WSIB: Muscle & Malaise

• First, I think we have to define “What is a Muscle Car?” and how is a Malaise era car different? What does Malaise even mean? (Don!) 
• Do we have any exceptions that we can take off the table along with the Camaro, Cuda, Mustangs… ie: Chevelle, GNX, WS6, Viper, etc. 
• Resto-mods, Swapped Cars, and EV swaps?
• Underappreciated or Hopeful classics > Prospecting
• Classics for under $50k – Affordable Classics
• Classics between $50-100k – Investments

and much, much more!

[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.

Like most enthusiasts in the collector hobby, we are a Camaro, CUDA, and Mustang out. It’s time for something new. Time to rediscover the unsung heroes from a period when square bodies and round headlights were all the rage. You asked and we answered from our latest fan poll. There was an overwhelming consensus that our listeners wanted us to come back for.

Yet another. What should I buy this time? Hyper-focusing on the cars from 1964 to 1982. And like all, what should I buy? Episodes. We have some shopping criteria this time. Anything goes as long as it’s not the same old muscle and malaise we’re used to seeing at our local car shows. Our panel of extraordinary petrolhead panelists are challenged to find our first time collector, something that will make their friends go.

Hey, [00:01:00] where’d you get that at? The next cars and coffee? Joining us tonight, our veteran, what should I buy? Panelists, mark s Shank, our nineties expert Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine and Rob Parr from Collector Car Guide, along with special guest, not Man Dan and Andrew Mason from The Big Man in a Little Car episode.

So welcome to the show, gentlemen. Hi. Good welcome. Good to be here. Now, before we get started, I just wanna say that I’ve got a new drinking game. It’s kind of a two-part drinking game every time Daniel mentions a square body, that’s the first one. And then the second one is, every time Eric mentions something, Mopar.

Ooh. Interesting. So is your goal, Brad, to put people in the hospital tonight? , we’re all gonna be laid out. As Don mentioned, it’s a pretty big bottle and it’s brand new, so I’ve got a long way to go. Well, gentlemen, just like our intro states, it’s time to talk about mustard and mayonnaise. I mean muscle and malaise.

So what exactly do I mean by muscle and malaise? Well, I don’t know. You tell me. Let’s [00:02:00] define and turn to our resident experts, Don, Rob, and Mountain man, Dan, to tell us exactly what those two terms mean in the automotive community. Jesus, you say the word malaise and you think, oh, Don, so Don, we’ve talked about this on a previous episode, but to refresh our audience, what is the malaise era really all about?

Let’s talk about the malaise era. I think that was an era when power was at a minimum because you had what? You had a lot of emission controls. You had a lot of heavy cars. From the safety standpoint, it was a point where, you know, all of a sudden the Dodge Charger went from being the Dodge Charger to being a Cordoba.

You had to make amends with that because you couldn’t market a Cordoba that did zero to 60 in 12 or 13 seconds. That just wouldn’t work. So you had to do what? You had to gussy it up with argy sweaters and pop-up colors. You had to give it pin stripes. You had to give it custom trim. You had to give it all kind of flash to make it look like you were pretty cool.

Take for example, the Trans Am of Smokey in the Bandit. [00:03:00] That was an epic cool car. , but it was not capable of anything that they did in those movies. Nothing that car could basically get out of its own way. It still held its head above water compared to so many other performant cars of the era, but compared to say, a 70 Trans AM or a 71 4 55 Super Duty Uhuh, it didn’t hold a candle.

But what it have, flash, pizazz. It was the bright, shiny object that everybody had to. And the movie helped it do all of that, so that helped us get through there. Somebody here has a drinking game going on, and if there was ever an era for drinking, it was the malaise era. Yeah, the weight came on the cars and the luxury was definitely a transition as the years went on from muscle to luxury.

Mm-hmm. , every year after 72 and actually even 71, they started changing the horsepower ratings to net horsepower from gross. But a big thing during that timeframe up into like the early eighties, a lot of the manufacturers were purposely low balling their numbers. They were putting out in ads to where there were [00:04:00] cases where they were taking ’em from the dealership to a dino and it was pushing.

10, 15% more power than what they were advertising the vehicles to have. And then as time went on, you had a g r, you had other emissions controls, and eventually in 1975, we got the glove catalytic converter. Of course, everybody cursed like crazy when it came out at 75, 76 were the lowest power cars.

There’s definitely sub 200 horsepower. I don’t think anything, at least on the American side was anything over 200 horse. There were a few, but you’re right. It just around there, right? L 82 Corvette was like two 20 by the end of the seventies and actually back in the late seventies started coming back up again.

But it tipped around 75 to 77. But I think the 77 the, the Z 28 came back and of course you had your trans Am like Don said that they got flashier and prettier. And unless you tune them a little bit, they really didn’t do a whole lot. So before we go too far down memory lane, let’s throw out any exceptions to our general rules.

As you guys know, and as our fans know, we try to do [00:05:00] this for the first time collector. So normally we come at this with a budget in mind. We go zero to 50 grand, 50 grand to a hundred, a hundred to Infiniti, you know, things like that. But I don’t know that it necessarily applies here because we’re looking for diamonds in the rough.

And we already said in the intro that we’re going to avoid the Camaros, the Cudas, the challengers, the Mustangs. I would say probably the Chaves. A lot of those super popular cars that you see crossing every auction block, you see it at every weekend car show. So we’re really looking for something different, something affordable, something fun.

Do we need to extend beyond the 1982? Did anybody come up with that as an exception to this? I’ve got a question. Do we want to extend beyond our borders too? Yes. They didn’t screw it up so bad. . Then you’re talking about Porsche nine 30 s and Skyline GTR as well. I mean, I, I don’t, I don’t know if they embody like the Muscle Car spirit.

I don’t know if we wanna go down and try and define what a muscle car is. Every time we do, mark and I end up getting into an argument about [00:06:00] something stupid. But now at dinner tonight, my wife and I were just kind of doing a little prelim research on Muscle Car and where the term came from, et cetera.

She found something interesting. The first article so far that anybody has found the earliest article that mentions Muscle Car actually belonged to. Jeep and they called it a muscle car in this one article. So now of course, me being me, I’m on this kick. I gotta go find this article. But supposedly it was back in the sixties because it had a big motor.

It was actually considered a muscle car. It wasn’t the Chrysler 300, it wasn’t the Oldsmobile, it wasn’t the Hudson. But yeah, it struck us both as really funny that it was an off-road vehicle that first had the term muscle car attached to it. So does that predate the gto? So is it earlier than 60? Now, actually, I believe it was 64.

Now that you say that. Interesting. It seems like she said in her reading it sounds, I think it was 1964 for that Jeep, so it would be fun to kind of track that down and see, you know, who wrote that, why’d they write it, et cetera. If we [00:07:00] extended the borders, I mean, then you can put the Jensen interceptor in there and things of that Ill, they’re not American muscle cars, but they have American Muscle car dna.

I think that’s okay because they have either small block or big block Chevys or Fords powering them. So I’m okay with that as a muscle car suggestion. We talked about on the Italian episode, the ISOs, it’s the same thing. There’s a bunch of these Italian coach builders that did American engines. The Panera is not a muscle car, it’s a sports car, so that’s off the table.

Right? That doesn’t qualify. But you’re right. There are some European and even Japanese cars that I think fit into the Mala era and we’ll probably talk about those as we go along. But I wanna make sure there aren’t any other exceptions. There’s a few. I think we can. Immediately take off the table. If we go outside of 1982, that’s the GN X Grand National, the WS six, the Viper, pretty much any Corvette Quick correction on that, cuz the WS six actually existed back in the seventies era of the Pontiacs as well.

Yes. The WS six was a trim option that had existed [00:08:00] since the second gen of Yeah, I don’t think they made any first gen, but I know from the second gen on they did and remember too, W six really all it was, was a handling package to give you what they wanted to call the the Jim Tana Experie. That was the whole point of the W six.

There was no power increase at all. It was just all chassis. So I don’t know if you wanna go there? Yeah, if we’re gonna nix the GN X, are we gonna nix the Trans Am GTA the Turbo V6 with the, I guess the, the same motor in the GN X and all that? If we’re gonna nix the Grand National, do we also have to throw out Monte Carlo Ss and the Grand Prix?

Okay. I knew you would know if anybody He has one, that’s why. Yes. Let me just push that a little further. If we’re gonna kill Grand National Kill Monte Carlo Kill Grand Prix Oldsmobile cut list. So that’s basically killing the whole G Body platform. But look what it brings. And this is up to y’all cuz we’re pushing kind of far now because I’m gonna bring up a car that is one of my personal favorite.

You guys are laughing. I know Lumen Z 34 and his little brother, the Cavalier Z 34 Z 20 fours. But in the [00:09:00] nineties, those were consider. The muscle cars. That was it. Unless you wanted to talk about your old guards, Camaro, Mustang, Firebird, et cetera. I think we need to pull Don’s card now. I think. I think he, he is disqualified himself from the discussion.

We’re like a bunch of medieval scholars arguing about when the dark ages end. I mean, I mean some of these cars, like they’re just too good. Like the eighties made some good cars, like I think this is about, the audio industry was kind of on its knees. They’re in a big transition. What are some of those diamonds in the rough?

What are some of those things that may be with a little modern technology, and assuming you don’t live in California, you can turn into something that’s really cool and fun. That’s what we sort of have to figure out. And we keep dancing around these cars that are still sort of popular, right? So if you look at the third gen Camaro, like the iroc, the Firebirds, not too far off.

We need to find something a little bit different. I just wanted to know where we taper things off and where the blend line is. And I think we’re still safe. Even if we go up to about 85, [00:10:00] if we go outside of our stated boundary, I think we’re getting too much in the weeds. I think we nix the Camaro, the Mustang, the Corvette, and maybe the charger and just everything else is a free for all of you.

Choose the Chave or whatever. Okay, that’s cool. But I think we leave them in. Why not? You won’t find any affordable examples. But I take events to the Chavelle comment. The Chavelle Laguna thing was bald Laguna. Good NASCAR pedigree. I mean, look at the Laguna s3. That was a hell of a car. It really was the styling.

It had muscle for the day. Come on. It’s a flashy time. You know? I think the Laguna is a great one, but you’re right. Where do we draw that line? I think if you go with the lesser versions of the car, the performance vehicles, like going with the cut list instead of necessarily going with the 4 42 going with the Buick Regal versus the GN X, the lower models, because that’s gonna fit the budget anyway.

Yeah. If we’re going to take some of the bigger names that you were mentioning, take one that’s a less known car and GT has an example. If you get into like the earlier ones before the judge and everything, the mid [00:11:00] sixties and a lot of the guys would find a tempest or a lamonds and make a GTO clone outta them.

I, and that’s a great way for guys that don’t have the money to go find a numbers matching gto. You go find the same platform basically and build the car. You want green all wholeheartedly with Dan’s sentiment there that especially when you buy one of those less than, you know, not the GTO o but it is the la Monzo tempest, there’s no guilt.

You’re not gonna feel bad if you cut it up to make something fit. I see muscle cars like kind of two factions. There’s guys who restore and go for period. Correct. And, and that’s what they like. And then there’s people who look at it as this is something to be made better and faster. So from the better and faster camp, there’s no penalty to taking something pedestrian and and moving it.

So I think that goes both ways. And that’s a really great point, Andrew, in that you can make a malaise car into a muscle car. And you can probably take a muscle car and make it a malaise car. Adding luxury, adding other creature comforts, adding other things to it that maybe they were devoid of when they were built because they were more sporty, right?

So I think this conversation ebbs and flows in both [00:12:00] directions depending on where you wanna take it. That already exists in a sense, for the fact that a lot of those muscle cars would come without ac. So there’s companies for the past 20 years that have been making aftermarket AC to put in there. So you could take that muscle car and go for a trip during the summer and not sweat your brains out.

That power steering, power brakes, all sorts of other stuff that came on the luxury cars that didn’t exist on the muscle cars. I think it goes both ways. Kind of getting into the AE stuff, we’ve transitioned from carburetors to fuel injection. The cutoff might be just carbureted cars if you wanna have a cutoff point.

But again, it all is gonna be based on budgets. Eric suggested we, I don’t know what our limits are budget wise for an entry level car. That’s another thing we need to determine. If it’s expensive, it’s not ma.

If you have to ask, it’s not a . You’d be surprised. I just saw an auction flax body cobra going for 70 grand. Yeah, I can’t, I mean, that’s no power. You could get a Corvette for 40 grand. that blows it away and it makes no sense. [00:13:00] So it depends on what the people want. Some of these people are so fixated on the IROs and the certain vehicles, they’re willing to pay more money for them.

There’s another vehicle that just kind of popped in my head while you were talking about that Fox Body Cobra, the 93 Cobra Impala, popped back as a, as a full-blown, hyped out Caprice 260 horsepower for its day. It was really, really amazing. In fact, I remember foreign driver MotorTrend, one of the two.

They compared the S 500 Mercedes against the Impala SS 1995. It, it was an amazing comparison because you hear you had the high brown Mercedes with all the luxury and all that crap, but it’s still a fast car. And then you had the Impala, which very fast car with eh, kinda luxurious, if you want to call it that.

I hate to say it. The Impala mopped the floor with that. That was one of those things. They almost didn’t wanna publish it because they didn’t wanna upset Mercedes and that particular Impala was only made 94 to 96, and the SS Callaway version of it actually came with a six speed manual, which I’ve always wanted to acquire one of [00:14:00] those myself.

I know Mercedes S 500 s and Paulas get cross shopped a lot, so I’m sure it is really concerning for Mercedes. The comparison. So what I wanna do is pull this back a little bit because Rob touched on something really important and actually so did Mark, which is two sides of the last part of our shopping criteria.

One is looking at those lesser models or the, the cousin of, or as Don likes to put it, in other episodes, the sister two certain vehicles, maybe under a different name with different sheet metal. You could get a variant of the G T O as an example. The Old’s rally three 50, which is mm-hmm. , basically a G T O judge that nobody pays attention to.

So those are considerations we need to make. But on the other side, mark hit on. LS swapped the world. And I know this speaks to Andrew, who’s been pretty quiet this whole time, kind of waiting patiently is Restomod’s swap cars, ev swaps. I think all of this stuff counts. When we’re talking about the muscle and Malays collector.

What [00:15:00] do they want to do with these cars? Especially if you’re buying a Malays car for like five grand, it’s gonna need some love. What do you wanna do with it? So, Andrew, let’s get your thoughts on that. I was gonna say built not bar, right? I mean, if you’re on a budget and you want something cool, who cares what it’s called?

Who cares what model or trim it is and what rich guys will pay for it? Buy the cleanest example of something that you can find that has all the trim there that you’re not gonna have to spend a lot of money piecing back together. But if it’s an abody, it’s a G Body, it’s a whatever. You’re gonna find parts for it.

I was gonna say 1983, first year of the Fox Body, all those parts go back on it. You have a blank canvas is the way I look at these cars. They aren’t terribly exciting as they came for all the reasons that were mentioned, but they’re all just as capable of being modded out and built. To Eric’s point about not having something, Like at every car show, I spent a couple years dreaming of Ellas swapping a Volvo two 40, which is just a shoebox on wheels.

But if it’s done clean and And you get the right wheels, the right suspension, I mean, it could be a hell of a lot of fun. Who cares what it [00:16:00] does performance wise? It’ll be too fast for anybody saying, you know. So that’s my take. Buy ’em and build them. The nice thing is you’ll be safe in that car, , right?

And I’ll send you an rial sweater. Yeah, there you go. Go undercover. What about the Mustang too? You can’t argue that that was like a turd. Well, yeah, it was a turd. But if you’re gonna be interesting, right? They had the Cobra version. Like could be fun. I mean if obviously you’d have to fix it, modify it. And so Mark, I will see your Mustang too, looking for alternatives.

Now I will pit it against the A M C Concord. I mean, it depends on what direction you wanna go, right? So if we’re going, and where Andrew was talking about where you know you’re gonna build out a muscle car, you’re just looking for a platform or a canvas, if you’re looking to show. At cars and coffee was just something that people just haven’t seen before and that you kind of restore and build out mechanically.

Just to make it, honestly, I would say more safe. There’s a bunch of different things to work with there, [00:17:00] especially from a M c. And so part of that is if you’re going down the cars and coffee route, then you’re also looking at volume and how many were made. So if you look at like a king Cobra or something, they only ever made 4,000 of ’em.

And because it was so hated, there’s probably, I don’t know, 27 on the road today, and you know, so, so there is that angle to play. And on the AMC side, they also did a bunch of interesting stuff. Somebody brought it up earlier, I think it was Don, right? The automotive manufacturers decided this wasn’t a grassroots car culture thing.

They just decided because we can’t make cars fast anymore, we’re gonna try and make them cool. by pairing them with luxury brands. And so you have like the Pierre Carden, a M c Javelin, you have a Gucci edition Cadillac Seville an Ole Cassani a M C Matador. There is never anything cool about the Matador.

Okay, that’s true

I have to admit That’s true. But you have the [00:18:00] Levi’s denim gremlin. I mean, that was on my list like when was the last time you saw a Levi’s denim gremlin? Like that’s just kind of cool going to gremlin. You had a gremlin with a 3 0 4 V eight from the factory. And if that wasn’t good enough, there was a dealership in Arizona, I think it was Randall a m c, they would shoehorn in the Matador 4 0 1.

Wow. And you talk about a little dynamo of a car. Sounds like death on. That was it. But now you’re talking kind of a yako edition for a m c cuz it was a dealer specialty. It’s like the Celine of a m c. So I don’t know if that would even qualify for this. I think it would. But there’s also a MX edition if we’re gonna go down the Gremlin road.

Right. Yes, the AM mx that was, uh, the Corvette’s competitor cause it was the only two seat sports car in America and it was half the price. Oh, I’m not talking about the Javelin. They had AM MX Edition other A M C vehicles. Yeah. Later on in the seventies they, they brought the am MX name back. Okay, so it was like a trim package then.

Yeah. That goes exactly back to what Mark was saying, the javelin is [00:19:00] definitely on my list. I love the way it looks. It’s got these kind of funky hunches, almost like wide body flares. It’s a, you’re not sure if it’s got like a 71 mock one or what it is when it’s coming at you. Especially in the a mx guys with the spoiler and the rally wheels and all that kind of stuff.

I think those cars are pretty cool. And Brad, so does this count towards the drinking game, a M C? Is that like Mopar adjacent or do they stand alone? Uh, I think they stand alone. All right. Good. , I’m gonna drink for it anyway. Chrysler bought AMC in 87. Gotcha. And here we are talking amc, which of course owns Jeep.

That’s the only reason Chrysler bought. It was for the Jeep brand. AMC actually does for the budget we’re talking about too. You can get a lot of performance. Yeah, people don’t usually look for those a hundred percent. And there’s quite a few of these. So let’s stay on the AMC path for just a moment before we deviate.

So we talked about the javelin, we talked about the gremlin we, I mentioned the concord, which looks a lot like the Mustang two. And if you dress it up a little bit, it’s a [00:20:00] great alternative To Rob’s point, not very well known. Another one that came up on my list as a potential muscle car conversion is the A M C Ambassador nine 90 bigger car.

Lines up with one of my other suggestions, but if you kind of take a look at it, you could do something with it. I think it’s kind of neat if you’re looking for a bit of a land cruiser that you could shove a big motor under the hood. I think that’s an interesting category for the group to get into, because then you start looking at some of the Cadillac El Dorados and mm-hmm.

and that whole kind of category of just land yacht, like just embrace the rolling couch and if you want to drive a couch, then you have some really interesting options that come out of this era. But that’s the other side of the malaise era. They’re not all sports cars, let’s say they’re these luxo boats.

Me being the Lincoln guy here, the mark three, the mark four, the mark five, all of those were equipped with four 60 s. The Mark five had it for one year as an option [00:21:00] against the 400, which was a pig, but it was a great cruiser. I’ll tell you, you get on any of those cars, they. Move. They really, really can cook because of that big block, tons and tons of torque.

Look at those oldsmobiles and those Buicks with the four 50 fives. You think grandpa going to church in the Oldsmobile 98 with a 4 55? That man could get there in five seconds flat because that thing was just, uh oh. A rocket, but that’s why it was sheer torque. And the funny thing is when you talk about 1978, the quickest, fastest American production car, Daniel appreciate this.

It was the Dodge Lil Red Express. Oh, you beat me to it. Yeah. Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to the manufacturer, at least Chrysler figured out, Hey guys, did you know that the truck doesn’t have to meet the emissions requirement, the safety requirements, et cetera, that the car. , they’re very lightweight. If we throw our 360 in there with a few little tune-ups, holy cow, we’ll have a tire smoker for days.

That was their little trick. And of course, here you are with this little farm implement and your burning Corvette’s, [00:22:00] trans Ams all day long with a pickup. It was hugely embarrassing. The trick was you had to be a good driver because all that power to a rear end with no weight on it. Yeah, that thing just wanted to burn rubber for days.

Dan, am I wrong? You’re the pickup guy here. I mean, come on. That was definitely on my list of vehicles dimension and with any truck, because there’s no weight on the rear of ’em if you don’t know what you’re doing, uh, you see all the videos of the Mustangs, you know, going through the medians and hitting people on the sidewalks.

It would’ve been way worse if cars in coffee existed back in the seventies when the low Red express was there again. Yes, and going back to the pickup conversation of, Hey guys, guess what? If we build a pickup with a really big motor, we don’t have to meet a emission standard. We don’t have to meet safety standards.

We can have a really fast. Truck that we can decorate out and make look really, really cool. It was the same thing with those luxo barges. Look, we’re catering to the guys who can afford a $15,000 coop to, you know, tool around in and look important. They can be Frank Cannon for a day. They can afford that four 60.

They can afford the 4 55, they can afford the four 70 twos. They can [00:23:00] afford the five hundreds they can afford all those big luxury liner. You know what’s more fun than finding a lightweight matador or whatever and pulling out a big 4 44, 6500 and throwing it in there. I wanna revisit a M C here in a little bit, but I do wanna go back to something that Mark mentioned earlier and he, he hit something that I had on my list when we mentioned Chevelle.

He brought up the Laguna version of the Chevelle, again, talking about these lesser known models, lesser known trim packages. I agree with you, mark. That was on my list as well. That particular model actually came on my radar a few years ago when Chevy, they did a Laguna at sema. And they were doing it as an advertisement for their crate engine business.

And they had, I think it was a 74 Chave Laguna Restomod and built out, and that thing just looked so cool. Mm-hmm. and like nothing that you see, which, you know, made me kind of look into it a little more. I just thought it was super cool. And there, I mean, there are some, if you’re looking at kind of racing pedigree, you know, [00:24:00] there, this was still the before times in nascar and you know, there’s a little more correlation between these models and what was raced than, you know, in the later years when they totally switched everything around.

But since you brought up General Motors, I wanted to go back to another John DeLorean special, not the gto o I want to talk about. The Vega. Here’s the thing about the Vega. I love the Vega. They are hardest, can be defined anymore because all the Quarter Mile guys realize, hey, the V8 S in ’em, they’re lightweight.

You can get down the quarter mile real quick with them. Unfortunately, because back when they were built, a lot of people didn’t like ’em. They were kind of thrown to the side and many of ’em wound up in Scrapyards and stuff. So I would say even though they’re a less known muscle car, they’re one of the harder to find ones right now for like the GMs.

But I found a solution to that problem because in watching shows like Rust Valley Restorers and learning about the Canadian versions of GM cars, that can be imported into this country very easily because the statute of [00:25:00] limitations on, you know, different models doesn’t really exist at this point. You could actually get a Pontiac version known as the Astra, not the Astra, as in like the Vox Hall Astra.

It’s a s t r E. It’s the same car, different badges in the same way. Did, did the Bonneville as the Parisian, and they had all these other names, kind of more European sounding names for all these GM products once you crossed our border to the north of us. So I looked at that and went, okay, cool. But also in the shadows is the manza, right?

You could go in that direction. Mm-hmm. As well. Mm-hmm. , I thought the Astro was an American car. I thought that was also available here in usa. It was sold here too, but I looked it up and a lot of the sales numbers were higher in Canada, just like the Parisian and And a bunch of others. Yeah. Canadians are big Pontiac people.

Yeah, they are. Yeah. I think the Vega could be a good one. When DeLorean was faced with Vega, he wanted to make it a sort of American bmw, general Motors just didn’t wanna have anything to do. They just wanted to put out a quick, dirty, efficient [00:26:00] little car. The main problem with those cars, if I remember correctly, was their engines would literally have trouble with the aluminum and they would self-destruct.

Just the mythology would give out on those cars. Another problem that they had was huge problem with suspensions. Literally wheels were falling off the car. I mean, this is not good stuff by design. I think they were fabulous. And when you brought out the cos, That was another John DeLorean special. He was the one who actually went over there and spoke to those people to build the heads and engineer a hot Rod Vega.

Now you’re talking about a serious collector car. I mean, these cars, they were limited production. They were reasonably quick for what they were. Somebody brought up the Mustang too earlier today or early on, this conversation. And you know, if you want a competitor for Mustang to Cobra, I think the Vega Cosworth absolutely outshine the Mustang.

And I’m a Ford guy. But that Cosworth Vega was something else. It was a fantastic little car. And again, on the collective market, just because they’re rare, just because there’s not many of ’em, and because they had that [00:27:00] performance pedigree with, you know, European influence that is a fantastic car and they’re not overly expensive, even in mint condition.

They’re really, really not. So since you went there and you’re talking about European influences, do you consider the Capri. Not the Fox Body Capri, the German Ford Capri muscle car or a sports car? No, I would consider it a sporty car. Absolutely. I love the Capri. The original Capri’s 69, I think was the first one that they built, turned into a hatchback somewhere in the mid seventies, and then at some point it got turned into a Mustang for Mercury, which, you know, that’s a whole different conversation.

But the original European version of it, I don’t think they’re muscle cars, but I think they’re sporty cars. And they were designed by one of the original Mustang designers. Europe wanted a Mustang and that was gonna be Capri. It didn’t do anywhere near as well as the American Mustang did, but it did very well in, in giving Americans an idea of, Hey, wait a minute, we could have a sporty, little, compact, fun little car.

But no, I, I don’t think it’d be fair [00:28:00] to compare that as a muscle car. Not at all Ford products. Again, mercury, Cougar, and Ford Thunderbird. Okay, and, and maybe like even toward the Buick Riviera, we’re always transitioning a little bit bigger car, but still lots of performance and that, I think that probably would fit in the war category too.

If we’re gonna throw Ford under the bus there, just talk about them. I’m surprised nobody’s brought up Grand Torino just yet, and I’m surprised nobody’s brought up Fairlane. I know Fairlane kind of goes back to the sixties with the three 90 s and the 4 27 in terms of off the Radar, both of those cars are fantastic first time cars because they are kind of off the radar.

And let’s face it, when it comes to those muscle cars, when it comes to those performance cars, for some reason Chevy always out shines forward and that pushes their values up a little bit. Usually not always, but usually. And when you talk about Grand Tono or you talk about Fairlane, you can get a really nice bargain muscle car that again, when you pull up to a cars in coffee.

And once you get over the start to getting Hutch jokes, you know they’re a damn nice car. So I was gonna add [00:29:00] onto to the European influence. Still it’s Blackhawk, you know, unfortunately none afford that, but I gotta throw it out. , the Elvis car. Now you’re talking my language. What have you done? What have you done?

I, I liked you, Dan. I knew I liked you. You know, you opened Pandora’s Box. It’s party Time Boys and Eric. We can bring the Canadians in because most of those cars were built on a Pontiac chassis. Just saying. They were. So first of all, I’m gonna ignore the Stutts comment because that’s just gonna get us into trouble.

But there are some undervalued, underappreciated Fords, and one of them that came to mind in doing some additional research on this was the Maverick, not to be confused with the new pickup truck, but again, going back to this Javelin Vega Yeah. Manza kind of style of card that you shoehorn a 3 0 2 in that and give it a little bit more oomph and suddenly you mm-hmm.

Got this muscular vehicle. Yeah. And if you wanted to go a little classier, you could always [00:30:00] go with the Comet, which was Mercury’s sister product to the Ford Maverick. I don’t know they, they didn’t, but I don’t know that they ever had something like the grabber. But it was the same basic formula. A little 3 0 2.

You could even get a four speed without cars. So was that the same marketing that they used for the Bobcat? Oh, it’s the Pinto’s. More upscale version. . I get all sweaters, baby . Brad, take a drink just from your big bottle. So we’d cheer up a little bit over here. Will you? There we go. That’s what I’m talking about.

You know, I’m not a Maverick fan. I struggle. I really do. I prefer the Clippers myself. I don’t see the lines on the outside. The interior is bad, even for its time. That’s saying something. It is. And again, the javelin is a sexier car. If we’re gonna go, really gonna go there. Yes. But the, the. It has potential because You’re right.

And what I see in it is sort of like they liked what they were doing with the Capri and then they [00:31:00] found a way to make it worse. Cuz it has that sort of Capri look to it. Especially when you’re looking at the side glass cuz it has mm-hmm. the way it kicks back. Yeah. Yeah. It’s just, it’s sort of there. And those, the Roundhead lights, Capri’s ugly sister to use a donk.

Yes. But you know, if you look at her with the right light on the prairie with you drink enough when his last fall, you’re at the bar, you need to take them somewhere. Just keep drinking. It gets easier. You’ll love Maverick after a few of those big bottles like Brad has. You’ll love it. That goes just with the whole period though they’re all sort of slightly terrible.

Right. But you gotta look at it for the potential. I see this as, like we were talking about you shoehorn, uh, coyote in this and suddenly this is an exciting car. Mm-hmm. . Wow. And remember too, not that I don’t love the coyote. Believe me, I do. I think that’s a fantastic engine. But in this day and age, you don’t need that much motor.

You really don’t. There are so many great four cylinder turbos, so many great V six s out there right now that are spinning 400 horsepower. Yeah. [00:32:00] When I was stationed out in New Mexico, one of the guys I worked with had a sixties Mercury Cougar. They wound up putting a 3 0 2 out of a fox body into it and then to give it a little bit extra pep, he found in one of the paxman supercharges that bolted right on to where it didn’t even show from above the hood.

It was a nice peppy older. , you know? Mm-hmm. , he was running the skinny 14 inch tires, so it burned the tires off of it every day, but it was fun to take out and ride around it. If you’re looking at that kind of Andrew’s Canvas perspective, you know, I mean, the Panther chassis launched at the end of the malaise era.

Did it really well. Was that the L T D at that point, or was that a different chassis? Yes, that was the LTB Ltd, mercury Marque, and 79 through those years, and you get some two doors. If I had more space, not to go backwards, but I like the idea of a two-door land yacht. It’s, it’s just so obscene. It’s just ridiculous that I need a 24 foot long car with two doors.

It’s kind of amazing. It’s [00:33:00] like everything that was right about. And, and just on four wheels, what that reminded me of was just why are muscle cars cool? It’s cuz they don’t look like anything that you can buy today. So if you have something like you said, 22 feet long with seven foot long doors mm-hmm.

you can’t buy that anymore. And so you have a completely different car experience by whether it’s fast or not. If it runs, it’s just automatically something that, again, you could drive home and not see anything like it all day long. I’d ask, why is the first time buyer interested in a muscle car? Whether it’s malaise or classic, maybe everyone falls in love with the classic things.

I’m sitting with the replica of a Shelby Cobra, my garage. So like I know about going after the poster child or whatever, 72 El Dorado I saw on the road today. I couldn’t help but stare cuz those lines, those fins, the taillights are all in your face. That doesn’t happen anymore. Everything today is built for fuel economy and, and building 50,000 of them if it tickles your fancy.

That’s I think what’s more important than is it a special addition. Again, I would go for something that’s as complete and [00:34:00] mechanically sound as possible for the first time collector and then enjoy it for any of those big land yacht, two work cars, any first time buyers. One of the things I’m gonna recommend is check the door hinge bushings, because those doors weighing a million pounds would wear out those bushings.

And it’s just one of those things, it’s inevitable to happen. And if you’re parking downhill, Hold the handle when you open it. Cause if not, it’s gonna go and it’s gonna rock the whole car to the side. Sound advice. Do they win IPOs? There was no side impact. Crash testing, but . Well you didn’t need it because they were all made outta lead

Right? A real steal. It’s like hitting the Brinks truck. I mean, come on. I’m gonna go out on a limb here a little bit. I don’t know about you guys, but for some reason thanks to Facebook and thanks to the magazine, a lot of my friends these days are in their twenties and early thirties. And I gotta tell you, it’s absolutely amazing talking to some of these guys because I’m a member of or five Lincoln Mark forums.

Uh, and it’s amazing how many of those guys are in their twenties and in their thirties and they are digging. These Lincoln [00:35:00] Mark 3, 4, 5. The six is kind of a lost child, but it has its own cult following. And then there’s a seven, which forget about it. The seven was probably the best car that Ford ever built here nor there.

What amazes me and you know, in my driveway, you know, Andrew, you brought up your Cobra. I’m gonna see your Cobra and I’m gonna match it with a 79 Caprice classic two-toned brown with a Val lure interior and plush carpeting. I seriously have it. It’s sitting in my driveway, is my godfather’s car. Bought it brand new.

I inherited it. I’ve loved it ever since I was a little kid. It’s slower than anything. It is literal. I, I, I’ve got a fiat that I think could probably outrun it any day of the week. again, it’s, it’s a factory five, but I’ve taken this road to a few car shows. I’ll park it and weave it and people look at it and everything like that and they ask questions or whatever, but I geek out over.

a mint condition. Pontiac Fierro the gt, and I’m like, because again, where do you see it? Mm-hmm. . I know my replica’s number. 7,000 something. So there’s 15,000 of ’em out there now. But how many legitimate period? [00:36:00] Correct. Good condition. Fieros are there can’t be that many. They didn’t come in good condition from the factory.

So I think the answer to that is zero. Yeah. And see Brad had a mark eight. Brad is turning me on right there. That’s right. Was a hell of a car in its day. Incredible car. MN 12 platform was my first car. I had an 89 Thunderbird sc. Nice. Do you have five speed or the automatic five speed. Nice. Very, very cool.

He used to autocross it too. He used to auto cross it. I did. That’s how, that’s how I met Eric. Learned to drive on my dad’s market. . Isn’t that kind of a big car to be auto crossing though? The Thunderbird? Yeah. Very . Okay. All right. We’re big guys, Don. That’s right. That’s true. Big guys drive big cars. , I can fit with you, but, and maybe this is off track.

You’ve got a Cobra replica. I’ve always wanted a 3 56 speed steer replica, but growing up replicas were kind of shun. Yeah, you didn’t have those unless you were a cheap, poor bastard who couldn’t afford anything . And we’re gonna make fun of you because we can. So I always kind of avoided it, but I’ve noticed in recent years, and maybe the quality too, has gone up so well that that’s [00:37:00] what’s forgiven them.

Having a Cobra replica, having a Porsche replica, having. . Even just a kit car that’s, you know, out of some guy’s head that he designed over a something chassis that’s suddenly now. Very cool. Right? That’s actually okay. Remember the, the TV show, Hardcastle and McCormick? The Coyote. The Coyote X? Yeah. Yeah.

Which was, if I’m not mistaken, I was designed to look like a McLaren race car. I remember watching that show. I love that show. I was young, but I remember my dad and I remember all of his friends. Oh, it’s just a vw, it’s just a blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? It’s just a, but I kept thinking, I don’t care about how slow or how fast it is.

It looks so cool. There’s something to say, like if you want to take a fiberglass body and put it on a Firo or a VW bug, like you said, that’s not all that special. I mean, but a modern kick card is a scratch built tube chassis with Fox Body or SN 95 suspension. Pretty serious cars. And that’s why I said my outlook on this topic would be basically like anything’s a kick car if you look at it.

Right? That might be a really good piece of advice, you know? Cause one nice thing about those kick cars [00:38:00] too, even the coyote is cheesy as it may have been back in the eighties. Okay. So it was built on a 69 VW Beetle. Guess what guys? You don’t have to smog it because it’s on a 69 VW Beetle. So if you can figure out how to engineer a little more horsepower outta that.

Oh, do I hear echo? Do I hear EcoBoost? Do I hear those four cylinder turbos that are being made today? DJJ 20 oh oh God. What that little coyote could do today. And you don’t have to smog it. You don’t have to do anything with it because it was built in 69 or whenever the Beatles platform was built. What was that other kick car that was really popular in the late seventies, early eighties that sort of looked like a dusenberg?

I used to call it as a kid, like the Core Deville Mobile. They had the clime, they had the Excalibur. That’s it. The Excalibur, yeah. Yeah. Matt Houston drove one. Remember ? Sorry, I had to bring him up again. Since we brought up Luxo boats, we talked about kick cars. I wanna go back to Mark again because I think he’s right.

We could probably wax poetic about the Cadillac bro and how it could tow 11,000 pounds and all this awesome stuff and, and the land out top that comes with it. [00:39:00] But there’s a compromise car and I said we were gonna revisit a M C again. So I wanna throw out for your consideration the A M C Rebel. Oh yeah, yeah.

Oh, totally. Absolutely. That was a car that was really under the radar back then. I mean, it was competing against the, uh, chargers and GBO GM cars. That was definitely a, a performer. And it fits Mark’s recipe. It’s a big car, right? Two doors. It’s big motor. Are you sure it’s a yacht or are you sure it’s a muscle car?

Is it malaise? I think it checks all three boxes. This thing is enormous, Eric. There are classifications, there’s yacht, there’s super yacht, and there’s mega yacht. So I, I think the rebel is definitely a yacht. Okay. Your mark fives. Your mark fours. That’s a super yacht. The mega yacht, of course, is the stutts, which you’re not allowing us to talk about.

No, no. Again, in the a m c, there’s so many things. There’s a lot of bad, but there’s a lot of good, and I think that’s the brand that has [00:40:00] just kind of been forgotten because the way it got absorbed into Chrysler years later mm-hmm. , that people don’t think about it as being. A front running American brand.

There’s a couple other cars I wanna mention in that camp kind of as we go along, but I wanna stay on this train of thought because Rob brought up a car. The Buick Riviera, the Boattail. Yeah. I love the Boattail Riviera. That being said, so does everybody else. But there’s another vehicle, much like the rebel, especially in its aesthetic, which is the underappreciated and often forgotten Buick Wild.

Yes. I wow that that was a land yacht. It was. Is that a mega yacht, Don? Yeah, I think that’s a mega yacht. Yeah, I think that’s a mega yacht. Yeah. And my cousin’s dad had one, and I tell you what, it was a two car garage, you know, nose to tail, two car. It took up every inch of that two car garage, but oh yeah, Uhhuh,

It was a hard top, sort of a fast back. Had that Riviera look to it. His was red with a black interior, really cool car. Every time we go over there he’d be like, ah, one of these days I wanna fix this thing. If I recall that at a big [00:41:00] block in it too. So there’s a lot of power buried in some of these cars too.

Like your point, you just look at it and go, yeah, look at that Brick on wheels, you know, what am I supposed to do with this yacht? But I think you can do a lot with it. And it circles back to the point earlier, Dan was saying, you know, the horsepower numbers are 18% or 10% lower than what they actually are in the Dino, but 10% of 180.

Let’s do the math. We’re still under 200 horsepower, but you’re still looking at 6.6 liters of Detroit iron in a TransAm, as an example. So how much power is actually buried in that motor? A thousand horsepower without turbos, without anything with the proper build. And unless you remember Eric, horsepower is how hard you hit the wall.

Torque is how far you push the wall, and that’s really what it’s all about. And when you bring in the 6.6 back into it, the 6.6 only had, if I remember correctly, it was either 190 or 200 horsepower. It, it was very anemic for those late seventies, but for those late seventies, that was damn good power. But it was in the torque.

[00:42:00] That was where that 400 had a lot of gumption. So off the line it could really go. But you’re right, the 400 had more potential than almost any other engine in the day. The thing about the 400 engine was you could take parts from prior ar year cars, the heads, you could change all these things around, other things that you could put together to build that engine.

Even though it was a late seventies model, you could make it like an early super duty MO motor if you had the right. When G T O first was introduced to the media, it didn’t do well. You know, road and Tracker MotorTrend, one of the two did tests with it and the performance was not that great. It was kind of poo-pooed in the report.

Jim Weger, the marketing guy, as well as John DeLorean, and there was one of the guy involved in this little trickery that they did, but they grabbed the red car. It was a red G T o. They pulled the 3 89 out and they just put in a 4 21 because the 4 21 and the 3 89 visually look exactly the same. And that goes to what you’re saying about the heads and all the interchangeability of those cars.

It was really pretty fascinating what they could [00:43:00] do with those cars. You didn’t mention the 4 55 that also came at ’em in the late seventies. Which was their big block, which was some point some leader engine. We don’t mention those, Dan, because they make us cry because they still only make 200 horsepower with more displacement.

The torque, it’s got tractor torque. Yeah, that’s a cam. Chef’s cam swap away. The last 4 55 though for TransAm leads was 76. That was the last time that they did TransAm. In fact, I might even be wrong about that. It might have been 75, but I think it was 76 that they had that. It was 76. You’re right. It was 70.

It was 70. Yes. Yeah. And that and that for 76. Come on, you’re still putting out a 4 55. Who else was doing that? Nobody. Buick had the 4 55 and also built 3 75 as well. Right? They used that bigger engine because they had to make up for the lack of power and the, the smaller motors. That was the key thing about the Molay period then, wasn’t it?

The trans TransAm 4 55. I mean, it was making good power up through 74. It was like the last, it was one, like the 74, 4 55 made almost 300 horse. If you have the super duty [00:44:00] model, that’s true, but the the lesser ones didn’t have as much power. You still had a 4 55. I mean, my God, it’s incredible to me to think in those mid seventies, in a TransAm, They’re putting out the 4 55 s that, that to me, you know, Ford had the four 60, Chrysler had the four 40.

You know Brad, you’ve got a picture of a Cordova up there. And I’m really glad because I don’t wanna go there now unless you guys want to. I wanna say that my grandmother had a Cordova and she used to erase people from traffic light to traffic light all the time. Pretty slow race. I’ll pay it. You know, if you knew how to use ’em.

They weren’t all that bad. I had an aunt who had a Cordova and she also had a Magnum and she was a drag racer. And I’ll tell you, that girl could really lay it down with those two beasts. But you had to know how to use ’em. And let’s face it, you probably couldn’t do what you were doing much with Trait from the factory.

You had to do a few tricks to it. Mm-hmm. , but they could move. But somebody brought up these limited additions. What about the Dodge Magnum xe and what was gt? And it was [00:45:00] 1978 and 1979, and that was all they built. And the whole reason for it was aerodynamics for nascar because that Cordova. And the Dodge Charger, which was based on the Cordova.

Look at that nose. There’s nothing aerodynamic about that nose, so when you put it on a NASCAR circuit, it’s fighting wind the whole time it’s out there. The Magnum had a little bit more of that laid back look on that front end to try to help the air go over it. It also had a higher rear end to help down force, and the Magnum was hugely underrated, but the biggest engine was a four.

And that was only in 19 78, 19 79. The biggest was a 360 and it was a 360 police interceptor, which was respectable, where they found the 360 interceptor with a better performing magnum was a 360, weighed less than the 400, and yet it produced. almost as much power as the 400. So there was kind of a nice trade off, but you didn’t have that bragging right of I’ve got a [00:46:00] 400, 6.6 liter.

No, now you’re down to what is a 360? I don’t know if it’d be 5.9 liter. Tremendous card. I think you guys are right. I feel like the malaise era is riddled with experimentation. Yes, we’re trying new safety things. We’re trying new emissions things, you know, are we doing mechanical? Fuel injection? Are we doing throttle body?

Are we staying with carburetors? Are we doing luxury, are we not? It’s all this hokey pokey and it lasted for like forever. And then what people forget is during the malaise era, the K cars were also born because we started to shift into the compact market at the same time because the United States was the only one still building these big cars, whereas the Europeans had shifted to the compacts and subcompacts.

I do wanna talk about the K cars a little bit, only because you brought them up, Don, at the beginning. And you’re right. Oh, blame me. Thanks . Always your fault, Don. You mentioned the 2.2 liter turbo charger, which shared the name, and that’s about it with the original charger, but it [00:47:00] was the Daytona, the charger, the laser.

They had 16 names for this thing, but you also had Shelby getting his hands in this just like he did with the Omni, creating G L H S versions of those cars. So sort of musclely, but sports cars, I’m not sure what to classify them as. , but interesting. Just the same. And I know it’s now the drinking game. If I mention a Dodge product, so here we go.

I like the Daytona iroc RT that came later. The much wider car where they finally sort of got it right before they said, okay, we’re done. Yeah, completely. Yep. That’s another car. Despite it being front wheel drive, would’ve loved to have that. Had that been rear wheel drive, would it be a great candidate in today’s world of hack and slash type of car, maybe tub the rear out, make it rear wheel drive, put something in there.

Now you got this cool looking body with a really, mm-hmm. Really neat underpinnings. Downfall to that is during that transition, they were starting to make a lot of the car’s, uni bodies, and a lot of the uni body’s stuff won’t hold up to the power. Remember two when the IROC [00:48:00] came out for a Chrysler not.

When the Daytona IROC came out, the first ones still had the flippy headlights. The second generations had these oval open headlights. Those are the super, super rare ones, and nobody knows what they are outside of the Chrysler world. But those things were absolute demons. And to your point about front wheel drive, the original idea of the IROC rt.

Was all-wheel drive that last Daytona, they considered very hard, make it an all-wheel drive car. So you had the 2.2 liter, the turbo, the inner cooler. It was a 222 horsepower beast. It would spank mustangs, it would scare the hell outta Corvette’s all day long. The only Achilles heel was where the piston goes up and meet kind of the top of the head.

You need to install an O-ring up there because you’re blowing head gaskets all day long on that car. And I don’t know what that was, but I just remember everybody I’ve ever known with the IROC rt, you had to do an O-ring at the top of the cylinder to [00:49:00] alleviate pressure. Once you did that, you had a bulletproof performing car.

But again, front wheel drive. But their goal initially was Let’s do an all-wheel drive. Let’s do a swan song. What killed it was it’s gonna be too expensive to do it. And why do that when we have the stealth? Well, I mean, we know how that turned out. So , I don’t know. I’m a fan of the Dodge stealth, like, I mean, come on.

It’s cool. It’s a cool car. A very cool car. We’re a Mitsubishi. Back in the day, I did like the 3000 gt. I’ll take anything into the nineties. Just gimme half a chance. The K cars are what they are. The Aries is never going to be a muscle car there. Doesn’t matter what you do to it. Now, if you show up to a cars and coffee with a fully restored Aries K car, I mean, I’m gonna patch you on the back and say, good for you.

Because I don’t know the last time I saw one of those, no guys, it worked for Ed Rooney. I think it should work for us. Or it’s like that Seinfeld episode, John Voz LeBaron, John Voss le. That’s right. John Voigt had one, ed Rooney had [00:50:00] one. These are the ultimate people that we wanna hitch our stars to. You know, we want to hitch to them.

And now, you know, you’re right though. When you come with the Omni, the G L H S, even just the G lh, that was a hell of a performer. That early charger, you’re getting into precursors, you’re getting into experimentation, you’re getting into what can we do with four cylinders? You know, in that same era, remember Ford had the 2.3 liter with the turbo going in the Thunderbird, going in the cougar, going in the Mustang.

I don’t know what GM had going on. There’s another Dodge that we’ve forgotten about. So I gotta walk this back a little bit. So if we rewind the clock and go, is there River? There’s the dart. I always kind of forget about the dark and not the 2016 Dart that Brad loves so much. I’m talking about the sixties and seventies Dodge Dart and there were a lot of cool packages for that.

There were some RT packages. There was the Stinger package. I often say the Swinger package. You never know. There was a lot of other things that the DART became available with, and it also came with different motors and. You know, you see ’em every once in a while, but they’re not as prevalent as some of the other cars that are out there.

True. [00:51:00] And they did, and you’re right, they’re understated, they’re underscored. They came with some great motors. I mean, they, they could be everything. A charger or, or a cuda could be no problem. But if you really wanna get weird, I’ll get weird with you. Oh, okay. Oh yeah. Here we go. You ready? Oh shit. You ready?

The Dodge Aspen Roadrunner package. Oh, 1973. 1974, baby. Yeah. Bring it. Oh, bring it. Stripes galore. Bucket seats with some sort of wacky thing in the upholstery, going on a console shift and this thing couldn’t get out of its own way. It made Mustang too is look fantastic. It really did. It also had that goofy oblong steering wheel, like reminiscent of something French.

It was completely terrible interior as well. Oh my gosh. Yeah. They were horrible cars. But Dart has more. Panache, yeah. More respect than the valari Aspen. Oh God. And certainly that Roadrunner. And you know, again, in that same era, and I know we’re not supposed to go there, but Pontiac Ventura brought out the G T O package for [00:52:00] 1974.

Love it or hated. I mean, there they were. It was the seventies, man. They were, they were trying to relive the old days, the golden days. And the only way they could do it was with a bunch of stickers, . But you talk about rare, and again, going back to what I was saying about all those friends of mine on Facebook who are in their twenties and thirties, they dig this stuff because they’re not out there.

You pull into a cars and coffee with one of those. Valari road runners or Aspen Road runners. Believe me, you’re gonna get laughed at. But you’re also gonna get a lot of respect because that car, when was the last time you saw one, they couldn’t have built too many of those cars. So another one that they didn’t build too many of that speaks to me from a racer perspective.

Hope my racer aficionados here will appreciate this going again in this weird Mopar camp. If we consider a M c in that same village. What about the spirit? And I bring up the spirit because, oh yeah. Lynn St. James raced one and you can shove a V8 in that thing. That weird looking thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The hatchback sort of Chico looking thing. Yeah. I was [00:53:00] waiting for convention. The eagle. Yeah, they had the four wheel drive at one point. Yeah. Well that was the eagle, the off road. I know, but same body, wasn’t it? They’re very similar. They’re very similar. The eagle came in a wagon. I had an uncle found it did when I was a kid.

Which is a great segue because this is the high point in wagons. I will agree, right? Any of these cars that we have talked about thus far is available in an estate or wagon version. So if you’re a wagon, long roof society nerd like I am, this is where you go. I mean, outside of the Brown Volvo two 40, this is it, man.

This is Nirvana. When it comes to to station wagon, it certainly was when they sold the most wagons because they had not yet invented the minivan. That’s right. But I mean, the CTSV was peak wagon. It was peak wagon only because you gotta look at the rest of the wagons. I mean, if you’re putting it against the Subaru Outback, I mean, yeah.

Okay. You know, or Jet, I’ll take your Eagle Sport wagon against the ctsv. . I will agree. For modern wagons, the CTSV wagon is [00:54:00] hands down. Great. That’s a muscle car. I mean, let’s be real, right? Yeah. 6.2 liters of pure pain. The HSV Commodor has something to say to that. C T S V. I’m just gonna put that out there.

A hundred percent. My daily is a Chevy Ss, so I, I’ve been fascinated by the, the Holden put the Ls in any form factor. You can name two-door, four-door wagon. You if you want it and you want it. Supercharged, they make it, they have the right idea. Too bad we couldn’t get more of ’em. You know, if we can go back in time a little bit, not to take away from your Holden Ss.

Or your A M C, whatever the hell it is you’re talking about over there. Eric, Brad has an interesting car behind him there that is a, uh, believe a 68 Ford Country Squire, l t d wagon, full size with the wood, and a lot of people didn’t know this. You could get those with the 4 28 and even the 4 29 if you wanted one.

Now this was a, a funky little era. You guys brought up station wagons. Chevrolet also had the Brookwood, which was also available with something big, I don’t wanna say 4 27, but it [00:55:00] may have been a 4 27. Chrysler, of course, had their four forties in the Dodgers and the Plymouth. But here are these wagons that in a straight line, God help anything trying to erase one of these things because again, It’s your torque all day long.

Yeah, they weighed a bit, but they actually didn’t weigh all that much, so Yeah. Isn’t it interesting when you go station wagon hunting, you can really get some pretty cool muscle cars out of a station wagon just by the engine and, okay. A M c Eric, I don’t know much about that little wagon behind Mark, but could you get the 3 0 4 or the 4 0 1 or any of those muscular A M C engines in there?

They did have an inline. That has its own kind of pedigree to it all by itself, right? That’s the same inline six that was used in the Jeeps and all that stuff. So that’s a bulletproof engine. So let’s not knock that straight six because it is what it is. Let’s talk about Oldsmobile 3 0 3 vk. That car dominated NASCAR for a long time until Hudson came [00:56:00] out with an inline six that had 10 more horsepower.

And did you just say Hudson? I did what? Like what generation are we in again? . You gotta roll in the Vista Cruiser. Oh God. Oh God. Windows everywhere. You have to remember the translucent roofs on those VM wagons from the late sixties and the early seventies. Yeah, they had the little lanne roof panels.

Sand. They weren’t real glass. Yeah. Oh wow. Okay. I always thought they were glass. You take a caprice, also known as the Malibu station wagon. You can make a little hot rod out of that too. Mm-hmm. if you want. So there’s some options there. Mm-hmm. in, in the malaise period. You can get a lot of car in a wagon.

You buy a nice long roof. You’ve got something that shows up at cars and coffee with some respect. I dunno about the AMCs. Eric, you might, good luck. Uh, but you know, let’s go across the pond because Brad mentioned it. There are some foreign cars in the malaise area that really do kind of capture the essence of the malaise era.

And they’re not just [00:57:00] the, you know, the muscle derivatives like the ISO and the Jensen and some of the cars that we talked about. There’s two that come to mind and I’m wondering if you guys can guess what they are. Gordon Keel. Ren Stampe. Oh my God. Seriously? Gordon Keble. It’s English. It had a 3 27 under the hood, four speed.

It was from a Corvette. It was incredible. And then of course he had the Iso Volta, which was a sexy little car. Looked like a little Maserati. I thought you were talking about some one term British parliamentarian or something like, you know, obscure facts. It looks like a P show. It’s not Malay, it’s 64 to 67.

It’s not even muscle car, right? It’s sort of like just whatever. One of the other ones that I’m gonna throw out for you guys to chomp on if we’re talking foreign cars. And I think it captures the essence of malaise from the island of Japan, the MIS Nissan. Two 80 zx. That’s a little bit of a hot take. I like that.

I like where you’re going, right? You want something different. You want something foreign. I hate to say it’s in this awkward [00:58:00] phase of the Z, but it exemplifies malaise as far as I’m concerned. It’s overly luxurious. The performance isn’t that great, but you could turn it into its musclely predecessors by beefing it up, dropping some of the weight.

It is a two plus two. That’s part of its disadvantage when they came out with the two 80 zx. Okay, I’m a great defender of the two 80 zx. I really am. Big shock, right guys? Yeah. Uhhuh. . Big shock. Yeah. Okay, but I, I’ll just say this one thing in defend of the two 80 zx, it’s ugly. I mean, look, my dad had a two 40, I owned a three 50 z I love Z cars.

That’s an ugly car. It screams malaise though. Look at it. You’re right. You’re right a hundred percent, but it doesn’t have the redeeming qualities. Of some of these cars where you’re like, I like the lines. I like the stance. Yeah, it’s got good bones. Just rip out the emissions equipment and pull its head out of its own ass.

You can’t fix that. No, you can’t fix what it looks like. You’re right. It doesn’t excite [00:59:00] you. When you look at it, it doesn’t say, wow. But on a performance level, I’ll tell you something. That car was only beat by one other in zero to 60 quarter mile, and that was the Ferrari 3 0 8, the Porsche, and it were neck and neck.

It was an incredible performer. I was shocked. And when you considered the price, it was the cheapest of that entire flock. It was only $17,000 in 1981 for the turbo. Great performer. Really, really is. And I think largely what you’re saying, because it is kind of ho, because it is kind of mass produced because, and I hate to say it, but it does still have that Japanese sort of stigma attached to it.

You can still get one for a veritable bargain. So for our listener who might be thinking about, I want a first time performance classic, maybe not a muscle car, I don’t think it’s fair to call it a muscle car. I think that’s a serious contender for the era. I give a credit from a perspective of, uh, put myself in the position of somebody in 1981 looking at this car.

Mm-hmm. and like as a [01:00:00] car person, I can point at some of the proportions and some of the things that I don’t like, but damn, does this thing look like the future in a lot of ways? And you’re like, okay, I have a hard argument to make that it’s cheaper than like the car that came out in 84, the 300 zx mm-hmm.

which is just a much more sorted car. I think both of these things are fully depreciated. They’re just worth the value of the metal and the fact that it’s a running automobile and, and however well the person has maintained it. To that point, I realize that I wouldn’t call the 300 ZX and Malays car by any means, but it’s kind of the point.

You know, it’s like if you’re gonna get a Z, you’re dealing with rust and all kinds of other stuff with that generation of cars that it’s like, if you’re gonna deal with that kind of pain, just get a two 40 or just get a 300. I don’t know. You struck a cord with me cuz I do love Z cars, so I get a little opinionated.

Two 40 s were horrible with just falling apart with rust and I didn’t know if they’d fixing that with the two 80 s. [01:01:00] So that would be an issue with trying to find one is if they were as bad as the two 40 s with rust. And again, if you do find one, it brings up that cool conversation point at Cards and Coffee of, wow, I haven’t seen one of these in a long time.

How’d you find it? Where’d you find it? How do you like it? You know? And, and at this point too, you know, they say Time heals all wounds. Okay, mark, you can’t get away from, I’m not gonna say it’s ugly. I, I disagree with that, but it isn’t an exciting looking car. It’s not something that really, wow, I gotta have one of those, you know, for some reason the Japanese cars, I still don’t think they quite figured out how to make a, Ooh, look at that.

You know, you’ve got Lexus out there with these freaked out front ends and these weird little haunches and, and I think really they’re just like, . How weird can we go here, guys? But yeah, mark, you’re right. The 300, the Z 31, that first edition, that was a much better car than the two 80, which was still trying to be a two 40, but it wasn’t.

It was trying to be a luxurious car. It really did work for 1981. It was a great car. So I struggled in my [01:02:00] research to find foreign vehicles that really fit the definition of either a muscle car or a malaise car. And so obviously the two 80 ZX fits the category of malaise. It was built in the right time.

It has that luxury over performance thing despite its aesthetics and all that. There are two other cars that I found, but not much else. And please, if you have some suggestions for European or Japanese, by all means, but I’m gonna throw these out there for you. The big bad. The muscle and Malays car of the era, whether you look at it from under the hood, from the outside, from its interior, is gonna be the granddaddy of ’em all the 9 28 followed by its littlest sister, the 9 24.

Both of these cars scream middle seventies. They exemplify the malaise. They’re probably the only true malaise cars from the German manufacturers or the European manufacturers as a whole. So I’m just throwing those out. Wow. It’s fighting, fighting words. Bring it, bring it. Everybody loves to [01:03:00] hate on the 9 24.

That’s an easy one. I mean, if you look at the history of the 9 24, Porsche didn’t intend to make that car for themselves, right? It was a consulting gig that VW walked away from and so they said, screw it, fine, we’ll make it. And the 9 28, yeah, I, I have to take issue with that. So we’ve talked about in other episodes that like the greatest nineties car is a Dodge Viper from the two thousands, like some things crossed their decade and I would say the 9 28 is an eighties car and they launched it in the seventies and they made it to the mid nineties.

But it is a quintessential eighties car. Like when you look at it and like, yeah, okay. I mean in 85 with a 32 valve, it got a lot better in the late seventies. They had challenges, I guess homolog it, you know, getting it through into the United States, you know, which they didn’t really fix until 85. But fair for people to disagree with me, I don’t think of the 9 28 as a Malays car.

See, I, I begged to differ four and a half liters. That made no power, even though it was better power than everybody [01:04:00] else. I mean, from a German perspective, it was an underperforming engine. It, so get the gray market like import one, like bring it in through the harbor. The best nine, early 9 28 is an LS swap.

9 28, I’m just gonna say it, but if you’ve ever sat in an early 9 28, no, I can’t say I’ve sat in a seventies, 9 28. They reek of the malaise era. Not in the way the Americans did it, where it was like, we’re gonna put gold leaf and all sorts of trim everywhere. That’s, yeah. , it was like big, you know, just kny, nasty, just big buttons.

Like something out of like a play school, you know, cozy coop kind of thing. Like a big a, a big. Exactly. And then they had like these just god awful interiors and some people love ’em. Don’t get, get me wrong. I, I’m not a big fan of like the pasha sort of houndstooth sort of checkerboard interior or the blue jean or some of these weird tartans that they were trying to come out with this.

That’s just cool though. Come on. You could just get leather. Don’t be [01:05:00] poor, get leather. I think it’s hilarious that you’re saying the original 9 28 interior was bad. Have you looked at the interior pictures of every other car we’ve talked about tonight? Oh, they’re horrendous comparison. The nine 20 eight’s amazing.

Of course it is because it’s a fortune, but no, it, it all seriousness. I also bring up the 9 28 because if you listen to the interviews with the early designers of the 9 28, they said they took their inspiration from all things the a m C pacer, right? So you’re sort of like, oh God. So here we are. That’s a i My background is a 19 78 9 28 interior.

Is it perfect? No. Is it 10 times better? Like add a zero better to every other American car from 1978? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Are those AC events on the door? Yes. They did that for a while. . That’s luxury baby. That’s amazing. That’s personalization. That gives you that cockpit. You were a fighter pilot and that’s your personal, you know, air device.

[01:06:00] I wouldn’t fit in that, but it looks great. , mark, I think you picked one of the better looking pictures cuz I’d pulled that up and was looking at it and there’s a bunch of’em on here that just, maybe it’s just the color schemes that just, I don’t know, they just don’t do it from me. Oh yeah, I mean they just, some crazy stuff.

The, the whole black and white, like Salvador Dolly interior, which, that’s just my name for it. That’s insane. Am I correct in looking at that, that the hand break is actually next to the door? Yes. It’s that way. The 9 44. Interesting. And even the c4 does that correct? And, and my jeep, the hand break is a pedal on that side too.

It’s like not uncommon. Well, I’m used to Handbrakes being in the center. That’s, that’s what threw me off. Yeah. It’s it’s different. It’s weird. It gets in the way of moving the sea too. It’s super annoying. . Yes, exactly. Dogs got it. I’m ready for mylas. Yes. I own one of these gentlemen. Oh, that was made out of an old 9 28.

That’s what he is not telling you. And it tastes awful. I’ll tell you. Tastes awful. Walk balls. [01:07:00] Yeah. So yes to Dan’s point. You picked the nicest representation of a 9 28. Go find like the Daytona interior or go find the Pasha interior. Go find like the pumpkin interior. Like dude, they’re ridiculous. Like psyched.

Nonsense. I love the PHA interior. I do. There, there, there, there. Mark has it right there. It looks like a, like I’m in a psychology. Yeah. It’s trippy. It’s trippy. There’s no accounting for taste. I love it. Like some people, they did enough drugs that they thought that was cool. It was the seventies. There was disco.

You’re still picking one of those. Caesar go with the tan interior, with the black and white checker center and it’s just, it’s awful. Doesn’t go together. Gonna say we’re in the twilight. Then with that interior, it’s terrible. . It’s terrible . And again, it’s these big, just chunky, funky, everything is just for German standards.

It’s just, yeah. And if I’m not mistaken, correct me if I’m wrong, that the PASHA 9 28 wasn’t that only available one year. It was like a special Yes. And again, it kind of goes right back to what I was saying [01:08:00] originally, which is flash and panache. Yeah. Where’s the glitter? You know, we’re not gonna go real fast, we know that.

But we don’t want you to think about that. We want you to think you’re in a really cool car. You know, I’m a 9 28 guy. I’ve always loved 9 28. I got nothing against 9 24. I think they’re fine cars weird. But they do their job. If I can shift gears here a little bit on you, Eric. You wanted to go across the pond and talk about some, uh, European and Japanese Malays crap.

I’d like to bring up the X J s. Oh yeah, that is a good point. That to me is the European equivalent of a Cordova. It’s got, its fine. Corinthian. Will tonight, leather whatever wood everywhere. It has flying buttresses out the rear end. It doesn’t run with crap. A lot of people argue with me about that. I love that.

But that is like me saying, Fiats are reliable. They run really well. If you go to Jags that run.com, because they’re all Chevy Swap, they’re amazing three 50 s. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that’s where we bring Andrew in on this. I’m just looking up the [01:09:00] xjs now and I’m looking at it and seeing all this like kind of rear weighted sweat B pillar back to taillights.

I’m like, I’m seeing Chave, I’m seeing classic, what I consider to be muscle car lines. There’s nothing wrong with that. You may have to put everything underneath. It may have to get replaced, but again, I’m gonna say it one more time. You buy a classic car cuz it looks like a classic. You’re not buying it cuz it’s more luxurious, it’s got better features.

Nothing’s gonna work the way a modern card is, but it’s gonna be different. And this is a great example of if you’re willing to put the work into it, that’s pretty damn cool. It goes back to when you roll into a car and coffee and you’ve got an xjs, especially an early one. Holy cow, you’ve got gold. You really do because nobody sees these cars anymore.

And remember kind of like the 9 28, this car stretched from per 75 to 96. Yeah, the 96. Yeah, 21 years. Yeah. This car had longevity just like the 9 28. And this is the other one I was gonna throw out there. Now this one’s almost anti malaise. It [01:10:00] really is. But I was gonna throw in there with the Jag, the six series M bmw, but you look at the eight series bmw, those things are going psychotic on the used market right now for a really prime example.

And yet built right alongside of them, there was the xjs. , they were right there and they do not command the same amount of money. Going back to those friends of mine who have them, have had them. Once you sort them out, and if you drive them, that’s their biggest enemy is people don’t drive them. If you drive them and if you sort them out, they’re actually really, really good cars.

But everyone says the same thing, avoid the 12, go for the six. It’s just a much better car all the way around. It was more modern. So you’re losing that seventies ness that we’re all talking about that we all love. But if you want something you can drive every day and not worry about too much. The six cylinder is your best friend.

If you’re just looking for that malaise, I am in your face a hundred percent go with the 12, but you gotta be able to afford it. And the best recommendation I’ve ever been given about buying a Jag is make sure it has a lot of [01:11:00] miles because then you know it actually ran. Yes, yes, I’ve heard the same. The four 50 S L C.

It was the most expensive car Mercedes built in the mid seventies. It was the father of the 3 8500 S E C and the five 60 s e c, but it looked like a four 50 s SL that had been stretched, but it was their ultimate car. It was their most expensive coop. It is a coop. It has a long hood. It’s a 4.5 liter v8.

It has some muscle to it, but not enough to really do anything. It was hugely expensive in its day. I think they were $29,000, if I remember correctly, that car screens fu money in the seventies. It screens. I have no taste whatsoever. They’re totally insulting and on today’s market, they’re just starting to see a little uptick in their value that for one of these listeners of ours with their thought of, I wanna buy a first time car.

Yeah, I, I really think your xjs and your SLCs, those are [01:12:00] really kind of the ultimate statement of, I’ve made it in the seventies, and boy did the cars suck. Mean they’re still cheap. You can get ’em in the tears. They’re the. Even in mint condition, they’re not all that much money. And you know, it’s a Mercedes.

You can get parts for it anywhere. Pretty much anybody knows how to work on them. They don’t break easy. They go pretty well. And it, and like Eric was saying about Jaguar, you know, if you buy ’em with high miles, you know that it’s earned its salt, it’s gone that far. Never buy a low mileage. Jag , how do we feel about Esri?

Esri was born smack in the middle of the beginning of it, and that is a car that’s very similar to so many, just like the Jaguar. Just like a Pasha interior. It’s a Lovett hated card. Oh oh seven made it the new Aston Martin. I think we have to take the wedge cars out. The 9 28 fits both categories, muscle and malaise because it was a German, German muscle car.

The Esri is still a sports car. It’s mid engine sporting. It’s a, it’s a wedge car. But you hit on something important. You [01:13:00] mentioned Aston Martin and if you go back to like the persuaders with Roger Moore Yes. Driving that V8 Vantage, Aston Martin. Mm-hmm. . It’s similar to the Xjs that you’re referring to. I actually like the look of that car.

It has that kind of Mustang ish feel to it. Mm-hmm. . Now granted that’s gonna take our collector into that stratosphere because that’s gonna be six, six figure car. They are super cool and I think that’s where the Jag is really a strong contender. Even the 9 28, you know, even those cars are starting to get a little bit pricey for what they are.

They’re joining the eight series bmw, but the Jag is still flatlined. And if you, okay, forgive me cuz this is getting, Nineties this year, but if you really want a better car all the way around the XK eight. Yeah. And the subsequent XK was a fantastic car. Now a lot of people will throw at me. Oh, it’s a Ford.

Yeah, that’s what did great. Throw me an xjs. Throw me an xk. Tell me which one is a better car. It’s the Ford. Okay, so get over it. Get out there and enjoy your Ford dir. Is that like a [01:14:00] boudoir, like what is that Boudoir? Yeah, come right in. My Ford Dir Ford dir. And don’t bring the grape fon bring mustard, you know, blue label with just mustard on it.

Better. Yeah. Bring little packets of mayonnaise from Jack in the box or something. Seriously though, I, I think for malaise, I think if you want the ultimate European malaise, I really wonder if that xjs is not the beast. I’m starting to come around on that. I think the 9 28 is in the muscle car category for sure.

It’s a close second to this though, but this I think probably takes the cake. It’s so, I don’t wanna say gaudy personally. I always thought it was a beautiful car. I really did. I like the version that Mark has up with the covered headlights. I always thought that was the best of all of them. Yeah. The Europeans, that’s, that’s a first genin, those wheels, et cetera.

Yeah. They were magnificent cars. I think the British tend to get the look right the first time and then they just screw it up from there. Yeah. Their, their evolution is wrong. The F type, like it just looks worse as time goes off, but yeah. The convertible version also. That’s true. Yes. Yeah. They were [01:15:00] beautiful without their top.

Are we still talking about cars ? No comment. I mean, if we’re going, if you’re going European, the Ford Granada, GIA Good car. The characters died. Uh, moving on . I was kidding. Moving on. No. Uh, I want a car that’s named after a weapon of somewhat destruction, . The Granada is a perfect one. Grand to. Cordoba, all these posh names.

You know, it’s like those cheesy, I don’t know how well you guys know la. I’m sorry. I’m from la so there’s a place we have called the Valley, the San Fernando Valley, and for the most part it’s a pit, but you can get anything in the world you want in this pit. Every sense of humanity is in the pit. In fact, there’s a great saying about Van Nuys or the Valley, which is Valley Money makes Beverly Hills living possible because it’s literally right over the hill.

Most of the people in Beverly Hills won’t tell you this, but they all own land over in the valley [01:16:00] because that’s where the business is. That’s where money is made. Now that being said, most of the apartments in the Valley are known as Sanrio, or they’re known as Granada. Or they’re known as something else.

It’s supposed to psychologically take away how crappy that apartment really is and give it a posh name and make you think, oh, no, no, no, no. I live on Lido is no, you, you don’t. You live on Colfax. And I think this gets muddled when we go into Europe. It really does. To be totally honest, and, and by the way, I’m a fan of the Cortina two because it was featured in shows like Life on Mars, and you got to see a lot of those European malaise cars in that show, but they don’t hold a candle to the kind of, as Don put a crap that we were producing over here.

One thing I noticed in just kind of scratching down some chicken notes here for this episode, when I hit 1982, a little epiphany hit me. One of my favorite Transams, you guys will laugh me outta here, but I am the laze guy, so forgive me. The 82 TransAm, the first year of the third gen with the little flip up [01:17:00] headlights, the bowling ball, hubcaps, et cetera.

Night writer was an 82 TransAm. But then I got to thinking, you know, charger came back in 1983 or 1982. It was a front wheel drive Mitsubishi, basically with a 2.2 liter Chrysler. If you had the turbo, you only had the five speed manual. Then you had the Mustang, which finally brought on that kind of muscular fox body.

It shed the, the Mustang too, and came out with the more squared off, et cetera. But the one thing you’ve gotta say about all of these cars, they kind of shed from muscle. To sport. They still have that muscular flare that, you know, American chest pounding flare to the look, but they didn’t have it under the hood.

But what did they have? They had handling that third gen trans Am handled like it was nobody’s business that Mustang handled fantastically that charger with the front wheel drive and the turbo. Holy cow, if you could keep the turbo lag to a minimum And what did that father, the Daytona and the laser, and of course surrounding that, Eric, to your [01:18:00] point, you wanna talk about the odd.

Just sticking with the Mopar family, Chrysler LeBaron gtc, is it a personal coop convertible or can it be considered kind of a muscle car? Yeah. I don’t know how gray you want to go with this, but I just noticed in my, in my little chicken scratch things started getting sportier in the eighties. Less muscular, more sporty.

Case in point. Mustang S V O, I know it’s a Mustang and we’re not supposed to say that word, but the s v o 2.3 liter turbo, total European styling built right alongside the gt. And yet it was more expensive than the GT and people couldn’t figure out why am I spending more money on this? Ah, it was a handling car that went just as quick, just as fast as a gt.

I was gonna say, to add to what you were saying Don, in regards of they were going to a more sportier there in that transition through the eighties, they were also switching to a lot of lighter weight materials on the vehicles. You could all the plastic and the interiors and things like that, which helped where those low horsepower producing engines, after all the, uh, fuel crisis stuff [01:19:00] in the late seventies, they were trying to find ways to get that power to weight better.

So they started using lighter weight stuff and unfortunately some of it was crappy electronics in the eighties, but that’s what it was to have at that time. And to Don’s point, he hit the nail in the head. There is a transition there where you started in the late eighties. You heard about the last of the muscle cars, the GN X itself.

The Grand National is that crescendo to the end of the real muscle car era because it was built as a muscle car, not as a sports car, even though we joked that it’s a sports coupe and and things like that. But in reality, Don’s right, they did move more towards sportier cars and we started to see that more in the nineties.

I’ve got one final car, which I think is the, the pinnacle here, but Andrew, mark, Rob, even Dan, do you have anything else on your list? I wanna go kind of around the loop again and see if there’s any other cars that we missed. Andrew, something you’re thinking about. Yeah, I got the Monte Carlo in my background.

Cause from the big guy episode. Embrace the bigger car, embrace the oversized. Gotten a little bit [01:20:00] pudgy muscle cars that are still a bodies that led into G bodies that again, have all the potential in the world. They don’t look as good as all the classics, but that’s what’s been put in front of you. So take a look at the cars that again, with a refresh, with a little bit of love, a little bit of your own personal style put on it is I think a, a perfect example of a, a mala muscle car.

That can be something to be proud of. That late seventies, Monte Carlo, they even had a fast back version of it that had like huge sweeping glass that was Yep. In my opinion, a very interesting look. I won’t say it’s good or bad, but it was interesting. Look for that body line. Yeah. Shaved the trim. Put a decent wheel, entire package on it.

You got something that looks pretty tough. I think Dan was referring to the arrow. Look, that’s call it back then. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. There was Chevy and Pontiac that had that, right? Yes. Bring up a Monte Carlo and let’s talk about a car that transcends because the car started out as what A personal luxury coop.

Remember it was supposed to be sort of an answer to the Buick Riviera, the old mobile todo, whatever it was, a personal luxury coop that was somewhat affordable. [01:21:00] Ah, but you could also get a 4 54 if you wanted it and spice it up and make it a real straight going performance machine. It, it really was basically a fancy chave for all intents and purposes, but here’s a car that transcended from the muscle car era of Chavela’s, dominant Cuda is dominant, et cetera, to, wow, we can’t do this anymore, guys, so what are we gonna be, we’re gonna become a real, live, personally luxury cooped.

But you could still get a 4 54 and you could still have a lot of torque and you could still have bucket seats and you could still, you know, if you did, kept your mouth shut. The insurance company, the epa, they really didn’t. Looking at that car right there looks like something your third grade teacher would drive, and that was kinda the beauty of it.

It was sort of that luxo sleeper thing. I always thought that Monte Carlo was a great car. Then there was that moment of the late, late seventies, early, early eighties when it was just kind of a weird little funky thing. Then came. In my opinion, the nicer one. I wanna say 1984. Yeah, the G Body Yeah. Sort of matched the, uh, the [01:22:00] Regal and that Grand Prix were talking about.

I thought they got back that muscular look, but they still retained that librarian ish. You know, you could be the librarian or you could be, you know, the Sunday racer if you wanted to. I always thought they were a tremendous, tremendous car along with the Regal and, you know, whatever was in the family. I think you just described the Monte Carlo as Linda Carter, Don.

I’m just kind of throwing that out there. That’s you, man. That’s, you know. Uh, I’m not playing the game correctly. I’m thinking the Chevy 4 54 SS pickup truck. But that was in the nineties though. 88. 98. You can’t get more malaise than that though. Is a 4 54 producing like 210 horsepower. Yeah, that’s muscle car.

It’s not luxury. Right. Malays really defines luxury on top of this non-performance, it’s in replacement of, so that truck, I mean, I’ve driven one of those. They’re pretty slick. I mean, they’re not super fast by any stretch of the means, but they’re, they’re kind of badass. They’re a little bit menacing. It’s, to Andrew’s point, they’re a cam and a 250 nitrous [01:23:00] shot away from running tens in the quarter mile

Yeah, that’s right. They were one of those buildable cars. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a 4 54, I mean huge iron block, you know motor that’ll take a two 50 shot, no problem all day long. Cam swap fixes everything and exhaust cam swap all the things before you LS swap cam swap. Okay, we go all the way up to 1987 with the uh, El Camino.

So we had the El Caminos that started out with performance from the old Chaves and went through into the seventies with the different model changes and then into the eighties. I think they finally had three 50 s at the end, but the pricing of those is very affordable for the later one. You’re genius.

How the hell did we skip El Camino? I have no idea. Yeah, El Camino and they made it for so damn long. It’s the perfect Malaysia. You could get like a 1990 or something and it’s basically the 1975 . And you know what the crazy thing, they’re gonna be coming out with a new El Camino, according to Chevy they’ve been talking about or threatening to come out with a Chavelle.

That’s 150,000. 150,000. If I [01:24:00] may counter that, Ford is also talking about bringing. The Grand Torino grand chair. What about the ranchero? Ooh, the ranch. We’re on car, wagon’s, truck things now Crux, they call ’em Crux. If we’re gonna go car truck, we need to bring Andrew in on this because down under they had a ute and that was a spectacular vehicle.

It really was. They have a whole subculture. They have the Ford version, they have the, the Holden version. It’s just V8 in the front and work in the back or however you wanna put that together. Mm-hmm. . But yeah. Amazing. That, that’s mullet not mu It’s an inverse. It’s an inverse mullet. It’s right, it’s an inverse mullet.

That’s right. Business in the front party in the back. Oh my goodness. Other than the, uh, El Camino. I was gonna throw out the Chevy love. Oh yeah. They’re phenomenal. They were like one of the original mini pickups. Oh, that’s like the zuzu pup or whatever they called it. Yeah. But the, the Chevy love, that was cool.

And I think they actually, for a short period of time, you could get it with the small block V8 in them from the factory. And don’t forget the Ford Courier. We [01:25:00] missed something huge guys. Well, that’s why I’m saying, you know, Brad with his 4 54 over there, you might have a whole different episode bringing up pickups.

We missed something tremendously huge. We’re talking about malaise, we’re talking about muscle. We’re talking land yacht. We’re talking performance. I got it all. It goes above the El Camino, the red shero, all of them. It is. The G M C Ventura Van AAM edition. Vans . Muscle van. Muscle van. Yeah, I’m all for that.

Remember in the seventies the van was the king, the custom van with the custom paint, the custom interior waterbeds bars. I mean they, that’s malaise. That’s malaise. Corvette, summer, man, esa, remember? Exactly, exactly, exactly. Don’t forget the mirrors on the ceiling, . Oh, you gotta have those. So I’ve got one for you guys.

As we kind of close out these many suggestions we’ve thrown on the table for our collectors to consider, if they’re looking down the muscle and [01:26:00] malaise era, trying to find something different, or trying to find something new, something that not everybody else has or would consider now hear me. We talked about no Mustangs, no Camaros, no kudos, no challengers, no chargers, no chaves, no this, no that.

The other thing. But what if I could present you a vehicle based on one of those with infinite amounts of customizability, infinite amounts of performance, even potentially track worthy, but really emphasizes and quantifies in one vehicle, muscle and malaise. Bear with me now as I present you the.

Fairmont based on the Fox body. 1983. Yeah, that bore. And they had a nine inch rear end. That car. Yeah. Is the car that does it all. If you think about the styling, it’s malaise through and through the interior is as well. But underneath, there’s a sleeping dragon waiting to be tuned and set up and be used in any capacity.

You like. Eric, if I can [01:27:00] burst just a little bit here. Go ahead Don. I want to take it just a little further. Okay. Just a little further. I want to bring in, it’s called the Lincoln Versa. It’s one of those cars with the funky names that promises you exotic locations and fine foods, when really it’s just a Granada in a tuxedo, but it’s still the five liter.

It’s still the c4, it’s still the nine inch rear end with four wheel disc brakes, and when you get inside that car, you’re surrounded with beautiful lux. Do you know what I’m saying? You’ve got some leather upholstery, you’ve got some fake wood, you’ve got Silver Gauge Dan Baby. Ah, you’re driving a Lincoln.

You know what I’m saying? I mean when you look at the Lincoln Versas, I mean I definitely see it. It, it is next level malaise, but it’s gonna be a hard toss between that Fairmont and the Lincoln. And I think I’m gonna lean towards the Fairmont only because of the fact that I’ve personally seen somebody set one of these up for track use.

And it is a performer. It’s shockingly quick. Yeah, and that’s what I was gonna say is where [01:28:00] the Fairmont has their serious advantage of weight, the Lincoln’s gonna have a thousand pounds over the Fairmont and that car was also available as a wagon on top of it all. Oh my God. Cool. That does it. That settles it.

If you can get it as a wagon, it’s a Fox Body Stage Act. Done. Done. Fox Buddy Wagon, my old girlfriend back in the eighties had one of those CARSs. Rob, you have won the day with that suggestion. You win the internet with Fox Body Wagon. You put a coyote in that thing, man, you’ve got a screamer. Oh yeah. Even a 3 0 2 out of like a Mustang GT in.

That would be amazing. Well, remember the car that replaced the Fairmont, where the L T D two basically was a stop gap. It was built after the Fairmont, but before the Taurus, and it was subsequent with the Taurus for a little while, and Bob Bonderant had them as training vehicles, and they were dogs. They couldn’t get out of their own way.

So they swapped it out with a Mustang five liter and turned it into a real beast. They took some Ford executives out and Ford executives were confused, wondering, where’d you get this [01:29:00] car? Where’d Well, we built it. They liked it so much. They started building their own for 1984 and 85. They ain’t built too many, maybe 3000 of them, but they were equipped with a Mustang five liter, an automatic transmission.

And essentially it’s what you’re talking about, Eric. It’s just. Ready to go from the factory with a five liter, but it’s a little guy. It’s the same size as that Fairmont there. But that might be something to think of too, but it might also be too far in the eighties. I don’t know. Well, either way, I think we’ve given everybody a lot of food for thought for this.

So let’s do a quick lightning round. Everybody pick one car out of the ones we suggest, or maybe one that we haven’t mentioned yet that our first time buyers should buy, what would it be? Pass . I’m gonna throw one out that wasn’t mentioned. I’m gonna go to the Chevy two Nova since that’s the muscle car side, and I really missed the one that I had when I was younger.

I’m thinking about a regal turbo. 1979. 1976. Cadillac Al Dorado convertible. All right. First generation Dodge Dart. Four doors. Yeah, I think I’m gonna stick with my home base. I’m gonna go with a [01:30:00] Lincoln mark for, I really do think it’s a hard toss for me between three cars. It’s the 9 28, the A M C Javelin or the Fort Fairmont that we mentioned there at the tail end.

I think those are three big contenders. Well, if we can pick three. I’m going with the LinkedIn. I’m going with the Xjs and I’m going with the slc. . Xjs was my second. You gotta think they’re three luxo barges from each country. Kind of fun. The Caprice wagon behind me and it doesn’t fit, but. Hard host. I make up the rules.

I don’t care. , it suddenly became, whose line is it? Anyway, the points don’t matter. All jokes aside, I think there’s so many options, especially when as we’ve been alluding to, you start thinking outside the box, the boxy vehicles themselves, between the vans, the Utes, the crux, the wagon, these supposed muscle cars.

There’s just so many different ways to take this. So it’s an underappreciated and overlooked period in automotive history, but it’s a great time to go back and revisit it and bring new eyes to it [01:31:00] and say, where can we take these cars? How can we make them cool again? 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@collectorcarguide.net. You’re guaranteed to catch Mark and Mountain Mandan on another episode of Break Fix in the Near Future, so stay tuned for that. And if you haven’t listened to the season one classic big man in a little car, it’s a great episode featuring Andrew.

Thanks again to our panel for another great, what should I buy? Debate. That’s right. We never come to a conclusion, but we always have fun getting there.

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 our Texas at [01:32:00] (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from. 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.

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