Rusty But Trusty

Either out of some sense of nostalgia, because I’m that much closer to being an old man, or because this is just completely different from what I’ve owned & driven, I have to come out of the closet on this: I have a strange and growing fascination with floaty-boaty older American cars from the 60s and early 70s. I’m sure part of it is the amazing amount of torque I imagine these things have, plus the fact you can pile 5 of your friends in, plus luggage, and go somewhere in reasonable comfort, if not with the greatest amount of control! There’s also a certain carefree appeal to driving a large and powerful car with an automatic when you’re used to darting through traffic & working the gears in small 4-cylinder cars.

That brings us to the first subject of this first post in a series, both of which happen to be 1968 model cars. The Chrysler Town and Country wagon above, located in Morgan Hill, CA, looks surprisingly clean to me for $2500. The seller mentions the car needs new paint and wood trim, but the pictures, with my optimistic eye, look like both could be original but well-maintained. Proof of that lies in the full service history records, and the tidy interior. Picture pulling onto the freeway at full tilt with the 290hp V8 rumbling away through the flowmaster exhaust…

This Newport sedan also looks really tidy at $1850, and is supposedly in San Francisco, although the seller lists an Oregon phone number. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this also has 290hp since it’s got the same 383 V8. As I’m writing this, I’m starting to think there have to be more reasons why these cars appeal to me…. is it the family road trips down Route 66 these cars evoke? Is it the fact that a car like this is something I would have brought home proudly back in the time of the Vietnam war? Or that the whole retro-modern-is-cool thing is influencing my tastes?

In any case, I’d like to have a chance to own one of the these in the future – call it having a steak to contrast with my usual insalata caprese.

Tags: american, chrysler, newport, town and country, whale

This entry was posted on May 21, 2009 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.