exchange. We didn’t name it classic part exchange because we wanted to keep the door open for modern classics. People like are talking about modern Ferrari or whatever, you know, we wanted to have that be open to them, but I think technically classic car is 1989 and before is what I, I believe it’s typic.

The definition sounds like a middle-aged man definition. Exactly. I would, I would prefer with this. I I’m mansplaining right now. Would you please shut up, mark. Do do classic cars go along the way of classic rock? Like if we listen to a classic rock station, now we hear nirvana, does that mean anything from the nineties is considered a classic?

Hell yeah. I mean, in Maryland it’s a 20 years and you get a, you can get a classic car tag. Yeah. Is that the standard across the, across the, I mean, so, so Brad, actually, let me flip this around on you and say, I’ll give you the exception for the future. Classic near term. What’s a car that’s [00:03:00] 20 years or older that’s a collector car that isn’t a classic.

Gremlin silence. Is it, is it Gremlin a classic. It’s right up there with the HHR and the PT Cruiser. But let’s let Don weigh in. Yeah. I I, I’m listening to all of you and, and I, all of you are hugely well qualified and you know, I’m just an old fart who has an idea here. You know, one thing that has always upset me?

When you look at magazines, you look at podcasts, you look at television shows, and all of a sudden, let’s talk about, oh my God, the instant collector of the Aston Martin something. Oh my god. The instant collector of the Ferrari something or other. Well, what year is that? Ferrari something or other? Oh, it’s a 2022.

But it’s an instant collector. Wait a minute. What? You know, it’s like saying the Viper. I remember reading about that years ago. The Viper. Oh, this is an instant collector’s item. Well, yeah, it’s gonna be limited production. It’s gonna be high performance. It’s gonna be very expensive. Nobody’s gonna be able to have this car.

But what makes a five liter gt a collector car? Oh, nothing. Nothing that’s not a collector [00:04:00] car until today. You ask anybody. Hey, I got a 93 GT triple black Chrome ponies, five speed in the garage. 25,000 miles. Oh my God. I gotta have that car. Well, wait, wait, wait. You were the same guy that when the car was new and I bought it, you said this would not be a collector car.

You know, Eric, you and I talked last time about DeLorean pretty extensively, and I think I told you I’ve got a stack of magazines. Each one with articles from the day with DeLorean in it. One of my favorite stories is in one of ’em, a young writer talks about what a piece of garbage the DeLorean is that it’ll never be worth anything.

It’s gonna fall apart before it’s worth anything. Blah, blah, blah. Ba ba. Fast forward 30 years. I have another magazine where the writers gushing over DeLorean and how different they were in stainless steel and gullwing doors and the plastic underbelly and all this other wonderful stuff, and it’s such a great car.

It’s an absolute collector car. You should buy it now while they’re priced. Right? [00:05:00] That was written by the same guy 30 years apart. Oh wow. Don’t you think there’s this, like cars are new and then they go into the valley of death? Yes. Even if we look back, there’s even lots of portion nine elevens, like when they weren’t that valuable, then all of a sudden they became like $250,000 cars.

Now they’ve come back down to Earth, but it’s like something goes away and then it starts becoming like Ferrari test Roses like five years ago. You get one for $40,000. They were not expensive cars. Now they’re expensive to own, but now they’re back up over in 1 21 40 range. And well look at your Kutas.

Those cars have gone completely nuts. The $800,000, it’ll be a couple years, there’ll be a million dollar car. Right. The residual value of the cocaine you’ll find in a Tesla just worth more than 40 grand. That’s true. And they were all brought to you by DeLorean, the dealer of the year for 1982. You know, mark, I had a little bit of time to actually think about your question.

I had to do some mental math, cuz you said 20 years older. [00:06:00] That’s 2002. How about the Ford Tempo? The Ford Escort, the Ford Taurus, are those classics? Oh God, no. The Chevy Taurus. S h o. Yes. The so, so, okay, so it’s got, so, so it’s gotta be ad particular model. You actually got the, like the good one you, you’re talking about a particular model, the Ford probe.

I’m, I’m ragging on Ford a lot here cuz it’s just popped into my head. Ford probe is just great. The Volkswagen Passade is not a classic, it’s, I’m sorry, the 2001 Volkswagen Passat is not classic. Yeah of course it’s a good car. Okay. But it’s a collector car. So wait the 2000, no it’s not a collector car either.

You but that wasn’t your collect, that was my question. Question Was anything 20 years? You a car that’s 20 years old that isn’t a classic? No it’s a classic. Gimme a car that’s not a classic that is 20 years old. Eric, you didn’t tell me these guys were married and it’s very undefined. But anything that’s desirable is the collector car.

I mean if you want, if you want the word probe GT or something V6 to the, whoever wants the car that’s a collector car, right? I mean that same guy has six of them because you know he needs the parts. [00:07:00] Like the guy on this panel that I’m not going to name who has about 200 mark fours in parts. It’s gonna be a collector car one of these days.

That’s all I know. Yeah cause you are one collector, five collector cars. Now. Wait, wait Mark four Volkswagen. Are we talking the German Mark four or from Dearborn, Volkswagen? No, not your Lincoln. Volkswagen. We’re talking about Volkswagens. Yeah. Not this Toyota. Mark four either. So lemme do, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Toyota. Good. Very good. Building on what you were saying about the tempo and the probe, et cetera. I have a 79 Chevy Caprice. I inherited it back in 2002. Nobody gave a crap. I was the only one who cared about that car. It was mint condition, 40,000 miles, two-toned brown. My wife hates it. She still hates it to this day, but here we are now, 2022.

And I gotta tell you, that car gets attention just as easily as the DeLorean, as the Mustang, as any of the others. It really commands a lot of attention and a lot of respect. Even though again, years ago, nobody gave that car anyway. It, it was like driving Rodney [00:08:00] Dangerfield around. It was horrible. You look like a man that would have that car on 22 inch rims.

Am I right? No. God no. No, no, no. Wow. I think that was like the biggest burn I’ve ever heard. So let me do this, let, let’s wrap up this thought. I think it’s very challenging to define what is classic or a collector car is. However, there is one staple guideline that we can fall back to, which is the official list of approved full classics from the Classic Car Club of America, which I happen to work with over the last couple of years.

And I’ll read it to you so we can separate a couple of hairs here. The Classic Car Club of America defines a full classic as a fine or distinctive automobile, American or foreign built produced between the years 1915 and 1948. Many factors come into play, but a classic was a high price top end vehicle when new [00:09:00] and was built in limited quantities.

That is their definition of a classic, which now we can say is distinctly different than something that would be a collector vehicle. I call bullshit on that. That’s just, who the hell is a member of the Classic Club of America? Gunther’s not on here, is he? No. And he was supposed to be, you know, again, Eric, going after your definition when you think about what you just read, Oh, the test Instant collector item.

Oh, the Viper Instant Collector item. Oh, the Porsche, blah, blah, blah. Instant collector item. Yeah, because nobody can afford them. They’re limited production. It’s exactly what they were talking about. I like those types of cars that are like, I own an Alpha Romeo Julius Super, so it’s a boxy four-door sedan, but it’s really cool.

That car gets so much attention. But it was a mass market car. It was well designed. It had a race pedigree, but there were tens of thousands of them [00:10:00] made, but most of them were left to rot, so then they became rare again. It’s like Fiat 500 s. They’re really cute. They’re cool, but they were a mass market car.

A lot of ’em rotted on the vine, and now they’re pretty extraordinary and rare, even though they weren’t really valuable to begin with. I mean, not that I’m trying to insult you or anything, but your Alpha and my Caprice, they’ve got a lot in common. They really do. They’re little boxy cars. At least pair up your Fiat 1 24 with this alpha, I mean, come on.

No, no, no, no, no, no. We’re talking about boxy sedans. Oh, okay. Not Minn, Yeti Marelli sponsored vehicles. Yeah, I got you. It’s all good. No, no, no. AC Delco, baby. AC Delco. Especially Ss, especially if it’s an Impala. SS. Oh, those are the best, aren’t they? Oh yeah. Oh, the nineties ones? Yes. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. My neighbor has one.

I salivate every time I see that thing. The LT one engine. Mm-hmm. So for our first time collector car buyer, let’s call them that, or classic car buyer, I think we need to now split this into different [00:11:00] genres, which is why we actually have all of you on this show, because you represent the different genres that these cars can be dissected into.

Unfortunately, Gunther couldn’t make it. He was on an earlier episode of Break Fix in season one, where he came on and talked about Packards and actual classics from the classic car government America. So we call those pre-war classics. Some of those are post-war up to 1948, just after the Second World War.

Then you have the post-war cars, much like what Chris has with that Alpha Rome being in the fifties and early sixties. Right? That heyday, the Dolche Vita times. Then you’ve got these pre gas crisis, the muscle cars. This is where Rob and Don come into play. And then you’ve also got the malaise era, which Don is very familiar with.

It’s one of his favorites. Then there’s Mark coming at this from the last 20 years and older in the nineties with those are those collector cars now. So now let’s kind of go around the horn a little bit here and talk about maybe some suggestions for the first time collector [00:12:00] buyer for a car that’s, let’s say, in today’s market with Infl adjusted for inflation $50,000 or less.

So who wants to take on the challenge of a suggestion for our first time car buyer Square Body Chevrolet?

Square body Silverado. But I will say from Gunther’s episode, one thing he did recommend a lot of people like to go out and buy the rarest car they can find. It was like, oh, it’s an instant. Classic Gunther’s philosophy was exactly the opposite of that, especially with the cars that he was dealing with.

You want something that was more mass produced, something that a lot of people have, because then it’s a lot cheaper and a lot easier to get replacement parts. And when you’re dealing with cars from pre 1948 or whatever he said, you know, the cars, they’re all rare at that point. That is extremely important to be able to find parts to keep the car running.

And that’s our ultimate goal is to have a car that we can keep running. I know where you can find parts. That’s a whole other conversation. And I think I’m putting myself, I was out at a cars and [00:13:00] coffee last weekend and there were some, you know, kind of 18 to 20 year old kids and they were driving some interesting stuff and we all forget the whole hot rod culture was basically built out of taking mass produced cars and making ’em your own right.

And Exactly. Now we revere that when people kinda shit on kids who are doing things with Subarus, it’s like, it really makes me angry because here are these kids, it’s like they don’t have a lot of money. They’re probably working a, you know, a Starbucks job or something like that and this kid had a, any of y’all know what an Alfa Romeo Milano or a 75 is?

It’s kinda like a family car, but it’s got a v6. Buso engine that when you tune it up, right, sounds like a Formula One car and a transaxle drives like a dream. They race them back in the day, so it’s got some pedigree and you can get one of those for like seven or eight grand. What a cool car for a kid to have.

It’s unusual. It’s different. They get to learn about the history of a different mark that they may not have been [00:14:00] part of. I don’t care what you’re into, if you’re into cars. We’re all down for it. And that’s what I love about cars and coffee is like guys rolling up in $250,000 Super cars parking right next to these kids that I’m talking about that have $5,000 cars.

Mm-hmm. Like I, I talked to a kid who, he was 15 and he had, with his dad’s help, he had helped him rebuild a corver and uh Oh wow. You know, it’s like, I want to give you a hug. I, I wish I at 15. This is giving out free hugs now. Can you believe it? Free hug baby. It’s the, it’s that drink. It’s that adult drink he’s got.

It’s half an

I kids at and coffee. Just don’t do it. See, your cars and coffee are very different than ours cuz ours are full of new age Mustangs and Camaros. Like I, you know, I don’t get it. I kid, I kid, there definitely is a car culture in Portland around, you know, that they like to bring the oddities out. [00:15:00] You can find, you know, early seventies, two-door BMWs and other really kind of interesting stuff out there.

It’s kinda cool. The last time I visited Portland I was shocked by the number of VW Type two s, Squareback four elevens, all that kind of stuff. You know, station wagon culture for sure. And it’s, and Vans and I’m like, wow, this is awesome. But I also have to remember West Coast, they don’t rock like they do here on the East Coast.

So for us they’re like unicorns. But out there it’s like, wow. Amazing. Still on the road. To go back to Brad’s point about what Gunther was saying, he’s a hundred percent right and I will not. Try to imitate his German accent. Uh, no, do it Gunther. If Gunther, if you’re listening, I’m not gonna do it. But one of the things he did say, if you’re looking pre-war specifically, let’s start there.

He said Model A Ford is a great place to begin your journey in that genre of classic or collector car. Because to Brad’s point, they’re mass produced, parts are everywhere and you won’t break the bank. It’s when you get into the Packards and some of the duesenbergs and all that [00:16:00] stuff, you have to build your way up to that.

You can’t just walk in and say, ah, yeah, I’ll take that steps over there. Have a nice day. I mean, maybe you can, but the pre-work cars, they’re getting tougher and tougher, you know, to deal with. But they’re still really cool. I’ve driven some of those cars. They’re as fun as something modern, but in a different way, right?

So it really depends on what gets you excited. So why don’t we move to the heyday and go back to Chris for a moment and talk about the fifties and sixties. What have you got? What’s a, what’s a suggestion outside the Milano’s? Really modern, right? That’s a late, yeah, that’s an eighties. Late eighties.

Nineties car. Yeah, eighties. Generally, you know, if you’re looking for something earlier, and I’m gonna focus more on the European side, like in the fifties and sixties, that’s affordable. That window is narrowing pretty quickly, especially if you’re kind of limiting it to the below 50 K. But from my standpoint, I like smaller cars, kind of underpowered cars in many ways.

Like my Julie is a 1.3 liter, and I took it out on a tour and I, like everybody else was having a [00:17:00] good time, but I was working, I was driving the same speed as they were, but I had to work to keep that 80 horsepower kind of up with traffic, right? That’s what I kind of skew towards. So there’s like a really cool kind of a little bit off the radar called an A Barth record.

Manza really cool little car. They’re a little bit higher in there, right around the late fifties, early sixties, and they come in in around 80 k. They’re really cute and unusual. They’re fun. They’ve got a race pedigree, but they aren’t like overpowered either. They’re. Four cylinder, but they rip tuned up.

They’ve got hot cams, they’ve got really tight suspensions, pretty nice looking cars. So you know, if you’re looking like in the fifties, I would look at that. Or maybe like an Austin Keely 3000 something in those ranges. But you’re still talking like around 50 k and I, I wanna offer people who are listening to this like kind of like a, a lower level.

And I think if I was really pointing to something European, I really dig triumph TR four s. Those are cool convertibles, great [00:18:00] proportions, fun to drive. Beautiful. Not common, but not expensive either. You can probably get one for 2025 k. You know, I’m an Alpha Rome guys. You’ve all deduced and I really am a fan of the earlier alphas from the fifties are really cool and iconic.

But again, their prices are going up out of the reach of what someone might wanna do for their first classic car. And fifties cars can be a lot if you aren’t really up for that. So I kinda steer people into the sixties and seventies range of alphas, which are all the 1 0 5, 1 15 years. They all have common drive trains.

So there’s three models. There’s the Berlin or the, the four-door sedan, the two-door coops, and then the, the open top spiders say you have three different. Distinct looking cars, but they’re all on a common drive train. So parts are inexpensive and available. They’re easy to repair. You can literally disassemble the engine with some wrenches and some Allen keys, and you can tear down the [00:19:00] entire engine.

They’re bulletproof engines. Four cylinder chain drive, double overhead cams. Lots of fun to drive. Plentiful, unique and available, assuming they don’t have spike of fuel injection. No, I recommend Spike. I disagree. Very cool. Well, then you can’t say it’s easy, then You can’t say it’s easy repair. Send.

Once you get ’em tuned, they just, they, they’re pretty bulletproof. Mm-hmm. They’re really good. But, you know, I’m, I’m a fan of carburetor carbureted engines and stuff. Like, my car has a del Ordo, it’s got a single Del Ordo, but most people have put a couple of Webers on there, and they’re, they’re rippers, they’re fun, and they’re really great cars to drive.

Super well balanced, but not overpowered. Chris, since you speak a little Italian, do you know what Delto translates to in English? I believe of the, of the forest or Of the garden? Garden. Yeah. Which is a slight reference to being agricultural. So Amini was a tracker company. Come on. [00:20:00] Yeah, I know, right? But I was think it meant being environmentally friendly.

A car. A car motor, environmentally friendly. Before I pass the baton. I do wanna play off something you said about the Barth. I am a big fan of the Fiat eight 50. That’s a cheaper version of a similar car. They came in a ton of different variants you could get into Coop and all this kind of stuff. I think they’re, again, quirky.

The one really neat thing about that car, people don’t realize it’s rear mounted just like a nine 11. So you can have some really fun trailing throttle oversteering those cars, but it technically doesn’t have enough horsepower to get out of its own way. But still, it’ll put a smile on your face, you know, day in and day out.

No, I, I think that’s a great suggestion. Another great car. I mean there, there are different cars. I mean, some of them have just gotten so valuable that I wouldn’t steer someone that for their first car. Right. Yeah. You know, and like Porsche 3 56 s, they’re kind of fun, but, well, since you brought that up, I’ll put it to our other resident, Porsche guy on the list here.

What about the Beatle? He makes a grimace. [00:21:00] What I say beetle. I’ve had friends that are huge Beatle fans. It’s almost a, a subculture in and of itself. It’s like Beatles, Jeeps, they are their own cartcher. And it’s like at that point, what year do you buy? You just buy one made in the nineties in Mexico.

That’s just a more recent copy of the 1960s or or seventies version. Like, uh, everybody wants a split window. We all know this, right? They’re only a hundred grand. I mean, come on. Exactly. But I think the Beatle is an entry level collector car in a way. I mean, it is mass produced, but you can do really, to your point, you do really cool stuff with Beatles, right?

I mean, I’m not saying turn it into a Myers Manx overnight or something extreme, but you can have a lot of fun with the bug for not a lot of money. So I think it fits maybe in that same category as the Fiat eight 50 or even the early 1 24 s, which are more in the seventies. But we’ll talk about that in a little bit.

I wanna give Rob an opportunity. You got anything from the domestic side of the house in the fifties that would be under 50 K? That would be good [00:22:00] starter. You’re having a little bit of a challenge on that because those cars are going, most of ’em are going over 50 to have decent ones. Your Fords are cheaper.

Overall, fours are less expensive, although their prices are coming up higher. Teenie’s crazy. Auction prices and Thunderbirds were used to be less than 50. Now they’re going over 50 pendulum condition, all about condition, what’s in the car and who built the car and all that good stuff. But I I, you could probably get under 50 in a Thunderbird.

I, I, I, I, I agree with what he was saying. The Thunderbirds are a great way to go, especially, uh, you know, the 50 sevens, 55, 56, those are always a little, but I think if you get a square bird, which is a 58 to, uh, 60, tho those, you can always get a real nice bargain on. You can even get the 61 to the 60, uh, 66.

Those are pretty nice too. The, the, to me they look like a switch blade, but, uh, those are pretty nice too. You can always get a nice bargain. And I guess I’m a sucker for this, but what is it that you like, you know, if you like the 57th Thunderbird, we can find you one for under 50. It’s gonna be over [00:23:00] 20, I’m sure, but you know, we can still find you one, it just depends on what you want.

I had a friend back in the day, he had a 70 charger. I, I remember thinking to myself, That to me is the ugliest of the three, the 68, 69, and 70. I prefer the 68, but I never liked that big lip mouth that the seventies had. I just thought those were kind of ugly. But I remember thinking to myself, why’d you buy that one?

Why don’t you hold on and get a 68 or 69? You know? But I got to thinking that basically the same car, just go enjoy yourself, have a good time. Don’t get stuck on stupid little details and, you know, not enjoy the car. The fifties, sixties are getting harder and harder because the cars are going up. What is it that makes a, uh, a fair lane more collectible than a falcon?

Does it go back to what you were saying about the A A C A where it has to be rarer? It has to be more expensive. It has to be more powerful. Okay. Well, that would be a fair lane over a falcon for sure. But I’ve seen a lot of falcons out there that are just exquisite. They’re, they’re crazy. And you think to yourself, why would you put all this money into a falcon?

Oh, because I like it. [00:24:00] Ah, there it is. Your recommendation for the fifties or sixties, I, I, God, there are so many different cars out there. Even if you go off the big three and start looking at other cars from Hudson, look at the cars from Willis. There’s all these different off the beaten path manufacturers that really were results from coming outta World War ii.

Everybody wanted a car and there was this flurry of manufacturers popping up, left, right center. I’ll tell you one that I think is off the grid that two of ’em that always popped to mind is Mercury and Oldsmobile. Collection car is always Ford, Chevy. Bam. There they are. Then there’s Cadillac, LinkedIn, you know, and then somewhere there’s this imperial guy off to the side.

When you get down to it, it’s always Ford, Chevy, Ford, Chevy, Ford, Chevy. Then there’s the Imperial guy. Then there’s a Chrysler guy, the Cadillac guy, the Lincoln guy. You rarely hear about the automobile guys or the Mercury guys cuz there are none. Because of that, there’s a glut of cars out there that cannot find buyers because people don’t think about ’em.

You know, one of the cars I look at every now and then is a, it’s a 69 Mercury Marquee convertible. [00:25:00] It’s a great car. It’s basically the same thing as a Ford xl. You’ve got the 4 29, you’ve got the four barrel, the the c6. You got all the stuff to make it go, but it’s thousands less than the Ford. It’s a knee-jerk reaction.

Get a Ford. Get a Ford. Get a Ford. Get a Ford. Or get a Chevy. Get a Chevy. Well wait a minute. Why don’t we slow down? Let’s go up a scale. What about a Mercury? What about an Oldsmobile? Yeah, you’re getting more car for the money and it’s less money. Usually. I, I encourage people to look outside of the neighborhood and see what you can find.

That way also led to Don’s suggestion Buick and Yes, uh, possibly Pontiac. And also go with the cars that are not the high-end models now. So like a Pontiac T 37, for example, that’s like 1970. But you go back to like the Buick Skylarks. The Pontiac Lamonds, the old, not the four 40 twos necessarily, but the um, cut list.

The cut list, yeah. You can get those almost at a bargain rate. You actually, Chris had a swap meet with me. There was a, a 1965 Buick Skylar convertible. A guy was [00:26:00] selling for $12,000 and it was in decent shape. Probably could have got it for 10,000. I mean, a convertible I thought, worth more money. I, I think that’s where to go now.

And the parts, you can still get the parts. I, I’d like to throw in a quick plug since we’re talking about GM’s dead relatives. They made some cool supercharged oldsmobiles in the nineties. Yes, they did. They were kind, they were kind of badass. Yes, they did. No, you’re absolutely right. And don’t forget the Quad four.

Yeah, that was a tough little guy. It really was. I was gonna ask, was that Buick Skylar Mint green convertible and was it coming outta the sack of suds To their point, I’m on Hemmings right now and you can get a 68 Oldsmobile 4 42 for 40 grand. That’s really good. That’s really good. Yeah, Don’s right, everybody sleeps on the other bastard children of the, the GM and Ford.

No. Mopar love here though. I don’t. I don’t. But you know, it’s funny. I love, I do. I love the whole Chrysler, but my God, are they outrageously expensive? If they have a fin, forget about it. You know? I need And [00:27:00] Ricardo Monto blonde. Okay. And don’t forget, in 1981, they reintroduce the imperial. And they had to go a step above Ricardo.

They got Frank Sinatra to introduce that, oh Lord, they went all the way out, baby. All the way out. You know, get your three martinis. Let’s go have some golf. You know, I mean, I like what you said earlier, Don, you know that you find a car that somebody spent in a rational amount of money on. I learned that lesson on my father’s knee with his 72 dots and two 40 that you couldn’t hold together.

The thing just instantly rusted and fell apart. Like every time you put a new thing on it, it just turned to dust, like Thano snapped his fingers or something. But he loved that car. He put the money into it and he sold it for a small, small fraction of what he put into it, because when he sold it, it wasn’t cool yet in the early nineties or whatever, for actually giving car buying advice instead of kind of taking the piss with each other.

If I’m buying my first classic car, I would look for a car that somebody spent money on, like they were gonna give it to their kid and this was gonna stay in their [00:28:00] family for the next several generations. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea and I, I think that applies to any car you’re gonna get. I mean, really try to buy the best of the best of the best that you can.

Cheaper to buy a car. Already restored or highly worked on versus buying a pile of junk, so to speak. But there’s a lot of people that buy buy piles of junks for VIN numbers. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars because it could be a sentimental reason they’re buying it, not because it’s a practical reason.

So what you guys are saying is the adage from racing how to make a fortune in racing. Is to start with a large one is this is very much the same in collector car world, right? That, that being said, it sounds like we ushered ourselves into the late sixties and early seventies without even really trying.

So I got a couple of cars to throw out there that, you know, for you guys to chew on. One of them a personal favorite of mine, and I kind of rediscovered it when the Clint Easter movie came out called Grand Torino, and it’s specifically the Grand Torino Sport. I personally think it’s the only good looking one cuz the [00:29:00] star skiing Hutch one is terrible.

Many people will argue with me, Don’s making a face. Oh, I’m a big fan of square lines and round headlights. You know, that’s why I like M three s and other things like that. But that car has a really nice shape to, it has nice hips, it has nice curves. It does. I don’t know what they go for, but that would be on my list to target if I was looking for a car from that era.

I have just a story to add to that. When I was a little, little boy, the first car that my parents bought new was a grand Torino. They kept it long enough where I got to learn to drive three on the tree in that car. It wasn’t one of the nice, it was a, it was a six cylinder, but, uh, still great car. Super fond of it.

Love it. I mean, that’s like having a six cylinder challenger. I’d still be okay with it. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which brings me to another car that is out of the realm of possibility, but it’s always been on my collector car list for that early muscle car era, or it’s right in the muscle car era really is a 70 [00:30:00] challenger, like you saw in Vanishing point, like I fell in love with that car.

It’s nothing really to write home about in those days, but you’re just like, oh, it’s so cool. You know? And, and so if they were below 50 grand, I’d be all over it. But for less than 50 grand you could buy a viper two years ago, and it’s a way better car. Mm-hmm. But I do have one other one. And it’s right on the edge of when things started to turn and the EPA A got involved and safety started to change as a national highway.

This, we’re gonna judge for whatever you say next, preparing. I will stop at 1973 and say the mgb, because that’s before they got the ugly bumpers. We could say that about the portion nine 14, also a hundred percent true. Nine 14, the bumpers that not hard. That was one of my recommendations as a nine 14. I, I’d love nine 14 and I have to go him to say that.

Product placement. Product placement Venmo. Me, uh, well, I was just hanging out with this guy who is like the Porsche nine [00:31:00] 14 king down in, uh, Redwood City, California. He raced him and his whole business was, he started road racing him and he’d go out and kick everybody’s ass and then all of them would come in and they would.

Pay him to tune up their cars and then he would kind of keep that going. So I owned in Porsche 9 28, which we’ll get to in a little bit. Oh, I’m right there with you on that. So, so, cause it’s, we’re not in that era yet, but any Porsche that isn’t a rear engine Porsche, I love, like two exceptions, a 9 24 and the 9 68.

Those are garbage. But, uh, the 9 28. Don’s face is priceless. Cars thought I could like you. I did the mid engine cars. I thought we were gonna have a relationship. Like I had a Cayman, you know, it was mid engine. But I think that’s a very rich scene because they’re undervalued. Like the nine 11 rear engine, especially air cold.

But now even water cold, they’re the top performers and the ones that people splash cash [00:32:00] on. But go get a 9 44, go get a 9 28. I promise you, you will. If you get one that’s good and you oh, if, if you like a 9 44, what’s wrong with a 9 68? There’re just ugly. Oh, I don’t, no, you have less themed Eric. Eric can we So, so kick.

So you gotta give, you have to give a better reason than aesthetics. Aesthetics is relative. The nine car, we think it looks good. The is a perfect car. And the 9 24 is a great car too. No, no, no, no, no. I love those cars. It just looks like someone, there was a little baby playing with cars and they took it 9 44 and they were going, me, me, me.

And they mashed it with a 9 28. And it’s just like, that’s a hundred percent what they did. I know. And its just, yeah, don’t, don’t you remember the ad? Don’t you remember the magazine ad? And it shows the cars that are staggered and the ad said simply, It has its father’s eyes. Yep. Remember that? A hundred percent know that.

And that was the 9 68. It just doesn’t work [00:33:00] for me. So, so let’s, let’s backpedal on this a little bit, right? Because you’re, you’re onto something, and we’re gonna get to this a little bit later on too. The nine 14 is in the lineage of Porsche. That is one of the true roadsters. So that is defined as a proper two-seater, no backseat.

So none of these nine elevens with their jump seats or speedsters, they’re not Roadsters, right? So it follows the lineage of the five 50 in some of these other vehicles. And there’s another episode that you can nerd out on where Lee Raskin talks all about that, along with James Dean and his whole history.

But what I’m getting at is the nine 14 has been underappreciated for so long that it is a goodbye. If you can find one now, you’re not gonna buy. A last year, two liter. Good luck on a 9 14 6 that’s out of the equation. Well those are six figure cars. Yes. So you’re gonna get stuck with a 74, 75 or 76 with the ugly rubber bumpers cuz of the ones that nobody wants because the early cars are either to somebody’s point, a race car, or completely unaffordable.

That said, recently we [00:34:00] reviewed an article from Forbes where they nominated the nine 14 as an up and comer in the collector world. But I wouldn’t vote for that on this list. I’m with Don. I want to go for the weird one. I want to go for the oddball. I want to go for the nine 12, which gives me the nine 11 styling.

With the nine 14 power plant. Nobody wants a nine 12 for good reason. You know, I, I think, I think your conversation’s getting very, very interesting here. I’m a huge fan of Ferrari 3 0 8 i I, I really am. It’s the magnum PI upbringing I guess. But I’ve always loved that car and I watched them just skyrocket in value in the last few years.

Well why is that? If you start to look around all the Ferrari, especially those V12 s Chris, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re kind of the resident Italian guy here, but the V12 s the flat twelves, they’ve all been going absolutely psychotic. Well I want a Ferrari. I want a Ferrari want. I’m gonna go get a 3 0 8.

That’s what I’m gonna get. Cause I can afford a 3 0 8. I can go get a 3 0 8 now. Take Lyft back over to Porsche nine fourteens Chrome bumper 9 [00:35:00] 14 6. Unobtainium. So we go get the next best thing, which is the rubber bumper. Everybody wants to call it ugly, but whatever here nor there. But it’s what I can afford.

You see what I’m saying? So people get into the mode and that’s what’s gonna drive up the price of the nine 14 rubber bumper. Is everybody wanting it? What happened to the 3 0 8? God, the stories I could tell you about 3 0 8 s I could have had, but everybody told me, oh don’t buy that. That’s a shit car.

You don’t want that car. It’s a terrible car. You don’t want that car. They built too many of ’em. Never be worth anything, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’ll look at ’em now. First rule of car buying. If Jeremy Clarkson says Don’t buy it, buy it. Yes. You want a Ferrari, can I interest you? And I’m onk exactly The Monday all and the 9 68 in a room and like birthed, uh, the mean do’s, having an a, Don’s gonna have a heart attack cuz every car I’m gonna ugly, he’s [00:36:00] leave.

I’m gonna go hug my caprice and I’m gonna leave. You know. But what’s interesting about the 3 0 8, I want to go back to that for a moment, right? That like the 9 44 was the every man’s Ferrari, right? Mm-hmm. And the 9 44 was the every man’s Porsche. It was affordable back then. They’re still sort of affordable today.

But the thing that is actually really obtainable, if you love the body style of the 3 0 8 and now because of gray market laws and things like that, you can get them, they weren’t sold here, but there was a 2 0 8, which was a two liter turbo V8 there was available in Europe and it’s looks exactly the same and nobody knows the difference.

I’m sure Chris is too. I’m on some of these Italian car marketplaces and I see ’em all the time and it’s like 12,000 euros and you can have a 3 0 8 and nobody knows the difference, right? So I think they’re kind of cool. I think they’re cool, but they were so unloved that it’s hard to find one that’s even worth saving.

That’s the challenge when you get into some of these oddball cars, those cars in particular, [00:37:00] if they’ve been sitting around, it’s gonna cost you five times what you paid for it to get it back on the road and kind of be operational. So if you’re doing it and you have a good one and someone who’s loved it and driven it often, that’s great.

If it’s been under a tarp in the back of a garage, Runaway run fast and far. Yeah. Hey, but Chris, this, this could bring you business. You should be encouraging people to buy these stars in the business, buddy. Come on. Yeah. Sometimes I don’t always think in my own best interest, but you know, it is to pick up the thread of this, so I own a Ferrari 3 48, which is often referred to as one of the most unloved Ferrari of all time.

I love ’em. Thank you very much. It, it is though. I, I’m not saying that’s right, I’m just saying you. Yeah, but it, it’s true. It’s one of those things that I had portion 9 28, which was unloved and I had a, now a Ferrari 3 48 and it’s unloved. I got it for $33,000 and it was very well maintained and very well loved.

Oh my god, what a bargain. It’s got a ribbon v, last [00:38:00] analog Ferrari, no power steering. It’s got renowned for its steering and drivability. It’s a phenomenal car. It will be available. I’ll bring a trailer by the time this episode comes out. But, uh, so I think one of the, I think one of the best parts about the 3 48 though, and aside from the price point is if you’re not in the know, it’s one of those cars, kind of like the 9 68, that you didn’t know what it was when it was coming or going.

Because if you look at it from the back, if you’re not a Ferrari person, you can say, oh, look at that test Rosa. Cuz it has those, those grates over the lights. It’s really wide and from the front you think it’s a five 12 tr because of those fog lights and the grill and the way that it’s scooped in the front.

So you’re like, you kind of don’t know what it is. They’re super cool because they are understated and they’re pretty cheap. Now granted in and out is the service position to do any maintenance vehicle. That’s the, that’s the whole Ferrari scam. Right. And, and I kind of worn people off of buying Ferrari in general just because they have these [00:39:00] incredibly expensive by design.

It was part of the business plan to have these engine out services to keep the service departments at the dealerships. Operational and, and keeping the money coming in. But the 3 48, we’ve kind of jumped out of the era that we were talking about. Yeah, I bring it up only cuz it was in the city cause you’re selling it the, the the nine 14.

But that particular car, it’s less related to a Tess Aosa or even a 3 28. It’s actual Big Brother is the F 40. It’s got the longitudinal engine, it’s like an un turboed F 40 now it’s got a little bit lesser parts, but it’s got the same layout and a lot of the same drivability and a lot of the same.

There’s a lot of common parts between them and the fact that 3 0 8 s and the 3 28 s are cool, but one of the problems is they aren’t cool in a literal way because the radiators are B right in front of the driver’s compartment and in the summer day you just get heat bombed out of ’em. So in the 3 48 they moved him back.

That’s why the, the, the strikes [00:40:00] are on the side. Great car. Really fun to drive. And, and I think that’s a philosophy that I have is like go for the little, like you guys were talking about where it’s like a little off the mark cuz you get like 98 or 99% of the car for probably. Sometimes a third or a quarter of the price of the one that everybody aims at.

So I’ll throw a couple other, so now we’re in 1968 to 1974. Right? We’re sitting in that era, the pre malaise era, which Don will define for us here shortly. The other cars that we’ve overlooked are entries from B M W, like the 2000 twos, but also the Audi 100 s. They also get overlooked, right? They had some Audi 100 coops back then, you know, predating the famous UR Quatros and all that, and those are out there.

I’ve seen some popping up on Instagram lately. And also you mentioned the 3 0 8 and 3 28. We’re gonna go back to that again. They’re the big brothers of the. Fiat X 19. So that’s another underappreciated car. It’s not fast by any stretch of the imagination, but if you want an affordable [00:41:00] version of that with plenty full backing because they were raced forever and there’s a big subculture for X nineteens, that’s another car to look at.

To piggyback on that, which is the launch of Fulvia Rallied car with a, it’s really interesting. Have you guys ever seen one or been around them? The engine is all cock-eyed and rotated over to the lower the center of mass, and they’re incredibly good cars and they’re very unappreciated because Lancia, especially in the US, was never that big of a deal or w very well known.

So I’ll just throw that one in there as, uh, another one, one of my favorite cars in that area, the, the B M W E nine before bring a trail, I got ruined. I used to look at those things and they, most of them were in Portland and I mean, I haven’t priced one in a while. I hope they’re still under 50 grand, but they were pretty damn reasonable.

Beautiful cars. Too beautiful. Yeah, and gorgeous. Like the proportions are great. No, they’re not fast. At all. Well, everybody wants the CSL or the quote unquote Batmobile and that version of it, but why not just have the regular 6 35 or whatever the [00:42:00] equivalent is, 800? Yeah. You can do an engine swap and then you don’t feel guilty if you do something interesting with it.

Like, what the hell? I mean, I, I guess if I’m, if I’m giving legitimate advice, don’t feel bad about being basic like four. Everybody aspires to buy a rental car. I’ve said it many times. If you like a, if you like a 69 Mustang or Camaro, then get a 69 Mustang or Camaro. Like, there’s a million things you can do with that platform.

You, you can fix any problem you don’t like, you don’t like the interior, there’s a ton of options. You don’t like the, the axle. You can, you can put an i r s kit in the back. You, you can do anything you want with those platforms as far as you wanna take ’em. You know, we’ve talked about everything that’s from the stock point of view, really haven’t talked about modified because today people are modifying pretty much almost everything.

I mean, you got your purists out there, but now we got a new generation coming in here and, and even the guys in our older age range with we’re thing, well how do I wanna drive this car? And what comfort level do I have? Do I want to add air to it? Well, I’d rather shift versus a automatic, when I shift my, change my transmission, put a [00:43:00] five speed in one way, only have four speeds and then I can drive it on the highway 80 miles an hour.

Crazy rear ratios like four 11 s can’t drive those things unless you have a, an overdrive, right? Not on the highway. That begs to mention that, you know, we might wanna look at consider that as well and that’s gonna probably will affect the value. Obviously nowadays they, you see these crazy cars going with auction that are higher than stock value.

When they’re highly modified. You got 5 0 2 cubic inches probably with the supercharger. You got six gears or they’re using 2 56 s in ’em. Now, you know, anything’s possible. But I would go back again like we were without, we were talking about before, if you don’t have to get a Camaro, get a Firebird. I am a Firebird junkie.

I don’t mind Camaro. I think they’re okay. But Firebird and Trans am have always just, you know, again, it’s that white trash smokey in the bandit upbringing. I guess if you’re gonna get a, if you’re gonna get a malaise muscle car, you might as well get a fire burn. Like, are we moving in? Are we moving into the late seventies now?

Are we going there? Let’s, let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s, you don’t have, you don’t have to. You know, it’s [00:44:00] funny when you were talking about your challenger earlier. You’re talking about your challenger in 1970, and it’s really funny because in the back of my mind I’m thinking to myself, Give me a TransAm any day of the week, twice on Sunday.

I don’t care what the challenge is. Packing. Give me a TransAm. Again, it’s personal preference. It really is. I’ve had a few mopars. They’re interesting. They’re unique. I’ve never had a TransAm, just always wanted one. But you know, the TransAm first started 1969 with the first body style, first generation, but it was very limited.

So that goes right in your hand of what’s a collector car? Anybody who knows GM muscle cars, anybody who knows Muscle Cars. I’ll tell you right off the bat, the original 69 TransAm is one of the absolute crown jewels, especially if it’s one of the seven or eight convertibles that were built, and it’s seven or eight because nobody can agree whether it seven was an eight.

Nobody really knows it was one or the other. Obviously if you have a car with one of seven or eight bills, you know, you kind of won the bet. Why not a tempest, not a gto O You can make a [00:45:00] tempest into a gto O and I know everybody wants to judge, right? And all that stuff. And, and here’s kind of the funny thing when you’re talking about Pontiac.

When it, when you go to Tempest, before John DeLorean snuck the G t O into the back door, GM wanted it killed. They thought, nah, we’re never gonna be able to sell enough of these things. Get rid of this stupid G T O. I don’t want to hear about it. We’re gonna get a lawsuit from Ferrari. It’s just not worth it.

And DeLorean made it. What an options package for the Tempest. Well, I don’t know exactly how it went down, but there was the Tempest 3 26 Ho and not many people know about these cars. And they were literally, it was a high output, 3 26 4 barrel, the whole nine yards heavy duty to suspension. Basically it’s a baby G T O.

But I wanna say in 1964, they built 3,800 of those cars, or 4,200 of those cars versus 33,000 GT O. Equipped Tempest. But the question is, where do you find them? A lot of people, they have Tempest. They don’t even know that they have the [00:46:00] HO or the, the lamont. They don’t even know that they have that HO package.

They just know that they have a really cool old car that looks like a gto. They have no idea what they’ve got. You know, that’s one of those funky cars that if you really start to look again, we’re going back to, Hey, buy a Mercury, buy an Oldsmobile. Okay, fine. Buy a Pontiac, the Bonneville’s. Holy cow. I mean those, that’s like buying a Cadillac.

Those things are, or Grand Prix. Oh, the Grand Prix are nuts. Yeah, those are absolutely not. And, and it wasn’t long ago, I wanna say it was a 72. It was a Firebird and it was white. White with a 4 55 and an automatic, but it was a Firebird. It was not a TransAm. But it was a 4 55 and I thought, I didn’t think that they built that.

I really didn’t. So I started looking it up and now they did. You could have had it. They built something like 1200 of them we’re talking the Rockford files. Firebird the entry level, right? Firebird. It was white, white, crazy color combination. Uh, you know, you don’t see cars like this, but I think you guys are on the right path when you’re trying to tell somebody what kind of collector car should we [00:47:00] buy?

Chris, we can talk Ferrari all day long, but you’re right. Trying to get one of these things serviced, it’s gonna put you in the poor house. Just the tires alone can put you in the poor house. You gotta be really careful. You know that a Ferrari, I’m looking at the 4 56 90 new millennium kind of car. So it’s out of this conversation for the moment, but my God, are they a bargain?

They’re a V12 front engine. And if you can find a stick shift, I like the stick shift. The price goes up quite a bit, but even the automatic, why not get the automatic? I come from LA back there, it was all automatic. You wanted an automatic because you don’t wanna be in traffic working that clutch all the time.

But the 4 56 is just under the radar. It, it has little inherent problems, but they’re all fixable. They’re all very, very fixable. And once you fix ’em, from what I understand, you got a pretty bulletproof car. And in terms of being part of the Ferrari family, they’re super, super cheap. There’s your oddball for Ferrari, I guess.

Yeah, the 3 48 is kind of an oddball too. Cause that I think, slips away from even the 3 55. [00:48:00] It, it’s almost like the 3 48 is kind of the forgotten little V8 child. Right? The 4 56 is kind of the same thing. Now, going back to the Pontiacs, the open bills, et cetera. Where’s that 3 26 ho What, what, what is that?

You mean the GTO o? No, no, no, no, no, no. It was the Tempest 3 26 ho. Nobody knows what this is, but you know, when you look closely, good old gm. It’s gonna have a brother and that brother’s gonna be something from Chevrolet. Oh, could it be a Malibu? Could it be a Chave, a Malibu with a big block? We don’t know.

You just really have to start digging. If you’re not gonna go pay the high dollar for a Trans Am or the high dollar for a Camaro Z 28, something like that. Maybe I’m wrong. Could, I’ve been watching the TransAm. The prices are going up, but I think they’re still in the shadow of Camaro. I think you’re still getting a bargain for what you get with the TransAm, with the Firebird, and you think about it.

Out of the gate, they were marketed to a more upscale crowd. So they had a few more amenities. They had a [00:49:00] few more little niceties to them that made them just a little nicer than a Camaro, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Mm-hmm. So as we’ve said before on this show, as the music changes, sort of, the cars music changed in the mid seventies into the height of disco, so came the malaise era.

Don, would you like to briefly define for folks they might be hearing this term for the first time? What exactly that means? You know, honestly, I have trouble defining it. I really do. Cause I own all of them. To me, they’re mainstream cars, man. I drive ’em every day. I thought it was French for shit. Isn’t that, am I, did I read that wrong?

Uh, you’re probably correct. You’re probably correct. It’s resume. That’s what resume. It’s French for, shit. Resume. Yeah. That being said, it covers the period between, what is it, 76 and like 82 or 83. Right. Let me just 70, 73 for American cars. Let me just bring it around the corner to you. Anything built in the era of Corinthian leather.

Oh, nice. Mak [00:50:00] speaking. Which I, I really think the Cordoba is the one that kicked that off. I, I really do. When, when you start talking Cordoba, it’s like, okay, that’s it. We’re going out for cheap drinks and cheap, what do they call polyester suits? You know? I mean, that’s, that’s what it’s all about. My family don’t, my leisure is legit.

There’s so much blah, but so much kind of awesome during this period because these are the, I think, the most unloved cars on the planet, like across every brand. Like everybody went through this period of just like, it’s like the dark ages. Yeah. The most important thing on the malaise era is gonna be what state you live in and what emissions regulation control framework you live under.

Because if you can just rip all the reverse vacuum crap out and get away with that, then you can have some really cool, really awesome cars. Like if you’re in California, like skip ahead in the podcast, just go like forward 10 minutes. That applies to all vehicles except for the [00:51:00] Mustang two. I just wanna highlight that.

That is not good anywhere. For some good ones, not all. Oh man. Two men. And just say anything that’s good enough for Farrah Faucet is good enough for me. Okay. That’s all. Including Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns. This is also the era where these unloved cars also picked up notoriety and fame through Hollywood.

If you think about it, there’s more cars from this era that are showcased in TV and film than probably any other, if you remember, if you go back to I Dream of Jeanie, which is sixties, they all had Pontiacs in that show. If you watch Bewitched, it was all Chevrolet. You know, it’s all about product placement.

And yeah, that kind of had its beginnings right there in the sixties. But yeah, in the seventies they hit it hard. They really had to, you know, to Mark’s point, if you lived in California, just skip over and and go. Cause they had so many restrictions. New York I think was the same way. [00:52:00] You know, one reason I love these cars, a lot of people asked me about the Caprice.

In fact, one of my wife’s friends asked me straight up at dinner one night. So you’re Caprice? Yeah. Why do you have that car? You, I mean, it was, it was just a bam, you know, there, there was no sugarcoating at all. And your car for me outta your dirty mouth lady.

And on that note, come on. It was a Will Smith reference. Come on. One cocktail. One cocktail, one half of a groan. This guy, man. And just so you know, I’m drinking coffee, so if I start talking more and more fast, you can just do this and I’ll understand, okay? But no one, one reason I love those cars and this, this sounds like some sort of cop out, I guess, and I don’t mean it to, I really, really do admire these cars from this era.

We went from 4 55, 4 26, 4 27 s, all these wonderful engines. Having billions of horsepower to the 4 55 was reduced to 230 horsepower. Ah. I [00:53:00] mean, it was just pathetic. Ah, but remember, they had to adjust the way they were taking their horsepower figures. They could no longer rate it from the flywheel. They had to rate it from the wheels.

So that lowered everything. Then you had the lower compression, then you had the gas, and you had this. Those cars to me are like the lab rats. You know, to me they’re like the heroes of the animal kingdom, because these are the ones who, you know what? We don’t have horsepower. We can’t go fast. You know, smokey in a bandit, I, I is hysterical to me because he’s doing burnouts and he’s doing this and he’s doing that.

That car does not move like a Lamborghini. I’m sorry. It just does not, and if you’ve driven one, you know, the first time I drove and it was beautiful, it was a 78, it was a full bandit packaged car, Eric, you know, my fiat, the guy wanted to trade for my fiat. That was his thought. Plus cash. And I, you know, I’m thinking, oh my God, this is my shot to get a trans am, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I drove it and I remember thinking, okay, so it’s a little bit quicker than my fiat [00:54:00] and I’m gonna get a lot worse gas mileage. I, I gotta tell you too, and I hate admitting this because I do love Transams. You close the door. It sounds like a busboy lost his tray. The T tops, the guy admitted to me. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don’t bring it out in the range. If the T tops, they’re gonna leak like a si. Oh, my Fiat is a full convertible. It doesn’t leak. Seriously. It doesn’t leak. And no, my Fiat does not leak oil, but his leaked at where the engine and the transmission come together, there’s a main seal. Yeah. Rear. Rear main seal.

Rear main seal. So I was gonna have to fix that at some point. And I’m thinking, holy cow, this poor car is just a beast, you know? So needless to say, the Fiat’s still with me. My point is, this is where we started going from substance to style. Big screaming chicken, and let’s take your Torino. You know, you like the muscle one.

You like the one in Clint Eastwoods movie. And I love that car too, but that car can lay it down pretty authoritatively. Star skiing Hutch was another funny show because there’s no way that Torino could have done half the stuff that it wanted to do. It had a lot of stuff. [00:55:00] You had the wood grain dashboard, you had the beautiful grain of the vinyl seats.

You had a vinyl top. You had all these wonderful things. Why? Because we can’t give you a horse tower. So we’re gonna give you not only the malaise. You know it’s funny, whenever I write about these cars, I love calling them the Baroque period. Cause you’ve got so much, the baroque going on. It’s a thickness, it’s a heaviness.

It, you know, it’s like you’re, you’re in some sort of a Frank Cannon TV show and everybody’s dressed in these drapes. It just, I’ll shut up. I know that’s what you guys want me to do. It broke for sure. Brad broke barro or broke. He actually started the, the direction was going to luxury. Luxury was where they were emphasizing.

Look at the core vets in the late seventies, there were dogs, but they’re becoming more collectible. There’s a certain thing about them, Tony, you’re saying there’s a certain feel you get about ’em. That I guess that it’s a charming thing about it. I, I gotta learn how to talk more succinctly like him brutalist architecture.

But I have to agree [00:56:00] with Rob because I have. Grown a newfound appreciation for the C3 Corvette’s. Mm-hmm. It has to do with something he said earlier, which is people modifying the cars and in stock trim. I am not a big fan of the c3. I think it’s plain, especially the long, with the long butt versus the bobtail 4 27 s.

Those were cool. So you look at the, the Longtail cars, and I’ve grown more attracted to them because people are doing things like removing the chrome or lowering them or using modern wheels and adding modern touches to them. And now it’s like, that’s a cool car. Like that’s really neat. Mm-hmm. Yes. It’s still 6.6 liters of 200 horsepower of awesome.

Not, but, but you can fix that with modern technology. You know, you put a, a sniper on there from Holly and suddenly you wake that thing up, right? Or, or whatever, cams and exhaust and you’re making 500 horsepower out of a motor that made 180. You said, you know, it was like, uh, this and that and, and the animal kingdom and everything between.

I hate to say these cars [00:57:00] were neutered. That’s really the term is they were. So it’s unfortunate and everybody did it, but the problem is your big four barrel, 6.6 liter TransAm going down the highway got roasted by an 1100 cc Honda CV, c c precursor to the Civic or A G T I or all these hot hatchbacks that were suddenly showing up in the later part of that era.

So, Now it’s like apples and chainsaws when we’re talking about the Malays period, because there’s, there’s so much to choose from what’s considered a collector during this period. Right. A lot of, a lot of it’s junk. The Malays car, that wasn’t the Malays car, the nine 30 Turbo, which you used to be able to get.

Yes. The seventies, nine 30. For under 50 grand, no problem. I feel horrible. I had my friend’s dad try to sell me his 19 77, 9 30 turbo for 25 grand, like 10 years ago, and I feel like a complete moron that I didn’t just buy it, but you know what ruined the nine 30, but also helped the nine 30 at the same time, cuz you saw a [00:58:00] drastic price increase in those cars, even when they were available was the introduction of the slant noses because suddenly everybody wanted one because the slant noses was the coolest thing on the block.

Nobody had ever seen anything like that before. Yeah, I mean, yes, if you looked at that within the context of the timeline, but like, I mean you can look at the 9 32 prices. I’m bringing shareholder price history. It goes back some of the best ones depends on your definition best. You could absolutely pick up a se a malaise era.

Late seventies, mid late seventies, nine 30 that had a slant nose kit on it and somebody had just coped out in the eighties or nineties. But then obviously precipitously dropped in value. You can see price transactions in just two years ago in 20 20, 20 19. Of those things going for 46, 40, you know, $48,000.

But the market recently is really, I mean, yeah, like it’s, it’s, it’s 80 grand. I mean, it, it’s crazy. There’s some amazing cars from that era. If you look in Europe and other places [00:59:00] and, and I was talking about 90, you’ll leave Detroit, you’ll be okay. Yeah, yeah. You know, when I was talking about nine 20 eights, I bought a 9, 19 85, 9 28, and I drove it 175,000 miles.

And it was my daily driver. Its cost of operation was less than a Honda Civic. I actually costed it out. And that is a fact. It’s a Handbuilt super car. It had a Mercedes. I was the first year of the 32 valve in America. Yes. The s yeah. Very good. Well done. Five liter and um, yeah, they didn’t get that in Europe for a few years.

Yeah. I had an automatic, so it was a transaxle, it was a Mercedes-Benz unit in the back. I could fit two bicycles in the back, make Costco runs. Leather seating powerful, made all the right noises, drove like a dream. And I recently had a chance. Uh, I’m friends with Keith Martin. He bought one down it, and I flew down and picked it up and drove it up the coast and fell in love with it all over again.

It’s, you can get one of those for 20 [01:00:00] grand and Right. Get a good one. Make sure you’ve got someone that you can take it to who really knows what they’re talking about with those. And they are bulletproof because they were built to replace the nine 11. They were horribly over-engineered. Their oil changes.

The recommended service was every 6,000 miles. Every 10,000 kilometers. They over-engineered this thing. So it really lasts. It’s a solid car. You know, I can’t emphasize enough. It was completely hand-built in a supercar, and I remember seeing him on the cover of Road and Track, and when I picked one up for $13,000, I couldn’t believe my luck and mm-hmm.

Amazing. So the thing about that lineage, right, because everybody, you know, nowadays likes to say, well, the 9 24 is a Porsche. Sure. Because it’s got a badge in the hood, but it was supposed to be a Volkswagen. And then politics got in the way and then it evolved 9 44, 9 28, and so on. The thing about it is the 9 28 came way before any of those, by the way, early seventies.

Yeah. Yeah. They, they, they bastard metamorphosis of the pacer, [01:01:00] right? Let’s say where the 9 28 got its inspiration. From that aside, that aside that, that aside, what I’m getting at here is they share a lot of parts with Volkswagens. So the people that had 9 44 s as an example, that kept them affordable, that didn’t become the mechanic’s dream, and you were paying their mortgage through every week you needed to take into the shop, you started to realize, Well, hey, this part can be cross-matched on a Chico, which is the same part on a on a rabbit, and it’s this and that.

Or, oh, this one’s off a dasher. Like all this weird stuff because they grabbed from the same parts bin. Like I know they try to play off today, the common platform and all this stuff between VW Pality that’s been going on for a very long time. So to your point, the nine 20 eights can be really affordable when you understand that part of that motor is derived from a Volkswagen.

Right. And all these other parts come from different places. There are things that are unique. It’s true, it’s a 9 28, but you’re, you’re exactly correct on the 9 24 and 9 44. Yeah. The [01:02:00] 9 28 is a kind of its own beast, but it isn’t as expensive to maintain. I think that’s the real point. Yeah. And the parts are pretty plentiful.

There’s a lot of great suppliers in the, they sold a lot of ’em. I mean, it was supposed to be the next big GT car. Right. It was supposed to, like you said, replace, it’s sold it for damn near 20 years. The settle from was 20 years, 77 to 94 or something. I mean, It’s a long time. Came in. Yeah. Well, you, you gotta think too as a, as a marketing standpoint, the 9 28 suddenly lured people who might have gone to Mercedes or bmw, all of a sudden they’re going to a Porsche because they have a proper GT car.

This is a car you can take to the country club. This is a car you can take to the boss’s party and not look like you’re some sort of rebel router in a nine 11. The 9 28 really opened up a whole new door for Porsche. Frankly, I thought it was the best Porsche that was ever made. I really did. Kind of going back a little bit by naming off the nine 30, the 9 28 and even the little 9 44.

9 24, let’s take that lazier. [01:03:00] You’ve got some bright spots. Take my little baroque cars, like your Cordoba’s, like your Caprices, whatever those are, okay? They are what define the Malaysia era. But then you have these bright spots that were born like your nine twenty eight, like your 9 44, like your nine 30 turbo.

These were cars that came out in blew people’s minds. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait. You got a Porsche that does zero to 60 and five? Come on, who does zero to 60 and five? My Trans Am takes 10 seconds. Well, yeah, that’s because it is what it is. You know, where are the bright spots in the malaise era? And going back to the main point, if you’re buying a first collector car, we can’t really, in good conscience say, oh yeah, yeah, go ahead, go, go buy a nine 30.

Oh yeah, they, you know, pop out a hundred grand, 200 grand, whatever they’re going for now, you know, the 9 28, I think is a gray place to go because again, biased, I love that car. But it is one of those bright spots. You know, this is going way to the extreme. Kush was born right at the beginning of the Maize era.

Look at them now, to build on that, one of my other [01:04:00] recommendations, like for the, what should I buy is, uh, Panera Lotus is Spree. Oh, absolutely. Panera a Lotus is Spree. The, the early ones are. Pretty cheap still. They’re like 25 K and they look, they have Kuta esque looks. I mean, I think they’re beautiful.

That boxing. Yeah, they’re like a baby Kuta. James Bond one and the the other one that I really love out of this era that is really affordable and probably one of my top picks for people who are looking for like something to have an experience of a collector in classic car is a gin one, RX seven. They came out in the late seventies.

Those were cool cars. I think it’s still a great design today. The rotary engine, they’re really weird, but man, they rip. They are cool. They sound cool. They are fun. Get a good one and you can get a good one for under 10 K. Mm-hmm. You will get the full experience and you’ll show up at cars and coffee and you’ll have lots of people talking to you.

Absolutely seek out the bright spots. You [01:05:00] know, I can talk about Cordova all day long. Yeah. But what were the bright spots? What were those little glimmering, you know, moments of, you know, you brought up the RX seven holy cow. What a car that was. I mean, that was just, bam. There’s style, there’s flash, there’s power, there’s a great car.

It’s, it’s, it’s a little cheating. It’s a little cheating in the sense that like when we’re doing nineties cars, realizing that some of the best nineties cars were made in 2000, 2001, 2002, and some of the best eighties cars were made in 79. It’s like you can pull in the SOB turbo, you can pull in the RX seven you, I mean, but those are eighties cars.

Spiritually. I agree with that. I have a hard time counting a first gen RX seven as a Malays car. Technically it’s 77, man, like 1977. That’s the hardest. Yeah. But there’s this opening. 79. 79. It’s the bright spots. Look for the bright spots. Bright being positive. I wanna argue. Two men enter 75. 79 Buick is [01:06:00] when they came out with the Regal Turbo, which eventually ran, became the brand national.

Oh, you had an inter cool turbo. And that was the fastest car fast in the Corvette in 1986. And that builds perfectly mark on what you were saying. Some of the cars from the eighties came from the seventies. Some of the cars from the nineties came from the eighties. There’s that Buick that popped up. Yeah.

All of a sudden it became an eighties icon with the Grand National, and of course the G nx. You know, everyone knee-jerk reacts to Grand National and that, that’s fine. Then there’s the T type, the little brother, nobody even knows about the Las saber T type, right? And it, it’s a turbocharged T type. It had the little grand national logo on it.

It was all blacked out. It was just a bigger, more luxurious car. But this is a car that could still hustle from zero to 60 and right around six and a half seconds. Now, I don’t care who you’re talking to, six and a half seconds in the early, mid eighties. Damn, that’s moving love. And you’re talking about a big grandpa Buick Don, I thought you were gonna go at one point.

You know, it’s the [01:07:00] height of the malaise era. Maybe mention cars like the Stutz Bearcat. I mean, you can’t get classier than that. Who doesn’t even love those cars? Those are the best. And I’ll tell you something, the la not that anybody cares. I know. Here I go again. Me and my Elvis crap. But the last photograph taken of Elvis Presley was him driving into his estate in his black Stutz Bearcat.

I mean, there’s something to be said about that. They were the height of the malaise. You’re right. They were the absolute gaudiest, most baroque car you could possibly have. The gauges were gold for crying out loud. You know, the trunk. Was fully lined in shag carpeting that matched your interior. I mean, it, it went on and on and on with these cars.

Were they fast? Were they quick? No, they were typical gm, gbo, Monte Carlo. I mean, they weren’t anything special. Yeah. They were wheezing their way to 30 miles an hour. And you felt good when you got there. And yet today people still like to make fun of ’em, but they’re slowly coming into their own. And what I think is funny about that, the people I see who are most interested [01:08:00] in them are in their late twenties, early thirties.

I’m blown away by that. It’s not guys my age. I would love to have one, but I’m weird. But everybody I see who’s really interested in those cars, late twenties, early thirties, or maybe up to the mid thirties. Yeah. And it, that blows me away when you ask them what is it about that car that you like? And it’s just what you said, Eric.

Oh, it epitomizes that era there. It’s they’re they buying them ironically. I think they are. Yeah. I think you’re right Chris. I, I aspire to be a pimp, so, uh, I don’t know if you know this, but pimping ain’t easy. I actually got to see one in person at the Peterson on a, on a recent visit, and it’s down in the vault.

And, you know, I’ve always had is a urinal, but I will say this, it is Gau picture. And it’s ostentatious in person. You’re just like, wow, this thing is ridiculous. And, and when you consider that car, I mean, pick a year that it was built. Let’s just grab [01:09:00] 1976. $70,000. Yeah. $70,000 in 1976. Yeah. You had to be Elvis Presley to afford this thing.

You were the only one who could afford it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, it’s astonishing the money that those cars commanded. And isn’t it funny that, if I’m not mistaken, those cars were assembled in much of the way the Cadillac ETE was put together. They were assembled here, sent over there, right, assembled over there, then sent back here and they were sold.

I mean, that’s a lot of money to be flying those cars back and forth. No, the Stutts is something else. It really is. That car was something else. And it was, you’re right. It was the height of the malaise era and they’re cheap. You know, when you really think about it, they’re not all that much money. I have one word, no sales on brand trailer.

There’s only one Italian car from this era that sticks out. Well, actually two, I will take that back. One is the super plain Jane. It’s the Fiat 1 31 and not the rally version, the A bar. No, it’s the plain Jane one. If you dress that thing up, it’s [01:10:00] actually really cool. People, ironically, to Chris’s point, will probably think it’s a lot because it’s the other way around.

You know, they, they copied the Fiats, but the other one that’s understated was sold in United States and people might remember from the Herbie goes to Monte Carlo movie is the launch of Beta Monte Carlo from 1978. I personally love that car. It’s that just miniature Ferrari, right? It’s more affordable.

It is more obscure. It has a pretty decent following. I’m sure Chris can probably back me up on that. But it, it’s a looker and it has that almost DeLorean kind of front end with the Panda Bear two-tone, grill and body work thing going on. I think they’re neat. They don’t appeal to me. I like the other launches, like the launch at Delta that comes along a little bit later.

Which we can get to. It’s on my list, but, um, absolutely. So we might as well dive headfirst into the eighties. Right. Let’s do it. The music changed yet again. I’m there for it. What era is the eighties? We’re, we’re the digital era now that’s where we are. Right? The beginning of the digital [01:11:00] era. When I look at the eighties, and again, I’m kind of gonna focus more on the four end, but I, I would say the c4, Corvette, yes.

Ooh, I’m a big fan. That’s one of my favorite Corvette bodies. I just, I really think that’s a, it’s a little plainer, but you know, the, the things that I like out of the, and these are still reasonably affordable, is like the Acura, N S X. What A car came out in the eighties. Formula One heritage. That’s when Honda was kicking ass.

And Formula one really complex and interesting engines, I think they look great. They’re creeping up around 40 now. But that’s a lot of car for $40,000. I mean, a lot of car, and I, I’d get one of those any day of the week. Like a notch down from that is the launcher, Delta Integra, which is a hot hatch, one of the early hot hatches.

Really cool rally cars. Very cool engine, but you don’t have to buy the HF Integra, you can buy the eight valve [01:12:00] or some of the other ones, like Chris Harris just bought one as a daily driver and it, yeah, you don’t need all the extra bluff and bluster. You can go buy a plain Jane one like we’ve been talking about, and they’re just as fun.

I think he said he spent like 8,000 euros for it. No, I mean, what a car for that kind of money. That’s a very cool and very special car. So I’m all over that type of thinking, you know, getting those, uh, those $8,000 cars and, and I mentioned it kind of at the top of the show, but look at those Alpha Romeos from that era.

The GTV six, the Milanos and the 70 fives. I mean, they might not be as beautiful in terms of their design or aesthetic. Like they might not like totally catch your eye, but there’s a lot of car under there and if you wanna spruce ’em up, you can put some kits on there to make ’em look like rally cars or some of the touring cars series, like they ate that series up, they were some of the hottest cars back then.

So they’ve got a cool racing lineage. So, you know, the NSX though, I think out of this era from an affordability [01:13:00] entryway into like a really, those are exotic cars in the, i I thought we were doing eighties. Sex was sold in America in 1990. That’s true. It did come out in the nineties out here. I was thinking out the, I thought they came out Japan.

In Japan first. Yeah. Alright, well I’m a, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m just gonna give you a hard time. Your choice, your RX seven. Not good enough. I hate you. I’m going home Eric. I think you gotta give Chris and Mark a show. Yeah, right. You gotta give Chris and Mark show cause that that’s right there. People would pay to see that one behind the scenes on Patreon for sure.

But I’ll say this, there are a couple cars that springboard mean to the eighties and they’re not what you’re thinking. And I’ll just throw these out there and look for some church nods as collector cars. The Ford Capri and the Opal Manta also kind of forgotten cars because they’re European cars sold here.

You know, Ford people go forward forward. It’s not the same Ford UK versus Ford Germany versus the US. I think those are cool cars. [01:14:00] But we are getting into the boxy cars with round headlights era, which are starting to catch on. And I have to pose this question, the Mark one gti, is it a classic or is it still just a shit box?

Classic. It has to be a classic. You know how much a, a, a mark one g t I goes for now. It’s insane these days. Too much. I mean, I’m not gonna buy one, but you know how much they were going for you. You know how much it costs to buy a decent one now, but when you check, I, I know and I’ve seen them on bring a trailer.

But here’s the thing, being a VW Porsche Audi family, I get into it an original G T I and it does put a smile on my face and I walk away from it going, it’s still the same shitbox. It was 30 years ago. It didn’t get better with age. There are better GTIs later. The Mark two is a thousand times better a car than the mark one.

But this nostalgia thing is driving a price up for the mark one s. I would say the Chico is more of a collector car than the G T I is. Right. I was just gonna throw that one out there, man. That I [01:15:00] love those Chicos. I think those are cool cars and they’re the same chassis. I just gotta throw it out there.

Yeah, no doubt. I had one of Chicos were incredible. I had a second gen. The second gens were awesome, but they were still carry over chassis unless you had a 16 valve. And that’s a whole nother story. Oh yeah. That’s different. Yeah. A car that we’ve kind of overlooked here that, I mean, they’re kissing cousins visually to the, uh, I know where you’re going.

Oh, where am I going? I know where you’re going. The Audi coop gt Actually no, but yes, you’re correct. You’re correct. Yeah. Wasn’t to you guys. I’m trying to be nice. I’m letting you handle, what are you the tiny, the Audi DW stuff? You know, I figure I’ll let Chris handle the Italian stuff, you know. No. Where I was gonna go was the Zuzu impulse, another two Jaro car.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Which little, little known fact. That was supposed to be the third Gensco and it was a rejected design from Volkswagen. Wow. Mistake. Mistake. I don’t know. The Carrado is a way better. Car Carras [01:16:00] is the nineties car, and it was totally one of my nineties recommendations the first time. Hey, believe me, it came out in 1989 with the G 60.

But you know what? Who’s counting? Somebody’s counting Was gonna talk about the Shelby g h s. The, the Chrysler, the Omni, the little Dodge Omni Shelby. Yeah. Well, and don’t forget, they didn’t just do it to the Omni, they also did it to the little charger. They had that little fast charger back then. Yeah.

Yeah. And then they had the, they had the G L H and then the G L H S G L H stood for goes like hell. Right. And the S was goes like hell some more. So that, that, those were the ones that were really modified by Shelby. What they built, God, you talk about rare, they built what, 500 of them? 1500. They’re disposable.

You don’t see any of, you don’t see ’em anymore. But to your point, there’s a lot of cars like that that are sleepers during this era because the G LH s packed a punch in a small package. Yes. I mean granted the base motor was a rabbit engine. They were collaborating with [01:17:00] Volkswagen at that time. There’s a lot of similarities.

There’s also cars that people salivate over from that time period that they don’t realize are super rare either to your point 500 G L H Ss. Let’s look at the Ur Quatro, right? You were talking about the, the launch of Delta before I owned one of these cars. We actually, they had two of them over the years and they only brought 627 of those to the United States.

Ah. So they are ultra rare. And that was within a three year span. You want original Quattro? Go get a 4,000. They made a billion of those. But if you want something super cool, go get a quantum synchro station wagon. That is awesome. That’s a collector car that nobody even thinks about. And that’s an Audi underneath Mark is holding his head in his hands going, oh my god, I is that car.

Really? Volkswagen though? The Quantum was bodied by Carmen and vw, like all of them were, but it’s a 4,000 underneath. It’s the same power plant, drive, train, everything. Okay. Okay, interesting. And the [01:18:00] quantum became the passant. I don’t know why that whole period, the rabbit and the quantum, they made all these weird names up.

I kind of wish Quantum had stuck around, but maybe, maybe in the EV versions. We’ll, we’ll get at that. Well shifting, you know, shifting gears here, and again, one car I really did wanna bring up that is just starting. I, again, it’s the younger people who are interested in them. The Lincoln Mark seven, I know Eric here.

I go with the Lincolns. But I am a Lincoln junkie. I love these cars. The Mark seven was really, really something in this day. It was introduced late, late 83 for the 1984 market. If you look at it, it has the flush headlamps. No other car had the flush headlamps in 1984. They were not available. Chrysler will tell you they were the first one to have it.

It’s not true. It was actually Lincoln, the doors, they were cut into the roof kinda like a 63 stingray. There were all kinds of advancements that Mark seven brought to the program. They had a console. They had true bucket seats. They had a floor shift. You know this for an American luxury car was really, really, I [01:19:00] mean, frankly put, it was just mind blowing cuz here you had everything people loved about the European cars.

The bucket seats, the floor shifts, the doors in the, in the roof, the flush headlamps, all these things added up. Damn. I mean, Lincoln really knocked it outta the park. And yet not many people really noticed. You were a Lincoln guy or a Ford guy. You looked at it and said, wow, whoa. This is the wave of the future.

And sure enough, if you watch Ford’s history, if you watch all American car history, they followed the Lincoln Mark seven. And nobody wants to give that car credit. But that is one hell of a robust car. Really a robust car, a five liter engine. Yeah, they had the five liter, the 3 0 2, but for 1984 only, they also offered a diesel, which was built by B M W, and that was to meet the CAFE standards.

Here we’re talking about the G L H S as one of 500 or one of 1500. I forget how many they built, but it’s the oddball of the oddball family that B BMW diesel six [01:20:00] cylinder in the mark. Seven is always the oddball of the family. I wanna say they did import something like 1500, and it was literally just to meet whatever the federal government required for cafe standards.

And that was the whole reason they did that. And the funny thing is they’re not worth anymore. In fact, people prefer the 3 0 2 because they’re more familiar with it. They can get parts for the five liter. They don’t know what a BMW diesel is. They’re not comfortable with that. So even though it’s much, much more rare, People don’t care.

It could potentially be a collector item, strange and rare, sometimes equal that person going, well, that’s really cool and I want to have 12 of those. Right. Well, and I think that’s something to do with collectibles too, as collectors. One little, uh, trait collectors have is they all want that, something nobody else has.

And that’s where these cars start to become popular. Like the Lincoln with a BMW diesel, that Audi, they only imported 532 of ’em or whatever. Unless you’re an Audi guy, you’re not gonna know about this thing. You know, it’s just one of those [01:21:00] off the radar cars. And yet, because it’s off the radar, you could probably buy one pretty cheaply.

You are Quatros, not so much anymore. Those have gone okay. Way through the roof. Yeah. And see, and that’s the funny thing. The Mark Sevens are doing the same thing. I’m looking at these Mark Sevens, and they’re maybe not like that Quattro, but they are really starting to climb up. But anyway, I, I think that is a pretty important car.

And that is a car that actually, when I do meet some younger people who are interested in buying some sort of a collective car. But granted, I have weird taste. I, I’m not into going 500 miles an hour. I’m not into, you know, I like a car that I can get in, just enjoy, you know, you, you wanna cruise to the beach, you wanna cruise to the mountains, you wanna cruise to your local resort to the car.

You can do it in, um, you know, if I wanna have a fight, I’ll go find an in-law somewhere, you know. So what else is sitting in the eighties that isn’t already considered a collector? Things like the Ur Quatro that we already talked about, the DeLorean, it’s already really a collector car. What are some of these wolfs and sheep’s clothing that are still sitting out there that a first time collector could be interested in?

Is there something [01:22:00] we’re overlooking? I mean, I, I gave Chris a hard time earlier, but I, I go back to the 85 9 28 just because it is. A really great early example of relatively modern technology with a 32 valve, five liter v8. They are underappreciated, undervalued. During this time. I wanted to mention to you also that they, joint ventures started up like Calloway with the Corvette.

There were certain models that were done after market that the broad one, I think, what was the Chrysler had a relationship with Maserati. They had a, I can’t remember the name of the car, but the tc. There you go. Thank you. And they didn’t use Corinthian leather. I wanna drive one of those. I’ve looked at ’em.

And those are another underappreciated car. Right? Motor by Maserati Drive, trained by, then designed sort of by pinning Purina. And then Chrysler had their magic in there. And they came as a manual. So I’m like, I, I wanna jump one. Yeah. Be careful of that though. Be careful of that. Cuz some of them had, it was the head by Maserati, but the actual engine, everything else was Chrysler or Mitsubishi.

Oh. So you wanna be careful, you’ve [01:23:00] gotta get the actual one with the head by Maserati and the five speed manual transmission, if you wanna go that route. Building on that one, the Cadillac Elan, that’s kind of coming into its own, but one car that a lot of people forget about the Buick Riata. Oh yeah. The little kind of bathtub thing.

I think that’s one of those overlooked cars. People are gonna wake up and realize, oh my God, what a cool car this is. I don’t know if it’s gonna go through the roof in price, but it is something that’s overlooked. You know, it’s in the shadow of the Elan, it’s in the shadow of the tc and I don’t think Buick people really got into them that much because it was kind of out of the Buick scope.

It wasn’t what your traditional Buick buyer would go look for in a showroom. Oh, I’m gonna go buy a two seater, you know, coupe or two seater convertible. That’s not your traditional Buick buyer. But I think that’s another one. Okay. I would agree. I would also say the Ponic Firo, maybe not. Yes. I was just Brad’s favorite car.

And you shoulda had a Deadpool on how long it took for the firo to come up. Of course, of course. Well, [01:24:00] I, I, I’ve got one that. Fiero adjacent, but is actually a good car. And that’s the to Toyota MR two? Yes. Um, yes. First gen is, is a great cool car. Car, great car. I mean if you want a reliable X nine, that’s the thing to buy is a mr.

And you could get it with a factory supercharger as well. I think that’s a great car. It, but I don’t want to crap on the Firo. It’s like a DeLorean in that I feel like that was a really ambitious and important car, but not well executed. The running gear just wasn’t as good as it should have been for what they were trying to do.

Mean the last couple years of the firo, they really sorted it out in the nineties they got it right. Yeah, exactly. Well, and and, and let’s remember one thing about the Firo, like I think Mark was just saying the last couple of years of fi they were getting it right. They were getting it so right. In fact that Chevrolet essentially told General Motors, you know, this is not the kind of club room.

We can have two seat or sport cars now. Is it So Fi [01:25:00] was getting so good that Corvette was starting to get a little paranoid about it. You know, it was cheaper, it was fun. It was something everybody could afford. No, it wasn’t gonna move like a Corvette yet. Give it time. They were working on turbocharging, they were working on all-wheel drive.

So this was going to become an animal of a car and we’re gonna get rid of it cuz sales aren’t that good. Oh yeah. Right. Sure. Sales aren’t that good. Mind you, it’s outselling Corvette like three to one. There’s a lot going on in the eighties. Right. And to the point of the episode we did with Mark, we discovered that a lot of really great nineties cars came from the eighties.

Right. They were born in the eighties and they, and they made their way like the fierro same kind of deal. So they matured. Exactly. They matured like fine wines. But one thing we’ve kind of overlooked, we talked a lot about Italian cars, talk a lot about domestic cars, German cars, you know, in there we, we focus a lot on VW Pality.

Not a ton on bmw cuz a lot of BMWs have already become collector cars. Mm-hmm. What we haven’t touched on, except for that RX [01:26:00] seven and the NSX are Japanese cars. They were late to blossom. They were late to the game. Right. It took them a while to get ahead of steam in the eighties, I think there’s some really neat cars in there.

But they fall into the hot hatch category like the Starlet and the FX 16 and other cars like that where they’re kind of obscure and when you see one, you get excited. You’re like, wait, is that a fiesta? No. Oh wait, no it’s not. It’s. It’s a Corolla, right? But I think they were still coming into their own at that time period.

Unless there’s something that really jumps out during the eighties, other than the 80, 86, I mean, but that’s already a collector card. Well, I, I think one thing we could all say, I, I think we can agree on, you know, let’s face it, B M W, the ultimate performance machine that’s in Nissan came out with a Maxima and they started marketing it as the four-door sports car.

And it had the 300 Z D N A, it had the engine, it had a lot of the chassis components. It, and if you ever drove a maxima, any of them, they really were something else. They were absolutely amazing [01:27:00] cars. When you pit them against the more expensive BMWs, it was pretty amazing what a bargain you were getting.

Yeah, I’d like to throw the maxim out there. I love Maximas. I grew up learning to drive on my friends four D s c, the little label they put on the side of all of the maximas, but front wheel drive, real world drive. It’s a little apples and oranges from a platform perspective, in my humble opinion, no, you’re wrong.

Fair enough, fair enough. So much good fruit, right? We’ve talked about the first gen RX seven. You know, I think that really matured in the eighties. Obviously we’re gonna see the sales volume where you’re gonna be able to buy one of those. The Celica, if you’re up for that kind of challenge, I think could be a lot of fun.

There’s one more, and I don’t know that it’s super desirable yet, but sort of is part of the reason people shy away from them is because they’re a little strange compared to their cousins, the Civic and that’s the cx. So even though they’re very similar vehicles, their D N A internally is different. Like some [01:28:00] things people don’t know.

The early CX is the motor spins backwards and the civic spends the way we all traditionally do it. There’s all these oddities with the crx and people go after the later ones, the gen twos and obviously their early roach looking civics that came out in the nineties. Those are more desirable for autocross and track and things like that.

But those first gen cxs, they’re really kind of awesome cars. I had the privilege of driving one that was modified for pro solo. It was a fantastic vehicle. And they get forgotten. Oh yeah, the Crx forgot about that car Goes back to the point of the Japanese at that time. I think were still coming into their own and didn’t come into their own until the nineties.

So maybe we need to cross that threshold and now kind of quickly discuss some of the cars maybe we didn’t talk about during your episode, mark in the nineties. Sure if I’m giving, you know, legitimate advice, someone getting into this ridiculous hobby, you do have to kind of think a little bit about goals.

You know, what are your goals to yourself? Are you getting into this to enjoy a car? But like you ultimately have [01:29:00] some longer term goal, so you want something that is either going to at the very least, hold its value, if not grow in value so that you can turn this around over time and grow the amount of money you’re investing in cars.

I personally did that. You know, I buy a car that either appreciated or didn’t, at least didn’t depreciate, I paid off, I take that, I roll it into the next car, and now I could buy a car that was twice as expensive. You know, from that perspective, you do have to maybe factor in some of these other considerations.

This is your first car and you have some other kind of more aspirational goals. Then you do have to think about kind of where the market is and what’s becoming popular. Then once you get into the nineties, it’s a really interesting market because the nineties teenagers are starting to come into their peak earning potential from a macroeconomic perspective, right?

And so the values of cars traditionally kind of track relative to their earning potential of the age that that person was 18 years old or whatever. [01:30:00] And so that’s why you, you see cars peak and then start to trail off. You’re just starting to get into that. We’ve talked about good options. I kind of personally disagree on, on the 9 68 uh, perspective.

I like that car. I see it as like a really the most mature 9 44 if you’re not going the turbo route. So you have to think about how much the car market has changed in the last couple years. You used to be able to pick up that 3 48 for below 50 k, that 4 56 I think that Don was talking about earlier.

Although any ones that would’ve been in your 50 k range were automatic. 4 56 s. So meh, if I had to land on a recommendation, your first car collector we’ve talked about a little bit already. I really like the Carrado. It’s a very nineties look. It really is the epitome of the nineties. You can put some turbo twist wheels on it.

The bolt pattern fits, they look the sex. It’s a cool car. I’m a little actually personally impartial towards the [01:31:00] supercharged four cylinder. I, i the VR six is more valuable in the market even today in this kind of crazy market. If you look at bring a trailer prices, which are always kind of inflated, you can find a better deal than bringing a trailer.

If you’re willing to work your market and work your area, take your time and, and shop for something. They’ve been selling carras, you know, they have I think three transactions this year. That are all like sub 20 grand and those are VR six s and some other things. And so I’m going way below the 50 K target.

You know, I’m thinking about myself when I was 27 years old and I was first buying my first collector car. I went with an eighties car, I got an a really nice 85 Carrera nine 11, but that was back when everybody hated the eighties nine 11 s. I got it for 20 grand and it was an amazing car, an amazing condition, and the guy had a ton of money into it.

You’ll find a very passionate carrado owners that spent an irrational amount of money on their car in the nineties. If I had to pick one that’s, that’s probably one that I, that I could lean on. There are a ton of [01:32:00] others. As I said earlier, don’t be afraid of being basic. Don’t be afraid of a Fox body Mustang.

If that’s what you like, you’ll find somebody that somebody dropped the fortune in. You know, you’ll still get beat by Tesla at the drag strip, but it’s really cool and a lot of fun. There’s a lot of, lot of different options out there. Oh, I already gave you the nx, okay? Your best eighties car. Got it. I got, I got time.

Shame by time. Cop mark, time cop. I have that game. It’s a great game. Eric. Eric, I’m, I’m telling you, Eric, you’ve got a fortune in Mark and Chris, you have a fortune. Give them a show sitting on a gold mine, SBEC. Oh my God, I can promote the heck out of this thing. Are you kidding me? This is gonna be brilliant.

I mean, Mark’s even drinking over there. He can’t believe some of the crap that Chris is coming up with. He’s just drinking. He’s, I can’t take any more of this crap. You know, I’m gonna give him a spit take now. So start drink milk. I have two in the very, very, very different cars that keep my attention from the nineties.

Do you remember the [01:33:00] four Thunderbird sc, the supercharge that was on my list? Yes. Sorry. I ripped. I the uncle had one of those. The thunder chicken. The thunder chicken. My brother had one and it, he never let me drove it though, jerk. But what a car. What? And remember, remember that car had a sister that Cougar XR seven.

Again, if you’re seeking Ford, you’re gonna pay a little more money. But if you know what to look for in a mercury, you can get the same car. They made a five liter version of that, which you can find for like $5 and a McDonald’s burger these days. Yeah, no disco. Rip the engine out and put it in something like drop it into something else and it’ll like blow your mind.

Great, great, great car. He also had a Pontiac, like he had some sported up Grand Prix and I can’t remember what the bottle number was for that. Hold on. Either stealing, supercharged, the sse, the Grand Prix also had a really special car from McLaren. It was the McLaren A S D Grand Prix and it was a [01:34:00] turbocharge.

It was essentially. A much more handsome, much more comfortable version of what a Grand National might have been. Very rare. Very few people even know what they are. Yeah, they’ve got flared out hips over the wheels. They’re a little bit bigger looking, a little chunkier. I wonder, Chris, could that have been it or did you have the super It wasn’t, it wasn’t McLaren, but it was the, someone said it.

I heard it. I just forgot the name. Rob. S S E I. The Supercharged. Sse, yeah. Great car. Really great car. Yeah. GXP model as well. Wasn’t there during that time period? I think so. The gxp, I’m sorry. Yeah, the SSE was the Bonneville gxp. Right. A actually, the one that I would really point people towards is, uh, gen one, Lotus Elise.

Yes. Generally think that’s one of the all time greats, but they didn’t sell those. Here you have to import those. And a lot of people, you and I know what they look like, but not the ones because uh, the time is the clock is run out, you can bring ’em in. Yeah. Without penalty. A guy brought one in from England, he was a holy crus.

I, I’ll never forget that car. The [01:35:00] handling, you know, it’s got a Toyota engine. I just think it’s a beautiful, beautiful car. And also it was the prototype for the Tesla Roadster, you know, they kind of built Right. Pretty much used that. See, but I, I would take a step back and if I’m going pure nineties Lotus, I would look for the last of the line before the Elise came out, the Ilan, which is what they kind of spun off of, and the Irans are kind of wedgie and have that.

80 shape to them, but they’re also really kind of cool. And there were some mgs and opals that were very similar as well. Mm-hmm. And if you remember, there was a commercial in the early days of kind of the internet, there was this guy and he would, you know, spin the car into the parking spot and it was in this little opal convertible.

And I’m not talking about like the voxel Vxr and the opal that became the solstice and all that precursors to those cars in the generation of the late Irans and stuff. Those are pretty neat cars that could be really collectible and very forgotten if you’re looking British. Yeah, I think that’s great.

[01:36:00] Lotus Head. I’m pushing back a little bit on what you were saying, like they had lost their way a little bit. Yeah. And like the Elise just like brought them right back to what Colin said, what it should have been. Yeah, exactly. Right, right. I agree. I agree. Like pure lightweight, low power, but unbelievable handling.

That was a really cool car. And I’ll throw in last, mark can call me on this, it was the, I certainly will. What year was the Meor or whatever they call that? Oh, the Ford Sierra Cosworth. The MER Car XR Fourt. Yeah, that was the eighties. Late eighties. Pleasant. Ok. That was a cool car though. That’s another underappreciated car.

Very underappreciated. Extremely. That’s my nineties list. So I have one for the nineties that I think gets forgotten because it was eclipsed very quickly and I recently got to riding one for an extended period of time and it reinvigorated the passion for one of these. And it’s the first gen two and a half liter.

Boxster. Oh yeah. Mm-hmm. Makes 200 horse, weighs [01:37:00] 2,700 pounds. It’s everything you need out of a two seat Roadster convertible. And they’re cheap. They’re very, very cheap. Good one. We have to bring at the first Gen Z one Corvette. That’s incredible bargain right now. Good bargain right now. Are they still cheap?

Relatively cheap for a long time. Yeah. They’re still cheap. You know why they’re overlooked? Because people look at the CFIs and sixes, but you know, it’s a collectible item and it was very expensive back in 1990 to buy a zero one, it was double the price of a regular Corvette. 375 horsepower had a turnkey, so your kid couldn’t get more power of like 200 normally.

And then it goes with the 3 75 or 4 0 5, depending on the year. Remember when that, when that car hit the 4 0 5, that was the moment when Corvette absolutely went Fender Defender with Te Rosa and Kuta. They were, and the, and the nine 30 Turbo. They were Fender Defender without card all the way, and yet they were Oh, much cheaper.

I heard a good one. Uh, back in the day, well, I’m gonna go buy myself a, a Walmart, Ferrari, [01:38:00] you know, and they, they were referencing a Corvette. You know, you can’t go wrong with one of those cars. You really can’t. The only caution I’ve got with a Z one from that era is don’t break that engine because there are no parts anymore.

Yeah. Though those engines are, you know, unattained, not unobtainium. Yeah. We, you do run into this situation very often where, you know, the aspirational, less expensive platform, and I’m not gonna say American, whatever, this is a true cross country where they go up against the end of the older platforms and they kick their butts.

It’s kind of really a shame in the zero one, you just, the internal politics around GM kind of killing that car. Totally badass and underappreciated. Great one, you know, kind of building on that. Way off base here. I’m gonna say this and you guys are either gonna wonder what it is or you’re gonna say, you gotta be kidding me.

Especially Mark over there with his anti front wheel drive thing. But the Dodge Daytona, iroc RT of 1992, that was a bear of a car and it was a little 2.2 liter or cylinder with a, with a [01:39:00] turbo and an inner cooler. The damn thing put out 222 horsepower. And Mark, forgive me that front wheel drive because of it.

Good god almighty, you, you could scare the bejesus out of trans Ams, Corvette’s, Mustangs all day long, especially in the curves when that front wheel drive is just pulling you through. They were brilliant cars. There were very few of ’em produced. Mm-hmm. And yet again, there are none out there. And a lot of guys don’t even know what they are.

And if you go back to the eighties, just like you’re saying, mark build on that platform. Yeah. I mean it was just a K car with a turbocharge. Yeah. That charger. That charger you mentioned earlier, the G L H charger, it’s basically a derivative of that. Yeah. Right. It it is. The father of the Daytona, they shared the showroom for one year, I think, than no more charger was Daytona City.

So another one that was on my list coming from the V a G world. Yet again, nowadays you’re starting to see the resurgence of first Gen Cuatros and second gen Quatro coops and a lot of people, second gen Quatro coops are like, what is that? You can go [01:40:00] look ’em up. 19 90, 91, they brought 1500 of ’em. Some say 1600 to the United States.

We had three of ’em. So I can account for those. We still have one. They’re kind of the epitome of the nineties, right? A big old just blob of metal on wheels. You know, like any Ford tourist or contour, you know, all that same shape. The nineties, everything was a marshmallow, right? The bubble design cars, right cab forward, all that kind stuff.

And the reason I bring up the intrepid is the first car with cab forward. Granted, the Chrysler Intrepid is not gonna be a collector vehicle and it’s not gonna make this list. I just said it for fun. Now going back to Audi, the car you should buy is not a second gen Quattro coop. You’ll be disappointed with the whopping 175 horsepower that that 20 valve five cylinder puts out.

Save your pennies. You only need about a hundred more. And go buy yourself a 1994 Audi 90 Quattro CS ass, a 2.8 liter v6. It’s a more modern suspension. They came automatic and manual. It’s [01:41:00] a better gear box. A lot of other stuff that was just improved upon the same platform. Th those chassis are great.

Adding the V6 and putting the wish phone suspension, all the other stuff that you take and put on a second Gen Quatro is all there for you and it’s not that much more expensive. And the best part is it’s a sedan, right? You’re not dealing with trying to get into the back and the vault doors like a Chevy Beretta that, you know, the second gen coops had and all that kind of stuff.

So that would be my recommendation for a saloon car from that era. That’s interesting. You know, the Audi guy recommending you go from the classic inline five to the V six. Heck yeah. And the other reason is you can put the four valve heads on there for the later six is you can do a lot of stuff with the six cylinder.

There was an all lumen, three liters that you could drop in there. There’s a lot of things you can do. More modern fuel injection in 1994 versus 1990, right? In the beginning they had Medtronic and then O the later stuff came out. So it’s just a better car waiting [01:42:00] four years later. For something way more modern.

Now, if you really want to go extreme, the Caprio LE is what I would get if I was cruising around. Same body style, all the stuff I just talked about. Only difference is they came in automatic only, but that’s really easy to swap out. Let me throw one Al else out at you guys. The Taurus, S H o, the Yamaha engine.

He’s shaking his head. Yes, they were cool. Yeah, definitely it was affordable. It was the poor man’s Audi 5,000, I mean. Right. You know, it was. It really was. You know, the s h o, again, Yamaha Power 220 horsepower out of the box five speed manual. If it went into the nineties, you had the same package, but the availability of an automatic and a sharper body, uh, now the s h o was a fantastic car.

And building on that and going into the Mopar Camp again, you had the, uh, Dodge Spirit rt, which was basically, let’s take that Daytona’s 2.2 turbo and put it into a sedan body. And again, [01:43:00] nobody knew. Nobody had any idea what this car was. It was a killer car, it really was. Now going back to Japan, if I could kind of compliment you guys, Mitsubishi had the, um, gallant, but it was a VR four package.

So you had the three liter V6 with the twin turbo, with the inter cooler, with the five speed manual transmission. I mean, for the most part it was a fairly conservative looking car. I think the s h o in the uh, spirit looked a lot more aggressive than the VR four Mitsubishi Sedan. The Spirit was the one that was also offered as the shadow and the duster and like a million other names, right?

It was the Plymouth Shadow and it was the Dodge Spirit. The duster was a sub package to the Plymouth Shadow. So you would recommend that over the Neon. Not that I’m saying the neon is suddenly becoming a collector car, cuz it’s not. But I’m just asking. Yes. Chris’s face is amazing. I would, I, I, you know, I think he opens some ganzola over there.

Something. I [01:44:00] think the neon is a little car, but when you’re just talking, you know, sheer drivability, sheer torque, the neon cannot touch the spirit. Rt, there’s just no way. It’s just not gonna do it. And it sure is hell not gonna touch the VR four. Another reason I like that spirit, it’s a 2.2 liter four cylinder with a, a turbo and an inter cooler.

The other cars are V6 s the Mitsubishi is the bully of the group. That thing’s got a V6 with two turbos and an inter cooler. The s h O is a three liter v6. That’s really, really well tuned up. Th those two are bullies compared to that Dodge. That dodge is a little four cylinder, but it kicks butt. So I’ll see your spirit and I will raise you.

And I think it was 1992 ish when they went out 93, the last year of the first gen. Minivan came as an RT with color match bumpers and all this stuff. Those are cool. And I think that’s a collector car if you’re into vans and station wagons. But I want to throw a, a wrench in here cause we did bring up [01:45:00] minivans.

Gotta bring up the s v t lightning truck’s. The very sought after truck now. Very collectible. The very first one. Yeah, you’re right, you’re right. I like those a lot too. They’re, they’re a lot of fun. I know a guy at tunes them and lowers them and those things are incredible. Yeah, that’s a great car that had the Windsor in it, if I remember correctly.

Or the Cleveland, one of those two motors, right? It’s, it’s nothing fancy in base trim, but when they lightening it up, it was a hell of an engine. They are. And if, if you wanna go that route, here I go with my Oldsmobile again, the Oldsmobile silhouette, which was a dust buster looking van. I mean, they weren’t performance oriented at all.

But if you wanna talk about cool minivans now I, I don’t know if we’re gonna go recommend to some guy, Hey, for your first collector car you should go get a minivan. I think you guys have been smoking a little too much. So let’s, let’s get back on track that we’re starting to talk about minivans. I think we just lost half the audience.

Chris, I can, I can pretty well assure you that Mark is writing all this down and he’s going to bomb us very soon here. No, [01:46:00] it’s Brad. We haven’t heard from Brad for like 90 minutes. I mean, I know Brad has just been sitting over there. I’m like, what does he do? You know? Uh, no thank you Alex. I’m okay. Uh, the 9 28 was definitely one, although I’m a 9 68 guy, like Mark, the nine 60 eight’s a just a phenomenal car ever since we started auto crossing together 20 years ago.

I was drooling over the couple of the 9 68 s that were there. So that car for me, but the, the nine 20 eights a, a good distance second for that, I’m disappointed that nobody said anything. Truck wise, other than the, the S V T lightning, when we were talking about the sixties, I was thinking like suburbans and, and stuff like that.

But that’s just cause I’m a bigger guy and I like bigger vehicles. The late nineties BMW seven series, those are beautiful colors. Like the transporter. Yeah, those are really cool. Seven 40. Yeah, that’s seven. Yeah, the seven 40 I ls and the, you can get a seven 40 I sport. I looked for one for a long time and they just was very hard to find.

So that’s why I bought the S eight when I [01:47:00] did. But yeah, those cars are phenomenal as well. Okay. But look guys, I really, I hate to cut in again. I know I’m like the Jay Leno here, but I, I kind of gotta get going. I wanna throw out a few that I, I wrote down here for nineties cars that I think are. Worth looking into.

Laugh at me, don’t laugh at me. Whatever. I’ll start with the Honda Del Soul. Okay. Which is basically a nine 14 or an X 19 or a Viper. If you look at it, it kinda looks like a baby viper, the Lexus SC 300 or SC 400 coop. The other one, which is kind of a weird one, you might actually have to look it up very early.

The Infinity M 30 coop or convertible. Then there, here I go with the automobiles again, the old Cal a Quad four I, I wanna see your facial reaction. I want your opinion on this, Don, 2002 to 2004 Thunderbird. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re a great car. I mean, if you just want a cruise and, and chill. Correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t think those have the supercharger option at that point, did they?

No, four point, they were just [01:48:00] the 4.6 and then the uh, the three point. Yeah, it’s a Lincoln Mark X, it’s a Jag X type or whatever underneath. So yeah, those could be collector cards. They’re really cheap and they’re are unique and they’re very retro and they’re in that retro at the end of the retro period really.

So I think those are are something people could look out for. And actually that specific generation, which was the last of the classic bird, if you will, before the retro bird came out, if you look at the interior, those, they had a stunning interior. They really had a very, very nice interior. And again, you can get the Mercury brother, which had a, a kind of a blunted rear roof.

Uh, different, different style altogether. But, you know, building on that car, it shared the chassis with the Lincoln Mark eight. Mm-hmm. And the Mark eight was a beast of a car, very technologically advanced. It had the 4.6 clearer, but you had 32 valves, four overhead cans. Essentially it was a Z one. It, it had the same formula as a Z one slippery, slippery body.

Uh, one of those was recorded at, it was either El Mirage or the Salt Flats, I can’t remember [01:49:00] which, but one of those very modified went over 200 miles an hour. It was still just running. When I say modified, it wasn’t the engine, it was the body and the interior and lowering it. So it’s even slipperier through the wind, but it went, it went something like 207 miles per hour with a factory engine.

Yeah. Building on your Thunderbird idea, you know, I take it a step further and if you want to talk sedan again, here I go with the Lincolns, the continental of that same basic era also used. The Mark eighth engine, 32 valve, four overhead cams. But it was a front wheel drive. I’m sorry, mark, but it was a front wheel drive platform, but it was a sedan.

Very luxurious, very nice car. But next he’ll try to sell us on something with a North star in it like the xlr. But I’m gonna leave that where it’s Ah, I got you. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I like the North Star. But you know what’s funny about the North Star? It is a good engine. If you repair everything Cadillac did, if you go through and fix everything Cadillac did, you’re gonna be fine.

But if you really want a [01:50:00] solid Cadillac engine, look at the 4.9 liter. Anything with that 4.9 liter is gonna gonna get you around the nineties. Go. Thank you. Without talking about the Mitsubishi Eclipse. Yeah, that’s a great one. I mean, it’s such an iconic, I agree. It’s such an iconic nineties car if only because of the Fast and Furious which, but isn’t it already a collector car though?

It’s not. No, no, no. Look at Brenda Trailer. They haven’t sold one in five years. I’m not kidding. Type Mitsubishi Eclipse in there and an actual second gen eclipse and they haven’t sold one since like 2019 or something and you can’t find them. I have looked, there’s two on eBay motors right now, and that’s about it.

I like where you’re going, but I would say the collector card for me would be anything with an Eagle badge on it from that time period. Not the Mitsubishi. It’s the same car, difficult. Just being difficult. I’ve got like a cult classic that I Oh, still have a super soft spot in my [01:51:00] heart from the nineties, which is the SOB 900 s turbo.

Oh, that’s the, that’s kind of the end, end of the line, right? Yeah. It’s like a, it’s that last of the wedgie boxy. Yeah, angular SOB and then the nine, the 9,000 came out, which was unlike anything else they had at that time. Yeah, yeah. The the 900 Turbo, it’s not gonna win any beat anybody off the line, but it’s just funky and weird.

It’s a sob. I mean, what do you expect? Yeah. And we forget about sobs cuz they’re garner now. Right. Anytime I saw one of those cars, I thought it was just a weird looking nine 11. I could say that. That’s very true because of how the, the windshield. Brad, you’re a weird looking nine 11. I would be a very weird looking nine 11 if I was nine 11.

So I don’t think we can go too much further into the two thousands, like you guys said at the beginning. 2002 is really the cutoff. Right. The last 20 years. We still have yet to determine what’s gonna be considered a classic. But I’ll pose this question unless it’s [01:52:00] the Porsche. Everything they made is a classic.

Just buy ’em all. Yeah. A hundred percent percent. Porsche. So I, I’ll leave this as kind of the last lightning round question. As we look at the last 20 years, is there something right now that stands out that you guys are going, I think that’s gonna be a classic tons of like high-end cars that you could pick off.

I find that less interesting because they’re designed to be instant classics or whatever. Like there’s this whole marketing thing. I don’t know the one that I would. Pick out, and I already alluded to it cuz I think it’s an important car and I think it’s a cool car, is the Tesla Roadster electric sports car kind of groundbreaking first of the Tesla lineage, which I think we can all predict is gonna be a huge thing.

So it’s gonna be like the little kernel of car that kind of like started the whole ev car revolution. And you know, that’s a controversial thing for all of us old timers, but when you look at a car that’s gonna be looked back upon as important and pretty rare [01:53:00] already, it’s that. I, I totally agree. I mean, I don’t like the car, but I totally agree in the sense that, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s certainly was the beginning of an era in, in that way.

It’s gonna be a seminal car for, you know, the next generation of technology and a hundred percent be collectible is basically a paperweight as it sits today, base junk. But uh, you know, I mean given the cost of the batteries and, and the unavailability of software updates and all the other things, like, I’m confident that there will be an open source community that eventually.

Is able to get that thing running and you’ll be able to buy some aftermarket batteries and, and be able to, uh, make a modern vehicle out of it. I think we fall into this trap very often. You, you said earlier in instant cla there’s so many auto manufacturers today are kind of playing on the trope of the, you know, this is the last hurrah of the ICE platform and whether it’s Shelby Cobras or, or whatever the thing is, is like, who knows when that last hurrah really will [01:54:00] be right.

Like those, there will absolutely be a market for 5,000 or 10,000 cars for 150 grand that make a bunch of horsepower and runoff internal combustion engines, and they’re gonna be making those through 2035 or 2040 or what? Like, it’s not now. It’s really not as much as anybody says now, for your mainstream cars, certainly, but your Shelby GT 500 is not the last one of those cars.

It, it just isn’t, you know, people tend to fall into those traps or they fall into the manual transmission trap on Porsche or whatever. It’s like, oh my God, they put a manual in it. I’m one of those people. I own one, but I like it. That’s, that’s why, that’s why I have it. That’s what, that’s what I wanted.

The values and the things that had happened to them as a result, you know, it’s easy to point out like a Viper ACR is something, but the values of those have already gone through the roof. They couldn’t move them off the damn lot for 145 grand when they were making them. Now they’re [01:55:00] 250 or $300,000. If I had to pick a classic car that wasn’t like an obvious bid at a classic, maybe it’s a little basic, but I go back to like a C 7 0 1 or zero six, you know, it was the last front engine Corvette.

It was the last, it was the last of a of a generation. They had a hard time moving those, they were selling, especially the zero six s with like huge discounts to get those things off the lots, just to move them. And you know, the market had kind of fallen out from them. And I think that’s generally kind of indicative of a classic car.

This is the best version of this platform, but it’s when the platform is a little too long in the tooth for the contemporary market. But the classic car buyer doesn’t care 20 years from now. They don’t care 20 years from now that that car was three or four years too late for the market. That’s the best version of that platform.

That’s the best version of that car. And I think, you know, that’s, that’s a future classic. So I think you [01:56:00] guys. And the audience included has probably already guessed what my vote will be in this category. And this car has yet to be sold on the dealership lots. And that’s the new Z 400. I mean, if you think about it, it checks all the boxes.

I I, if we talk about the end of the ice era and all this kind of thing, a two-door proper sports coop with a manual transmission, making decent horsepower, all that kind of stuff, I think that’s gonna be the car you buy today and in 20 years is worth a mint because it really is the end of the line in a, in a lot of ways when you look at all those boxes.

But, you know, Brad’s been stewing on all this stuff throughout this episode. So after taking all this in, what do you think, Brad? What would you buy? 2016 Dodge Dart, H H r, BT Cruiser, all those, you can, you can get a brand new 2016 Dodge Dart on dealer lots. Right now. People do it every day, at least one a month.

Um, no, I, I’m gonna say the F type Jag. [01:57:00] That’s a good choice too. But I’m not gonna say like the SVR or the, the big V8 one. I’m gonna say the only one you could get with a manual, the, like the standard v6. I mean, because they did, they just didn’t make very many of ’em. I like the supercharge six as well. If I was talking about a car nowadays, that’s not a Dodge Dart.

If I can fire a shot to, and, and I think this is hugely important, the thing I tell everybody who asks me anything about this, it’s just buy what you like. Because then even if you’re stuck with a, a total dud in terms of value, at least you like your car. You know? And you can have fun with it still. You might not be having some sort of Porsche, but you’ve got something that you enjoy.

You know, there’s a kid back in California, a real nice kid. He bought himself a uh, Mitsubishi Eclipse convertible, real nice car. Five speed car. Real, real nice car. He was just having a ball with that thing, but behind his back, I hate to say it, but people were kind of making fun of him. And I said, why are you making fun of him?

You know? And they all had these goofy, oh, Wilson Mask produced Mitsubishi, [01:58:00] who cares? I said, yes. Have you ever heard of the 3000 gtv R four? Have you ever heard of the stealth? Those are the big brothers of the eclipse. And guess what? People are starting to clamor for those cars. I guarantee that Eclipse is gonna be exactly the same way.

Sorry to all of you out there who are kids? I know I’m the old fart of the group here, but he’s a kid who’s really getting into it. And the Mitsubishi is a gateway car, so to say. He’s really enjoying the Mitsubishi. I’m hoping that later on he’ll get into other cars. He seems to have a thing for the Japanese, but the bottom line, even if he can’t sell that car for more than a dollar down the line, you know what?

He had a ball. He had fun. Who cared? Let it go. And I think that goes back to a very important point. Did you talked about on your episode, Don, which is not dissuading people from the cars that they like. Right. If they’re attracted to it, even if it’s not the most popular thing or not the smartest investment, foster that enthusiasm.

Mm-hmm. Get people interested in the automotive world. So like all [01:59:00] good, what should I buy? Episodes. We never really come to a conclusion, but we give you plenty of food for thought. So hopefully if you’re listening to this, you had a good time. We sure did. And maybe we gave you some things to think about that you weren’t considering before.

So to learn more about each of our guests, you can revisit their episodes on break, fix, or continue this conversation over@garageriot.com, the social media platform for vehicle enthusiasts, and bring your garage or collection to the next level. With Don over@garagestylemagazine.com. Get all the latest information on events, clubs, forums, and recommended vendors over with Rob A collector car guide.net.

And if you want to clear out your garage shop or shed list your parts today with Chris over at www.collectorcartsexchange.com. Well gentlemen, I can’t thank you enough for coming back on break Fix and putting up with the shenanigans. That is what should I buy? And we look forward to seeing you all again soon on another episode.

We can’t agree on [02:00:00] what cars you should buy, but I think we can all agree on what car you should not buy. You know what? Car didn’t make this list. Pontiac. Aztec, a hundred percent. I’m gonna get one just to be cool. Yeah, ironic. It’s gonna be a collector. Breaking bad, I think changed the profile of that car.

Not enough. It was great talking to all of you. Great to, to meet you and uh, I’ll look forward to our next conversation. Great to see you Donna. Great to meet you. Show thanks. Thanks for having me. Thanks. Thanks for hanging out. It was, uh, it was a real blast signing off later. Thanks guys. Yeah, no worries.

Thanks.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, 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 Texas at (202) 630-1770 or [02:01:00] send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.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 GTM 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.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of Fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.[02:02:00]

Learn More

To learn more about each of our guests, you can revisit their episodes on Break/Fix, or continue the conversation over at garageriot.com the social media platform for vehicle enthusiasts.


Don’t agree, let’s agree to disagree? Come share your opinions and continue the conversation on the Break/Fix Facebook Group!


Thanks to our panel of Petrol-heads!

Guest Co-Host: Don Weberg

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.
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Bring your garage or collection to the next level with Don over at garagestylemagazine.com

Guest Co-Host: Rob Parr

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.
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Get all the latest information on events, clubs, forums and recommended vendors over with Rob at collectorcarguide.net

Guest Co-Host: Chris Bright

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.
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And if you want to clear out your garage, shop or shed… list your parts today with Chris over at www.collectorpartexchange.com

Guest Co-Host: Mark Shank

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Gran T
Gran Thttps://www.gtmotorsports.org
Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information.

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