Here it is after some custom body work done to it by a little old lady that was praying with her eyes closed while she drove through a stop sign at 45 Mph.
Posted on 05/10/2006 4:48:01 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Jabari Bryant didn't go to a car dealership to buy his new car last fall. The 28-year-old went to a retirement community in Tybee Island, Ga., where for $2,000 he bought a navy blue 1988 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Brougham from a man who was "at least 83."
The seller said "his eyesight was going and he had no use for the car," recalls Mr. Bryant, an automobile glass installer from Savannah.
Young people today don't want their father's Oldsmobile -- they want their grandfather's. Some of the hippest wheels for under-30 drivers today are models commonly identified with seniors: Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Chevrolets and Cadillacs from the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
From Collins Ave. in Miami Beach's South Beach neighborhood to International Blvd. in Oakland, Calif., teens and young adults are cruising in "grandpa" and "grandma" cars that they have painted bright colors like lime green, outfitted with fancy sound systems and propped up on monster-truck-style wheels. They're sweet-talking their grandparents into giving up old cars and offering to buy them on the spot from strangers.
Television shows, such as MTV's "Pimp My Ride," and rappers, including Snoop Dogg, are helping to drive the craze. There's even a new magazine, Donk, Box & Bubble, dedicated to the tricked-out-oldie-car culture.
For U.S. car makers, struggling to lift sales, it's a painful irony that the models striking a chord with young buyers aren't those rolling off the assembly lines today but rather ones made decades ago. Detroit's marketers are trying to figure out how to ride the trend without ruining it.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Get a C6. It's an amazing piece of engineering, and is roomier than that C4. I'm 6'7" and fit quite comfortably in mine :)
Oh ya. The 240D is a powerhouse at going nowhere faster than a jogging penguin. I r0x0rs the b0x0rs off old ladies in electric wheelchairs all the time.
Actually, it's not too bad to drive so long as you approach everything you do with the mindset of driving an 18-wheeler full of concrete - off road.
And the "I'm about to explode with the force of a small nuclear weapon" sound of the engine when you hit 50 in 3rd, always fools your brain into thinking you're doing 115.
That 56 ford was my first car. :-)
I had a clear plastic distributor cap on it revealing the rotor as it sparked and spun around. It always drew a crowd!
A big ole 1962 dodge crashed into it while it was parked and killed it! Cost me 20 bucks to have it towed away. :-(
Here it is after some custom body work done to it by a little old lady that was praying with her eyes closed while she drove through a stop sign at 45 Mph.
Funny thing is that if I could find one at a decent price I'd probably buy it myself :-)
I had a '85 Ford Tempo diesel. Bought it new. I loved that car. Last I saw it was in the shipping lot in Berlin, trying to bring it back from Germany. It wouldn't start so it couldn't go.
As I was leaving for the States the next day, I left it with a "buddy" together with $300 and told him to get it fixed and ship it off.
Never saw him, the car or the money again (sigh).
I may have lost my shop today as my realtor was showing the property to someone tonight. I will be out of the restoration business for awhile until I can either build or buy somewhere else. Hate to think about moving all that equipment at my age.
I know what you mean about the southern Louisiana humidity. I worked in the French Quarter for four years.
Muleteam1
I MIGHT be able to squeeze a C5 into the budget, but a C6 is out of my range. I'd love to have one, though.
Muleteam1
FWIW, I'd guess you'd get 28-30 mpg with a 240D.
A buddy of mine and I went to the Nam at the same time, from the same town. He had the best, off the line, fully restored '55 Ford Crown Vicky....with the Plexiglas fore roof, you every saw. His daddy loved that car, and his son, so much he covered it, blocked it and packed it in Vaseline till he got back. No kidding....Vaseline!
My Buddy still has that car today, and it runs like a scared dog. Flat head eight! He has kept it collector's quality and it just shines like a new penny. And, it has 215,000 original miles on it. Some yuppie a$$hole offer him 100,000 for it. He sent that boy packin'.
A man's love of his car transcends money, it's pure love.
Before I left for boot camp, and after I flunked out of college I had a 1965 Chevy Impala convertible Super Sport with a stock 409 cubic inch 4 barrel carb engine, and a 3/18 rear end. I had it for 2 months before I left. God, I loved that car. The top was never up, nor was the accelerator.
The 312/292 V8 (Y block) had oiling problems with the rocker arms. A nice solution was to bolt in the later model 352/290 V8. Even the big Edsel V8s would bolt in. Impressive performance against the 283/327 Chevy guys.
Which, in the low horsepower days of the early-mid 80s, was not terribly bad, especially when you consider the torque.
The new ones are still a heck of a lot faster...nowadays, they manage 0-60 in less than 7 seconds. Mine is probably more like 18. Slow, but not ridiculously so.
my 22 year old has been driving his late grandmother's 88 Celebrity ... after reading this article, I've told him he's a trendsetter ... and at least he's not in debt for a set of wheels.
Yeh! That one would do it for me.
I'll tell a story here about a '55 Ford although some Freeper in this area of Texas may recognize the area and the car. Many years ago (1970s) I would buy western boots from a fellow out in a little place called West Camp, Texas. Back then he sold namebrand boots out of his garage but is now one of the largest boot retailers in eastern New Mexico. But I digress. Each time I drove out to this place, on the FM road going out, I would notice the hood of a 1955 Ford Fairlane just inside an old garage. Over the top of the car you could see a thick chrome piece that went from side to side and I always assumed the car was a "Crown" Victoria. Someone told me the fellow would not sell the car so I never checked on it. Some twenty or or more years later as I drove along the main highway near the intersection of that old FM road, I saw a truck pulling a trailer out onto the main highway. On the trailer was a beautiful but dusty 1955 Ford Fairlane convertible. I guess the family had died and the kids finally sold the car. I never knew it was a convertible.
I had forgotten about that oiling problem in the 292s and 312s but you are absolutely right.
I agree. A large part of the reason I won't trade/sell either of my two oldie cars. Relatively new compared to some of the stuff on here..
My first car was/is an 83 Cutlass Supreme. There's something about that car, I won't let it die, even though it went through two v6s and a 307 with blowby and a rodknock, and now sreaming with a 455 (rocket) 4bbl. Built it up all around, it has the power to be a contender at the track, but I'm just content to drive it around, and its surprisingly quite easy on gas if not constantly mashing the pedal to the metal (goes nearly 400 miles on a tank of gas).
Second car, and even more so a lost cause from every arguable standpoint, is my 86 Caprice Classic wagon. Its only been through one motor (two transmissions though, both before I got it). It looks like hell though, because my father had it before me and he never waxed it and used it on the mail route. Its just stock with a 307 in it, and other than needing a new ignition modulator (it stalls when its hot and dry out a lot), it runs great). I want to fix both up to look good, but right now the wife's 96 Ciera SL is at the front of the queue, courtesy of a parts delivery truck grazing the right side from bow to stern.. Only other issue whatsoever with the Caprice is it needs a new hood desperately. The last few years of that body style they went to aluminum hoods, and with age it bowed and buckled in the middle and closing it is now a two person job...
Muleteam1
No kidding. My first car was a red '69 Cougar with a black vinyl top.
Personality to spare.
I miss her so. Sigh.
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