by Chris Barrus
Spotted on the Hemmings blog: 1973 Grand Prix: The first Pontiac I ever drove.
The first Pontiac I ever drove was my brother’s ’67 G.T.O., but a ’73 Grand Prix was the first car I ever owned. Here it is in action:
Outside of Belmont, Nevada. June 1984.
And me at the wheel – hauling down the West Side Highway in Death Valley. December 1983.
Would love to drive one again for a hour or so, but I’m happy to mostly leave it in the past.
One more car video for now. The Nürburgring in Germany is one of the most feared and challenging tracks in the world. Andreas Gülden is the chief instructor of the ‘Ring’s driving school. Ride along with him for a lap and full speed – in the rain.
As the Autoblog guy said, the resulting footage is a master class in car control.”
David Higgins lowers the driving record up Mt. Washington by nine seconds. Bottom to top in a mind-croggling 6 minutes 11 seconds.
Ride along in HD:
Spotted in Los Angeles.
What it looked like in 1964:
And what it looked like today in 2009:
Hemmings Auto Blog has the rundown on the sports car and dune buggy connections to the original U.S.S. Enterprise.
Hemmings Motor News visits “Miss Belvedere,” the 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that was buried in a Tulsa time capsule for fifty years and unearthed in 2007 to a Internet-full of snark who joked about the pile of toxic rust and the bomb shelter that could withstand nuclear attack but apparently not oxygen and water.
Two years and lots of specialized rust removal later, there’s actually a car now…
Some families were Oldsmobile families. Others were Ford. For us it was the three-headed triumvirate of Chrysler, Jaguar, and Ford Truck. There were a couple of exceptions to this rule: my sister’s first car was a 1960 Pontiac Catalina.
And then there was this… My first car: a 1973 Pontiac Grand Prix – the last gasp of a model that none other than John DeLorean was responsible for.
I still maintain that if the current G8 was called the Grand Prix or the Bonneville, Pontiac would have sold a lot more. Since the G8 was rebadged Holden, GM ignored it with the worst case of Not Invented Here Syndrome ever even if Holden had a better conception of what consititutes a traditional American car than GM did. Maybe it’s the cultural memory of Mad Max movies…
Driving northbound up the Glendale freeway for lunch today and caught a glimpse of a dark shape silently WHOOSHING past me. Caught up with it just in time to take a picture.
Last year I saw a black Tesla parked in the Century City mall parking lot, but this is the first I’ve seen on the road.
It’s one of those modern myths you always hear rumors about but never really see in action. Someone has a Les Paul goldtop hidden under a bed for forty years or there’s an old barn out back that has a rare car sitting in it. Still, on occasion it does happen…
Reader Dan Veneman recently shared with us an interesting little barn find. It appears his buddy recently inherited a ranch in Salida, California, that included a 75,000-mile 1956 Ford Thunderbird.
Let’s not forget that amazing 180 car find in a Portugese warehouse. Sadly, most of these barn finds are languishing in the “I’m going to fix it up someday” category.
Franklin Avenue notes that California license place numbering has incremented up to 6xxxyyy style numbers. Not necessarily a big deal itself, but there’s a greater question that has remained unanswered and it’s something that’s been nagging me for years. I’m serious here, as a Californian this irritates me to no end…
When the HELL is California going to stop using that horrid script font? That Mistral font knockoff screams “I’m a logo for a dubious 1980s Redondo Beach nightclub/cocaine front for yacht rockers and their Magnum P.I.-style red Ferrari 308s!”
How come Oregon, Nevada and Arizona can consistently have terrific looking license plates but California can’t? Even the better looking California plates, the whale, Lake Tahoe, and the new Sierra Nevada one are ruined by that awful font.
Attention California DMV! It’s time to solve this blight upon our highways. There are several metric tons of graphic designers in California who could use some work and some sort of competition is in order to finally pound a stake into that ugly script.
P.S. While you’re at it, why not offer new replicas of the classic yellow-on-black plate? (Make ’em reflective so the CHP will be happy). Nevada offers something similar with their 1982 plain blue plate replica. Nothing kills me more than seeing a classic car with a current-style license plate on it.
P.P.S. A plate redesign does not mean you can splat your state URL on it. Indiana, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and Michigan all do it and each one looks like a civic cry for help.