1973-77 Pontiac Grand Prix

Speaking of the late Carrie Fisher and her AWESOME 1977 Grand Prix from The Blues Brothers movie, I have resurrected here my paean to that very car, formerly published at Car Lust.

I’ve no shame whatsoever: I see that photo up there and I just want to lick it, it’s so gorgeous.

I think this could quite possibly be the genesis, the dawning, the ultimate source, the Patient Zero of my youthful Car Lust: a maroon 1976 Pontiac Grand Prix. It’s certainly the first real car I recall developing a mad crush on, apart from the usual panoply of TV cars that I’ve mentioned over the years. Oddly enough, it was actually a Catholic priest that piqued my interest in these things. Fr. Tony, newly installed assistant pastor at our little ‘burgh in central Wisconsin, showed up driving one that looked identical to the brochure image here. He was a neat guy (still is, actually), quite different from the usual stodgy priests I’d known up until that point, and he eventually became a good friend of the family.

As fine a shepherd as he was, it was that Grand Prix that really captured my eye. We’d had a similar vintage GM Century (which we all pretty much loathed), but Tony’s Grand Prix was a definite step above the old family hauler and grocery getter. Two doors instead of four, a long, luxurious hood ending in a, to my mind, elegant upright split grille, and a short deck accented with opera windows. And it was quiet inside: even though it had a V8 instead of our pathetic V6, the noise didn’t intrude much into the passenger cabin. And it was quite noticeably quicker than our misbegotten tank.

Of course, it might have been a similarly unreliable piece of junk for all I knew. . . . .but I digress. It.Was.Awesome.

Carrie Fisher, RIP

I heard she was in some kinda space movie, too.

But we don’t care about that here.

(1977 Pontiac Grand Prix)

Great(ish) Commercials: Love Today/Today Is Pretty Great

Our very own Mike (Cookie the Dog’s Owner) was cross-shopping for a new car. A 9^th-gen Honda Civic was in the cards. It reminded the author of this post written for CarLustBlog.com back in February 4, 2015. The post remains largely unchanged.

This is the print advertisement that is supposed to entice Gen-Y/Millennials and me to consider buying a new Honda Civic.

Nope.

*turns the other way to the defunct Scion (now just Toyota) dealer*

 

The Fateful Saturday Cross-Shop

The Great Used Car Adventure of 2016, Episode 4

Though the GTI had been declared a total loss at the beginning of September, I ended up waiting for Godot Mutual* until mid-October before I got my settlement check and could go forward with actually buying a car.  In that space of time, I’d seen several solid candidates appear in the listings for a fleeting moment before being sold off to someone else.  In the meantime, the inconvenience of our household being short one daily driver was beginning to weigh on us all.

Once I’d cashed the check, I plotted out a marathon reconnaissance sortie for the following Saturday.  My wife and I would visit several dealerships in Cleveland and Akron and try to look at as many cars as possible in the hopes that one of them would meet our specifications and we could get this over with.

Making the Rounds

The Great Used Car Adventure of 2016, Episode 3

My oldest son took a job in the Cleveland suburbs last year and moved to an apartment in Streetsboro, where there is one of those “automall” commercial developments which puts five or six dealerships on one street all within sight of one another.  We started at one end and worked our way to the other, searching for cars with entertaining driving dynamics and manual transmissions.  I found two that day which were worth trying on for size.