Type-10, or "A Cadillac Cimarron with Cloth Seats

Type-10, or "A Cadillac Cimarron with Cloth Seats"
Sometimes the rarest classic car on the block is a well kept secret hiding in plain sight. Even calling the gray doorstop below a "classic car" would get the blood up of many collectors and aficionados my age. Regardless, behold the tiniest patch of fog in Bay Ridge!

This is a 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier Type-10 in one of five colors GM called Silver Poly that year (itself a damning testament to the automotive landscape of 1987). This is the last year of the first generation which debuted in 1982. As a reliable and efficient front wheel drive compact the Cavalier was popular for its entire run through 2005.

Type-10 was the name given to all 2 door Cavaliers, which included a notchback as well as this hatchback. 4 door sedan and wagon versions vastly outnumbered the Type-10s which makes this a rare beast indeed. As an example just over 6,000 of these were built in '87 compared to over 150,000 of the 4 door. I have a friend who owned a 4 door BROWN Cavalier with a manual transmission back in the day that I loved. At the time I had my '63 Beetle and we even traded cars for a week while living 2 states away. There was something so unabashedly uncool about a 1980s compact sedan that the stick shift made it a secret weapon: the ultimate 90 horsepower sleeper, complete with White Zombie stickers on the dash.
I'd like to point out that this car is missing its front passenger side hubcap. Unlike most, this is literally a small cap to cover the wheel hub itself.

The shape harkens back to the X-Body (Citation, Phoenix) 4 door that bowed out in 1985. This ride is built on the J-Body platform, which brought you such hits as the Pontiac Sunfire, Olds Firenza, and Buick Skyhawk. The Skyhawk and Sunfire offered bizarre power headlights in the form of little doors that lifted up like eyelids while the headlights stayed in place. The Pontiac power headlights were never fully closed, with the lower thirds of the bulbs visible under the doors giving a sleazy, heavy-lidded look.

You can't tell me that this rear end doesn't look like the fabled DeLorean! The gridded multi colored taillights are very similar, as is the long sloping rear window. Those quarter windows have a small black dot near the top edge. This is the pop-out mechanism for ventilation, otherwise this thing would fishbowl so bad in the sun.

For anyone that wants to try and date one of these they might run across in the wild, the word Chevrolet was on the right side of the rear fascia until 1986. The CS designation is a trim level one baby step above the base model. There was a much faster sport version called Z24 starting in 1986 originally only for the Type-10s.

From this angle you can actually see some styling effort. The lower edge of the rear window is inset into the body, and a faux wing indentation above the taillights. It's not much but it's something!

Cavalier is such a funny name for such low-hanging fruit. The main definitions are offhand, indifferent, casual, and dismissive (which sums up this owners parking style). Chevy had a cavalier attitude about delivering the best possible design for the '80s I suppose. The Cavalier was the basis of one of the greatest crimes in recent automotive history though.
 In 1982 Cadillac decided to take its heralded luxury nameplate and shove it into a J-Body sausage casing, resulting in the Cimarron. Widely and famously known as the most egregious case of badge-engineering gone wrong, the Cimarron was obviously a Cavalier with a fancy grill & hood ornament. No matter if leather seats and sound deadening were a part of the package, the Cimarron's disguise didn't fool anyone. Cadillac barely slipped the cinderblock tied to its legs to come back to the surface.

This is the standard GM interior of the mid to late '80s. That pull-out door handle in its plastic square, the flat expanse of the dash and glove compartment, and the tall block housing the gearshift are all too common across the likes of Corsica, Lumina, Beretta, and Pontiac 6000. The factory stereo has a cassette delete in the form of a plastic cover even bigger than the cassette door would've been. This is the interior of my high school friends cars.

Looks like this frumper took a good knock to the jaw at some point, but it's still standing strong. Besides this spot the overall condition is pretty damn good for a 30+ year old car. Most GM products of this era have paint jobs that look like they reentered the atmosphere. This "color" is as boring as it gets, but it is intact.

Well there we have it: a pseudo sporty yawn on wheels from the deepest corner of the Malaise Era. Just for kicks I looked up the current values on this ride and found that it starts at $195 for salvage condition and makes its way up to $5,850 for an absolutely pristine, flawless, museum quality example. In reality there might be 2 mint examples of this ride on earth, and to the middle aged success story who had this as a first car the value might reach 15 or 20 grand (stranger things have happened). If you stumble upon one being sold by the relative of a recently deceased owner who kept it in the garage and serviced it at the dealer I say pick it up! Parts are easy to get, and it will turn as many heads as a Chevelle at most 2019 car shows. Mark my words oh Grumpy Baby Boomer: the J Body will have its day, just as easily as mid-'70s gas crunch rejects are having theirs today.

Lipstick on a Pig, or one of the hardest naturally occurring minerals

LIPSTICK ON A PIG

The more common the car the easier it is for it to go extinct before anybody notices. Think of the Passenger Pigeon being hunted to oblivion without any public outrage. Here's the final pigeon:

This is a 1992 Mercury Topaz in Cayman Blue Poly. I took these pictures because I was surprised to see one at all in 2017.

The Topaz is the twin sibling to the Ford Tempo. Both were built from 1984-1994 and picked up where the Fairmont and Zephyr left off. This is one baby step above the basic transportation of the Escort/Lynx. The full width front light bar is much like that of the larger Sable so you have to give it up for design continuity across different models.

YAWN.

This is a GS; the commonest Topaz. It is the mid-tier trim level with nothing remarkable about it. There were a few interesting variations including the GL-AWD which was all wheel drive, and the XR5 and LTS; both high performance versions with the former being a coupe and the latter a sedan.

If you have trouble sleeping here's a dealer training video of the 1990 Tempo.

This ride is similar to several smaller cars built around the same time that weren't quite as popular. The Dodge Shadow and Plymouth Sundance look very much like the Topaz even though they come from a competing company.

The Ford Taurus is widely regarded as being a watershed, game changing design. It heralded the arrival of a bulbous, rounded shape in which the windows and doors were integrated seamlessly for a slippery drag coefficient. The Tempo/Topaz line shares many of those traits and is a transitional shape from the boxes of the '80s to the bubbles of the '90s.

I was feeling a bit too exposed to really press up against the glass but suffice it to say you're not missing much. 2 things are on display in this pic that are very much of the era; stereo and cruise control buttons being located on the steering wheel, and that automatic track-mounted shoulder belt. Anyone who's experienced the shoulder belt automatically trundling back until it pinches your neck hates it. Thankfully they disappeared when airbags were deemed standard equipment, but they reigned in some regard from 1975-1987, and on all new cars from 1990-1995.

Topaz the gemstone is one of the hardest naturally occurring minerals. The Topaz has a MOHS hardness of 8!

Oh yeah this little punk has been around. I was happy to see at least a little tape repair to liven things up. Being on the passengers front corner I'm gonna go ahead and blame the driver 100% for this one. Taking a corner a bit wide or not quite noticing how close the parked cars are can do this easily.

Well there you have it; an utterly forgotten luxury version of a car that might as well be called BASIC TRANSPORTATION.
Mercury as a brand is no longer with us in 2017, which is kind of a shame. From its beginnings before WWII through the 1970s Mercury built so many amazing cars. They were always a luxury offshoot of Ford but they even managed some unique and awesome muscle cars with the Cougar and Cyclone. By the time this little Topaz was sold new Mercury was relegated to only producing cars identical to Ford but with slightly better trim. Their last big hit was the Grand Marquis but the demographic buying them grew older and died off (if that sounds harsh I assure you that their own internal research found that this is how it went down!). In the very end a gussied-up Ford Explorer called the Mountaineer was the first called to the chopping block. Within a year all other Mercury products followed suit, bringing the 72 year old nameplate to a finish in 2011.

Blight as an accidental classic

BLIGHT AS AN ACCIDENTAL CLASSIC

For a car to be officially called a classic it must be either 20 or 25 years old. Some rides are instant classics due to their rarity and/or design. Then there are things like the hooptie below that time defines as classic but the world is collectively waiting for them to just leave the party.

Good grief. What we have here is a 1988-1990 Chevrolet Cavalier in White. YAWN.

This little punk is riddled with damage. The grill is some auto parts store replacement that's committing the crime of being too clean and bright. The side light is long gone. Dents and scratches abound. The paint on the hood looks like it was touched up with White-Out.

This car is standard transportation in every way. 4 door basic, standard wheels, zero chrome, and an utter lack of decals complete the boredom.

Rust is beginning in the strangest way on this ride. It's almost like somebody brushed saltwater above the rear wheel well. The wheel is just sad. For some reason the owner taped a map to the inside of the window. Why?

All the neighbors know this car because it's the worst one on a nice block. Way back when somebody wanted to represent sports radio and a nation with some decals.

Sometimes cars get to a stage in life where they've already had their final trip through the car wash. I believe this Cavalier is in a post washing place in its path.

I knew of one cool Cavalier in my life. It was a 4 door brown (and I mean BROWN) 1985 version with 4 square headlights. What made it unexpectedly cool was that it was a manual transmission. Driving it was actually fun enough that I traded my VW Beetle for the Cavalier for 1 week (back when I was an age where that seemed perfectly normal). The car came with lots of White Zombie tapes.

This has a thoroughly boring inline 4 cylinder engine and is front wheel drive. There was a high performance Z24 version of the Cavalier as well as some sporty 2 door body styles. Then there's this.

Time to back away and wonder why I bothered snapping pics of this slab. I suppose it was the fact that it is 28 or so years old even though it causes zero excitement. When I was in high school in 1990 this would be the equivalent of having a car from 1962. Maybe there are kids today that are fascinated by this utterly ignored ride? Who knows? Eventually anything left on the road from long enough ago becomes somewhat desirable but this still has a ways to go.

Cobblestone appreciation post with bonus Olds

COBBLESTONE APPRECIATION POST WITH BONUS OLDS

I found myself walking through the post apocalyptic wasteland of the soon to be developed Gowanus Canal when I found an equally war torn hooptie:

This is a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera in Medium Garnet Red Poly. My main reason for featuring this ride at all was the awesome setting. 

This is the same make and model the bad guys got as partial kidnapping payment in the movie Fargo (though theirs was an '87).

The Cutlass Ciera was introduced in 1982 and production continued through 1996. It was the top selling Oldsmobile during its entire run. Since the larger Cutlass was a massive hit for Olds they named most of their cars some derivative of the name. At one point in the '80s you could've bought a Cutlass Supreme, Cutlass Ciera, Cutlass Calais, and a Cutlass Cruiser (which was a wagon). They were available in front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, 2 door, 4 door, station wagon, and convertible.

This forlorn bucket is powered by a 3.3 liter Buick V6 good for a yawn-inducing 160 horsepower. Dig that typical-for-the-era paint job with the clear coat peeling off in sheets.

In heavy shadow this car looks perfectly normal. How many cobble stone streets remain in Brooklyn?

We're looking East towards Carrol Gardens in this pic. One day very soon this image will be an historical document with a location unrecognizable due to development.

These cars sold so well that GM didn't really want to change the design. The caveat was that they became known as the quintessential retirement car. Reliability was excellent as every little quirk had been worked out by the time this was built. 

Here is the interior which I would rate as perfectly adequate. If you have no need for excitement and just need transportation and comfort this car was made for you.

This side has seen all the action from dents and scrapes to a very dubious color matching with the touch up paint. 

I was killing a lovely afternoon walking each block that dead-ends at the Gowanus Canal when I saw this. The setting looks more like Detroit or Camden that modern day Brooklyn so I was taken with it. Most of the cobble stone (actually Belgian Block) streets of Dumbo have been sterilized; replaced with uniform paving stones meant to give the impression of the originals (they fail miserably at this). The Belgian granite stones that make up these few remaining holdouts came to NYC as ship ballast in the 1830s! To encounter them today is a rare treat. Viva Gowanus!

The car everyone always tells me is revolutionary. I ain't buyin' it.

YOU ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS CAR SO I'M SAYING ALMOST NOTHING ABOUT IT. IT'S A MUSTANG.

I was walking along in Brooklyn and was like "there's a Mustang"

Yep. Like '65 or '66.

"Black Cali plates. That explains why it's so rust free." I thought.

Most of the time I was looking at this ride I was asking myself why I ought to bother featuring such an astonishingly popular car that's always struck me as kind of vanilla. I guess I was moved to do so since this looks to be a nice original that's tasteful. No fuzzy dice thank god!

Ford came up with this car, see? Revolutionized the world. Nobody could believe it. Amazing. Since it was named after a horse the press decided to coin this new style of automobile the Pony Car.
This is where my gripe comes in: The Mustang is not a new style of car. To call this a new kind of car ignores so many long hood short deck cars that came before it. Examples? Almost every European sports car since the very first one. The Mustang invented a new car category like Columbus discovered America. IT DIDN'T!

How could the world forget that a mere 10 years before this came off the assembly line Ford themselves released the Thunderbird?

Now THIS is cool. Why there would be louvers on the tip of your exhaust is beyond me but it looks great. I can't imagine a single performance benefit but hey!

The color is Wimbledon White and it looks pretty snappy.

Under the skin this is a Ford Falcon. The Falcon was a cool car. Why isn't there a new category of Bird Cars? Bird Cars are cool, just ask Pontiac!

These are pretty cool original "Spider Web" design wheels. They were an option.

I do like the tidy look of these early interiors which remind me of an old school powerboat. The wood rim steering wheel is pretty foxy.

In the movie Smoke Harvey Keitel tells a story where he visits an old blind lady in the very rough Wyckoff Houses. Well there they are just past that scaffolding. These days they are eminently walkable 24 hours a day.
*To be fair the full name is Wyckoff Gardens Houses. They are tucked between the headwaters of the Gowanus Canal on one side and Carrol Gardens/Boerum Hill on the other.

I think I'll continue on this tack and mention that the fictional tobacco shop in Smoke was located in a real storefront at the corner of 15th Street and Prospect Park West. The storefront now houses DUB Pies which stands for Down Under Bakery. They serve delicious New Zealand style (mostly savory) pies. It looks nothing like the movie except when you stand with your back to the door and look out at the street scene.

Since I've gone off the rails completely I'll mention that the bank in the classic film Dog Day Afternoon was located a couple blocks up from Dub Pies at 285 Prospect Park West. That building is long gone now, replaced with a somewhat innocuous row of buildings.
Well there you have it; an almost contentless blog piece with pictures of a Mustang. My favorite Fords are their vans and the bigger cars like the Torinos, LTDs, and station wagons. I suppose if black and white tiled floor diners with pictures of James Dean, Elvis, and Marilyn Monroe are your thing this might be your favorite '60s car. Lucky for you as there are trillions of them out there. Have at it!