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Festival of the Unexceptional: ordinary old cars

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by hkmb, Jul 8, 2014.

  1. ny_rob

    ny_rob Senior Member

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    Right.. it was Ashes to Ashes! ... excellent series, and IMO better than LOM.
    Re the Audi- he had to get something flashy to compliment his now famous boots!
    audi_ashes-to-ashes.jpg
     
    #21 ny_rob, Jul 10, 2014
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2014
  2. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    These were never destined to be classics, and certainly not movie stars, but I have fond memories (and some not-so-fond) of the original Honda Civic. I learned to drive a stick on one of these little 4 speeds, and I also learned about understeer, which is much easier to describe by saying 'the front end slides first'. I'm still convinced people become better drivers when they have to try harder in a small, underpowered car. Us kids thrashed the heck out of Mom's poor car, stuffing it with camping gear, finding its performance limits in all conditions, and finally blowing the engine when we failed to monitor the oil level. But it served us well. SV204778.jpg
     
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  3. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Yes, a Capri is definitely what Gene Hunt would have driven. I always thought the Audi was an odd choice.

    As for the P76.... I've never seen one if the five years I've lived here. I think the few that were sold all died within a few months of purchase. They've gone down in history here: unlike the unexceptional cars, P76s are remembered. Just not in a good way.
     
  4. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Those Civics were brilliant.

    I'm surprised you ever managed to destroy one, though. I thought you could fill them with sulphuric acid and hit them with missiles and they wouldn't die.

    That's the thing about these unexceptional cars, though - they did things for us. It sounds like you got a lot out of that Civic. I'm going to talk about this a bit more in a reply to Troy.
     
  5. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Well, the Trabi is definitely worth remembering. How did you get one of those in the US?

    But I think you may be missing the point.

    Take that Dodge Omni. It's deeply ordinary. In Britain, it was sold as the Talbot Horizon. The next model up in size was the Talbot Alpine. I'll stick a picture in when I'm not on a rubbish computer at an airport Internet cafe.

    It was nothing special. It was a 1.5, and it was slow. It was dark green, and it was not pretty. But we bought it new, and my Dad reall liked it.

    At the same time, you could buy a Ferrari 308. Or a Countach. Or the first of the very square Rolls-Royces.

    But none of those cars did what the Talbot did. That Talbot took me to school in the morning. It took me and my famly to my grandmothers' birthday parties in Glasgow and Dundee. It took us on trips to London and the Lake District. It took us to Bonn to see my Auntie, and took the four of us plus my gran to the village she was born in in Southern Italy, on a trip that took us to Paris, Milan, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Naples, and halfway up Vesuvius (we did the rest in a chairlift). And it did all that with a kettle that plugged into the cigarette lighter because my Gran was so obsessed with having a nice cup of tea on the go at all times.

    That makes that car special to me, even though it's incredibly ordinary.

    And look at your Trabi. We'd all look at a Countach and wish we had one. But the vast majority of East Germans (basically, the ones who didn't have Wartburgs) got mobility because of their Trabi. A Trabi, or an Omni, or a Dodge Shadow, or a Vauxhall Belmont or whatever, affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in a way that a "special" car never could.
     
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  6. Horsefeathers

    Horsefeathers Member

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    My first car was a 1979 Chevette 4 speed. That little thing was indestructible. (y)

    [​IMG]
     
  7. ftl

    ftl Explicator

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    My wife and I took our 1968 VW Beetle across country and back in four weeks in 1972, driving over the Rockies at 12,000 feet (before the Interstate was finished). The only maintenance was an oil change in Los Angeles halfway through the trip.

    1972-20.jpg

    The route (Southern out, Northern back, starting and ending at Long Island, NY):

    1972-Map.jpg
     
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  8. JamesBurke

    JamesBurke Senior Member

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  9. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Weirdly enough, having not seen one of these for years, I've just seen one on the way home from the airport.
     
  10. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    That sounds like it would have been great fun.
     
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  11. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    Does it. I'm trying to work out how to ask them if they fancy doing it again and having a Pommie +1 :)
     
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  12. ftl

    ftl Explicator

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    A few more notes on the trip:

    I didn't yet have my license, so my wife drove all 8,000 miles of the four-week trip herself. We left Long Island on August 20th 1972 and drove straight through to Fort Wayne, Indiana, on the first day - almost 700 miles! From there we followed the route with no particular timing, except we needed to be in Los Angeles at the beginning of September.

    As well as the full map above we used an early form of navigation system, the Automobile Club (AAA) Triptik. This was a custom-assembled set of strip maps for the entire route, each about 9" x 4" with a comb binding across the short end. Each map was highlighted with that section of the route, a foldout showed more details, and the back listed area cities and attractions. Our trip had about 80 of these; the AAA must have stocked thousands of them to cover the entire USA and Canada.

    The hotel in LA, and stops to see relatives in Oregon and Canada, were the only definite arrangements we made. We would get up early each day and hit the road, taking in the sights as we found them. Late afternoon we would find a motel, get dinner, and lay in supplies for the next day - ice for the cooler and a packed lunch. The cheapest place we stayed was $4 a night!

    Gas was about 32 cents a gallon - we were horrified to have to pay 48 cents on an Indian reservation.

    My wife and I are still together 42 years later, but I'm not sure about doing it again, especially with a couple of passengers...:eek:
     
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  13. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Funny how that works. Eyes only gather the light - it's our minds that 'see'.

    Here's another bland but purposeful entry. The design was 'faux sporty', but it was a practical and reliable car. I especially liked the hatchback design; part of the reason I bought a Prius so many years later. The rear seats weren't very comfortable for sitting or anything else, but it was a great two-seater-with-a-cavernous-cargo-space kinda car. I recall the ventilation being especially good, mostly because I could reach the rear vent window from the driver's seat. I bought it from a foreign student who was returning home, and sold it a few years later for the same price I'd paid for it.

    245941-1000-0.jpg
     
  14. orenji

    orenji Senior Member

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    Dodge or Plymouth Arrow! If you can find one today they are going up in price. These are considered one of the vintage Japanese cars to be of collector value.
     
  15. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    That looks like the Coupe version of my first car; a Datsun Violet (stock picture - it's not me lol)

    [​IMG]
     
  16. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Yes, I thought it looked like a Datsun too. But a bit of Wikipediaing said that the Dodge/Plymouth Arrow was a Mitsubishi. It really looked like that Datsun Coupe - was it a 120Y? - that they sold in Britain in the 70s.
     
  17. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    I remember when I got my first Saab in Hong Kong, I suddenly noticed how many other Saabs there were.

    That car was a bargain:

    [​IMG]

    I bought it for HK$ 1,000 (US$ 125). I got it because my wife's friend and her son were coming to visit us in Hong Kong, and this car was cheaper than two return trips to the airport by taxi. It had half a tank of fuel (worth about HK$ 400) when I bought it, and six months of road tax (worth another HK$ 400). And the vendor gave us a can of Diet Coke each (HK$ 5) while we were arranging the sale. So it worked out almost free.

    It was on its last legs, and I got rid of it after about 9 months. But for those 9 months, when I'd just set my company up and didn't have a lot of spare cash, it was ideal. And it had the most unbelievably comfortable seats.
     
  18. orenji

    orenji Senior Member

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    Yes Chrysler and Mitsubishi worked together on a few cars in the 80's and 90's.
     
    #38 orenji, Jul 16, 2014
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2014
  19. GrumpyCabbie

    GrumpyCabbie Senior Member

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    Yes, but as they all rotted away about 25 years ago I have no point of reference :(

    It's a shame Saab have gone pop too. I used to crave a 900 Turbo back in the day :) They're quite a rare old beast these days. In fact I don't think I've seen one around for years. The trouble with the new strict MOT is that it's killing all old classics left, right and center.

    [​IMG]

    Hkmb, The old tax disc in the corner of the passenger screen will soon be a thing of the past. They're phasing it out from October this year. You still have to pay but it is just logged on the Police computer along with MOT and insurance info. I guess if you clone the plates of another car Plod will never know nor care. My tax is due the end of September so I'll be one of the last :) but as it's free for the Prius, I don't mine that annual bill any longer. I remember when I first got the Prius and the nil road tax had just been introduced and the first reminder asked if I wanted to pay £0 for 6 months or £0 for 12 months? Hmmm, let me ponder on that one for a while lol.

    Vehicle tax changes - News stories - GOV.UK
     
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  20. hyo silver

    hyo silver Awaaaaay

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    Yes, it was a Mitsubishi. I wouldn't have bought a Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler otherwise..... ;)