When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Of course the new cars are faster and better built, there has been almost 50 years since those dinosaurs rolled off the line. But you don't buy old cars for that reason, you buy them because they look cool and have a certain feel to them that you aren't going to get in a new car. And if you do want to go fast, you can build an old Chrysler big block or Hemi and stick it in the 1969 Charger and run circles around the new stuff, sky(and your wallet) is the limit in the aftermarket world.
Oh, I agree the cars we grew up with had a lot more personality. There's also a psychological factor to it, too, at least to some extent.....some of the Baby Boomers like me trying to re-live their youth. I mentioned that on my post.
The problem is that many people forget what a PITA those cars were to take care of and operate....especially the poorly-built Chrysler and AMC products. Balky carburetors. Undependable starts/warm-ups in cold/wet conditions....and sometime even when warm. Carburator icing. Stalls/stumbles. Breaker-point ignition and tune-ups every 6-12 months, replacing many ignition-system parts. Batteries/starter-motors and ignition-systems that often wouldn't crank below about 10-15 degrees or so. Sloppy recirculating-ball steering with play in the middle. Brake fade. Bias-ply tires that neither gripped nor lasted. Paint that constantly required waxing...and then came off on your rag when you DID use wax/cleaner. Little crash protection. Constant rusting from salt/moisture. We've been so spoiled by modern cars that that we forget there was a reason why many of the things on modern cars were developed.
Oh, I agree the cars we grew up with had a lot more personality. There's also a psychological factor to it, too, at least to some extent.....some of the Baby Boomers like me trying to re-live their youth. I mentioned that on my post.
The problem is that many people forget what a PITA those cars were to take care of and operate....especially the poorly-built Chrysler and AMC products. Balky carburetors. Undependable starts/warm-ups in cold/wet conditions....and sometime even when warm. Carburator icing. Stalls/stumbles. Breaker-point ignition and tune-ups every 6-12 months, replacing many ignition-system parts. Batteries/starter-motors and ignition-systems that often wouldn't crank below about 10-15 degrees or so. Sloppy recirculating-ball steering with play in the middle. Brake fade. Bias-ply tires that neither gripped nor lasted. Paint that constantly required waxing...and then came off on your rag when you DID use wax/cleaner. Little crash protection. Constant rusting from salt/moisture. We've been so spoiled by modern cars that that we forget there was a reason why many of the things on modern cars were developed.
Its a toy/hobby car, you don't drive it every day. Put it away in the winter, you don't have problems with cold starts/not running right in cold weather, and it won't rust(provided it doesn't have a bunch of rust hidden with bondo under that shiny "freshly restored" paint job). Also a lot of people take care of those other problems when they restore the car with disc brakes, modern radial tires, base/clear coat paint, etc. A good restoration will have the car looking, running, and driving much better than when the car was new. Honestly where I live you can drive a classic year round, there are only maybe a handful of days where the roads are really bad and salt covered, some years we get no snow.
I grew up in the 60s Muscle-Car era, and remember the original Charger R/T well (mechanically, under the body, it was the same drivetrains and running gear/chassis the Dodge Coronet Super Bee / Charger Daytona, and Plymouth Road Runner / Superbird / GTX...though the Daytona and Superbird, of course, had the wedge-front-ends and high wings on the back.
Though some people will pay almost anything for antique cars today or to relive their youth, I think it should be pointed out (as I'm sure you know) that you can get a brand new Charger SRT-8 today, with a modern Hemi, that will blow the doors off even the 440 Six-Packs and 425 HP / 490 ft-lbs. torque dual-quad-carb Hemis of the late 60s. Even more power, if desired, is available in todays 707 HP Hellcat versions. And one can even get some of the same pastel and bright circus-colors that were available on late-60s Dodge/Plymouth muscle-cars. The only thing about today's Charger is that you have to live with 4 doors instead of two.....but if that is really an issue, then just march down to the other end of the showroom and check out a Challenger. Another far better feature of today's Charger/Challenger is the much better way they are built. Chrysler products of that late 60s era, except for their generally durable engines and TorqueFlite automatic transmissions, were notorious rattle-and-squeak specials that were only partially-assembled at the plants......once they rolled out of the factory, reached the dealership, and were delivered to customers, they needed an endless amount of repairs, re-work, and adjustments to bring them up to the level of what should have been done at the factory in the first place.
Correct.
Fast for back then, but my current Jaguar XF 5.0 will outrun pretty much any of them, my XF 5.0 Supercharged (RIP) would outrun even an L88 Corvette I do believe.
In 2008 I sold a matching #s 1958 Porsche 356 Speedster. Original Black w Red interior. Damn near show condition, perfect gaps, never hit, never wrecked, only one small patch in the battery box.
FACTORY Super engine, FACTORY Rudge knockoff wheels.
I thought $125,000 was ALL the money.
for you..! You left A LOT of money on the table my friend!
i bought a new 90 dodge spirit rt i ordered when i was stationed in korea.what a pos lol
i traded it in on a 91 stealth.
My grandpa and aunt both had the Plymouth version of that car, but of course they ordered them with old fogey options such as base motor and column shift automatics. I don't remember much about them other than they were really ugly and they never put enough miles on them to where they'd start giving them problems.
my old little red rocket... a 06' Mitsu Evo IX RS ....600hp AWD bullet....daily driven...sort of (100 Octane Unleaded Pump Gas, no roll cage). Ran 11.8s ETs when it was at 500hp. In 3 years I owned it, only put on 6k miles, with a lot on the dyno lol. Had carbon fibre hood, trunk, bumper, and titanium full cat back setup making it weigh only 2850lbs (at track scale). Everything on the car was made for performance, even the headlights with drilled out hole for the intake! It was a beast and shot flames at night upon deceleration!
When i was a wee lad we had, in the following order:
1978 chevette
1983 chevy citation
85 Renault Alliance
82 Datsun 210
86 chevy astro
Not pictured was an 82 nissan pulsar and a 79 monte carlo SS my dad wishshe would have kept.
Today my father still has a mint, factory air 1968 Charger R/T with 33,000 original miles. Red on black, numbers matching, unrestored and not modded. It was the car his father bought brand-new and drove until he died in 1975. His mother never sold it, and he bought it from her in 2005 for $10,000.
As for me, i have had a lot of cars. Some awesome, some terrible.
- 1983 chevy s10 4x4 (bulletproof)
- 1995 Ford contour 5spd (also bulletproof)
- 1990 Lexus ES250 (not bulletproof)
- 1997 Lexus LS400 (ridiculously bulletproof)
- 2002 Ford Escort ZX-2 Sport...fun little car.
- 2005 Toyota Matrix XR AWD (awful, unreliable as hell-AWD system was problem laden)
- 2006 Honda Civic EX- awesome car.
- 1996 Chevrolet Cavalier coupe. Awful car but couldn't kill it.
- 2009 Ram quad cab 1500 SLT 4x4. Entry level Ram with a few options. Put 80k on it. Traded up.
- 2011 Ram 1500 Big Horn Crew cab 4x4. Nice truck but financial struggle and divorce caused me to have to sell it.
- 1992 ford escort lx 5 spd. Loved it, ran forever, 35mpg, should have never sold it.
- 2002 Ford Focus Wagon. Loaded, leather, loved it. But had a weird electrical issue i couldn't figure out. Sold.
- 2014 Mazda CX5. Great car. Needed a truck.
My current ram. 50k miles in a year, work it like a whipped mule and it miles and says give me more.
1974 International Travelall - an early 4X2 SUV that, at the time, was the preferred tow vehicle of RV owners everywhere. With AMC's 401 CID V8 and a 2bbl carb, it was a torque monster, able to pull anything you could get on the hitch. It was also a gas pig, but in the days of 49¢ gas, who cared? It had two tanks, 26 gallons in the rear and another 18 gallon tank under the passenger's floorboard. A push-pull **** on the dash switched tanks while rotating it switched the gauge from front to rear. Odd, but it worked just fine.
The truck was odd in so many ways. I'd learn after owning it for several years that IH built them from a parts bin that consisted of leftovers from the Big 3. It had an AMC engine, GM Hydramatic transmission, a Dodge rear end, Ford drum brakes in the rear, Dodge discs in front. The radiator was GM, which caused another problem - the radiator hose needed a 2" fitting on the radiator end, and a 1" fitting on the other to connect to the water pump. They were specially made for IH, so when none were available, you lashed up two different hoses with a muffler swage.
A friend who had worked on the IH line in St. Louis asked me if I found a strip of paper with a lot of five-digit numbers on it in the glove compartment. Yeah, I wondered what that was, but it looked important, so I tucked it into the owner's manual. He told me I was lucky, a lot of people threw them away, but it was the "line setting ticket" that accompanied the chassis all the way through assembly at the plant. It contained the parts ID's for everything on that particular vehicle. Basically, every Travelall was different, and this little slip of paper was the key to everything on yours.
Originally a horrible Dijon-mustard color, I had it resprayed in Lincoln's "Wimbledon White" to match the color of my boat. The fake-wood vinyl trim had to stay because getting it off would require sandblasting which brought up another problem. The thing rusted like crazy. I had it patched twice and repainted each time over a period of six years because rust was eating away at everything, popping up in new places every time. Finally I gave up and bought my first 4WD Suburban, trading the IH to a neighbor for painting my house. I think I got the better deal.
The truck was odd in so many ways. I'd learn after owning it for several years that IH built them from a parts bin that consisted of leftovers from the Big 3. It had an AMC engine, GM Hydramatic transmission, a Dodge rear end, Ford drum brakes in the rear, Dodge discs in front.
Interesting. I remember the old 70's vintage line of IH products quite well (a couple of my colleagues owned IH Scouts, and my church had a big IH school bus for transportation). I don't remember any other IH products being built in the manner you state here (raiding everyone else's parts-bin)...but, since you actually owned a Travelall, and saw its assembly-line programming, I'll take your word for it.
I don't consider myself an expert on IH by any means, but from what I do know about the company, they started out making agricultural machines (tractors, combines, threshers, harvesters, etc.....) and graduated to trucks/SUVs from there. They also did a pickup truck...but, like similar pickups from Studebaker and Jeep, it did not sell very well.
04-17-16, 05:09 PM
