Three articles over at AA today! Based on overall page and search popularity, I've written an article on the Nissan 240SX. Plus, two backport Collectibles articles: the Chevrolet Chevelle and the Toyota Corolla AE86. An excerpt of the 240SX article: If you're big on RWD, short on cash, and absolutely...
Holy crap, it's another Collectibles article over at AA! Today's topic is the Porsche 959. An excerpt from the article: It's only got one side mirror. I understand there are aerodynamic reasons to shed the unnecessary passenger mirror—but come on. The only other 1986 I've driven that didn't have a...
Rob got some great photos of a Lada Niva when he was in Taipei—and they've interested me so much that I wrote an article about the car. Without the stickers, the Niva is a really neat little vehicle. Read the article over at AA....
Holy crap, it's the Bond car! Another collectibles article over at Autos Articulated. Photograph by Brett Weinstein....
Hey, that's right, another Autos Articulated article—all about the Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am with the big gold eagle on the hood. Awesome. Damn, that's a big image....
I've posted a collectibles article about the Merkur XR4Ti over at Autos Articulated. No sir, I don't like the XR4Ti....
I'm officially back getting into getting back into the swing of things! Tonight's article is a request from Rob: the Mazda RX-8....
I've finally gotten back into the swing of things and have just posted an article about the BMW E34 M5 (sold from 1991 through 1993 here in the US) over at Autos Articulated. It's good to be writing again....
Off and on for the past four decades, Maserati has filled the niche market of selling cars to people too cheap and too weird to buy a Ferrari. The new MC12, for example, is little more than a rebadged Ferrari Enzo with a cash-back incentive. The Coupé is about as...
Now that I'm about done with all the moving, I figure it's about time to get back into writing something worth reading. So I'll start that ... tomorrow. Here's what I've done so far—and this time, it's sorted. Maybe I should just post this list somewhere.Austin-Healey 3000 BMW 2002 BMW...
Let's talk about James Bond. You may have heard of him—he's a suave British spy-type known for how daring his missions are, how precisely he performs his secret operations, and how classy he is the entire time he's doing it. He's refined and understated until he needs to do his...
I'm nearing my 30th collectibles article here at /dev/null and I figured that instead of just writing the post (as I usually do), that I'd also write about writing the post. Writing about writing? Why heck, that sure sounds like excitement to me! Step 1: Get the ball rolling. In...
If I were to imagine the meeting that spawned the design for the Miata, I would come up with something like this: A half-dozen grey-haired Japanese executive types standing around an aged MGA, all saying profound things about handling and track prowess in deliberate and well-thought sentences. "If we are...
In the heady days before the Japanese automakers got a solid foothold in the American car market, General Motors let its individual marques operate like little carmaking city-states. They all swapped designs and bodies and engines, but at the end of the day, they all had their own sets of...
"Well," says the BMW M Coupé, "my mother thinks I'm handsome." That's about all that can be said of the car, which is described by most as a sortof sleek BMW running shoe. It started when the nice German folks over at BMW took an innocent Z3 roadster and put...
Subaru has had a history of taking nearly every major trend in the automotive history and blatantly ignoring it. Occasionally, this strategy pays off seriously well: Subaru has become the de-facto manufacturer for cheap AWD vehicles, turbocharged compacts, and station wagons for lesbians. This happens because often, Subaru manages to...
Taking only style into consideration, it's fairly obvious that BMW didn't really "get it" until 1984 with the E30-chassis 3 Series; and even then, they didn't finally nail the pattern until the 1988 E34 5 Series. With a few rare exceptions, everything that BMW built prior to 1982 or so...
Some of you may have noticed that it's been a while since my last collectibles article. In fact, it's been over a week—which is longer than the break I took between the Fiat X1/9 and the, err, Chrysler J and K. Unlike the J and K, which failed to excite...
Ferraris are only as cool as the software nerd driving it; Hondas are only as cool as the kid's rich dad who bought it; and Rolls Royces are only as cool as the queen mum—but the Continental will spot you ponying up to the cool bar and will kick your...
Ahh yes, it's time once again to make a master list of all of the damned articles here—if only because it's a damned long week and I've got a whole pile finished.De Lorean DMC-12 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 Triumph GT6+ Chevrolet Chevelle SS Toyota Corolla AE86 Austin-Healey 3000 1960s Mustang...
If you were to pick nearly any person at random out of a crowd and ask them to name the most quintessentially British car ever made, odds are damned good that they'll tell you the Mini. A few snobs will probably say something like the Jaguar XKE and the occasional...
When you think of Japanese sports cars, you may think of the Supra, the NSX, or the 3000GT. They're all high-powered cars of remarkable power and (generally) amazing build quality. They're luxurious, they go quickly, and they'll last longer than any domestic car put against them. And they all owe...
It turns out that there was something of a miscommunication and instead of the Chrysler J and K platforms, I was asked to talk about the Chrysler 300J and 300K. Now, the 300J and 300K are somewhat more interesting than the J and K, although it happens that most toothpastes...
What do you get when you take a silly Japanese sedan and place a fire-breathing turbocharged all-wheel-drive powertrain in it? Well, you get the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution or the Subaru WRX STi—unless you'd like this all to happen sometime around 1991, in which case you get the Mitsubishi Galant VR-4....
The Cizeta-Moroder V16T is, in one word, crazy. It looks like a crazy Lamborghini Diablo, it's got crazy popup headlights, it's got a crazy 16-cylinder engine, and it has a crazy Italian name. In fact, it's so crazy that only 9 were ever finished—and the Sultan of Brunei was so...
Lotus has been making cars since the late 1950s and they're all largely indistinguishable from each other: for example, almost all of the cars are extremely light (like this Elite), look like frogs (like this Europa), and all have names that start with E (like this Elan). I'm not so...
I realize that although I've been keeping the Collectible autos article velocity fairly high, it's easy for a request to get mired at the bottom of the queue. So, I'm changing the way I select topics. This should lower the turnaround for requests, and keep me more flexible in selecting...
Around the end of the 1960s, the CEO of Lancia said to his design division, "my 12-year-old son drew this picture of a car that looks like a spaceship. Build it." I don't think that's actually how it went down—Lancia was bought by Fiat in 1969, so it was probably...
When it comes to designing cars, Toyota follows a very predictable pattern: first, they identify a market where they want to be. Then, they enter the market with a terribly inadequate vehicle, and are ridiculed for it. Lastly, they evolve the design year after year until they finally figure the...
Selecting the most beautiful car ever made is a bit like choosing which outfit you like best on your girlfriend. There's a long formal dress, the Maserati 3500 GT; a well-fitted suit, the Alfa Romeo Brera; a pair of daisy duke shorts and a halter top, the Plymouth Barracuda; heck,...
I've done a recap of the collectibles series once before, but I've got a few more articles under my belt and figured now would be a good time to index them again.De Lorean DMC-12 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 Triumph GT6+ Chevrolet Chevelle SS Toyota Corolla AE86 Austin-Healey 3000 1960s Mustang...
Jarrod asked for an article about the collectability of cars built on the Chrysler J and K platforms. For the rest of this article, you all will have to bear with me. The J and K platforms were launched in 1980 and 1981 respectively, and both underpinned such fine front-wheel-drive...
The Subaru XT. The 1st generation Toyota MR2. The Triumph TR7. The Pontiac Fiero. The Fiat X1/9. They're all little cars shaped like little door stops. I'm focusing on the last of these today: the Fiat X1/9. Now, Fiat has a reputation for making small and durable cars: the 500...
Look around any city, suburb, or rural community in America today, it's immediately obvious that large SUVs are very popular. They've been around (in one form or another) since the early 1960s, but starting in the late 1980s, the number of available SUVs on the market has multiplied several times...
I can't thank the Germans enough when it comes to naming things. The Unimog is a German acronym (Universal Motor Gerät Schnitzel) which translates approximately to "universal motor thing." Between this and the "bucket seat car," I can't keep from tittering. Unlike the bucket seat car, however, the Unimog is...
In German, the term Kübelwagen means "bucket seat car" and is used to describe a WWII-era German military vehicle which was evenutally updated into the Volkswagen Type 181. Now, the 181 was sold around the world under various names (it was called the Volkswagen Thing here in the US) but...
Depending on who you ask, the Jaguar E-type is either of the most exquisitely designed cars of all time, or it's a hideously bulbous car bought primarily by old men aiming to look more virile than they actually are. "It's sortof like an old British Corvette," they might say. "Only...
Front-wheel drive cars are all over the place these days—nearly all the "car" cars available today are front-wheel-drive or based on front-wheel-drive platforms, and some of the trucks are, too. And this certainly isn't a new thing, either: it took until the early 1980s for FWD vehicles to become really...
If you were to make a list of things that make cars collectible, you'd find things like powerful, rare, and exotic. And if you made a list of cars that fit these items, you'd see names like Maserati Bora and Model J Duesenberg. You'd see power and class and wealth...
Although you can get to the entire category from the archives link at right, I figured I'd give you an update on what Collectible autos posts I've made so far and which I intend to make in the future. From oldest to newest, the posts are:De Lorean DMC-12 Toyota Land...
It's quite possible that you would disagree with me when I say that the Austin-Healey 3000 is one of the most exquisitely designed cars of all time. "The rear end is too short," you could say, or, "it's like a British 1950s Corvette," or, "it looks like it's smiling at...
It's small. It's boxy. It's ridiculously Japanese. It's the Toyota Corolla AE86. This particular Corolla (AE86 is the chassis code used by Toyota) was built from 1983 through 1987 and was the last of the rear-wheel-drive models to which Toyota affixed the name. The rest of the Corolla line built...
Update: I'm post-dating this so it'll stay at the top of the page for while. Scroll down a bit to see other, more recent, posts. Another update: I'm letting this fall off the top of the page now. Feel free to comment nevertheless, because I do read all comments posted,...
I'm really glad that Jarrod requested that I discuss the Chevrolet Chevelle here in the Collectible autos series because, I have to admit, it's not the sort of thing that I would have chosen on my own. If you hadn't noticed already, I tend to get very excited about cars...
The Triumph GT6+ is an exciting British roadster for boring people. I should know; I'm a boring person. Like an awful lot of boring people, I don't like the sun very much—which is why I moved to Seattle. I like cars that have big solid roofs instead of flimsy plastic...
"It's like a Jeep, only Japanese." The Toyota Land Cruiser has been sold around the world in various forms since 1954. It was originally introduced as a small, two-door military vehicle and has grown over the years in overall size to the point where it's now the largest SUV that...
I'm going to start off my new run of articles on collectible cars with a favorite of mine: the De Lorean DMC-12. Made for three years in the early 1980s, the De Lorean (also incorrectly called "DeLorean," with no spaces) is a two-seat sports cars featuring a rear-mounted V6, stainless-steel...
There is no money to be made in collecting cars. I hate to say that, but it's true—and it's a truth that I lament more than almost any other. For all intents and purposes, cars don't generally ever increase in value. The rare ones that do are often due more...
