Puerto Rican pony con Señor Frijole!

PUERTO RICAN PONY CON SEÑOR FRIJOLE!

I was walking into Red Hook from the area around the Hugh Carey Tunnel (that's the Brooklyn Battery to you ol' timers) when I saw the most Puerto Ricanist car ever!

¡Mano! This is a 1971 Ford Mustang Mach-1 in flat black with the Puerto Rican flag straight-up painted onto the hood.

The Mach-1 gave you a spoiler, this double scoop hood, a wing, and some graphics. Who's that behind the wheel?

BWAHH HA HA HA yes! Mr. Bean's face was hanging down from the visor in a supreme move of goofy humor.

I've featured all kinds of Mustangs lately because it seems that they're head to head with old Cadillacs in sheer numbers on the Brooklyn streets. I won't bother with too much in the way of actual information on this ride.

Around the time of the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in NYC you see cars draped with flags. There are always a few folks who take an entire flag and wrap their hood but I've never seen it painted on until now.

Back in 2014 I featured a '71 Mach-1 in the factory color Anti Establish Mint (a type of mint green). *This year/make/model was also the star of 2 very different car chases. The first was piloted by James Bond in Diamonds are Forever. Bumbling yokel cops frantically try to catch up on the old Las Vegas strip circa 1971.
The other is one of the longest (if not the longest) car chase ever! The LOW budget original Gone in 60 Seconds finishes up with a 45 minute extravaganza through the whole of Southern California. Over 200 cars are wrecked in the process. When I was 12 years old I bowed down before 2 gods: this terrible movie and the Road Warrior.

The perfect blend of luxury and crushing brutality

THE PERFECT BLEND OF LUXURY AND CRUSHING BRUTALITY

I was gazing out the front window of my shop when this improbable vision presented itself:

Yowza! This is a 1971 Buick Gran Sport Stage 1 GSX 455 in Apollo White with a Red stripe. The name is a mouthful but suffice it to say that each major option added another title to this ride. 

Basically this is a Buick Skylark body (the sibling to the Chevelle, LeMans/GTO, and Cutlass/442). If you really wanted brute power you upgraded to the Gran Sport which came standard in '71 with a 455V8. If somehow that wasn't enough and you were trying for the Most Powerful Muscle Car on the Road you had to throw an astonishing $1,100 on top of the Gran Sport option for the GSX Stage 1 Performance and Handling package. Very few were built and fewer remain but get this: the '71 GSX outperformed the HemiCuda! Blasphemy they say!

That's right. The whopping 360 horsepower and 510 lbs of torque this setup produced helped the GSX outperform both the 454 from Chevy and the mighty 426 Hemi. The 455 block weighed approximately 150 lbs less than the Hemi which made a huge difference. In fact the GSX held the record for highest torque rating of any American performance car for 33 years until the V10 Viper came along. 

Keep in mind that this is a Buick; second only to Cadillac in the GM hierarchy. Unlike the miserly list of delete options the Mopar Hemis sometimes required you could get your Buick fully outfitted in creature comforts. You'll never see a GSX with a factory delete rear seat or heater, and the body parts are all regular steel.

I barked out to this guy "is that a '71 Stage 1?" and he yelled back "yup, with the 455!". Then he proceeded to light up the tires for me as much as he could in heavy traffic.
I love the idea of a Buick walking into the final round at the muscle car table only to drop a royal flush and walk away the victor. The value is plenty strong with auction prices for these getting close to $200,000 for numbers matching examples. However it is still a Buick so fit and finish were excellent and the non-performance parts are widely available. This is the perfect example of a car that can be eviscerated with rust but still worth your while to restore as long as the drivetrain, vin number, and build plate are intact. 

One of the prettiest BMWs ever made

ONE OF THE PRETTIEST BMWS EVER MADE

I was walking in the recently recognized micro-neighborhood of Wallabout when I noticed a fin slicing through the waters. Shark attack!

1971 BMW 3.0 CS in what might be Island Blue. Interestingly BMW offered something like 12 or 14 different shades of blue in this era, each prettier than the last.

BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke which translates to Bavarian Motor Works. Their cars are ubiquitous in the States today but during this era there was one single person named Max Hoffman was responsible for BMW importing. Mr. Hoffman is the rarest of rare in that he was an automobile dealer who was responsible for several automotive legends. He suggested the development and production of the Porsche 356 Speedster, the Mercedes Benz 300SL Gullwing, and the BMW 507. He is in the Automotive Hall of Fame as a result.

I find this design to be one of the most beautiful of the '70s, and indeed it looks fresh today. 

The small details like this vent grill lend lots of class to the design.

This is what's known as a Grand Tourer; seating for 4, a powerful engine, luggage space, and killer good looks. To think that 15 years before this ride was built BMW was selling 1 cylinder microcars where the entire front end was the door is remarkable. It's safe to say no other car company leapt so quickly from postwar diminutive transportation to producer of world class automobiles.

Pardon my super fuzzy pics! This thing puts every other vehicle on the block to shame with its mere presence.

This beat-down industrial block is the last place this car probably thought it would be parked.

We can just barely make out the 4 speed manual gearshift through the windows in this pic (I didn't want to press my phone up to the glass on a block with warehouses full of workers looking on). These rides are unique in that the power window, heating, and windshield wiper controls are all on the console surrounding the gearshift. A truly bizarre fact is that the turn signal stalk is located on the right side of the steering column! I couldn't even get used to that in New Zealand when I was driving on the opposite side of the road. The stalk on the left side controls the high beams only.

Well that's where I'll leave this unexpected cruiser. These cars remain popular with collectors who really like to drive. The fact that this thing is 46 years old and looks as good as it does it incredible. In many ways BMW owes its future success to this model which was the harbinger of the company look for the next 2 decades. If you see one in good shape at or under $10,000 I would grab it quick! It's not  uncommon for nicer examples to cross the 30 thousand dollar threshold these days.

Cannonball Gold Caddy that took the Bronze

GOLD CADDY THAT TOOK THE BRONZE

I'm going to take a minute to feature yet another '70s Cadillac because they seem to live forever. Way out in rural PA I passed this dusty beast sitting in the Summer sun:

This is a 1971 Cadillac Coupe DeVille in Chalice Gold Firemist Poly. You can call it Chalice Gold but let's face it this thing is BROWN.

As massive as this car is it looks sleek with those awesome taillights that trail the quarter panel edge top to bottom.

Build quality was top-notch for Cadillac as we can see here by the tight and unblemished vinyl roof. This roof treatment is known as the Halo Roof as it doesn't go all the way to the tops of the window openings. This is a hardtop coupe as there are no pillars between the front and rear windows.

The interior is a super comfortable expanse of various browns (called either Carmine or Saddle in the brochure). The dash wraps around the drivers seat a bit even though there isn't much to see. GM figured that anyone buying a Caddy didn't need to mess around with gauges other than the speedometer and the fuel level. The prodigious ashtray is open only adding the overall brown feel.

This long hood holds a monster of an engine; a 7.7 Liter 472 V8 producing 375 horsepower and 365 ft lbs of torque. The only available transmission was a 3 speed automatic. Even though these beasts weighed in around 5,000 lbs their sheer power make them fun to drive hard. Amazingly the engine to succeed this one was even bigger! 1975 ushered in the 8.2 Liter 500 V8.

A bone stock '71 Coupe DeVille just like this one placed 3rd in the original Cannonball Run (this was a real yet unofficial race that was run 5 times in the 1970s). It managed to hold the highest average speed of the race at a whopping 84.6 miles per hour! To average that speed over almost 3,000 miles means hours at over 100mph. They reported an average 8.9 miles per gallon for the race but with a 27 gallon gas tank they still had a while between fill-ups.

This car is as wide as it looks. The '71-'76 Cadillacs had the most door-to-door interior space at 64 inches. Three people can easily sit abreast in the front seat.

Why anybody would bother swapping the Coupe and deVille words so that it reads deVille Coupe is beyond me but whatever. This beast is sporting new tires which can be pretty expensive for such a large car. I don't mind the letter tires and mudflaps on this ride actually.

It's too dark to see but this little housing on top of the fender has 3 small lenses. These are connected via fiber optic to the lights and turn signals to let you know when they need to be replaced. Being a Cadillac it has its own compliment of chrome trim to keep it classy.

Overall this ride is in solid shape with only surface rust emerging here and there. It's sitting nice and tall which makes me assume the suspension has been redone. The ride in these cruisers is like floating on a cushion of air. It can take some getting used to, but things like speed bumps appear in the windshield only to be reduced to a slight movement when passing over them. In addition to the ride these cars are almost silent in stock form. There is sound deadening equipment throughout and the exhaust has a resonator in addition to the muffler to keep it quiet.

This is the sort of car I grew up in. My grandparents had a succession of Cadillacs through the '70s that they would pass along to members of the family when it came time to get a new one. When you're a small child in the backseat of one of these monsters it's like sitting in a room. Power windows and ashtrays (usually full) in every door were the norm.
In high school I had a '74 Coupe DeVille with a less powerful engine than this and I still laid strips constantly (I was 17 years old what do you expect?). It was such a hilarious car because it was super fast while enormous. Gas at the time was around 90 cents a gallon so it was doable. I remember once getting my Shop Rite paycheck and filling the tank from almost empty with the best gas available. even at that low price 27 gallons left me with only a few dollars extra, but what else did I want to do at that age?

Who knows if it's still available but since it was for sale and I snapped all these pics I figure I might as well give the seller a plug. You could do worse for this money if it's in as good repair as I suspect, and if it is still available I'm sure the price is much lower. Good luck!

Sweet Bittersweet Buick to start your work week

SWEET BITTERSWEET BUICK

Pardon the leaves on the trees in these pics! It was a warm and lovely day months ago when I walked by this beauty in the East Village:

This is a 1971 Buick LeSabre convertible in the awesome original color Bittersweet Mist Poly. This is just a really nice unique classic that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

This is the last moment for pre-emissions and safety regulations domestic cars. In 1971 GM had a corporate mandate to slightly lower compression in order to run on unleaded gas. The engine choices for this beast would be the 350 V8 or the mighty 455. The design of the front and rear bumpers was still entirely up to the automaker as opposed to having to meet federal standards.

This was the largest generation of LeSabre. For a 2 door car this really is gigantic.

With the top down on a ride this big you can easily cruise with 5 adults in total comfort.

The integrated rear bumper frames the taillights nicely. 2 years later there would be massive bumpers hanging off of the front and rear with the taillights and grill positioned above completely separate.

These vents in the trunklid are a part of the new-for-'71 ventilation system. The air comes into the cab through the cowl and exits through the trunk lid.

As with just about every GM product from '71 the gas cap is hidden behind the fold-down license plate.

Those are the original Rallye wheels from '71.

There's a radio visible and of course it is a convertible but other than that there doesn't seem to be any other options. Roll down windows and a bench seat keep it humble.

This CUSTOM badge tells us that this ride is equipped with the 350 V8. An emblem that says 455 would replace it if it had the huge motor.

Sometimes a car can be great without tons of flash or luxury. This ride is super comfortable, powerful enough to do whatever you ask of it, and is a ragtop from the era when they were still pretty common. A '71 LeSabre will never tear it up at the big classic car auctions and as a result they are pretty affordable. Combine that with the fact that parts are universally available and you've got a great ride for the summer months. To see one in an odd color is a treat.

Cinquecento! The tiniest Fiat.

A FRENCH BULLDOG AS AN ITALIAN CAR

Right at the end of my block this little egg appeared the other day. Where was its mother? Should I wrap blankets around it to keep it warm? It's just a baby!

Actually this little fluffy bunny of a car is a 1971 Fiat 500F in White. This is the Italian VW Beetle, yet smaller! They were built between 1957-1975 without huge differences from beginning to end.

Even though it is diminutive it has this sizeable rollback sunroof. I had a '63 Beetle that had one and with the top rolled back it was like being in a convertible with almost no wind.

This was the perfect car for the European market in the '50s-'70s as over 3 million were built. After WWII most European countries were scrambling to get transportation into the public's hands with little resources and a reeling economy. The answer was the microcar; tiny vehicles meant to carry 1 or 2 people and basically no luggage. This is one step up in size from a microcar and vastly more practical.

The engine is in the back which explains those vents under the rear window. Unlike the Beetle the 500 is water cooled. The name comes from the minuscule 500cc inline 2 cylinder engine. How much power can be gleaned from an inline 2? A full EIGHTEEN HORSEPOWER! Hold on tight!

One of the many changes that can be seen on this generation is that the door hinges are in the front like most vehicles. Until 1965 (and through 1969 on the 500D) they had reverse-opening suicide doors.

The 500F was the base model so there is little in the way of chrome trim on this ride. Another downside is that the fabric sunroof is only half-length as other models got a full roof rollback.

Look at this thing standing up straight behind that SUV. When I first noticed this car that truck was backing up in the spot in front of the Fiat getting closer and closer. I really thought the driver was going to just bump it and I think they would have if the little Fiat wasn't already gathering onlookers. The driver got out of the SUV and said "that little car stole my spot!" all indignantly to those of us who couldn't care less. Finally with myself and others gawking and fawning over the 500 she left without doing damage.

How Italian can a dashboard get? Options: ashtray, and it's open.

That round speedometer tells me this is not the Lusso model which received a square version. Perhaps the most astounding thing about this car is that the seat is moved forward meaning someone was actually in that backseat!

Just look at this stout little puppy and try not to smile. The fact that it's survived all this time and made it to NYC without being rusted or wrecked is remarkable. These are still ubiquitous in Italy and they're not worth terribly much so extensive restorations are usually reserved for the rarest models. If you're curious to see what a pricey version looks like and don't mind your heart exploding into a million pieces check out the Fiat Jolly complete with wicker seats and a tent-like cloth roof! They go for north of $100,000 these days.

Well that's where we'll leave this little crumpet looking all innocent and sweet. I once took a job working for an old man just to try and obtain a '59 Fiat he had languishing on his property. In was the Bianchina version from 1959 which had a canvas roof that rolled all the way back to the top of the engine, even folding the rear window down with it (the metal sides remained in place). After a while I finally got a good look at the inner workings and found the engine to be rusted into a solid shape, so I forfeited. However I've never even sat in a running example and would love to acquire one some day.

Arrivederci little Fiat!