PLASTIC
OZONE
DAYDREAM
PLASTIC
OZONE
DAYDREAM
The Corvette Chronicles
Floyd M. Orr
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2000 Floyd M. Orr
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.
Smashwords Edition
This book is a work of fiction. Any and all facts and figures presented herein are accurate to the best of our knowledge. The publisher and author disclaim responsibility for any misprints, math errors, or other inaccuracies presented. Any and all celebrity and trademark names are mentioned for identification purposes only. This is not an official publication.
Published by Writer’s Club Press
ISBN: 0-595-15794-7
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
Plastic Ozone Daydream is dedicated to the memory of David Morrow, who left us all too soon, and to my wonderful wife, Miss Pamela, who made me learn about computers and finish this fifteen-year project.
Acknowledgements
The inspiration for this book comes from a group of obvious sources. The series of Corvette Black Books allowed the verification of hundreds of facts and figures about the history of Corvettes. Small bits of other facts and figures were verified with the Illustrated Buyer’s Guide series. The book would never have been written without the cooperation of The Longhorn Corvette Club BULLetin editors credited at the back of this book. Special recognition must be given to Alan Waters and Dave Doig, who computerized and updated the club newsletter until it broke all records with three consecutive first places in the National Council of Corvette Clubs Newsletter Contest.
The black 1965 Coupe on the Spirits of the Age title page and the Miura in Silver Bullet belong to Scott & Tricia Reid. The white 1959 hardtop in Flash Gordon belonged to Dave Doig, who was also the driver in Coneheads. The blue 1967 427 Coupe in Vampires belonged to the late Steve Hoes. John Erickson drove his wife’s 1987 Coupe in Blue Steel to the home of Steve and Barbara Erickson on Sunny Lane in the Spring of 1990. The owner of the red 1959 in Maybelle’s Inflation is unknown, but the red Chevy station wagon behind it was owned by the legendary Tom Moore, whose hilarious writings for the club newsletter became the seminal spark for this book. All of those mentioned here have been long-time members of Longhorn Corvette Club in Austin, Texas. Without the existence of LCC, I might have bought an Elan instead—or a 911S Targa, or an Austin-Healey 3000, or an XK-E 4.2 Roadster, or a ’66 Mustang GT Convertible.
Cover Design and all photos by author.
Table of Contents
Introduction
American Dreamer in the Ozone
Opiniated Steering Wheels
Me and My Toads
My Favorite Misaligned Sports Cars of Yesterday
Series I: The Wild Tales
Decades
The Art of Cars
Character
Aquarium
Realness
Hosses
Stampeded
Music
Wheels
Twelve Wheels
Futures
Elan
Nomenclature
Eurosport & Baby
Toys
Paint
Targa$
Tekwars
Essence
Series II: Roadblocks
2001
Wally-World
Drivers
Louie, Louie
Speedtraps
Bandwagon
Rationale
Series III: Spirits of the Age
No Pretense
Packards and Portholes
Megatrash
Greenstreak
Chrome Hallucination
Spaced
Rising Stars
Love Minus Zero No Limit
Triad
Maybelle’s Inflation
Ice Cream Fun
Show Me the Magic
Series IV: The Sweet Rides
Highway 7
Coneheads
Sportsuit
Flash Gordon
Blue Steel
Travelog
Silver Bullet
Series V: The Great Pretenders
Kermit the Hermit
The Legend of Old Blue
Vetteworld
Batman
Vampires
Summer Fantasy
Super Squirt
Ride of the Vampires
Cowboys
Introduction
Casting Call
Episode 1: “End of the Trail Drive”
Episode 2: “The Arrival of Mongo”
Episode 3: “The Nine Boys Start Trouble”
Conclusion: “Gunfight at Round Rock”
Epilogue
Flashback
Prelude: Fifty Year Overview
Decade Five: Millennium Odyssey
Decade Four: Technology at Its Best
Decade Three: Conforming to the Regulations
Decade Two: Musclecars in America
Decade One: America’s Sports Car
Epilogue: Tire Tracks
Anagram
The Sports Car Trivia Test
Glossary
The Corvette Chronicles
Bibliography
About the Author
Introduction
PLASTIC OZONE DAYDREAM offers the most depth in the least words to describe particular segments of Americana. No one piece of man-made hardware has ever had more significance in this arena than the Corvette. This is the Corvette’s story told without rules. The more successful of the stories should bring All-American emotions to the surface like an apple pie thrown in the face….
AMERICAN DREAMER IN THE OZONE
Let’s just pretend for the moment that this is my high school theme paper for the topic of “What is a Corvette?” and my reply to this question is going to be as amateurish and opinionated as you might well expect. To top that off, I’m going to fill my garish grammar with allusions to low-life such as marketing departments and funny furrin’ cars! There are two notable facts about the author which I feel you should know before phoning the man with the butterfly net: I have read just about every Road & Track, Car and Driver and Motor Trend issue dating from1974 through 1990 and many before and after that period; and I have, by a conservative estimate, driven 500,000 miles in the past seven years. You may proceed at your own risk.
A fascination with things with wheels and engines and forward motive power overtook me at an age I cannot even remember. Packards and Cadillacs sent me on the way of my passionate obsession. Back in 1962 a big blue Bonnie Convertible taught me what tops were for and a few years later a Volkswagen Convertible taught me another lesson; this time it was how lightweight cars take to tight turns better than big luxury boats. A little raggedy, I mean ratty, Morris Minor Convertible showed me what those foreigners could do with a bit of independent thinking. That thing was as ugly as a post, but its seats and the way they worked in concert with the suspension was wonderful. By this time I knew what I had to have. I just knew, from the bottom of my heart, in the most sentimental of ways, that my first purchase would be an Austin-Healey Sprite. Here was a true sports car and it was cheap. Forgive me for my sins, but back in 1963 or so, the approximate $2000 for a Sprite was the cheap ride! But anyway I got sidetracked into the ultimate motorcycle fascination and it happened to be July, 1968, when I went down to my Austin-Healey dealer, which was in Memphis at that time, to buy my new Sprite (pant, pant). On the way there I stopped by the Fiat dealer and bought an 850 Spider instead. Boy was that a momentous decision of the good variety for me! Since the 850 had debuted only a year earlier, there was far less to read about it than the Sprite. That is the power of marketing. The bottom line was that once I drove the Spider, I saw that its 50 cubic inches and rear-engine were only minor irritations compared to those emitting from a beast of horridly primitive design. I had the Spider only two years. I ran the stink out of it and tried, unsuccessfully, many times, to get worse than 30 mpg. The little booger just wasn’t thirsty!
The car I almost bought many times was the only Ford I’ve ever really liked, the ‘64-’66 Mustang. I just never wanted that beast quite enough to own a Ford. The Mustang had many tiny flaws in its suitability for my tastes, but one flaw just killed any ideas I ever had about buying one and really taking it home. It was a Ford. No, not really, just kidding, etc. I don’t really have an Anti-Ford Merit Badge either. The problem, from 1964 all the way through 1980, was that when you put the right goodies onto the Mustang’s price sticker just to make it truly interesting, the words echo back from the ozone, Sting Ray. Back in those good old days, $5000 would buy a nice new Corvette. That was still only one-third the price of a Ferrari. A Corvette has generally been close to a Ferrari in performance. It has always been cruder and a bunch less costly. This isn’t horse hockey: a Ferrari will prance and a Mustang will stampede off in a cloud of dust, but only the Sting Ray can produce such a high smile factor while thinning the wallet only a little more than a far less sporting Mustang.
My own crude mental library has in its catalogs much useless trivia and a lot of it is about Corvettes. Did you know that every time the smell of burning rubber assaults the snotty noses of the Car and Driver staff they make a snide remark about Corvettes and these same snotnoses fight over who gets to drive the Vette every time one of them can find some new excuse to test one? The Dino of the early years and even all the Dino’s descendants consistently get good remarks from all the magazines about their marvelous (mid-engine) weight distribution. The testers at Road & Track produced the following weight distributions: Dino GT4 41/59; Boxer 43/57; 246 41/59; 365 GTC4 51/49; 1970 loaded 454 53/47; 1969 435-hp 50/50; and 1967 300-hp 49/51. To my eyeballs, these are darn interesting figures. First of all, you can see that if a person does not have to use his own wallet to drive a Ferrari, then of course the beast howls a beautiful tune and sticks like the infamous glue. But did you realize that the Corvette in one of its more decadent forms still had a front/rear weight distribution very similar to the V-12 front-engine Ferrari of that vintage, and that the highly touted 246 was headed toward the Porsche department in its f/r distribution? The facts are that, along with the TVR’s, the positioning of the drivetrain in the Stingray is similar to that in the 365GTC4, which is basically a touring Daytona. The difference is that the C has an engine-mounted transmission with the engine way back in the chassis with a pair of tiny rear seats added. The B (Daytona) has a transaxle and only two seats. The C is the only Ferrari of that vintage with that design.
The Sting Rays and Stingrays are just cheap, klunky Ferraris to me. This is the best compliment I can pay them, particularly when you remember how much driving and reading I have done. I have only one Corvette, and to be honest with you I have very little desire to have another. The only cars I have ever seen or read about that I like as much as the one I have are the 308 GTB/S and (almost) that 365 GTC4, at $30,000 apiece of course. My car squeaks and groans when you drive it under about 50 mph. At that speed you have to be in some gear lower than you want to be and in your boredom, you will swear you can see that gas needle dropping. It doesn’t seem to complain much at a reasonable speed. The conversation made by the wind, the exhaust, and the tires muffles the body’s pot-holed complaints at about 60 mph, and if you open the secondaries on the 4-bbl., all you can hear is howl.
Did I mention the body the Stingray reminds me of? The 246 has the poured-over-the-wheels look down pat. The Cobra has the macho-muscle-fun look at bay. The E-type is of course the epitome of long and slinky. A little-known 275 NART Spyder, of which the books say there are only ten, is interestingly close to a 1968 Corvette Convertible. The infamous 308 GTS, which has outsold all past Ferraris, isn’t really that far from the 68-72 Coupes either. In my opinion the 68-82 dash is the best there is, and since that is what you have to look at when you herd the beast, that is an important factor to me. The only Ferrari even close is the 365C with its front-mid-engine-Corvette-type layout. When I selected my Vette, I was well aware that a TVR would have given me exclusivity and compactness (remember, I admit that I once owned a Fiat) and I know that I can see out of a Lotus Elan much better than a Sting Ray Convertible, and you may never understand how important that is to me. I owned a 1950 Chevy for many years and I had to sit on a big fat pillow every time I drove it. I swore that I never was going to actually sit on a pillow in a 1965 Sting Ray Convertible. Besides that it has too many details on the dash I don’t like. When the longer, lower, wider body came along (and I could see over the steering wheel) that was the car I had to have.
My Stingray is so superbly competent at whatever speed I dare to drive it that it has endeared itself to me in a way that no other car at a reasonable price can match. I have read more about Corvettes and Ferraris than any other cars because these are all the kitty-cat’s meows. TVR, Fiat, Maserati, Alfalfa, and the others can have the cat’s paws and claws. The meows are taken.
This cadet was in high school in the mid-Sixties. It is obvious where my automotive passion lies. Somewhere I bet each one of you has a story to tell, too, and your Plastic Beast might even expose a hint of your own lifestyle ...back in those days.
1950 Chevrolet Deluxe 2-Dr. Sedan. My dad bought it in 1960 for $100. He gave it to me as my first car in 1965. I changed its original black to bright blue and the interior was “updated” to black vinyl door panels, walnut contact paper on the dash, a genuine walnut steering wheel, bright blue carpet, and black buckets from a GTO. The car remained in the family through a total of three rebuilt engines and a zillion miles. This photo was taken in Dallas. “The Bomb”, as my cousin named it, was finally sold for $200 in Austin, Texas, in 1979.
OPINIONATED STEERING WHEELS
ACURA took the luxury car wars to new heights by bringing a new Japanese marque to market. With the “sterling” reputation created by Honda, a new upscale era began.
ALFA ROMEO is the only Italian company to attempt the Ferrari driving spirit in reasonably priced models with the probable reliability problems expected.
ASTON-MARTIN builds a heavy, powerful car that always seems like a rare, British, exclusive, and all-too-expensive, Corvette, and they do it very well.
AUDI tries to be the mid-priced German, but usually the complexity/price quotient bites back, much as it does with Jaguars, and the emphasis is usually on features and technology.
BMW invented the sports sedan, is certainly stuck on rear-drive, makes every model drive at least very well, and continually chases the status held by Mercedes.
CHRYSLER produces cost-effective copycats and niche-fillers. Their models come out last with the most visible features for the lowest price, usually utilizing captives.
FERRARI races first and builds for the road second. All engines howl and all models take a bit of talent to drive properly.
FORD usually has a better idea. They invent concepts such as personal luxury cars and ponycars, and they sometimes take risks on new ideas such as retractable hardtop convertibles and roly-poly styling.
GM produces highly developed, very complete designs premiering usually between those of Ford and Chrysler and using a lot of brand interchangeability among components.
HONDA is the world’s most serious engine developer and all their models are very completely engineered, although many are limited in range and somewhat feminine in personality.
HYUNDAI sells almost literally a Korean Mitsubishi line of econoboxes that offers economy and value right out where the U.S. consumer can see it and buy it.
INFINITY followed Acura’s trail with a line impersonating Jaguar with its elegance, fine driving qualities, and good taste. Like its parent brand, Infinity never expects to overtake Lexus production numbers.
JAGUAR has always offered Old World luxury like a Rolls Royce sold by Sears, which, like an Audi in burled walnut, is both a blessing and a curse.
LAMBORGHINI does not race and all models are meant to be superior to Ferraris on the road. Build quality and practicality are far down the list headed by stunning styling and exotic specifications.
KIA is the Nineties version of a mythical Subaru/Hyundai alliance. Attempting to break into the bottom of the U.S. market, their main threats are a cheap little sport utility and a matching cheap little sedan.
LEXUS is the upscale Toyota brand. That should say it all: conservatism, high volume, supreme build quality, the best of the Japanese upscale copycats, if these are the words with which you define best.
LOTUS is the engineering never-say-die, super handling with light weight, bulldog of sports cars. Handling is everything for this little squirt of a company.
MASERATI is the conservative builder of engines and bodies among the Italian pedigreed sports cars. Production is kept very limited, but the styling and technology are very conservative.
MAZDA always seeks out niches in the market for intuitively innovative designs and models. They are limited in scope like Honda, yet ambitious like Ford.
MERCEDES-BENZ is indeed the most engineered and pedigreed conservative line of sedans in the world, cost, complexity, maintenance, and maintenance costs be damned!
MITSUBISHI sells cars as much under other people’s signs as their own, and all the models offer loads of visible features and trendy style for the money.
NISSAN is very much an oriental Ford with its trendiness lacking overall development, producing a few serious winners and many featureless copycats.
PEUGEOT may be French and hard to pronounce, but all their machines are supremely comfortable if nothing else, and like Lotus, they just refuse to die in the U.S. market.
PORSCHE has the audacity to sell an entire line of sports cars only which offer high levels of engineering and construction quality and very drivable snob appeal.
SAAB has always been the not-so-conservative car from and for a cold-weather climate. They have been pioneers in front wheel drive, even with the sporty Sonnett, a sports car ahead of its time.
SATURN is the long-awaited sixth GM division, but like its inclusion here outside the GM listing, this is the division that truly blazes its own trail into customer satisfaction ranking with the big boys.
SUBARU was a real pioneer a couple of decades ago with their cheap and reliable four-wheel-drives. They seem to hold their own in a very tough market by combining nutball bravado with fiscal conservatism.
SUZUKI builds competent, value-effective motorcycles and a line of cars not much larger with tiny engines not really very well suited to American driving conditions.
TOYOTA usually shrinks, refines, and defines GM concepts and product lines, with the ultimate emphasis on build quality rather than a broad range of new and exciting concepts-- a very conservative company.
VOLKSWAGEN has always at least attempted to offer reasonably priced German cars with lots of engineering and build quality with very small engines.
VOLVO is the brand tailor-made for the conservative safety nuts among us. Their forays into sports cars have been few and far between, and they consistently have built sedans and wagons with rear wheel drive.
Footnote: Ten Things We Absolutely Never Needed to Have On or In Our Cars
(In No Particular Order)
1. Plastic wheel covers
2. A zillion tiny buttons on our car stereos
3. Engines made from other engines with two cylinders deleted
4. Steering systems without a feel for the road underneath
5. Tires that are simply too cheap and ineffective for safe handling
6. Noisy and/or ineffective windshield wipers
7. Shoulder belts on motors that actually encourage forgetting to buckle the lap belt
8. Seats with insufficient thigh and/or back support for no apparent reason
9. Automatic transmissions connected between tiny engines and overly tall gearing
10. Digital computer games disguised as instrument readouts.
ME & MY TOADS
From July, 1978, through March, 1990, I owned and drove extensively seven cars of a rare species I call the Road Toad. Actually I just lied to make it interesting: these toads are not even remotely rare. They were some of the highest production cars on the roads of America throughout The Eighties. The subject at large is the GM Business Coupe of the Eighties that was downsized in 1978. These toads included the legendary Grand Prix, the forever-regal Regal, and last but not least in the sales race, the never-before-raced Monte Carlo, named of course after a racetrack. My personal collection of road toads included the following suspects:
1978 Grand Prix named Dumbo (the flying blue elephant). His features included a V-8 with the first year of electronic ignition, light blue shade with a white vinyl top, and a light blue interior with bench seats.
1979 Regal named The Regal Beagle. The Beagle had the wondrous distinction of the F-41 Sport Suspension (hallelujah!), V-8, white exterior with red vinyl interior, and the lack of silly hoohahs.
1980 Regal named The Road Toad. This 90-degree V-6 slug was the first of several nightmares to come. Its dark metallic gray color was as homely as its dark red vinyl interior. It at least had buckets and a console.
1981 Regal named Tuffy (the cute little light-blue mouse). It still had the wretched ¾’s of a V-8, but its nice blue color and matching blue cloth, buckets and console, interior moved it up a notch from the RT.
1982 Regal named The Blue Goose was dark blue and its console was of a worthless design. Its engine was still as rough as a choppy sea and its ride as mushy as a waterbed on wheels and out of control.
1983 Regal named The Grey Ghost after the 50’s TV show. Its pale gray exterior and interior made it inconspicuous, but its seats were the best of the bunch and its console was of a new and useful design.
1984 Monte Carlo named Pimpmobile 7 for its tacky, overstyled exterior. With its unnecessarily limited front seat travel and absolutely useless console, this abomination was a disgrace to its kindred spirits.
All of these turkeys had the Heavy Duty Suspension package meant for trailer towing, with the exception of The Regal Beagle, the shining star of this herd that stood out like perfume at a skunk convention with its F-41. This is actually an incorrect option code for a Buick, but I happen to know the corresponding code for a Chevrolet is the F-41. This has always been one of the best buys on a Chevrolet option sheet, and the difference was the same on the Buick Regal Beagle. The everyday driving quality of The Beagle was far above that of all the non-Sport Suspension toads.
The overall ratings of the toads, from best to worst are: (1) The Regal Beagle (2) The Grey Ghost (3) Dumbo (4) Tuffy (5) The Road Toad (6) The Blue Goose (7) Pimpmobile 7. The best features of all the toads were reliability, the steering, the GM air conditioning systems, and the highway mileage. The worst features of all the toads were the engines, HD Suspensions, tires, in-town mileage, wind resistance, radar resistance, and general annoyances. The annoyances common to some, but not all, included: (a) horrible console design; (b) horrible seats; (c) suspensions that cause tires to self-destruct; (d) tires that cause suspensions to self-destruct; (e) unbalanced brakes (Streets under toads are like Gremlins. Don’t get them wet!); (f) windows that seal properly only when they feel like it; (g) shorts in the electrical systems which cause repeated installations of stereos; (h) very loud and noisy windshield wipers; (I) cheesy GM stereo installations; (j) and numerous computer carbs acting like Gremlins after a pigout, and the irony of it all.
General Motors made toads of this particular species at a very prolific rate from 1978 to 1987. The 1978 Grand Prix was the first of the downsized GM personal luxury cars. In the coming years the Cutlass would be the best seller at Oldsmobile, and it is only another variation of the other three. They all have the same basic chassis, drivetrain, and body. The differences among them have always been miniscule. The only thing an onlooker could mistake one for is one of the copycats, such as the one with Genuine Corinthian Leather. When you really think about it the GM Toad could be the “form follows function ala Beetle” made by The General, but from many miles of driving experience I would say that GM simply dropped the ball on its own foot with this wretched design. Toads have almost no interest in taking a sudden break in the middle of outer nowhere. Dumbo’s electronic ignition fritzed on the outskirts of Houston once, but that’s the end of that list. You look mahvellous, darling! In general all the toads are engineered in the Twilight Zone and marketed to the American hordes who could care less about the engineering of their vehicles as long as they don’t embarrass them at parties. They are designed in whatever mode the marketing maniacs can get away with, as long as it’s cheap.
Toads and Gremlins have a lot in common. The most significant is that they both are designed to look good in the showroom and save the surprises until long after the deal has been made. The irony I referred to is that every component on the toads that I am disgusted with was also available on the other toads. Unlike the VW masterpiece, GM has made absolutely minimal effort to consolidate the components of these cars into one really fine machine. They insist on making the silliest of changes for cheap-shot marketing reasons, while whining that jewels like the F-41, for which they get about $50, are for the sports car drivers only. A very small portion of the total toad production had the Sport Suspension option. Dealer installed tape stripes cost twice as much because the dealer farms out the striping job, and we all know that everybody has to get their cut. The sad part of this story is that the Sport Suspension helps this car avoid accidents and the stripes can be the most difficult part of an accident repair job. I have personally experienced both of these problems.
The most dangerous part of the toads is their tires, which can produce the worst wet-weather handling and non-stopping I have ever experienced. Some of the tires are so lousy they begin premature wear in a manner that damages the front suspension. If the base price of a toad were raised by $100 for the addition of decently safe tires, the problem would no longer exist.
The suspension on the toads is far too soft. It is so soft that the car blows around in the breeze on the highway, wallows like a drunk in the turns, and can cause premature tire wear. There is too much compliance everywhere. GM’s story about this is pure horse hockey: the ride sacrifice in the Regal Beagle was minimal! The difference in stopping in the wet and wet or dry cornering was astounding. Add $50 to the base price with my blessing.
The fact that this car is sold at all with any engine less than a 305 V-8 is a total disgrace. This car is so slow that it is dangerous. Wet driving is loads of fun! The V-6 in the toads is the roughest engine I have ever experienced. It gets rougher with age, too. Other than the fact that the design of this engine was dirt cheap for GM to do, it has no advantages of the nature GM and our beloved government would like you to believe. It gets the same highway mileage as the V-8, and I suspect, less mileage around town. Did I tell you that it idles rougher than the hulking beast I have chained down in my Stingray? When I used to leave The Toad and get in the Stingray, Baby’s purr made me think I was in a Jaguar! Did I say it was slow? You can race all the base-engine Escorts you want, but don’t mess with those VW buses!
The Grey Ghost had wonderful seats and a console. The Pimpmobile had the worst seats and the worst console I have ever experienced. The bottom cushion of the front seat had no support for your body, and neither did the rear seat, although it was a bit better than the optional cloth buckets. The front seat was too close to the firewall, apparently to give the illusion of more legroom in the rear seat with the front seat set all the way back. This bit of idiotic nonsense was designed for a car which rarely carried rear passengers! When you hit a bump, and any little old bump would do, the lower cushion would dip just enough for your tailbone to make contact with a piece of metal within the way-too-soft seat’s structure. The annoyance level of this defect alone was incomparable. If you moved away from the metal stabbing you at the base of your spine, you would soon discover your tired feet and aching ankles that had been supporting your weight. You may as well have been standing up!
Chevrolet released the Eurosport in 1984 to relieve us of all this grief. The Eurosport’s design was so good in comparison that it changed my attitude forever about four-door sedans. I can look back on this story from my computer chair in 1999 and see the same pattern of mistakes taking over once again. No more Eurosports have been made since 1990, and the replacements have for the most part lacked the Eurosport’s perfection. General Motors’ sales records have not been very impressive throughout The Nineties. Well, color me surprised!
MY FAVORITE MISALIGNED SPORTS CARS OF YESTERDAY
Lotus is the smallest, lightest way to go really fast on four wheels. By the same analogy, the Aston Martin DB’s, the V-12 Italian exotics, and big-block Corvettes are the biggest, heaviest modes of fast transport. Like most Jaguars, the Lotus is made with many expensive, high-tech parts, but the methods of design and assembly are distinctly done to a price. Let’s just be fair and say that you are making a sports car to meet a price and that sports car is also going to be both light and fast, then you can rationally assume that the car will not be as reliable and durable as a car made without those strict parameters. The Elan has always been to me a Fiat 850 Spider with the engine up front, a plastic body, twice the horsepower and ten times the charisma. A Europa is a 246 GTB with a bargain basement price and far less image. Ever compare an Espirit with a Mondial? How can a Mondial be a $70,000 car when the Espirit, even in its most pretentious, Ferrari gobbling $50,000 mode, the Espirit can do anything the Mondial does except display a prancing horse brand. The other Lotus models are nice, too, but they are not my favorites.
In spite of all the beautiful designs of The Seventies and Eighties, such as the 308’s, the C4 Corvette, the Countach, the Boxer, the 930 and the 944, the Jaguar XK-E will always be considered beautiful. A nice example of one of these, whether 3.8 Six, 4.2 Six, or 5.3 V-12, is pleasing to the eyes of many. Do you know what that means? It means that when you want to market your Jag, you can be relatively assured that there are many others out there like yourself that are suckers for a nice body. Look at all the sports cars that have held their value and you will see that styling has had a lot to do with it. Out of all the really attractive sports cars, the E stands out as the only one, with the exception of the Corvette, which is not distinctly overpriced, and unlike the Corvette, you don’t meet yourself on every corner. Look at it this way: if you desire a fast, classic sports car with a sexy body and a reasonable price, there are only two you can afford. If Vettes and E-Types were not built to a price, they would be better cars and two more nice toys you and me could not afford. So what is the result? We work on them a lot so we can enjoy the pleasures they offer.
In the past decades, going back to the mid-Sixties, there has been a line of cars for sale in the U.S. which I have always thought to be of exceptional value: the Griffith / TVR’s. At one glorious time in the U.S. some 58 people purchased TVR Tuscans for about $6000. This essentially was a Cobra Coupe, with its little bitty British chassis and body and its 271 hp, 289 cubic inch Ford Mustang engine and gearbox. The later model roadsters at one time were a steal at $16,500. As tiny as their production figures have been, I feel that the TVR’s will always have a place in my personal Sports Car Hall of Fame.
Saving the beast until last, the 68-72 Stingray, particularly with the big-block with four-speed drivetrain, is truly one of the great sports car values of our time. I rate the dash layout #1 with no exceptions. The power for the money, particularly considering total maintenance and rebuild costs, is simply exceptional. The control over the environment with its GM air conditioning and multiple top alternatives is also exceptional. Let’s set the record straight on a few misaligned Stingray points. (1) The weight distribution of the big-blocks is 51/49 front/rear. (2) The Jaguar V-12 is much heavier and thirstier and far less reliable. (3) The highly touted 246 Dinos have a worse weight distribution, although they may “feel” better. (4) Both at the time they were built and on today’s classic car market, they are incredibly cheap! You can go boogety-boogety in a very nice 427 or 454 Stingray for less than $20,000. You can also go very fast (for a four-wheeler) in this machine. A new Harley-Davidson Sportster price starts at about $6000 with hardly any options at all, and it is not particularly fast or reliable. A new Ferrari costs at least $80,000, and even the most boring and slow used one costs $25,000. A blindingly fast Japanese bullet bike will cost well over $6000 today. Why do these classic Stingrays languish in the bargain basement?
Series I
The Wild Tales
Series I is the beginning. Like Mark I. Like C1.
These are the simpler designs. Every car has to
start somewhere….
DECADES
Observing the history of the Corvette a little more than casually can lead to some fascinating conclusions about this plastic beast and the remarkable way that it has successfully held its position in the steel jungle for more than three decades. Even though the ‘53 and the ‘85 may be very different from each other, they are still Corvettes, which means they are still ...the same.
The new Chevy was introduced in 1953. The Big Change (Sting Ray body and independent rear suspension) came in 1963. The first time the government made it look significantly different was in 1973. The 1983 does not exist, or you could say that in 1983 arrived Big Change #2. I wonder if the famous V-8 will disappear in 1992?
Consider how much the ‘54 is a mildly altered ‘53 and it is of less interest in the collector market. Could ‘63 and ‘64 be substituted into that sentence? How about ‘73 and ‘74? If there had been an ‘83, the ‘84 would probably seem very little altered and it would be of less interest to collectors in 1995.
1965 will always be remembered as a very “hot” year and so will 1985. 1975 came out cooler than usual, but don’t shovel the fault on Chevy too hastily: this was the year that “performance” became a dirty word, much like “drunk driving” is in 1985. The government was throwing its weight around in 1975. An optimist would say that the pattern has not been broken. In 1985 Chevy is back on the track: fast is fun again. You thought I forgot that the extremely famous small-block engine began to make the plastic flex its muscles first in 1955, didn’t you?
666 is the infamous symbol of the beast. Chevy seemed to lose things in the “6” years: the ‘56 lost its roadster status with new roll-up windows (Omigawd, it’s not a spoats car no mo’!). The fuel injection went bye-bye in 1966 and the fresh-air hood disappeared in 1976. Let’s hope that whatever gets lost next year is some little doo-dad that breaks frequently, or maybe a CB radio that only 16 cars had in 1985!
If any year seemed to be blessed with the magic, it had to have been 1967, the famous last year of the body that could make strong men weak in the knees; or was it 1957, the year Chevy seemed to be on a roll with the Corvette discovering fuel injection and the four-speed, and the regular Chevy line, which still makes collectors pant? The real miracle came in 1977, when Chevrolet sold a record number of Vettes, even though the ‘77 was little different from the ‘76. If anything could be noted to liken the ‘77 to the ‘67 and the ‘57, it would have to be the very successful way they were received by the buying and collecting public.
There are many elements such as trim and mechanical details that make the ‘58, ‘68, and ‘78 singularly unique years. 1958: the year of the chrome overdose. 1968: the year of the new-fangled gadget overdose. 1978: the year of over-promotion (too many Silver Anniversaries produced to keep it really interesting, along with another special of the same year). In all three of the above, there is an exceptional number of individual items unique to those individual years.
The ‘59, ‘69, and ‘79 were nothing if not successful. Basically Chevy just fixed everything that needed fixing from the previous year, and they did it quite well.
The years of quiet refinement: 1960, 1970, and 1980 were models distinguished by their subtlety. These models had few changes, but the changes made produced nicer cars, without losing quality control to new model innovations or rushed production.
1961, 1971, and 1981: things are getting pretty boring about now. I mean that about both the model years and this correlation nonsense. The Sting Ray tail appeared in 1961; the fiber optic system was traded for the burglar alarm and lowered compressions in 1971; and in good old ‘81, we got the NEW L-81 engine with a computer thrown in for free!
Another small yawn for the ‘62 that predated the eye-popper of 1963; the last year of coupe removable rear windows and the first of net horsepower ratings in 1972; and the slick Collector Edition amidst an ocean of all-L-83-with-four-speed-automatic powertrains offered in 1982. The “2’s” were another group of lasts.
The Eighties decade has brought us many fine and expensive attributes for the plastic beastie: the fat farm in 1980, two-tone paint in ‘81, four-speed automatics in ‘82, a marketing ploy in 1983, an all-new stomper in ‘84, the return of fuel injection in 1985, ABS and a convertible in 1986, aftermarket Callaway Twin-Turbo in ‘87, super-exotic tires in ‘88, and the return of a convertible with removable hardtop in 1989. What’s next, a four-cam howler in 1990?