Reported.
I learned how to drive in the early 70s in a 48 Hudson, used a couple Edsels as daily cars in the later 70s and 80s, and a couple 1950 Fords in the 90s. And that doesn’t count the really vintage bikes I’ve run for 10K or more a year. My 59 Edsel Villager wagon I had for 12 years and better than 100K.
- Do a serious repair style restoration if at all possible. Make things pretty if you want but be really sure to make them SOLID.
- Check your laws before getting antique or classic plates if your state has them. PAs read was “parades, club activities and routine maintainence only” which means at an undefined number of miles, you you get cited. I usually just ran regular plates and just took my time and skill getting through the emissions testing in my county.
- Buy ahead. If you just put on new brake shoes, buy new brake shoes - and maybe pick up a rotor too. Have some spare bulbs and lenses handy.
- Find a local machinist and buy him many beers in advance without telling him why. Becuase there is always going to be that one part you can’t find.
- Get a Hollander Interchange manual for your car. Edsel station wagon rims would have cost like the dickens and were near impossible to find but 1960 Caddy rims were an easy scrounge and pretty cheap. Nice things to know.
- If there is a club specific to your make/model join. In the EOC and IEC (Edsel clubs) we often sold/traded parts and knowledge well below market prices.
That’s off the top of my head. That and have fun with it. If you start and find it isn’t fun for you, bail.
Damn – gotta start looking at the dates before I reply. Another zombie catches me napping.
Does a 1969 VW Squareback count? We bought ours secondhand in 1974 and it’s been my wife’s car ever since. She basically won’t drive anything else. It looks brand new (no kidding) and she gets a big kick out of people in parking lots asking all sorts of questions about it.
Have had very little trouble with it, except for several years ago when the electronic ignition system had to be yanked out (couldn’t get parts any more) and replace with twin Weber carburetors (which give it a lot more pep than the electronic system ever did).
Now I have to take it into the local foreign car shop maybe once a year for its oil change. This sounds like an excessive interval but in a typical year my wife will only drive something like 950 miles.
First: Another endorsement for the Chrysler Slant-6 - the closest thing Detroit ever built that was bulletproof.
Closest thing now is the small block Chevy 354 - assuming it is still in production.
If you are in CA - check for “How old to be exempt from smog”. I met a fellow building up a '73 Ford - because that year was exempt, and the beast didn’t have a chance of passing smog certification.
Now:
I drove a '29 Ford (Model A) in college.
Knew every damned nut and bolt on that car - intimately.
Many years ago, there was a kit to adapt the Model A to use a Pinto engine. I’m still not certain that was an improvement, but it did make service a bit easier.
For a daily driver:
Model A Fords came with mechanical brakes. Stepping on the pedal turned a shaft which pulled rods connected to the backing plates. These can be serviceable, but you should look for something with hydraulic conversion.
Original voltage was 6 volts, and, no kidding: POSITIVE GROUND. 'nuf said. 6 volt headlights don’t work so good today.
Plate glass in windshield and side and rear glass must be replaced with safety glass.
Creature comforts: BYO - Henry didn’t believe in such things.
And Model A’s were produced in the US for model years 1928-1931. Brazil (IIRC) continued into 1932.
The 1932 was officially known as Model B - the '34-35 is/was rarely called a Model C. After that, Ford went with model year designations.
A modern (non-Lucas) alternator, gear reduction starter and electronic ignition really transforms starting Little British Cars. They are also old enough that primitive smog plumbing can often be removed and converted back to a bog standard carburetor.
IMHO, newer “Classic” cars with computerized engine control modules are going to be tough to keep going as the electronics age and replacements dry up.
As a former 60s Mustang owner, I wouldn’t hesitate to use one as a daily driver. Parts are easy to find, the technology is modern enough to be reliable and they are easy to work on.
I love classic muscle cars, and have often thought it would be fun/cool to buy one and use it as a daily driver. But I always talk myself out of it, and for good reason:
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Classic cars are not nearly as safe as newer cars. They don’t have ABS, airbags, three-point seat belts, and crumple zones.
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They get bad gas mileage. I drive 40 miles each way, so gas mileage is important to me.
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They suck in the snow. (I’m in Ohio.)
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They’re unreliable.
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They’re noisy and uncomfortable.
From 1998 until 2000 I drove my 1972 Cadillac Eldorado convertible as my daily car. It was a ton of fun and I looked AWESOME driving it. People riding with me looked AWESOME.
From 2000 until 2011 I drove my 1978 Chevy Blazer as my daily car. It was also a ton of fun and I looked awesome driving it.
The thing to remember about older cars is that you still have a monthly payment to make, it’s just in the form of maintenance instead of a loan payment. Put money away every month for the inevitable repairs you will need and driving a classic car can be a hoot. You might not need to fix something every month but you need to have money earmarked for it when you need it, eh.
Old “slant 6” engines were mentioned. I swear, every time I read about those engines, it’s noted how bulletproof and reliable they were. Every time. So, what happened to them? Why aren’t they around in some modernized form? Or are they?
Vintage and classic cars can be very cool, but I would never use one now as a daily driver. Modern cars in general are tremendously safer and more reliable.
Having said that, I drove a 1962 Ford-100 (the style with the unibody) around in the late 80s and early 90s. My first vehicle. It was a money pit, but I admit I loved it.
I wouldn’t mind having a classic car as a daily driver. I’d want one with big honkin’ fins!
Never really did muscle cars although my 58 Pacer with the E-450 motor comes close to the definition.
- To a degree. If you want to stay box stock even lap belts are a stretch and you are probably safer without them. But I did put a 4-point harness on the “kings” side of the seat for times when I felt it needed. One thing I will say for the older cars though – I came out of a store one time to find some security people around my Villager. I thought they were just curious until one said “It that your can? I think it got hit”?
Huh? Think? Well, there was this bumper from a Monte Carlo laying in the parking spot next to me almost touching my tire. Checking under the dirt, there was a small dent in the flare of my rear wheel-well. The lady (it turned out to be) next to me was backing out, hooked me, and tried to basically floor it free. I had about $100 damage but she lost much more. Besides the bumper and her front plate (Ohio car), she was heavily fined for leaving the scene and more - call it $1500 or a bit better. Safe? Not totally. But by God they are tanks.
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Again, the Villager - mid-sized 8 and it got like 16 and 25. Not that bad considering the size and all. Now the Pacer once I put the “race kit” in it – you had to shut off the motor when gassing it because the pump couldn’t keep up. But some of those old buggers will match the average Subaru or Ford today or darn close.
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Rear wheel drive with good studded tires and a set of chains in the back for serious emergencies. I’ll go anywhere fearlessly equipped like that - places I would never even aim my 2013 AWD.
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I should have kept that Villager. Other than oil changes every 5k and the usual stuff, it was fine. My 58 was more a prima dona but even that could limp back home on a wing and a prayer. I folded the top off the radiator down around Uniontown and made it back to Pittsburgh only adding say 3 gallons of water to replace what fell or cooked out.
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My mileage is different. I would kill for a new car with bench seats and a wing window. I spent days living in/out of several of my old cars, treating them almost as campers - I barely can stand napping in our new car.
I drove a '63 Studebaker Cruiser daily for a few years back in the early '90s. It definitely would have been trouble if I wasn’t able to do all the work on it myself. That work was mostly stuff any good handyman would do back in the '60s- tune-ups, oil changes, brake jobs, etc. Fortunately, the car had a Delco-Remy distributor on it, which was a one-year only deal (on Studebaker engines) caused by a strike at Autolite. That meant I could get points anytime at any parts house. The car never stranded me anywhere or refused to start in the morning.
Would I do it again? Not without another, modern, backup car. Cars from this century are just too reliable to not have one around.
Oh, yeah- about bench seats- One of the initial selling points of FWD cars (think Toronado here) was that there was no transmission hump. So, what do all the manufacturers do? Fill up all that flat floor space with silly consoles!
I did that with a 64 Chevelle, 78 camera…etc but it’s a nickel and dime thing plus body parts are crazy expensive. I just want to go from A to B and modern cars make that a quiet and reliable reality for me. Plus I just got sick and tired of working on them. Ever since I went with Honda back in 05, I never did a thing to either one except get a new battery, tires and oil changes.
I daily drove air-cooled VW’s for much of the 1990’s and 2000’s. At least back then, because they were still making them in Brazil and Mexico parts were easy to find and ludicrously cheap, although sometimes not 100% correct for an American-spec 1960’s Beetle. They were probably cheaper to run than a new car at that time. Gas mileage was pretty similar (an “honest 26 MPG” as they said) and having 2.5 quart no-filter oil changes helped. Of course that’s only if you don’t count the cost of your own time. I don’t even want to think how many valve adjustments I did during that period of my life.
Alas, in these northern climes the cheap daily driver VW is gone, either rusted away or turned into someone’s beautifully restored garage queen.
The general industry move to front-wheel drive cars beginning in the late 1980s meant most manufacturers switched to inline-four or V6 engines due to engine compartment space issues. Because FWD cars have engines positioned transversely, inline-six engines such as the slant six could generally not fit into the engine bay (V6 engines are shorter, only the length of an equivalent 3-cylinder engine).
But what really killed off the old engines was the tightened emissions rules. Carburated engines such as the slant six were simply too dirty to pass emissions tests without resorting to design changes that affected driveability. Ultimately it made more sense to replace them with fuel injection engines with a clean sheet design.
There’s no reason they couldn’t have made a fuel injected version of it. Chrysler kept making fuel-injected versions of lots of their old iron well into this century, including the straight 6 they inherited from AMC which was reasonably similar to the slant-6.
But, yes, the dimensions of the slant-6 were pretty awkward. The thing took up nearly as much space as a V8, which was fine for most of its applications where it was the engine for people too cheap to spring for the V8. They ended up scrapping it because they needed a 6 cylinder engine for the Dakota and there was no way that was going to fit in there, let alone anything with a transverse engine.
With all this talk about Chrysler’s slant 6 I feel I have to mention my daily driver. An 88 F-150 with a 300 straight 6. It has much the same bulletproof reputation as the Chrysler and it was updated with EFI in 1987. It’s slow, but has good low-end torque. I want to replace the Mazda made 5-speed in it with the German made 5-speed that was only available in the F-250 and up.
So far I’ve put about 10,000 miles on my Ford with nothing other than routine maintenance. I’ve owned it since early last October.
IME, as long as you do not let the oil level get below the “ADD” line on the dipstick, they are bulletproof. If they get low on oil, they toss #3 rod mighty quickly. My brother & sisters had Darts, Swingers, Valiant, & one D-100 pickup all with the slant six power-plant. Most of these rigs got fairly good MPG. My Dart & my sisters Valiant both got 27 MPG on the highway and 24MPG in town.
I have almost always used “Classic Cars” as daily drivers. My DDs today is a 1989 Dodge D-250, or my 1978 Honda CB-750. I would take either of these on a trip to any coastline in the lower 48 & back again. With a little prep time, I would include Alaska in that statement, not Hawaii though.
If you are willing to spend the time and $$ to maintain them properly, they can be a cheap & fun way to get from point A to point B.
IHTH, 48.
NM, Double post.