What are your Favorite Cars???

[McHeath]

Last Fall we were out puttering about town on our scooters and came across this truck for sale.  After hemming and hawing with the owner I drove off with it for 1200 bucks.  

Always wanted one of these.  Not sure why, probably need to have my head examined.

It's a 1972 Ford F-250 Camper Special.  360 V-8, C-6 auto trans, power steering and brakes, Factory AC, dual gas tanks that hold 40 gallons total.  I'm the third owner and it seems to have 120,000 miles on it.  

All original, even the paint.  I did add the headrests and three point seat belts as I didn't fancy my skull going through the back window from a rear end hit.

Runs shockingly good, fires right up, motor right off in it.  Gets beyond terrible gas mileage, 8mpg, if you keep your foot out of it.

So far it's been a lot of fun, and a blast from the past after decades of driving small vehicles. 

One of the things I like about it is the total lack of all modern electronics.  Not a single warning buzzer, safety interlock, computer, or sensor.  It still has points in the distributer and a two barrel carb.  Nor does it have a single emission control component, having been exempt when it was built due to it's GVWR, and we don't have to do smog checks to register it due to it's age.  Pretty much vehicle, pure and simple essence, undiluted and straight. 

[Dennis Markham]

Very nice, Heath!  You guys out west talk about how you don't find phones like we do here in the north east, but we sure don't find forty year old vehicles in the kind of shape of that one.  With all the salt used on the roads here in the winter to melt ice, automobiles are eaten by rust.  Especially of that vintage.  Very cool truck.  Congrats!

[Tom B]

Tell you what, that is a nice truck 

[HowardPgh]

For me, the only classic car I would have is a Citroen 2CV, though maybe a Mini aswell, but the 2CV takes priority for sure....

This picture is for you 2CVbloke

[McHeath]

Wow nice car.  And it's got 2 horsepower!

(sorry, couldn't resist)

[twocvbloke]

Just keep it away from Tesco and Findus, or else they'll end up in burgers & lasagne...

[McHeath]

Yeah I've heard ya'll been having some sort of trouble with horsey ending up in the food.     My dad used to eat squirrel and possum when he was kid, which are not high on my list. 

[twocvbloke]

Yeah I've heard ya'll been having some sort of trouble with horsey ending up in the food.    

Apparently horse is a good eat, better than Beef, but, it's the fact that it was illegally added to the foodchain that's upset people a lot, cos you don't know whether there was anything wrong with it or not....

[mienaichizu]

Oh I almost forgot to post this. This is my new car, a Toyota Crown 1983 model that I bought almost 3 years ago.
Its a 4 drive transmission, diesel engine

[twocvbloke]

From what I hear, diesel cars aren't common on that side of the pond, only foreign brands having offered them and GM having tried and failed to make a decent diesel engine using the small-block design as a base pattern...

Still, there are diesel gems over there still available, obviously classic cars now, such as the Mercedes W123 300D (or 300DT, with a turbo), those things are bulletproof, and will run on pretty much anything oily, and of course have the looks and class of a Mercedes...

[McHeath]

Oh I almost forgot to post this. This is my new car, a Toyota Crown 1983 model that I bought almost 3 years ago.
Its a 4 drive transmission, diesel engine

Nice car!  I like old cars in general, but this one Ramil is very clean and looks great.

And no, twocvbloke, diesels are rare over here in cars.  The US car makers only offer them in 3/4 ton and larger pickups, and even there they are huge beasts, so you are not going to see great fuel economy.  Back in the early 80's during the second oil crisis you could get some diesels in cars and small trucks, Toyota offered a 2.2 in their pickup that easily gave mileage in the 35+ mpg range.  

I owned a couple of diesel VW Rabbits, one of which, with the 1.5, got 48mpg on the freeway.  Still the best mileage vehicle I've owned.  I rebuilt that engine once, a simple deal of pulling the head and bottom end, but leaving the block in place in the engine bay for honing.  It was a great engine.  

Rumor has it that Dodge is going to drop a diesel 3.0 in their 1/2 ton pickup next year that will give 30+mpg on the freeway, that would be a first in a long time for 1/2 tons trucks here.  The US truck market has gone plumb crazy, in my opinion, about horsepower and engine size in the last decades.  Used to be you could buy a full size 3/4 truck with a simple 105 horsepower, 3.9 inline 6 cyl and get mileage in the low 20s on the freeway.  

But that was 40 years ago.  You'd think with the tech advances since then that pickups would be giving mileage in the low 30's on the freeway, and mid 20's in town. 

[twocvbloke]

I always find it incredible how the big three over there make such large engines in terms of Litres, but they put out such small figures in terms of horsepower and MPG, the general response is "It's all about the torque!!", fine if you're towing a London tower block about, but you have to use up a lot of fuel to get the engines to spin up and maintain that torque, and if all you do is the school run and the weekly shopping, you're wasting so much money on those pigs...

All the while, over here you get little engines, be they diesel or petrol, being made that can produce insane horses for the small sizes, and maintain a high MPG (well Miles per Imperial Gallons), and as for Japanese brands like Honda, they produce whopping figures for little 4-pot engines, all of which could run rings around the average american boat...

Someday though, the Diesel-engined car will be more common again over there, seeing as diesel is cheaper and more efficient, and modern (well, modern foreign) engines being cleaner burning, less polluting and a lot quieter, the only thing stopping them being used is the paperwork brought in over there years ago to prevent the diesel cars being sold to keep the american people reliant on the ol' petroleum distillate cos that's the moneymaker for the oil co's, it's funny how the governments over the years have played into their hands...

[McHeath]

Yeah torque numbers have always been widely promoted, at least for trucks.  For example my 72' Ford F-250 has a 360 V-8, 5.8l, and only manages to get 172 horsepower on the ground.  (that's the number on the data plate with the VIN) But the torque figure is 375 pounds, quite a lot. 

US car makers have significantly improved their horsepower/displacement numbers in just the last 5 years or so.  But they could do better, for example my 08' Accord has a 146 cubic inch engine (2.4) and has 190 ponies, so well over one horsepower per cubic inch.  (an old benchmark)  It also easily pulls down 31-32 mpg on the freeway, going 70mph, AC on full, and it's a large car. 

The US bias has always been towards large displacement engines, which few of us actually need, and so we pay for that with poor mpg.  My dad loved large engines, and he had some whoppers in his cars over the years.  A 352, 390s, the 428 in the Galaxie, 460s in the trucks, massive hulks that were amazingly bulletproof in reliability and thirsty at the pump. 

Diesel here, Calif, is more expensive than gasoline and has been for a long time.  The car makers always charge a premium for a diesel engine, often a lot, which you simply won't make back in fuel savings from the higher mpg unless you own the car a long time.  Same for hybrids. 

As some wag once said the cheapest car to own and operate is the one you have that's paid for. 

[twocvbloke]

Yeah, diesel is more expensive per litre here than petrol, a cleverly thought out intentional price hike to make diesel a similar cost per mile, but the advantage of the diesel engine is you don't have to use the stuff at the pumps that they refer to as diesel (Rudolf Diesel used things like peanut oil in his development stage)...

With an engine such as the Merc W123 300D, old VW engines, most Isuzu engines (which GM used over here until they decided to use their own), all can run on anything from old engine oil to used Canola (or for us brits, Rapeseed oil, same stuff, just a different name) without any modifications, and of course when you refine vegetable oils or even animal fats into Biodiesel, you can use it in more modern engines with relatively few modifications, though you do have to ensure they're compatible with Bio as it can eat away at rubber seals and hoses (see Top Gear & their 24 hour endurance race in a diesel BMW which isn't bio compatible!!), which ends up with a dead car...

Of course, there are cheaper fuels which will work great, but governments will frown upon (often resulting in fines and possibly worse), paraffin being one of them, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's that most of the time there's no fuel duty paid on it and therefore, s'not allowed...

Still, if I ever somehow manage to ever afford to be able to drive, I'd definitely buy a diesel car as a daily driver, though I wouldn't know what as yet cos I have no need to think of what I'd buy, but it'd probably be a Honda Accord (Euro, sold as an Acura across the pond) tourer...

[McHeath]

One of my favorite tales to tell is when I drove my 79' VW diesel Rabbit from California to Austin, Texas.  The car had a super large fuel tank bladder in the spare tire spot, and incredible range.

Filled up in Bakersfield, CA for about 25 dollars.  (this was in 1991 or so)

Next fill up was in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Cost about 27 dollars as I recall.

Arrived in Austin with a quarter tank of fuel left.  (took about 30 hours total, one stop to sleep in a rest stop)

Total miles were about 1,600.  Cost of fuel about 53 dollars.  So that's about .03 cents a mile.

Wish I had kept that car.