Motor Trend Car of the Year for 1974

MOTOR TREND CAR OF THE YEAR FOR 1974

Some cars live strange lives. When we were getting ready to open our shop in Gowanus 5 years ago this was parked with a for sale sign in the window at a local gas station. I even had a friend who was considering buying it for $5,000 years ago (I told him it hadn't moved from the lot in years). The gas station where it lived is now gone and so here we find this little ride, 10 blocks to the north:

This is a 1974 Ford Mustang II in Bright Red. *This is a rare case of perfect timing with an all new design. Somehow the folks at Ford knew to start planning on a tiny version of their Mustang even as the trend was still bigger is better.

*All the more astonishing from the folks who brought you the Edsel!

From what I can tell these turn signals are the one clue that this is a 1974. That horizontal bar in the middle of the lens was a first year only detail for the II.

The sky was falling in 1974 for the domestic automobile market. From October '73 through March of '74 the gas crisis caught the public by surprise. In a land where plentiful cheap gas was taken for granted the cars were enormous and thirsty. In a cruel bit of timing this same year ushered in new efficiency and safety regulations that had automakers scrambling to make their dinosaurs compliant. Here comes the Mustang II in drastically scaled down fashion with a design that accommodated the larger bumpers nicely. It was an instant hit.

There isn't a single bolt on this car that was carried over from the previous generation. In fact the Mustang II shared a platform with the compact Pinto.

The wheels on this ride are from an '80s Mustang 5.0 a la Vanilla Ice. They look a bit oversized for my taste but whatever. Styling cues harken back to the original 1964.5 Mustang such as that simulated scoop on the door. This thing is very tidy overall.

They also produced a fastback/hatchback version of this car which looks plenty cool, but I like this notchback model. My babysitter had one of these when I was a wee sprite in the '70s. I can still clearly remember sitting in the backseat admiring the steering wheel with its circular openings on the spokes.

After all this time these have aged really well. The big taillight clusters look cool with their angled edges conforming to the body shape. Even the huge mid-'70s bumpers look justified with their red cladding.

Who needs plates? Park a car in Brooklyn with nothing on it and the cops will roll right on by for weeks or months (this has already been where I took these pics for at least a month).

As much as this looks like a hardtop there is a thin B pillar between the door and rear quarter glass. In addition the rear quarter is fixed in place and doesn't have a roll down mechanism. There was never a convertible either making this the only generation Mustang to lack one.

In this first year of production there was no V8 available giving it the dubious honor of being the only year Mustang without an 8 cylinder option in its entire 53 year (and counting) run. The base engine was a 140 Inline 4 cylinder. The sole upgrade was the German built Cologne V6.

I love white interiors and this one with the red dash and carpet is fantastic! This ride seems decently appointed as it has an am/fm Stereo (possibly with an 8 Track but I can't be sure from this view). Being an automatic means this ride is S L O W. Those 3 round gauges are all the basics with Fuel being on the left, ALT in the center, and the temp on the right. That little white nub on the door panel is the remote side mirror adjustment. If there was a/c there would be large vents hanging under the dash. This has the basic wheel but the sporty GT wheel was what I remember.

Where there we have it; the perfect mini placeholder for a marque while the 1970s sorted itself out. Lee Iacocca was responsible for the II and insisted that the overall fit and finish were of the highest order. He specified that the Mustang II ought to be "a little jewel" and as a result they're very stout little rides. 4 of the 5 years the II was produced are in the top 10 of all time for Mustang sales. There were stylish Ghia and sporty King Cobra editions too. If you like the looks of this beast just go get one as there are a ton of them out there!

Sweet little rally racer lying dormant in in Red Hook

CIVIC RALLY CROSS

Thankfully the late coming snow has now washed away or melted. However just a couple weeks ago this was the scene in Red Hook:

This tiny little car is a 1990 Honda CRX Si in Granada Black Poly.

I'm showing this pic next because it neatly sums up this entire ride. DOHC on that little trim piece indicates a Dual OverHead Cam engine.

 MUGEN equipped stands for the Mugen Motorsports company. Mugen was founded by the son of the founder of Honda; Soichiro Honda. As a result it is about as legit a badge of aftermarket performance parts as you will find.

Combine those details with a broken marker light, rusted brake rotor, and dented fender and that's this CRX in a nutshell.

The CRX was introduced in 1983 as a 2 seater version of the Civic. The three letters stand for Civic Rally Cross.

As dusty and beat as this thing looks now somebody spent a lot of money on modifications at some point. This is a race car parked on the street. The hood is a fiberglass replacement with a cheesy deep reverse scoop accented in LOOK AT ME purple.  

These cars are tiny - just over 12 feet long. From the factory even the earliest, most frugal models handled incredibly well. Parking is so easy that it's like having a private space wherever you go.

This was a great era for Honda. There was a 4 wheel steering option for the Prelude where the rear wheels turned slightly in the opposite direction of the fronts. The result was a Honda that outperformed Ferrari and Porsche in handling! That innovation combined with the legendary durability of their cars was spectacular for their reputation.

All CRXs are true 2 seaters. I rode in one back in high school as the 3rd person and it entailed jamming my legs between the front seats and laying flat in the trunk area, looking up at the sky. There is ZERO extra room in these!

This tiny wing probably helps with the already enviable drag coefficient. 

That shockingly green thing in the window looks to me to be a valve cover. Maybe the engine is disassembled at the moment? Actually upon further review it looks like an engine in a plastic tub.

Yeah bro now we move on to the bro area of this ride. BUILT NOT BOUGHT is the sort of ridiculous macho crap that dudes slap on their car for other dudes to admire. Please rotate your hat and show respect. Do you even lift bro?

Cool dude I totally get it! That little sticker means kiss your ass right? Sweet!

Putting blackout stickers over your taillights seems ridiculous to me. The best thing about the bumper with those 6 holes in it is that it's cracked and might be replaced.

In many ways this design is similar to the '71-'73 Ford Mustang Sportsroof (fastback) as each has an equally useless rear window. Unlike the Mustang Honda augmented the visibility by making that panel between the taillights and the wing out of glass. Heavily tinted as it is you can still see through it enough to back up without hitting something.

I bagged on the bro-mods a bit but in reality I've always loved the CRX. It was eventually replaced by the Del Sol which has a removable targa roof but lost some of the charm of the original for me. If you somehow found one of these that was rust free or close to it in running condition I would highly recommend picking it up. You'd be hard pressed to find a better blend of fun and reliability. 

Tiny little Toyota in Bay Ridge

TINY LITTLE TOYOTA IN BAY RIDGE

Wipe the lens of your phone camera before snapping pics folks; that's my lesson from today. Regardless here's a quirky little crumpet from the days when Japanese cars looked truly foreign:

This is a 1981 Toyota Corolla Tercel SR-5 in Silver Metallic. The Tercel was introduced the year before but wasn't allowed to use its own name. As a result it masqueraded as one of many Corollas that populated the Toyota showrooms in '81. In fact this "Corolla" didn't have much in common except that they shared the same manufacturer. For example this is the first front wheel drive Toyota while every other Corolla continued to be rear wheel drive!

The antenna placement is a frugal solution to being carwash-proof without the cost of a retractable or hiding it in the glass of the windshield. I'd forgotten about the antenna being mounted on the windshield pillar until now, but I remember this on old Datsuns as well.
SR-5 was a trim level/option package for the Corolla Tercel. Reports vary but some sources insist that the 5 speed manual came with the SR-5. I always thought it referred to the 3 door hatchback models. Regardless it's somewhat charming to half decals so huge that it looks like this car is wearing its parents clothes.

What up city veteran?
You used to see a lot of this in NYC. People would come out to find their door or trunk lock destroyed as a result of a break in and would replace the lock with this armored bit of overkill. This is a particularly quick and dirty job as the back plate encroaches into the indentation meant for your hand! Combine that with 3 different styles of rivet and you know this thing has seen some action.

Well there's no mistaking what this car is since the owner elected to put an 81COROLLA SR5 decal in the windshield.

Black rubber bumpers and black trim around the windows make for a clean, chrome-less look. Too bad about that one dead eye.

The range of Corollas in this year was staggering: 2 and 4 door sedans, a station wagon, sporty 2 door hardtop coupe, and a 3 door liftback. The Corolla was so popular that it became the best selling car the world over. This is the reason they piggybacked the Tercel onto the Corolla for the first 3 years it was around.

The front of this ride is the same as all other body styles for '81.

I like how awkward this frumpy little body style is. The handling is adequate as the wheels are pretty far out towards the corners of the car. The current Mini Cooper isn't too different.

Military stickers plaster the windows on this car so I didn't lean in for an interior pic. You rarely see U.S. military stickers on a foreign car which was mildly intriguing.

These odd taillights are 1980-1982 Tercel liftback specific which makes them annoyingly difficult to replace. The same can be said for that rear window with its quirky shape.

Poor car had an identity crisis from the beginning!
The Tercel will become a stand alone model in 1983 with a modernizing facelift.

The front wheel drive setup keeps this from being a cult car as the drifting crowd has no use for them. The 1.5 liter inline 4 cylinder engine sat above the transmission, connected by a differential. Gas mileage was excellent, especially with the 5 speed manual.

Well there we have it; a truly gawky car in its awkward phase roosting on a Brooklyn street at age 36. Given half the chance these cars will dissolve into rust like a sugar cube dropped in boiling water so it is remarkable that this exists.
Spending my teenage summers up in Northern California this was the sort of car that my friends would have as their first. I've been in these old Toyotas on dirt mountain roads, up and down the coast, and even into the desert, and they never failed to keep on trucking. The last car I owned was an '83 Corolla wagon so you know I have a soft spot for this little punk.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

YAWN ON THE HORIZON

I like reading zero star restaurant reviews in the New York Times. Just a heads-up for those already yawning at the image below: this will be a bad review. No stars!

This is a 1984-1990 Plymouth Horizon in Daystar Blue Poly. It is very boring.
We can tell it's at least an '84 as the previous years had a grill with no vertical bars in it. After 1984 the designers went home and never returned as this ride saw no changes until it went away.

This is a subcompact car. It is pretty dull.
I can muster up some informative tidbits though. For example this (along with its twin sibling Dodge Omni) was the first front wheel drive vehicle from the Chrysler Corporation. This is rather unimpressive as GM unveiled the FWD Toronado in 1966, but it did beat Ford by a couple years.

I'm always entertained when an owner deems the antiquated anti-theft device The Club necessary to protect an utterly valueless ride. The fact that this is an automatic makes this ride slow. An inline-4 cylinder engine was the only unit available. Even though the horsepower rating was around 84 this car was acceptably peppy with a manual trans.
One curiosity of this car is that the climate controls are located to the left of the steering column as opposed to the center.

Debuting in 1978, this ride helped Chrysler stave off the grim reaper long enough for Iacocca to produce the K-Car. This little hatchback sold extremely well throughout the 1980s. It could fit 4 adults while getting good gas mileage. Yawn.

There were some interesting offshoots of this little bucket like the GLH and turbocharged *GLHS Shelby editions with a racing suspension that was very fast. There were also elongated 2 door hatchbacks called the Plymouth TC-3 and Dodge 024 that look much cooler. The most I can say about this is that it looks to be in good condition.
*The names GLH and GLHS stand for Goes Like Hell and Goes Like Hell Some more. Really. Don't ask.

One notable shortfall for the Horizon/Omni was the crash test rating. It failed both the front and rear tests. I had the misfortune of being a front seat passenger in a bright yellow Dodge Omni that ran off an icy road and into a telephone pole. Like most accidents it seemed to happen in slow motion until the moment of impact when the entire front of the car folded around the pole. There was no mistake that the car was totaled. There was also no mistake that if we were going more than 35 mph we would have been severely injured at the very least. The driver of this crash was then gifted an all original 1968 Chevelle from his aunt. I guess I would've crashed that Omni too!
*For those of you who also relish brutal restaurant reviews this is a good list of them.

Identity Crisis!

IDENTITY CRISIS!!!
I was walking through the East Village recently when I stumbled upon an old friend. I called out my friends name but the car ignored me. It turns out that this car has had many an alias and prefers not to talk about the past. From what I can tell this little box has had 7 different names just between it's birthplace and the States!

This is a 1987 Plymouth Colt E in Sarajevo White. The name of the color at the time celebrated the city that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics. This is the same city where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in an act that lit the fuse to start WWI. Unfortunately the city was also under brutal siege by the Serbs from 1992-1996 after declaring independence from Yugoslavia and gaining UN recognition. I don't think Plymouth kept up the color name for long.

Easy there Close Talker! This car just looks like it has coffee breath.
I was confounded at first by the centerpiece of this grill and how it looks removable. Then I noticed that shiny headlight on the left compared to that old toenail on the right. My guess is that the grill was smashed to oblivion parking on the streets of lower Manhattan and the replacement is a universal one. When this car was sold new it had COLT written in the middle of the grill. In its birthplace of Japan it had a large Mitsubishi logo. The replacement knows no allegiance.

Here we see the Colt in its home environment (amidst piles of garbage).
I think this is when I admit that I love this car even though I'm relentlessly bashing on it. The front and back side windows mimic each other nicely, as do the angles of the windshield and hatch. I had a friend in high school who was nice enough to lend me her Colt of this era long before I even had my drivers license. I would take it full speed down the Saw Mill River Parkway and spend the ditched school day driving all over Manhattan feeling like a champ*. At the end of the day I would deliver the car back to her after filling the tiny tank with the few gallons I used. This is a genuinely fun car to drive hard through corners!
*Champ happens to be one of the many names this car used in the '80s.

Usually I like to walk around the whole car before peeking inside but I'm breaking tradition to show you what a romper room it is. This is just a pile of old blankets and litter with multiple cushions and supports scattered about. I can just see the passenger saying "this cushion's no good I need a different one!" and just stacking the new one on the old instead of throwing it away. Imagine just adding a new band-aid to an old one.
The manual transmission makes this a much more fun car to drive than the auto at least.
Also, is that a cookie in the dashboard for later?

Gotta love that limo tint. You're not protecting identity with that tint, more like the reputation of whichever unlucky bastard contorted themselves enough to get into that backseat.

COLT E. Is that like culty? Is this a cult car or are you actually explaining that this the ECONOMY because that's what's written all over this little runt (it does stand for Economy actually).

Now we're getting to the bottom of this basket of lies!
This car is the definition of both Captive Import and Brand Engineering. It was the '70s and '80s when American automakers were at their lowest ebb producing tired, weak dinosaurs held together with glue and tape that the idea was hatched; why not buy reliable and tiny Japanese cars, slap our American names on them, and sell them to a public still staunchly Patriotic enough that they refused to buy the same cars from Japanese dealers? It worked beautifully.
This Colt is 100% Mitsubishi Mirage. It was also known as the Dodge Colt, the Plymouth Champ, and eventually the Eagle Summit among others.

Anyone for some nostalgic '80s movie racism on this topic is encouraged to watch the 1986 groaner Gung Ho! starring Norm from Cheers, Batman, and everybodys favorite Japanese comic relief Gedde Watanabe (you know; Long Duk Dong from 16 Candles). Never mind that Mr. Watanabe is originally from Utah. This movie perfectly captures the xenophobia of the domestic reaction to captive imports. 35% of people on Rotten Tomatoes can't be wrong!

Parkability is very high on the list of why to own this little bucket. In fact it is the list.

Talk about Hyperbole!
I research automotive minutiae almost as a profession but I can't find a single hint of what this claim means anywhere online. The perks of the S.E. probably consisted of the stripes and a cup holder, maybe a radio.

I'll slowly back away from this tiny car and let it keep doing its thing on the streets of the East Village. This example has a 1.5 liter 4 cylinder good for only 68 horsepower, but parking in the most dense neighborhoods in the city is worth plenty, as is gassing up monthly or less.
I have a fondness for these super boxy '80s Japanese cars built pre airbags and powered by the smallest carburetors you've ever seen. The generation before this one had an optional transmission called the Twin Stick. It had 8 forward and 2 reverse gears due to an additional shifter for the transfer case. If I stumbled upon one of those I would be very tempted to make a foolish purchase. The last cars to offer the Twin Stick were the Tredia and Cordia; talk about forgotten cars!