I had German friends who worked in the German auto manufacturing industry who were American-car hobb

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We don t have such a thing as COTD * on TTAC . It s a shame, maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals too, because without an explicit way to force readers to compete with eachother for an arbitrarily-dispensed, meaningless accolade, you readers out there just won t grovel at our feet the way we d like. We ll work on creating some kind of user rating/slating system, I swear just as soon as we fix the gallery issues, the Cloudflare business, Ed s issue with emotional distance, my lovable but ultimately malicious immaturity, and the lack of tall, busty blondes on the staff. I mean, on the roster. Not on the staff. You know. Not that we couldn t use one or two on the staff. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.
The video heading this segment is a famous Lincoln advertisement demonstrating the embiggenedness of the 86 Town Car. Watch in amazement as a variety of slightly dopey old people try to sort out a hilarious confusion between the Cadillac deVille (or, sadly, Fleetwood of the same year), Buick Electra, and Oldsmobile maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals Ninety-Eight. Watch as the camera focuses, again, and again, and again , on the toy-like C-pillar of the Cadillac. Here s a shot of an 85 Fleetwood showing just how ridiculous it looks:
Really, the styling sits most awkwardly on the Cadillac and perhaps best on the Buick. Not surprisingly, the Buick is the one which looks least like its RWD predecessor. Regardless, they all look dwarfish today . Imagine how they looked twenty-five years ago, surrounded by 215-inch first-gen downsizers like the 77 Fleetwood or 80 Town Car
or, for that matter, the 86 Town Car. Thus we have the subject matter of this video. econobiker brought it up, acc azda atch asked for the video, and Educator(of teachers)Dan found it. Thank you, gentlemen. Now, if you ll excuse me, I m off to drive my unmistakeable Town Car around this city.
My theory is that Holden benefitted maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals greatly from being on the far side of the world from Detroit, so it was more difficult for GM headquarters to meddle. And it wasn t considered a fast track ticket punch so it wasn t burdened with the presence of overambitious maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals GM corporate politicians with blimp-sized egos.
I don t see what s wrong with the styling of any of these cars. They look contemporary enough for the mid 1980s. Dated next to the Taurus and the Audi 5000 sure, but those sedans were far ahead of their time.
I owned an Olds Toronado during the late seventies that I bought new at the Frankfurt/Rhein Main GM outlet at the BX. It was huge! Everything about it was huge. The FWD powertrain maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals was enormous. It wasn t the best handler on the mountainous maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals roads to Berchtesgaden or Garmish but it had plenty of power.
It was vehicles like that Toronado and its Cadillac and Buick brethern that got us the more refined FWD GM cars we enjoyed in the 80s, 90s and beyond. What is a shame is that the foreigners surpassed GM with their FWD development by basing their FWD powertrains on the FWD Audi design of the sixties.
What do you mean by foreigners developing Audi designs of the 60s? While it is true that I can t think of anyone copying GM s side by side longitudinal engine and transmission joined by a chain, relatively maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals few automakers went with the Audi/NSU longitudinal maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals FF layout either. I think the various Issigonis transverse solutions were more popular and influential. They were improved upon by FIAT and Autobianchi on the Primula in the mid sixties, and those were the cars that showed the way forward. VW copied them for the first Golf. Audi s design had too much weight in precisely the wrong place to be copied by many. The only thing worse was the FWD-midengine designs used by the French, who apparently maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals never heard of weight transfer.
maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals In the Toronado, the engine was directly over the front wheels and the transmission maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals was mounted low and next to the engine. The transmission was mounted backwards, and drive from the crank was connected to it via a chain. In the Audi(and NSU Ro80) the engine was in front of the transmission which was attached maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals to it conventionally. The front axle line went through the transmission, leaving maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals the engine maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals hanging out ahead of the front wheels.
CJ, I m impressed! You know your stuff. I lost my original reply to your question but in essence, at that time, the Japanese were on a quest to reverse-engineer German maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals automotive technology from BMW 3-series, Mercedes suspensions, and the Audi FWD system.
I had German friends who worked in the German auto manufacturing industry who were American-car hobbyists that I kept supplied with American car parts from JCWhitney, Warshawski s, etc., who told me the Japanese were doing industrial spying to develop their cars for entry into the US market.
You will appreciate the difficulties Oldsmobile faced when finding the sweet compromise of offering the high performance without torque steering and other aggravating front-wheel-drive characteristics.
Here is a photo of an Audi 100 LS. If you know what you re looking at, you can tell that the engine is mounted far in front of the strut towers, signifying that it is forward of the front wheels because the transmission is mounted behind maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals it and the wheels driven off either maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals side of the transmission:
Ate Up With Motor should be any car enthusiast s first stop when researching the history maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals of a marque or model. Aaron Severson maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals s work is great, he s got very high standards for his source material maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals and I d had the pleasure of letting him use some photos that I ve shot for Cars In Depth.
Those C/H-body GM cars were ubiquitous when I was growing up in the Upper Midwest in late 80 s and early 90 s. Like corn, cows, and passive-aggressiveness you found them everywhere. Drive past a church parking lot on a Sunday maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals morning in rural Iowa or Minnesota in 1992 it d easily be 50% C/H-bodies, mostly the Buicks and Oldsmobiles.
I drove an 87 Olds Ninety Eight (I love that the chrome badges spelled it out) as my college car. White with a white vinyl top, dark blue inside. They tried so hard to make it special velour upholstery and plastiwood as far as the eye could see. Combine it with the hard plastic steering wheel and the extra-wide speedometer with the lazy orange needle. The 3800 engine maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals was uninspiring, but it got up to speed easily enough, needed nothing but clean oil every 5K miles, and delivered an easy 25+ mpg on my drives home to see the folks. Even with 180K+ on her she took good care of me, never gave me any trouble, and certainly bore witness to a lot of my bad behavior.
My grandmother had, I think, an 89 Olds Ninety Eight. Maroon with maroon interior. The last car she ever bought with Grandpa. We drove her to his funeral in it it sat there in the background as we layed him to rest. She sold it shortly a year or so later. It probably only had 50K or so on it, and I m sure she didn t get all that much for it. I wish I still owned it.
They definitely were not a stylistic high point for GM, but they were good, solid cars. They made a lot of people very happy for a long time. I m sad that there are not many left on the roads anymore it makes me realize that I m getting old. Can you tell I miss the ones that played parts in my life?
I think the mileage these cars achieved, not only good for the day but good by today s standards, is something not many people are aware of. A friend inherited a 98 from his dentist dad, after which it went on many long fishing expeditions. maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals I was always astonished at how much ground we could cover on a tank of gas.
Cars with the 3800 get excellent gas mileage, maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals especially considering the displacement of the engine and the fact that it s a pushrod. When Oldsmobile offered a DOHC engine in the Intrigue, it got worse mileage than the 3800 in the same car, despite having a smaller displacement and only modestly greater horsepower.
I had a 1988 Buick Electra T-Type (the 4-door sedan version of the T-type which was even more rare than the 2-door Lesabre Ts, but less desirable) and it was probably the best car that I have ever owned overall. Sure it had the infamous GM peeling paint and undersized front brake rotors, but I had 225K miles on the original drivetrain (including complete exhaust system and CV shafts, how many 1988 Accords can you say that about?) when I sold it and it was still running just fine.
The interior of this body style had MORE room in it than most 1970s full-sized cars, including my 1971 LTD. Rear seat legroom and headroom was unparalleled. The flat floor and optional (THIN) center console made for a ton of front seat legroom also. You didn t feel shoehorned in as is typical in these new cars where the center console eats about a foot of width out of the front seat.
I now have a 2001 Lesabre, and I would much prefer maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals to be driving the 1988 (with the Series II 3800 and upgraded tranny). You could actually tell where the car began AND ended! I think that GM made a big mistake by going to the slugmobile design that ran out the 1990s and into the 2000s.
There were a lot of good design elements in these cars that were cost-reduced out over the following maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals years. The Buicks had a tilt-forward hood (a la BMW) which made getting to the back of the engine a snap. Rear spark plugs and O2 sensor were actually visible and easily accessible maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals w/o having to remove major engine components.
After having had a number of 1960s and 1970s full-sized boats (GM, Ford, and Plymouth), my 1988 Buick was the first FWD and first mid-sized car that I bought. Also the first car that didn t have a V8 in it. It was a major decision maggie valley north carolina vacation rentals for me, as I had never owned a car with electronic engine