Other People’s Cars: Maserati Biturbo

It was two days before Thanksgiving (and one day before Hanukkah). You could smell the anxiety in the air. The streets were stuffed with cars stuffed with stuffing. And someone decided it was a good time to take this heap for a spin.

This car is just as insubstantial as it looks. It’s old, Italian, and thus, unreliable. It’s a Maserati Biturbo.

No, really. It’s a Maserati. Can’t you see the trident emblem on the side?

That disparity between expectation and reality is one of the reasons why Biturbo routinely ends up on “World’s Worst Car” lists. Don’t take it from me, though. Here’s what Top Gear host and man-with-access-to-car-crushing-objects Jeremy Clarkson had to say about it:

I think people are too hard on the poor Biturbo, though.

Sure it’s hideously unreliable, but so is every other Italian car. It’s not very pretty (this example’s fake hood scoops don’t help matters) but that straight-edged styling was in fashion when the Biturbo was new.

The Biturbo isn’t a sleek sports car, but Maserati has made practical sedans before. It still makes the four-door Quattroporte and Ghibli.

The Biturbos fatal flaws were its poor execution and the fact that it wore a Maserati badge. Without that badge, it would just be a small turbocharged performance car.

That’s something that people seem to enjoy with a Saab or BMW badge, but it’s not quite good enough for the hallowed trident.

Backtracking

Let me tell you a little about railfans. These people–who spend most of their spare time photographing, riding, and talking about trains–are a highly sentimental lot.

Growing up obsessed with all things vehicular, I quickly learned that not all trains are created equal. The old, obsolete, and rare are always more interesting to fans.

This makes a lot of sense: older fans are nostalgic about the trains of their youth, and everyone is nostalgic for a time when railroading was more romantic.

Just like classic car enthusiasts who love 1950s Chevys and Buicks, railfans love the streamlined E-Unit and F-Unit locomotives GM was producing around the same time. Their shape is easily as recognizable as a tail-finned Bel Air; it even adorns railroad station signs in the New York metropolitan area.

Rarity is also a factor. It’s just too easy to take a piece of railroad equipment for granted when it’s common, but as older things are retired, they become more of a catch.

Which brings me to the Metro North Railroad electric-mulitple unit (EMU) cars I found humming away in the caverns of Grand Central last week during rush hour.

These older cars are quickly being replaced with new M7 and M8 models, but will anyone miss them when they’re gone?

These cars never generated much enthusiasm among railfans when they were new, nor do they have much historical importance.

Younger generations also aren’t as prone to sentimentality when it comes to vintage machinery as their predecessors.

Still, they’re becoming increasingly hard to find on the commuter runs into and out of New York City. Will that rarity make them more attractive?

What makes a car a “classic?”

I picked up the latest issue of Hemmings Classic Car today, and found an unusual mix of vehicles on the cover.

A gorgeous 1962 Chrysler New Yorker wagon was the main attraction, but it shared space with a 1991 GMC Syclone and a 1977 Mercury Monarch.

Any vehicle over 25 years old is considered “vintage” (which makes me feel rather dated), but you don’t need to attend the Pebble Beach Concours to know that “vintage” and “classic” are not the same.

Cars from the 1960s or earlier have the strongest hold on the “classic” title, but lately I’ve noticed many cars from the 1970s and ’80s making their way into classic-car discussions.

This is partially because of economics: as cars get older, they become rarer and more expensive. Many of the most desirable classics have been priced out of the average enthusiast’s range, leaving him or her to get creative.

It’s more than that, though.

No one is going to deal with the trials and tribulations of an old car, unless they really want to.

People often collect cars (and other things) to recapture their youth, and not everyone grew up during the age of tail fins.

The nostalgia factor is often masked by a car’s other positive qualities; you don’t need to be a child of the ’60s to appreciate a first-generation Camaro.

However, as newer cars transition from cheap transportation to potential collectibles, people’s personal attachment to them becomes more apparent. Why else would you buy a Mercury Monarch?

The Monarch, and its Ford Granada sibling, have been the butt of many jokes, but perhaps that will change as people become nostalgic for the days of the Carter Administration.

If that happens, old car mavens will still be able lament about how “they don’t make ’em like they used to,” but people might answer “good.”

Manhattan car adventures

I spend a lot of time wandering around Manhattan, because I never know what I’m going to find. Last weekend, I headed to Alphabet City to check out the new (and slightly more spacious) Obscura, as seen on T.V.

On the way, I found plenty of other neat stuff, including a Hungarian bookstore and a few cool cars.

They’re not new, they’re not collectible and, out of context, they’re not even necessarily that interesting. It’s hard to say exactly what makes this random assortment of cars cool, but they definitely are. If you’re as obsessed with cars as I am, there’s something life-affirming about seeing an unusual model among the sea of beige Toyota Camrys.

Here are a few islands in that sea, in glamorous cellphone pic style.

Volvo Amazon

Plymouth Valiant

Ford F-Series

BMW M3 (E46)

Buick Skylark

Other People’s Cars: Willys Jeep Truck

People in my neck of the woods (that’s not just a figure of speech) drive a lot of trucks, but none quite as awesome as this vintage Jeep. I’ve seen a few of these things in various places, and they always seem to be painted the same shade of green. I don’t have a problem with that.

Willys-Overland built this truck in an effort to capitalize on its purchase of the rights to build Jeeps. Willys and Ford, of course, were the two companies that built military Jeeps during World War II, although the actual design came from the American Bantam Car Co.

After the war, Willys put the Jeep into production as the CJ (Civilian Jeep), and quickly realized that it had a hit on its hands. The SUV boom had begun.

The CJ’s four-wheel drive traction was impressive, but not everyone wanted to drive around in a tiny two-seat convertible with rock-hard suspension. Willys built a slew of Jeep-based vehicles in more conventional body styles to attract more sales.

In addition to the pickup truck pictured here, there was a Willys Jeep Station Wagon and the slightly absurd Jeepster convertible. All three combined the original Jeep’s ruggedly simplistic good looks with a bit of 1950s flair.

The Willys Jeep Truck went into production in 1947, but this example appears to be a facelifted 1950-1961 model. These trucks started out with the 134-cubic inch “Hurricane” inline-four; bigger inline-sixes came later.

Willys/Jeep continued making the truck until 1965. Today, if you want a Jeep pickup truck, you’ll have to buy a Wrangler and an aftermarket conversion kit.

Other People’s Cars: Volvo 780

What do Volvo and Lamborghini have in common?

This car (admittedly not the best specimen) forms a tenuous link between these two polar opposites of the automotive world. That’s because it was designed by Bertone, the same Italian coachworks that was responsible for the Lamborghini Miura and Countach.

It’s a Volvo 780, a coupe version of the Swedish company’s popular 760. In the late 1980s, Volvo wanted a car that would push it further into the luxury market while still maintaining the brand’s core values, such as safety and subtlety. That’s exactly what buyers got with this car.

It may look like nothing more than a 760 minus two doors, but the 780 made quite a statement when it debuted in 1987. It was Volvo’s first two-door car since the ill-fated 262C, and despite looking just as angular as anything else from Gothenburg, subtle tweaks (such as a 1mm lower roof) ensured that it was completely different from other Volvos.

Today, despite the massive expanses of flat surfaces, the 780 does look much more trim than a typical Volvo. The proportions juxtapose traditional Volvo cues, like the accordion plastic bumpers and square headlights and taillights. It still looks like a Volvo, but one designed to do something other than haul camping equipment.

However, while the 780 looked fast, it wasn’t. During the car’s 1987-1991 production run, two engines were offered: a 2.3-liter turbocharged inline-four and a 2.8-liter V6. The V6 was similar to the engine used in the DeLorean DMC-12, which should give you any idea of just how little performance this car had to give.

The four-banger produced 175 horsepower and 187 pound-feet of torque, or 188 hp and 206 lb-ft, depending on the year. The V6 was rated at 145 hp and 173 lb-ft. The only available transmission was a four-speed automatic.

The 780 was based on ordinary, non-sporty Volvos anyway. Like most coupes derived from existing sedans, it was primarily for looking good.

And look good it did: It may seem like it was designed by an angry architect, but straight, crisp lines were all the rage in the ‘80s. This was the decade of the Subaru XT Coupe and TVR Tamsin, after all.

This 780 isn’t looking so good, but despite the tree growing through the front end, it’s still worth a second look. Only 8,518 780s were built, making this car quite rare.

In fact, this particular car has been a bit of a white whale for me. Several years ago, I found out that it lived near me and I tried to track it down. When it finally appeared earlier this week, I was much happier than was strictly appropriate.

After all, when else are you going stumble upon a junked car with genuine Italian coachwork?

Full Monte

There’s nothing more American than the “personal luxury car.” Just the idea that a person is entitled to not just basic transportation, but luxurious accommodations, of their own speaks to the abundance of resources available to American consumers.

It’s also a lot of marketing hype: these cars were almost always titanic coupes with remarkably little interior space. They’re put to shame by today’s top choice for solo luxury driving: the prestige-badged German sedan.

No German luxury sedan has quite the presence of the Chevrolet Monte Carlo, though. Although it was basically a modified version of other Chevys, it always had a feel and style all its own.

When it was introduced in 1970, the Monte Carlo was just a Chevelle with a stretched wheelbase. Nonetheless, it was considered a step up from its sibling in prestige, and today it’s much rarer, and thus, more interesting.

While the 1970 Monte Carlo pictured here was on its way to becoming a classic, things changed. In just 10 years, oil crises and emissions regulations forced Chevy to streamline and downsize its lineup, yielding the fourth generation Monte Carlo.

This car looks pretty baroque compared to cleanly-designed original, but its styling was in fact significantly toned down from a decade of ‘70s excess.

The car was smaller than before and, with the demise of the Chevelle, took up the mantle of Chevrolet performance. It was dressed up with a NASCAR-inspired front fascia and fastback rear window to cheat wind, becoming the Monte Carlo SS Aerocoupe.

These two cars have little in common, yet they wear the same badge. Drivers of the 1970 Monte Carlo probably couldn’t have predicted that their car would look so different ten years down the road, or that it would eventually transition to front-wheel drive and disappear.

In the interim, these two cars found new owners: a lucky college freshman who wasn’t alive when his ’70 Monte Carlo was built, and an individual with poor taste in custom wheels. They’ve not only outlived the Monte Carlo name, they’ve outlived the entire concept of personal luxury cars.

Five things that probably shouldn’t be nuclear powered

Once upon a time, people thought the atom was the key to the future. It may have just been the ultimate threat to human existence at the time, but Cold War engineers thought nuclear power had plenty of utility as well.

Using a small chunk of metal to power a city for decades seems like a good deal, as long as you don’t consider radiation and the occasional bout of China Syndrome. Before people started thinking about those little foibles, they came up with some pretty creative uses for nuclear power.

Cars

A functioning nuclear-powered car was never actually built, but Ford toyed with the idea. The company’s 1958 Nucleon concept was a 3/8 scale model intended to show what a production atomic car could look like.

The Nucleon had the cab-forward look of the Dodge Deora (of Hot Wheels fame), but instead of a pickup bed for storing surfboards, it had a rear-mounted nuclear reactor. While it would have made an interesting rival for the Porsche 911, it’s probably best that the Nucleon never made it to production.

Airplanes

During the 1950s, ships took their place in the triad of strategic defense thanks to nuclear power, so it’s not surprising that the American and Soviet air forces wanted to extend that success to their strategic bombers.

Strategic bombers patrolled enemy airspace in anticipation of a nuclear strike, a la Dr. Strangelove. A bomber with the unlimited range of a nuclear submarine would definitely have been an asset.

While a nuclear reactor never powered a plane, both Cold War rivals sent them aloft in conventional aircraft to see if they and their heavy shielding could be lifted. The Americans built the Convair NB-36H, a variant of the B-36 Peacemaker, and the Soviets converted a TU-95 into the TU-95LAL.

General Electric also built a prototype reactor in Idaho for the follow-up to the NB-36H, the X-6, but thankfully it proved unnecessary. Advances in Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) eventually negated the need for a long range nuclear-powered bomber.

Airships

If a nuclear wing aircraft couldn’t work, what about one with the Hindenburg’s propensity for spontaneous combustion? The airship was out of vogue by the 1950s, but that didn’t stop The U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Naval Weapons from proposing an atomic version as part of the Eisenhower Administration’s “Atoms for Peace” program.

The Navy reasoned that an airship’s low power requirements would allow it to use a lighter reactor, and that it serve as a “flying aircraft carrier,” defending itself with its own fighter planes.

An even more ambitious proposal appeared in a 1956 Mechanix Illustrated article. Author Frank Tinsley envisioned an airship 1,000 feet in length (nearly twice the length of the Hindenburg) that could be used to publicize the Atoms for Peace program.

Ike ended up building the nuclear cargo ship Savannah instead, and that’s probably for the better. Given large airships’ inability to stay aloft (the entire U.S. airship fleet of the 1930s was lost in crashes), it’s probably best that one didn’t take to the skies with a nuclear reactor on board.

Lighthouses

Before GPS, lighthouses were all that kept mariners from crashing into rocky shorelines and underwater obstacles. To keep the lights on, keepers needed to make sure there was plenty of fuel or electricity at the lighthouses’ remote locations.

That must have seemed like too much of a hassle to the Russians, who built a few lighthouses powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), the same type of generator that powers the Curiosity Mars rover.

Unlike nuclear reactors, RTGs rely solely on the energetic decay of a piece of radioactive material. As the material decays, it emits energy that is converted into electricity.

A box of plutonium might generate plenty of power for an otherwise inaccessible structure, but is it really a good idea to leave said plutonium unsupervised?

Drones

If you think the all-seeing Predator drone is scary, wait ‘til you meet “Project Pluto.” An atomic nightmare, it was a pilotless nuclear powered cruise missile that could launch its own nuclear weapons.

Known as a Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile (SLAM), Project Pluto’s mission profile exemplifies Cold War desperation. The reactor powered a ramjet, heating air fed into the craft as it moved and expanding it to produce thrust. this would have allowed a Pluto missile to travel at speeds up to Mach 3 and stay airborne for months at a time, allowing it to deliver a payload of hydrogen bombs to multiple targets.

It gets better though: Pluto’s unshielded nuclear reactor would spread radiation as it traveled along, making it pretty dangerous to the country that launched it. Developers believed low altitude supersonic shockwaves could also be dangerous to bystanders, but that didn’t stop them from testing a prototype nuclear ramjet engine in 1961.

In his memoir, Silent War, Navy special projects director John Craven recalls hoping that a defect would be found in the engine, shelving Project Pluto. To his (and my) relief, the military eventually gave up on its atomic death machine.

Other People’s Cars: Pontiac Firebird Trans Am

Has a car ever winked at you?

Jake Kara sent me this photo of a 1980s Pontiac Firebird Trans Am that looks like it’s either trying to get the viewer’s attention, or is having a seizure.

This car has what collectors call “patina,” which makes it look incredibly out of place parked in the center of Monroe, Connecticut, a town with a lot of history and a lot of money.

The third-generation Firebird, produced from 1981 to 1990, is one of those cars that seemingly obligates its driver to grow a mullet. They always seem to look like this car, and always seem to be heading to the local 7-11.

That wedged shape also made third-gen Firebirds popular fodder for “Fauxrrari” body kits, which transformed them into Ferrari Testarossa knock-offs.

This Firebird did have some good qualities, though. It was the basis for KITT in Knight Rider, and it was one of the few true American muscle cars of the 1980s.

The Firebird, and its Chevrolet Camaro twin, were among the few 1960s performance nameplates to survive the purge that took place in the early ‘70s, at the hands of rising insurance costs, EPA regulations, and OPEC.

This car’s “High Tech” aluminum wheels identify it as a 1985 (or later) model, which means it has a 305 cubic inch fuel-injected V8 under the hood. When new, that engine was good for 210 horsepower. That doesn’t seem like much, but keep in mind that a base 1984 Corvette only had 205 hp.

So this car’s owner deserves a little credit for going for the Trans Am and not a regular Firebird, although how they ended up with this example is a question for the ages.

In fact, there’s plenty of mystery surrounding this seemingly unremarkable car. Did that ding in the front bumper come from a dramatic police chase? Why did the driver back into that space in such a photogenic way? Why is the car winking at us?

Other People’s Cars: Oldsmobile Delta 88

This may not look like a very impressive car, but bear with me. You probably have a better chance of seeing a Porsche on today’s roads than seeing one of these babies.

This is a car from a brand that no longer exists and, fittingly, it represents a type of car that is on the verge of extinction.

Ask a kindergartener to draw a car and they’ll probably come up with something like this: a four-door sedan with no curved lines other than the wheels.

At one time, this Platonic automobile really was the most common sight on American roads. If it wasn’t an Olds Delta 88, it was a Chevy Caprice, or a Ford LTD, or a Dodge Monaco.

Today, however, the automotive landscape is much more diverse. Cars try to be all things for all people, which is why we have crossovers that look like tough 4x4s, but are actually based on front-wheel drive sedans, and “four-door coupes” that try to combine style and practicality.

In contrast, the big American sedan has become a niche item. There are still a few around (Dodge Charger, Chevy Impala, Chrysler 300, Ford Taurus) but they are the automotive equivalent of vinyl.

That’s not exactly a bad thing. Today’s cars are safer, faster, and better for the environment than this gas-guzzling Olds, although maybe not as old-school-cool.

Either way, this 88 is a noteworthy sighting. It’s both a historical reminder of a time when cars were expected to have the square footage of a small apartment, and a rare car in its own right.

Oldsmobile may have made legions of these things back in the ‘70s. but you’d be hard pressed to find one on the road today. That’s why I’m glad I did.