Posts Tagged ‘american’

Make it Bigger! 1955 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe Sedan

March 14, 2014

The first Chrysler designs from Virgil Exner seem to be the best designs from his tenure, unlike Elwood Engel’s, as he seemed to have a knack for leaving before his designs became obscured by management pressure – or perhaps Engel just had a stronger personality. Either way, the 1955 Chrysler sedans were some of the most elegant, continental-looking designs coming from Detroit at the time. And while the coupes and the 300 letter cars have moved out of the realm of affordability, you can still occasionally find a sedan, which has 95% of the styling at 10% of the price. Or something like that. You can find this 1955 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe sedan for sale for $3800 in Los Gatos, CA.

1955 Chrysler New Yorker Deluxe right front

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Cult Ford – 1985 Ford LTD LX

March 13, 2014

Update, 3/14/14: Revisiting a cached version of this listing today shows the same seller listing what appears to be the same car, again with different plates, fewer details, and a couple of higher resolution but older photos, at $3400. So perhaps the demand was enough to prompt him to increase the price by $550, but the changing details and photos are enough to make the sensible buyer approach this one with caution, even if the rarity won’t make you shy away completely.

Original post, 3/13/14:Here’s an interesting car. Supposing you liked the performance of a Mustang/Capri or Thunderbird 5.0 (well, as it was back in the mid-eighties), but you needed four doors, or your driving record required you to appear as if you’d just rolled off a rental car lot. That very thing is possible, because while the Ford Fox platform is most well-known in its Mustang guise, it was also offered as the Ford Fairmont/Granada and Mercury Zephyr/Cougar, as well as the Ford LTD/Mercury Marquis. And there were also the Lincoln Continental sedan and Mark VII. So as you can see, most of the cars on that platform were painfully boring and/or forgettable, but for a brief run in the mid-1980s, Ford decided they wanted to try to annoy BMW by dropping the 302 V8 in their plain-jane sedan. They also threw in bigger brakes, stiffer suspension, 4-speed automatic and limited slip differential. You can find this 1985 Ford LTD LX for sale for $3950 in the Dublin/Pleasanton/Livermore, CA area.

1985 Ford LTD LX right front

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Not a GTI – 1989 Plymouth Colt GT Turbo

March 7, 2014

Before many manufacturers happened on the clever idea of throwing a turbo on their hot hatch engines, Mitsubishi (and by extension, Dodge/Plymouth) were doing it. Starting in 1984, they put the 4G32T turbo four in the fourth generation Colt GT (with the famous twin stick transmission), and by 1989, the sixth generation Colt GT received the 135hp 4G61T. With the turbo lag of the day, this must have been really fun, and this version of Colt GT has become something of a cult favorite with tuners, who modify the factory engine or slip in a 4G63T engine from the DSM Eclipse/Talon/Laser. Unfortunately, the combination of tuning and the cars’ cheap-speed mean that many have been lost to attrition, and the remainder are hard to find for sale. You can find this 1989 Plymouth Colt GT Turbo for sale for C$3200 in Mission, BC.

1989 Plymouth Colt GT right side

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