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Xenophon · 07-29-2016, 01:09 PM

All this talk of well-used cars reminds me of a few my parents owned.

My parents bought a new 1964 Plymouth Barracuda, for a ridiculously low price. It had the optional 273 cu in V8. The engine had been "blueprinted" and the car hot-rodded in various ways by the dealer's mechanics and machinists. It had been intended as a high-school graduation gift for the dealer's son... who then flunked out and didn't graduate. That car provided reliable and fun transportation for 240K miles, until it finally died (quite catastrophically) in 1973. Less than a block from home, there was a very loud BANG followed by smoke and a grinding noise. When everything came to a stop, we were astonished to see holes in the hood where some pistons and parts of the cylinder heads had been fired upwards through the hood! Totally dead car. Sadly, it didn't make it until I was old enough to drive.

Its replacement was a 74 Volvo 145 wagon. 2.5 tons of Swedish steel, with a tiny 4-banger engine. And it was the first year of Federally-mandated pollution controls, which also greatly reduced the available power. The family joke was that if you stepped all the way on the gas pedal, you didn't speed up... the only thing that happened is that the engine got louder!

In 1978, I learned to drive in a 1957 VW Beetle, with all flat glass, running boards, and the split rear window. One of my Dad's grad students had bought it used in the late '60s, with 90-something thousand miles on the odometer (no 100K digit, so there's no knowing the actual mileage). My parents bought it from him when he got his Ph.D. and went back to France in the early '70s. By the time I was learning to drive, we'd put another 240K miles on it. It was a great car for a teenaged driver -- it had a blue-book value of $0! My folks eventually sold it to a relative who was visiting from overseas, and wanted to drive around the US. It was cheap, reliable, and easy to work on. A competent shade-tree mechanic could repair just about anything with a coat-hanger and a rock. (OK, that's hyperbole, but you get the idea...) If you visit the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, you can see a picture of that car taken around 1970 when my Dad's graduate students were measuring it to get data to make a 3D computer-graphics model for their research.

Thanks for sending me on this trip down memory lane!

07-29-2016, 01:09 PM	#28212
Xenophon curmudgeon Posts: 1,487 Karma: 5748190 Join Date: Jun 2006 Location: Redwood City, CA USA Device: Kobo Aura HD, (ex)nook, (ex)PRS-700, (ex)PRS-500	All this talk of well-used cars reminds me of a few my parents owned. My parents bought a new 1964 Plymouth Barracuda, for a ridiculously low price. It had the optional 273 cu in V8. The engine had been "blueprinted" and the car hot-rodded in various ways by the dealer's mechanics and machinists. It had been intended as a high-school graduation gift for the dealer's son... who then flunked out and didn't graduate. That car provided reliable and fun transportation for 240K miles, until it finally died (quite catastrophically) in 1973. Less than a block from home, there was a very loud BANG followed by smoke and a grinding noise. When everything came to a stop, we were astonished to see holes in the hood where some pistons and parts of the cylinder heads had been fired upwards through the hood! Totally dead car. Sadly, it didn't make it until I was old enough to drive. Its replacement was a 74 Volvo 145 wagon. 2.5 tons of Swedish steel, with a tiny 4-banger engine. And it was the first year of Federally-mandated pollution controls, which also greatly reduced the available power. The family joke was that if you stepped all the way on the gas pedal, you didn't speed up... the only thing that happened is that the engine got louder! In 1978, I learned to drive in a 1957 VW Beetle, with all flat glass, running boards, and the split rear window. One of my Dad's grad students had bought it used in the late '60s, with 90-something thousand miles on the odometer (no 100K digit, so there's no knowing the actual mileage). My parents bought it from him when he got his Ph.D. and went back to France in the early '70s. By the time I was learning to drive, we'd put another 240K miles on it. It was a great car for a teenaged driver -- it had a blue-book value of $0! My folks eventually sold it to a relative who was visiting from overseas, and wanted to drive around the US. It was cheap, reliable, and easy to work on. A competent shade-tree mechanic could repair just about anything with a coat-hanger and a rock. (OK, that's hyperbole, but you get the idea...) If you visit the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, you can see a picture of that car taken around 1970 when my Dad's graduate students were measuring it to get data to make a 3D computer-graphics model for their research. Thanks for sending me on this trip down memory lane!