I used to love Ford Falcons, since my father had one when I was little.
I still see one every once in a while.
Anyone own a classic car?
What kind?
Was it completely overhauled to last this long?
Father owned a 1948 Ford convertible. Built from parts.
Uncle owned a 1947 Ford Coupe. Built from parts.
I own two 1977 Triumph TR-7s. I restored one and gen. man. for the other.
I own a 1966 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special Brougham. It’s neither a Classic nor a Milestone car but it’s a lot of fun.
My latest addition to the fleet is a 1976 Buick Century sedan, just like the one Kojak drove on TV. It’s by no means a Classic either but it’s fun to play with.
I had a '73 Riviera with the snow cone rear window and a 455 that was pretty sweet.
Sold it and bought a '69 Corvette, 2nd year of the Mako Shark styling that could probably be considered a classic.
I currently own a cream puff SL that’s not really old enough to be considered a classic yet. Maybe it will be for my daughter by the time I give it to her.
I just finished dropping in a rebuilt 302, and doing a transmission conversion from 3spd to C4 auto in this old F100 Ranger I’ve been restoring. Not really a classic, but I like it.
It’s a 1970 model, btw.
lieu, I had a '69 Riviera coupe, before the camelback rear window came out, it had a 430 under the hood and retractable headlights. We called it the Land Shark… Fun car, but a real bitch in the winter.
A bitch at the gas pump as well, Cheese, but if the speedometer was to be believed, capable of 154 mph.
Vanilla , I used to HAVE a Ford Falcon!
I bought it back when I was in college for $200 from the original owners & it was a wonderful old car. They had really taken care of it!.. Looked showroom new inside & out & ran great.
A few years later,I was foolish enough to think I had to have a brand new car & sold it. It may still be alive somewhere down in Florida.
I have a 66 GTO. Almost sold it a few months ago. Someone backed into the front end a couple weeks ago, left without leaving a note. A good samaritan gave me a vehicle description and license and the person was found. She claimed she didn’t do it but the paint of her minivan matches the paint on my bumper. Her insurance agent is being a real dickhead too. I want $500 for a new bumper, he wants to have it straightened which will end up costing more.
I went through a couple of Falcons (62 and 64) and a Mercury Comet (63) while I was in high school. I might have paid $200 total for all 3 cars.
I’d be willing to felch a '66 goat.
The Shark got about 15mpg highway, IIRC, but never really got the old girl much over 100. Dammit, though, she could light those tires up, positraction rear end, she’d leave two nice long rubber strips down the road. I miss those irresponsible days of youth.
really streching “classic” here:
65 ford f250- installed new 390 in march
69 ford torino gt- low miles, all original
73 jeep commando- jeepsters/commandos seem to have a following. should always have a tow-truck following to insure getting home…
80 fiat spider- original, family owned since new. can’t get em here anymore. hauls ass and looks great, but needs paint
also got a 63 landcruiser that i’m trying to make go away! (pretty far from “classic”)
American cars of pre-75ish era are not aerodynamically designed to go really fast. Their shape tends to go towards airborne rather than pushing down on the road. That and you need properly rated tires to go over about 90 mph.
I recently sold my 1970 Olds Cutlass Supreme convertible. Now I kick my ass everyday because I miss the car so much!
Other classics I’ve had include:
A 1968 Buick Skylark GS with the California package
A nonrunning 1968 Dodge Charger, which I never actually drove, it just sat in my garage until I sold it
2 1970 Chevrolet Malibus, one of them a Chevelle.
And I currently own a 1979 Datsun 280zx, if you can call that a classic.
Oh, and I had a 1974 Camaro, which happened to be the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever driven.
My first car was a '57 Chevy BelAir 2-door. My parents kicked in half and we got it for $200. It wasn’t that old a car yet. I got some used Hooker headers (it had a 283) and put in a Hurst Mystery shifter. Woohoo! I sold it four years later for $75 because I needed some cash to take with me when I hitchhiked out to California to be a hippy.
Later I owned a '55 Buick Special that did get partially restored (body, paint and most of the interior). It was a gigantic shiny black monster with a mountain of chrome on the front - my friends told me they could spot me in traffic at quite a distance (this was early '70s). Cool old car, it was a four holer, which meant it had four chrome fake exhaust ports on each front fender, indicating the straight eight powerplant. It was stolen.
Maybe not widely considered a classic, my '72 Triumph GT-6 was a truly fun car. I put some suspension upgrades on it (stiff rollbars, Koni shocks), an Abarth exhaust and Minilites. And I had it painted Ferrari Red. Oddly enough, considering that it was a direct derivative of the then popular Spitfire, most people seemed to think it was some truly exotic vehicle along the lines of a Maserati or some such.
Fine with me.
Being, as it was, a British Leyland product, I just got used to door handles that didn’t work, and Limey rubber. But it was such a fun car it made up for it. And it will definitely affect your life if your primary mode of transportation has only two seats. Enjoy it as I did, the theme was set early on. I bought it at a dealer and literally, as they opened the big glass doors, drove it off the showroom floor. And wended my way through some backstreets back to my apartment. So, I doubt I had even hit fourth gear yet, and I know I’d gone less than a mile, when I got rear-ended. Crap!
Well, I wound up crashing that car many times (once put me in the hospital for a month), but it was in dandy shape when I sold it six years later (it paid for my last semester at college).
Another that may not truly be a classic was my '75 Plymouth Gran Fury Police Interceptor that I bought in '76 for $800. A Blues Brothers short, it was blue with white doors and roof, and said POLICE in big yellow letters on the rear fenders and had a unit ID in black on the roof pillars and (helicopter-size) on the roof. While they had peeled off the city badge (San Antonio) from the front doors, the adhesive had done something to the paint such that in certain light (particularly at night) it appeared that there was some sort of shiny badge on the door.
OK, I terrorized my friends with it for a few months while I gradually converted it into the taxicab that put me through college. I came to think of that Police Interceptor package as the NASCAR option. Partly, obviously, because with that 440 Interceptor engine it was a fast car, but more so because it was a very tough car. It easily withstood the abuses of the fellows whom I hired to drive it when I wasn’t.
Well then, is that all?
Of course not. For you, Vanilla, I’ve saved something for dessert.
I’ve owned not one, but two Falcons. The first was a bright red 1960 Falcon four-door that my father bought new, and I bought it from him for $200 ten years later (yes, my '57 Chevy and the Falcon overlapped). I learned to drive in that car. And the very first night that I secured permission to take the car out, well before I owned it, I had my first automotive mishap.
Several of my friends, whom I visited that night, lived in a 'burb with those curbs that have no distinct edge - they just sort of segue into sidewalk. The Falcon was a three-on-the-tree and we’d just put nice, new, slick seatcovers on its benchseats. So, I made a left turn (probably about the eleventh of my driving career) and the car banked right, and I began to slide down the seat towards the passenger side (this was well before seatbelts were common). All I had to hang on to was the wheel, and as I slid I just pulled the car into a tighter left turn.
Thankfully the corner lot was vacant, and I just bounced to a stall.
My second Falcon was much sexier - it was a bright yellow 1965 convertible - the only convertible I’ve owned. This would have been about 1971 or '72. I was surprised that these folks down Galveston way were selling such a car, with an obviously newly refitted interior and new convertible top for - you guessed it, $200 (I spent a chunk of time in the $200 car strata of society). I enjoyed that car even after I’d come to understand why it was so cheaply available. Massive exposure to salt had destroyed most of the underside of the car, and I had to teach my friends to do the yogi thing and not trust the floor.
Finally, the brakes failed. If you’ve ever had that experience (I was behind a schoolbus coming up to a stoplight), you know the false feeling of acceleration one feels when the expected braking fails to present. Anyway, I got the thing stopped and the nearest mechanic told me to not spend the money, so, I towed it home. Stolen very quickly.
I have owned
1960 Nash Metropolitan
1966 T-bird
1969 Buick electra 225
1947 Ford sedan
and a 57 chevy Apache
Now all I have left is a Honda Insight (00)
and the Electra
sigh
what I really want is a '54 Buick Skylark Convertable.
While in college I worked for a man who restored old cars
which I got to drive from time to time around the yard the likes of,
'30 Packard
'41 Pntiac Torpedo
various Morris Minors
'38 Jaguar
'58 caddie
'32 ford
and my personal favorite
1904 Caddie