Not fooling anybody

DANGER BUS

Look, I like a one-liner as much as the next guy. However some people just don't know when to quit! I present to you SCHOOL BUS:

I mean, why would you do this? I'm all for customizing cars, even with a few cans of spray paint, but a school bus theme on your super-stretched limo?

This thing was parked out in the barren wastelands of the Brooklyn waterfront below Sunset Park, making it even more ominous (though where else are you gonna get a gargantuan parking space to fit the budget of whoever made this monstrosity?).

As I leaned in closer I realized something was odd about that back window tint. 

They just painted the window black! Very thoughtful to leave the 3rd brake light exposed, but look at the heavy drips of paint dried on there. That is not rain I can tell you! Somebody just clambered up onto the trunk with a bucket of glossy black paint and started slapping it on there, getting their grubby smudges all over the yellow in the process.

Consistency is key when creating SCHOOL BUS, so be sure to paint the side windows black as well! *Just remember to leave large squares of unpainted window so you can see all the jealous expressions of the passersby.

This is a bright red toad in the jungle. Everything about it screams; "Warning! Nothing good can come from approaching this vehicle!"

Outlining the body lines in black was another attempt at really making this look like a bus, and I think they totally succeeded. The guy with the black paint need to be fired though for sloppiness.

If you're gonna do it, take more than 20 minutes and at least put some tape over the lights!

Okay, actually, I take it all back! They actually went through the trouble of attaching one of those fold-out STOP signs to the side!?!?!? I surrender; SCHOOL BUS is magnificent just for that one detail.

Part of me wants to see the inside, but most of me never wants to enter a vehicle with the windows painted black that has a child-oriented theme. We'll just leave this one to the docks and hope it's not some Venus Flytrap for people.

Rainy day Bavarian cruiser

bavaria

Look at this funky schnoz leaning forward in close-talker fashion! Chrome middle section and four eyes can only mean one thing; An early '70s BMW E3, specifically the bavaria. Since they left it lower case I'm following suit.

The BMW "New Six" series is the basis for this fine ride, which was available in Europe from 1968-1977. It referred to the new 6-cylinder engine which was available in small (2.5) and large (2.8) sizes. The Bavaria, however, was a U.S.-only model done up as a factory high-performance luxury hot rod. It was basically the 2.5 car with the 2.8 engine providing the power. While that 0.30 difference doesn't sound like much, it was enough to offer a serious performance upgrade. The bavaria is basically the ancestor to today's 7 Series with a roomy and very well-appointed cabin combined with Autobahn capability. Only built between 1971-1975, this is a rare car indeed! The color is der über German-sounding "Saphirblau"-metallic

 Almost every part of the Euro & U.S. versions are identical in looks, which brings me to a curiosity of this particular car: it says bavaria on the back, but it has Euro-spec front fenders (the U.S. version would have an additional rectangular orange reflector behind the turn signal like that red one on the rear). With that gray primer patch along the front we can guess that perhaps this was either in an accident or was rusted out in the front (Mass plates), requiring fender replacements which are more common for the Euro cars than the scarce bavaria. Anyone still reading? It was this sort of automotive autism that made me start this blog in the first place!

This one is from before 1974 because the huge safety-required bumpers would be hanging off the ends (really messing up the curved body shape in the process). Other than that it's really hard to date without the original wheels as they were only produced for those 4 years.

bavaria in big lazy lowercase letters looks a little funny on a high-performance sedan, but it's the only time I can think of where a BMW was given a proper name as opposed to numbers & letters.
I love the brushed stainless steel back panel on these cars. The reason the license plate seems to be bolted to a loose part is that it is a hinged door hiding the gas cap.

That Automatic emblem on the left side makes this even more rare. As hard as it is to imagine now, more of these 4-door sedans came with manual transmissions than automatics! Imagine a 4-door luxury sedan being offered in standard today.

Great design moments abound in the details of this ride. The stout, curved mirror stalk seems unnecessarily aerodynamic (having a passenger-side mirror at all was rare in the early '70s). Also, look how discreet the antennae is tucked in amongst the chrome window surrounds at the same angle.

I kind of want to pick this hood up and trim my beard with it, or julienne some vegetables, or something due to those 20 sharp looking blades attached to each side of the hood. 

My plan was not to produce a psychedelic photo with ghostly fingers and a happy face floating in the upper middle left, but that's what happened. To confuse things further this bavaria seems to have a BMW 2002 steering wheel! With a rare car that's over 40 years old you take whatever replacement parts you can get that fit. The fact that the interior is not finished in leather is correct, as the bavaria came with with a price tag almost $2,000 less than the standard E3.

This is the first appearance of the quad headlights that were to become a BMW hallmark for decades. I think these earliest versions of the 4-headlight grills are the best with the thin chrome surrounds and steep forward-leaning angle, necessitating those bug-eyed light housings.

Here is a close-up of the calling card for BMW; the iconic "kidney grill". This split design with vertical bars was first seen on the 1933 BMW 303, and persists to this day. The bavaria is one of the most elegant; all chrome and rounded edges. The genius in this feature is that you know exactly what company produced it even if you only saw this much of the car.

Twofer Tuesday with a couple of off-road Toys

A PAIR OF J40S

Parked at the spot where Carroll Gardens and Red Hook stare across the open trench of the BQE at each other was this drab little soldier: 

A 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser! 

The color is Olive Green, which was only available from '78 to '82. The tan colored grill surround became squared-off as opposed to rounded around the headlights in 1979, confirming this as a '78.

These little brutes were every bit as capable as the Jeep CJ was both on road and off road. Combine that with the Swiss Watch reliability of Toyota engines from the '70s and you've got a great 4x4.

That body separation line between the rear wheels and the rear side windows is where the metal roof can be lifted off for your safari or trip to Home Depot. Those corner quarter windows are a thoughtful touch; no blind spot so you can see the vehicle passing you clearly.

Rugged, basic, and well-built were the hallmarks of this boxy ride. 4 WHEEL DRIVE got you wherever you wanted to go.

This handsome Land Cruiser is from the 40 Series (known as the J40), and was built with almost no changes whatsoever from 1960-1984. The original (10 and 20 Series) was built as a military vehicle for the Korean War. The fact that they persisted throughout almost all of the Cold War makes this truck like an homage to Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese holdout soldier found to be fighting WWII alone in the Philippines in 1974.

This particular truck has leftovers from the decade in which it was built; faded pinstripes surround both the rear side window and the lower door section. The white roof looks smart, but is also practical in hot summer for keeping the cabin (essentially a glass & metal shed) cooler than it would've been otherwise.

The new tires and overall condition make it seem that this is ready for action!

Soon after stumbling across the first one I found this parked at the northeast corner of Fort Greene Park; a 1974 version of the Land Cruiser. The smaller fender signals let us know it's '74 or earlier.

The flat charcoal spray paint is chipping away all over this thing showing what seems to be the original color; Freeborn Red! Is that a reference to people born into a free country that later turned Communist? Are they mocking the less fortunate North of the Korean Peninsula for which this vehicle was designed? No, but here on my computer alone I can type that.

The TOYOTALandCruiser emblem has been re-affixed with 2 wood screws drilled right into the panel. This grumpy little lump is more about work than show, as it should be!

This trapdoor was ajar, allowing us to admire the basic mechanical nature of this entire vehicle. No do-dads or gizmos - the vent is connected by a hinged rod to a lever that says VENT. No need to fidget with complicated controls when deciding the percentage of airflow you want on the defrost as opposed to your feet or face. You feel hot & stuffy? Open the trapdoor to the outside!

Again with the nice tires; good for you Land Cruiser owners! This little frumper is ready to climb a mountain right now. Those 40 year old leaf springs might make for a bouncy ride, but they also might make for more clearance when traversing a rocky path.

From this angle you can see the roll cage installed in this beast. Also, see those big metal hinges on the lower corners of the windshield frame? With the roof off you can fold the windshield forward and lock it flat to the hood, making the highest point of the vehicle the top of the steering wheel. With that setup you can truly crawl through dense jungle trails (or find a spot near Fort Greene Park to park). When I was a kid in California an older neighbor named Pat had one of these and I always admired it. To find 2 of them in NYC decades later surprised me to say the least!

Show Car Sunday returns on Monday with the Motor Trend Car of the Year for 1966!

AUTOMOTIVE MILESTONE
I'm a day late with this post but not a dollar short as you will soon see!

I was on the final leg of a 22 mile ride across the Hudson to New Paltz when this jaw-dropping beauty presented itself at the Park & Ride:

Alright people stand back! What we have here is a 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado in an incredible turquoise color. The closest original '66 GM color I could find would be Ocean Mist, but this looks to be more of a teal. There are other colors elsewhere in the GM books, and in that day and age you could special order just about anything, but let's move on already!

I throw superlatives around on this blog to excess, but in this case it would be hard to overshoot just how spectacular this car is in every way. In 1966 when this came out it immediately made every other car on the road look 10 years old. This thing was way ahead of it's time, not just in the looks department, but under the skin too. This enormous spaceship was the first high production front-wheel-drive vehicle in the world, and the first American auto producer to build one at all since the 1930s Cord. Being such a large car meant a huge engine too; the 7 liter 425 V8 was standard. To be able to fit the big engine and transmission above the front wheels took some seriously futuristic designing savvy, including a "split" transmission employing 2 heavy duty chains that was nestled under and around the engine.

The fact that the grill is made of horizontal slats identifies this as the debut year for Toronado, as the following year went to an "egg-crate" style. You can see from the angle of the power headlight door that this is indeed a ride with almost 50 years on it. The detail of the thin horizontal reflector above the headlight door trying hard to look like additional hood scoops is worth mentioning.

Look at the side view of this beast; wheels are accentuated by the pronounced flaring of the arches, long hood, ultra gentle fastback profile, and those bumpers that perfectly meld into the lines of the car all contribute to the big picture. GM gave the go-ahead for this car in an attempt to compete with the Ford Thunderbird. When they decided on a design for the new car they chose a never-meant-for-production dream car sketch from one of the artists on staff that he had done in his free time months earlier. This is that design almost exactly!

Oh come on! The back of this car is one of my very favorite from all 100+ years of automotive history. The reverse lights are made into a central rectangle exactly the width of the license plate. The oval shape of the rear holds the taillight bar which is mimicking the front grill slats, along with an expanse of body-colored metal with Toronado written in script. The rear bumpers are some of the most integrated in the business, and the dual exhaust coming out of two cut-out arches are classy and tough. Finally, look at the subtle rake of that trunk/rear window combination!

Looks like the owner drove through some mud with that lower quarter panel. Since it's a front-wheel-drive car this was due to really driving through mud as opposed to peeling out in a little mud puddle.

Seriously, at this point I was just crawling all over the car taking extra shots.

Such a cool old script font for the emblems, with the T extending all the way across "oro".

Not only does this pic highlight the gentle S-curve of the roofline, but it shows a signature feature of this make & model: those vents are the intakes for the new "Draft-Free" ventilation system. The clean lines of this ride remain intact due to the fact that this system eliminated the need for small vent windows in the front doors. Also, look how pronounced those fender flares are from the factory.

This was one of the brightest days of the summer so interior glimpses were hard to secure with a phone and the steep slope of the glass. The steering wheel is so funky that I had to try my best; it looks a lot like the '60s Batmobile steering wheel from the TV show. Almost every option was chosen for this car too, as the radio, clock and a/c controls are all present. One standout and totally odd feature is the speedometer which is located in that square of chrome above the center of the steering wheel. The needle was a stationary horizontal bar, and the numbers were on a roller behind it acting much like the spinning numbers of a slot machine. It was almost like the speedometer itself was the big wheel from The Price is Right!
 There is a cheap plastic console on the floor which is too bad because it obscures another selling point for the Toronado; the front floor was completely flat because it was front-wheel-drive and there was no need for a transmission hump. 3 adults could sit across the front seat without any awkward leg positioning.

Well there you have it; one of the coolest and most innovative cars built in the U.S. in the past century. Since they are more along the lines of luxury coupe (no manual transmission was ever offered for this model), the prices haven't reached the absurd heights of muscle cars. I feel like with some searching you could find this car in this condition for around $10,000. Compared to a GTO from the same year this is a bargain!

Seriously brash American cruiser for the 4th of July!

FAUX-BRA
I was way out in the middle of Queens somewhere when this little Ford with a Napoleon complex started flexing at me:

A 1976-1979 Ford Mustang II; possibly the special Cobra edition! Don't let the title of my post fool you; I'm not calling this little punk out for not being a real Cobra. It's just that even if it is, the blasphemy of using such a storied vehicle name as Cobra on a Pinto-based Mustang compact needs to be mentioned. The original AC Cobra was an incredibly powerful sports car that held the world record for going from zero to 100mph-and back to zero for years. This thing would be destroyed at the track by any standard Honda of the past 20 years.

From the side we can see that the styling really isn't that bad, even if the hood looks a touch long for the rest of the car. The window trim looks to have been chrome painted black, which is chipping off to reveal chrome again. If this were a 1978 Cobra that trim would have been black from the factory. It would also have "dual color-keyed racing mirrors", of which this car seems to have one. It is the correct mirror though, so maybe somebody cannibalized a junkyard Cobra to approximate their own?

Other Cobra-specific identifiers include the rear window louvers and that rear wing. Missing are some of the most ridiculous decals ever put on a car; it should say COBRA in massive letters about 8 inches high across the full width of the door, with an equally tall stripe extending to the front and back.

Finally that chrome cobra coiled in the middle of the grill is doing it's best to scare off the competition which, to be honest, wasn't very tough either in the mid '70s. That goofy homemade 2-tier hood scoop is just that; homemade.
Lee Iacocca gave the go-ahead at Ford to downsize the Mustang so severely in the gas crisis days of the early-'70s, and to his credit these were some of the best selling Mustangs of all time. The standard engine was a 4-cylinder, with 6 and 8 cylinder version available in later years. All were choked with emissions equipment to the point of gasping, so acceleration was downright leisurely. What does all that matter if you just hang out by the warehouses looking real tough? I thought so!
Happy Birthday America!

Going Commando!

GREEN DREAM
Tucked away in a lot near the Domino Sugar Factory was this 1970 Jeepster Commando! The color is Spring Green Metallic which helps us date the truck. That particular color was only available from 1969-1970, and the turn signals next to the headlights were much smaller in '69.

This is a damn fine looking vehicle that screams FUN! That white metal roof comes right off which leaves you rolling in one of the coolest and most capable convertibles ever made. Underneath that somewhat gussied-up exterior is a standard Jeep; this thing can easily climb mountains, ford rivers, and ride through deep sand or mud. The interior is a little more car-like and comfortable than the standard CJ of the time too.

The hood is wider than the regular Jeep, but from this angle you can see the similarities. It basically looks like a CJ wearing a hoodie. Even the front fenders look like the ones from the CJ, but it's almost like the hood grew over them like a tree absorbing an old barbed-wire fence.

Those tiny coffee stains of rust along the rocker panel are NOTHING! This is as rust-free as Jeepsters get. I would wager that this came from California or the Pacific Northwest as the condition is really solid yet seemingly unrestored. Original hubcaps looking good too; the fronts have a circular opening in the middle for accessing the locking hubs when using 4-wheel drive, and the rears have the large colorful JEEP logo in the same spot.

"Jeepster" in an oblique shape cutting across the large C in Commando; just cool! The hood pin is indicative of the utilitarian roots of Jeep.

More cool emblems, with the middle horizontal line in the number 4 stretching to provide a border between WHEEL and DRIVE. The V6 emblem let's us know that this example is powered by the 160 horsepower "Dauntless" engine. For whatever reason the names of the other Jeep engines were equally nifty, with the "Hurricane" straight-4 and the "Go Devil" straight-4 also powering their trucks.

It was tough to get a shot of the back, but you can just see the Jeep emblem spelled out in Wheel of Fortune individual squares.

Only in a Jeepster would you find a snazzy console with a floor shifter for your automatic! This looks to be a radio delete car as it would have been below that rat where the aluminum plate resides.

I love this little truck and think it would be a blast to drive. That period-correct winch means you'll never be stuck anywhere for long, and with the roof off you've got the perfect beach cruiser. It's almost like the Commando is saying "Put away the gun Bennet; LETS PARTY"