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What kind of outfits would you expect Brazilian booth professionals to wear when showing off VW Beetles and Variants at the '79 Salão do Automóvel in São Paulo? How about long flowery dresses, the better to show off the features of the new alcohol-fueled VWs? BЯдΖǐL-ЯЄРΘЯΤЄЯ has unearthed these great photos for us; make the jump to see them all and read his description. galleryPost('BrazilBoothBabes79', 6, 'VW Booth Pros Of 1979'); Our time-machine has the dial on 1979, and the location is São Paulo, to be more specific the VW booth at the "Salão do Automóvel" See how forward thinking we were, a car on ethanol, does that not sound familiar today? On the other hand the forward thinking stood still with the booth babes they looked more "nun" than "babe", also the air-cooled boxer was a best-seller.
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Cadillacs sold pretty well, even after most of a decade of Malaise-y gas prices and general sense of diminished expectations, so you could still buy a great big angular slab of rear-wheel-drive Fleetwood as late as 1984. Here we've got a raggedy '79 Fleetwood that's been sitting on a major commercial strip for a couple of weeks now. This stretch of road is a popular spot to park cars for sale, since the traffic is so heavy. This Caddy, however, has no For Sale sign in sight; it may belong to the resident of a nearby apartment building, or it may be abandoned (this car has the telltale purple window tint, indicating that it is probably on its last owner). The APD is vigilant about this sort of thing, so a date with a tow truck may be in the offing. These things listed at $21,735 from the factory, or about 65 grand in 2008 dollars. Power...
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newVideoPlayer("/78_Zephyr_Chevette_476.flv", 506, 423,""); Here's a two-for-one Classic Ad Watch deal from the darkest days of the Malaise Era . First up, a Gladding Chevrolet (Maryland) offer for a Chevette with factory air for just 99 bucks a month. Before you jump in the time machine to take advantage of that sweet deal, however, consider the '79 Mercury Zephyr, which was cheaper than both the Toyota Corona and the '78 Zephyr.
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Not very shockingly, the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL beat up on the Pontiac Bonneville in our 6.9 Liters Of Misery Choose Your Eternity poll on Friday, no doubt because voters were counting camshafts or dollars in the original purchase price or something. Today we're going to have the traditional post-24 Hours Of LeMons PCH, only instead of letting you choose between the cars that finished #1 and #2 (in this case, a Supra and a Jetta) we're going to choose between two cars we really, really want to see someone bring to a LeMons race. They were expensive when new, featured sophisticated DOHC V8s and rear-wheel-drive, and came equipped with dizzyingly complicated electronics and plush luxury gear… yet it's possible to pick either one up for a LeMons-friendly price today! We've seen the Porsche 928 in the Hel l Garage before ; in fact, we've had more 928s here than any other car! Why is that, you ask? They were insanely expensive, insanely hard to fix, and insanely (for their...
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! I really wanted to call today's matchup Édition Débâcle , but the heads of our beloved Server Hamsters tend to explode when they're forced to deal with weird furrin letters in our headlines, and headless hamsters don't run on wheels. Never mind the English-only hamsters, though, because we've got to choose between two equally impossible desirable French cars. I tell you what, every time I see that three-across seating layout of the Matra Bagheera , it makes me ache for a Bagheera to call my own. You figure all the possible automotive seating layouts had been established a century ago, and then here come the French with a totally new approach. Sure, it's a crazy approach, but that's why we love French cars so much! The Murena was the successor to the Bagheera, and the seller of this '80 Matra Murena is quick to point out that "Only...
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The Ford Ranchero cartruck went through numerous platform changes over the years, with the full-size sedan-based '57-59s, the compact Falcon-based '60-66s, the mid-sized Fairlane/Torino-based '68-76s, and the bloato-mid-sized LTD-based '77-79s. We saw a beige-and-brown two-tone '79 last summer, and now I've found another two-tone '79 on the island. Those stacked headlights and monstrous turn signal lights are as 1979 as odd-even gas days. Hey, maybe we'll have those again! Even though cartrucks aren't really set up for serious heavy hauling, this Ranchero's bed is spacious enough to really test the limits of that LTD rear suspension. How much gravel can you haul in one load? How many pinball machines? How many street-sign shooting armed drunks and associated cases of Mickey's Big Mouth? Cartruck tradition is firmly behind the "test the load limits" school of thought. You got a 151-horse 351 when you bought a new 1979 Ranchero. Don't...
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Normally, a Malaise Era car with 500,000 miles would be an ideal appetizer for The Crusher, but this one is a movie star! Yes, this 1979 Peugeot 504D was driven by Adam Sandler in You Don't Mess With The Zohan , a cinematic masterpiece that will one day be regarded as the Citizen Kane of our era... and it could be yours for only $2,500. The seller says "No air, no heat, no rust, a few dings and small leaks," so we figured it was just too nice for Project Car Hell and deserved its own post. [Craigslist Orange County] galleryPost('ZohanPeugeotCL', 3, 'Zohan Peugeot 504 Diesel Can Be Yours');
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newVideoPlayer("79_200SX_476.flv", 506, 423,""); The Datsun 200SX for '79 didn't have TURRRRRBO power yet, but it packed a not-too-shabby-for-its-time 92 fuel-injected horsepower. Weighing just 2,268 pounds (about 650 pounds less than the '08 Sentra), the 200SX didn't feel particularly Malaise-y, and it even came with a Sky Roof! It wanted you to open it up and watch its moves!
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I'd really like to shoot more Malaise Era Civics, but it seems most of them have been crushed by now, victims of their own reliability. The problem is that these cars just did their jobs without showing a huge amount of lovable personality, and thus it wasn't much like shooting Old Yeller when an owner's coldhearted fix-it-or-scrap-it calculus came into play on a broken 20-year-old Civic. Well, that's my theory, anyway. So, here's a '79 that's beaten all the odds and kept on doing its job; I photographed this car just across the street from the '77 Volvo 244DL , making this block a little museum for Malaise Era imports. I've driven many of these Civics, and they're actually pretty fun to drive. Noisy and bouncy, sure, and other vehicles tower over you, but the late-70s Civic didn't feel stricken by the same level of Malaise that was hammering American and European cars of the time. The CVCC engine meant Honda didn't have to put catalytic converters...
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newVideoPlayer("79_Toyota_Tercel_476.flv", 506, 423,""); What's the best way to show that your car is better than the competition? Slap a huge Malaise decal bearing your car's name on the side, set up the ramps, and jump the competition! It's even got more headroom than the Rabbit, which we all know is roomy enough for Wilt Chamberlain! Then it kicks Honda's ass by having a longitudinally-mounted engine, though we're not sure quite how that's an advantage in a front-wheel-drive car.
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There's a Volvo 262C parked in a driveway scant blocks from my house; it would be a super-cool DOTS car, but it's off-limits. Not so for the Bertone in ejacobs' neighborhood, which is on the street and set up for easy photography with no other vehicles nearby. These things sold for 15 grand back in the day, well over twice the price of a regular 242; this one has some rust, but looks pretty complete. galleryPost('DOTSBEDenverBertone', 11, '1979 Volvo Bertone Down On The Denver Street');
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The French car beat the German one in our last Choose Your Eternity matchup , which means we need to give France's cross-Channel rival an opportunity to snatch the PCH Trophy (which features several rods hanging out the side and a spreading pool of oil below) today. We're going with something a bit different this time, however; ever since the What Should Mad_Science Drive To Work QOTD, we've been thinking about non-petroleum-fueled car projects. Not boring ol' electric cars that can barely buzz up to highway speed, or seen-one-ya-seen-em-all veggie-oil-powered Mercedes-Benzes, though. Something fun! Something... HELL! There's no law that says you have to run dinosaur juice in your diesel; vegetable oil or animal fat works just fine! Oh sure, some worrywarts will tell you that you need to use some kind of witches' brew of methanol, lye, and who-knows-what-all and make actual biodiesel, but that's only if you want to run the stuff in an unmodified diesel engine...
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We've already seen a 928 in this series, but I always consider the Malaise Era 928s to be the best ones. Sure, the later 928s were way faster, but late-70s car freaks didn't have much reason for optimism during a period of declining horsepower, disco tape stripes, and huge bumpers, and the then-new 928 was one of the few bright spots. So here we go with another JFG / DOTS combo car, which I found parked near the 1970 VW Transporter pickup . The 219-horsepower V8 in this car doesn't sound like much today (and, yes, you Yurpeans got more power in your 928s... and dirtier air), but [insert horsepower rating of any 1979 Detroit V8 here] . That power didn't come cheap, however; you'd have to move a lot of white powder to come up with the $28,500 (about 84 grand today) list price of a '79 928. You could get yourself a new Ferrari 308 for about the same price... or three Corvettes. This example is a little battered, but it moves frequently enough to indicate that it runs...
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With today's Engine of the Day being the AMC inline six, it seemed only good and proper that we have a Choose Your Eternity dilemma featuring a pair of vehicles powered by that fine powerplant. It's also good to have a couple of American cars, which I really can't use very often in this series because the stuff out of Detroit is too simple and parts obtainment is too easy to make for true hell. Not so with Kenosha products, though- even though the drivetrain parts are easy to find (thanks to the Jeep connection), the body and interior components are another story entirely. And today's trip into Hell isn't just about restoring an old AMC- it's about hot-rodding the six-cylinder engine so you get at least 300 reliable horsepower out of it. The road out of Hell is steep, you see, and you'll need plenty of power to climb out of the boiling sulfur! When you see an American rear-drive car with a big fiberglass hood scoop, brightly-colored racing stripes, and rear tires...
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We don't hold with those who hate all Triumph Spitfires across the board, although their unreliability was legendary even by British Leyland standards. No, the only ones that really deserve the "Shitfire" label are the ones hauling around 900 pounds of Malaise crash bumpers with an engine rated at... well, it's too depressing to get into. I found this fairly complete example located a few rows down from the '76 Peugeot 504 , and the sight of those horrible bumpers- even more horrible than those on the 1975 BMW 2002 - made me feel like Jimmy Carter still negotiating to get the hostages out of Iran even as Reagan took the oath. galleryPost('JunkedSpitfireTop', 6, '1979 Triumph Spitfire Down On The Junkyard Part 1'); galleryPost('JunkedSpitfireJump', 12, '1979 Triumph Spitfire Down On The Junkyard Part 2');
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