After totaling three nice cars, my indulgent mother allowed me to buy a 1974 Vega GT in December 1976, for $1,750. It looked neat, sort of like a Camaro Lite, and it served me as my only transportation until December 1979, when I sold the still running remnants of the Vega, by then using a lot of oil, for $250, and I bought an absolutely perfect, mint 1974 360 Matador X Coupe for $900, schoolteacher owned, 20,000 mile, garaged, and every factory option. It had lime green paint and looked like a bullfrog, but it was a completely modern car then and would be today.
I spent one pleasurable day removing all the smog control gadgets on it, had it retuned, and added glass packs. The glass packs were sort of a mistake but kids like loud exhaust.
I sold it to a friend in 1982 when I bought my mother’s perfect 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass and he drove that Matador about 300,000 miles and parked it, because it needed something done, I forget now what, and it sits today behind his father’s house.
Nobody would do it, but if you wanted to you could buy every single critical part to a 1974 AMC Matador at the local parts shop, and put it back on the road again.
My 2012 Chrysler 300S is the last large, rear wheel drive, V8 engined, Detroit land yacht. God, how I love it, but it’s just a refined and improved version of my 1974 Matador. 2023 will be the last of the 300s and sister car Chargers. Ford and Lincoln quit the Crown Vic and Town Car about a decade ago, and General Motors quit fifteen years before that.
For cheap and glorious transportation, the greatest cost is not gasoline, but depreciation, maintenance and insurance.
On long trips, my Matador closed on 20 miles per gallon. Let’s say I drove 350 miles and got 18 mpg at $3.25 per gallon.That’s only $63.
Our hotel room cost $135. My wife and I ate lunch at some trendy, gentrified cafe on the square at Springfield where they sold a zillion different brands of craft beer, and the tab was $52. And our Chrysler burned $46 worth of gasoline driving 350 miles.
It still looks new, and I keep it spotless, but in a few years there’s going to be a better American electric land yacht that’s totally silent, and costs only 3 or 4 cents a mile to run, will run 400 miles on a charge, and cost about $40,000, and has a million mile battery.
The car bodies of big Detroit iron haven’t really been much improved in fifty years. The only room to improve them is eliminate the piston engine.
Maybe we’ll get Bordello Velour and reeech Corinthian leather back.
I spent one pleasurable day removing all the smog control gadgets on it, had it retuned, and added glass packs. The glass packs were sort of a mistake but kids like loud exhaust.
I sold it to a friend in 1982 when I bought my mother’s perfect 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass and he drove that Matador about 300,000 miles and parked it, because it needed something done, I forget now what, and it sits today behind his father’s house.
Nobody would do it, but if you wanted to you could buy every single critical part to a 1974 AMC Matador at the local parts shop, and put it back on the road again.
My 2012 Chrysler 300S is the last large, rear wheel drive, V8 engined, Detroit land yacht. God, how I love it, but it’s just a refined and improved version of my 1974 Matador. 2023 will be the last of the 300s and sister car Chargers. Ford and Lincoln quit the Crown Vic and Town Car about a decade ago, and General Motors quit fifteen years before that.
For cheap and glorious transportation, the greatest cost is not gasoline, but depreciation, maintenance and insurance.
On long trips, my Matador closed on 20 miles per gallon. Let’s say I drove 350 miles and got 18 mpg at $3.25 per gallon.That’s only $63.
Our hotel room cost $135. My wife and I ate lunch at some trendy, gentrified cafe on the square at Springfield where they sold a zillion different brands of craft beer, and the tab was $52. And our Chrysler burned $46 worth of gasoline driving 350 miles.
It still looks new, and I keep it spotless, but in a few years there’s going to be a better American electric land yacht that’s totally silent, and costs only 3 or 4 cents a mile to run, will run 400 miles on a charge, and cost about $40,000, and has a million mile battery.
The car bodies of big Detroit iron haven’t really been much improved in fifty years. The only room to improve them is eliminate the piston engine.
Maybe we’ll get Bordello Velour and reeech Corinthian leather back.
