There was a tiny period in the late 70s and early 80s when false-badging cars was almost a fad. Kit and modified Japanese cars bore false badges regularly. Almost any small red car could have a Porsche 944 badge. We all got a kick out of it. And then, the fad was over.
Yesterday I saw my first Polestar 2 in the wild. Pretty cool looking car, fairly masculine looking sedan.
I saw a Husqvarna FE501s in the wild today. Yeah, not a car, but it caused me to pay attention.
Oh my. I wanted a Husky so bad back in the day. That 501 must be a real beast. The closest I got was a Yamaha IT490. You didn’t mess with that. Hanging on tight would not work any better than hanging on to a tiger. Had to be gentle with that.
I saw another Polestar today, perhaps the same one from a few days ago. Now that I know what to look for, maybe I can spot more in the wild.
I saw one of the new Wagoneers on the road today. Pretty sure that’s the first one I’ve seen in the wild.
Corvette C3 convertible with a multilayered paint job* parked in someone’s driveway.
*Wide red stripe over wider orange stripe over wider yellow stripe over white, IIRC.
Chevy SSR (hot rod pickup truck) in front of a repair shop. While not my cup of tea, I always thought it was a good looking car, very reminiscent of the retro Thunderbird front end.
I saw a Rivian on the freeway this morning.
I don’t know what make/model it was, but I saw an SUV that looked like it was made of stainless steel. Could that be a “skin” he had put on?
Highly possible.
The variety of available colors and textures of vinyl wrap products is amazing these days.
A Hyundai Ionic 5, definitely a car that stands out in a crowd.
A Pontiac Solstice, IMO a very stylish car that has stood the test of time. Also, a Chrysler Lebaron convertible, a car that had styling of a sort.
Yesterday evening, I saw a Jag with a standard Illinois passenger license plate of 83.
I saw a brand new white Corvette Stingray convertible in the bank parking lot. That’s one beast of a car.
And today I saw my first Rivian in the wild. In my case it was parked on the street.
And although not as interesting as the Rivian, also worth mentioning is the newish Volvo V60 station wagon I saw while out for a walk. I knew Volvo was until recently one of the last holdouts offering an actual carlike station wagon (as in not an SUV/Crossover) in the US, but they are still pretty rarely seen.
I saw from a distance (100 yrds) what appeared to be a Ford GT but may have been some other exotic sports car. There are so many high end sports cars showing up around here now that the weather is nice. I live in an area that once was rural but is rapidly “gentrifying” due in large part to a very big hospital complex and related medical facilities that have sprung up in the last 15 or so years. Once the weather gets nice everybody gets their toys out. I see it all…exotic high end European stuff, classic American muscle cars…crazy monster trucks.
While the Mustang II was anemic it weighed under 2900 lbs with a 302 and air conditioning. So it was easy and cost effective to build a 300+ version that was zippy. But they were rust buckets.