We got dropped off somewhere on Hawthorne and walked down to Burnside. Lovely walk in the soft rain, reminded me of being at home in Ireland. But the surprise of the day was all the older classic European and Japanese cars sitting in drive ways and parked on side streets.
Here's a small sampling: Ford Fiesta MK 1, Peugeot 505 S, EVO IX (VIII?), VW Bus, Datsun (1500)Sports, Volvo 144, VW Karmann Ghia (two examples) and an Audi Quattro (love the plate).
Mercury, the subsidery of Ford, not the planet, has effectively been silently killed off this week. No one is talking about it, 'cause nobody cares. Crap, even Saturn had a bigger going away party.
For too long Mercury(s) were just re-badged Fords, which were not such great cars in the first place. And where did it fit in the family line between Ford-Lincoln-Mercury; was it a step up or a step down? Often they were a few hundred bucks less than the blue oval versions, other models were more costly.
The last decent looking Mercury was the 8th edition of the Cougar, but favored by cougars, not drivers, and that will always kill a sports car/coupe (are you listening Mistubishi Eclipse?).
The only Mercury I ever had a crush on was the Mercur badged XR4ti. It wasn't a huge sales hit, unlike the European Sierra counterpart, but when you are lucky enough to see one on the road today it still looks amazing. Sure, loads of gear heads had a boner when the 2003 Marauder came out, but it looked like a 1987 cop car. So that makes it lame, especially when you could have gone to the auctions and picked up an actual Crown Vic Interceptor for about two grand at the time.
Well, only the only person to blame is parent company Ford who decided the Mercury brand was only good enough for retirees who didn't give a damn how a car looked or drove. The kind of customer, who due to Alzheimer's is not even going to remember that they used to drive a Mercury Sable, or where they parked it.
R.I.P. Mercury, say hello to Pontiac and Saab in car heaven for us.
Even this commercial looks like it was made by a Youtube Fanboy.
Monday, May 3, 2010
"Right, listen here, I got it...we'll take a really great looking Japanese car, change it till it looks like a pig's ass, put Dodge badges on it and call it the Stealth, people will flock to our showrooms. Success." Can you imagine this pitch at Chrysler back in 91 and then the other fool who actually green lighted the project?
The Mitsubishi 3000GT (GTO JDM) is still a fantastic looking car, a true Japanese Ferrari, especially in red. The first time I saw one I actually thought it was an Italian Stallion and my mind was blown when I realized it was a Mitsubishi. It has a design that will endure and inspire future generations of car enthusiasts and designers.
Fast forward 10 years and I'm living Stateside and I start seeing these certain ugly cars made by Dodge that look vaguely familiar. Then it hits me, like a Chrysler Group marketing man jumping off a building, somebody fucked up a 3000GT.
I get infuriated when I see a Stealth on the road. Like when you see a beautiful building that has been tagged by graffiti and you just can't understand why someone would do such a thing to a piece of art.
And don't get me started on the fecking monkey who pitched the idea of the Eagle Talon...ahhhhhhh! What were they thinking back then, no wonder Chrysler got into such a mess.
They made it look like a Ford Probe or something else totally redundant
The wheels remind me of a washing machine, even this girl walking past is grossed out
"Yeah, and we'll put a boomerang shaped little spoiler on it..."
"And you know the way the 3000GT looks good from the front, well we'll make sure the Stealth doesn't."
This video is practically saying "An old car in a barn is more of a car than your brand new Dodge Stealth."
Kenny McKinstry goes “right into crest, left 90, ” Gwendaff Evans in a pink Ford Escort Cosworth spitting fire from its exhaust around Phoenix Park, David Llewellyn in a Castrol coated Toyota Celica leaping into the air at 100 miles an hour: poetry and mechanical madness embraced by a small, esoteric segment of the populous.
As youngsters our Dad brought us into the fold and we embraced the culture like hungry pups on a fat nipple. Up the back of Clar chapel, inches from the graves, perched on a freezing-cold stonewall. Marshals in yellow bids blow their whistles and yell for people to get off the road. The first car to come around the corner is a wee Starlet, hammering on at a speed that is was never meant to do while picking up groceries from the car park at Dunne’s Stores. Followed by a black Opel Manta, spiting chips in the air from the back wheels and a fat lip stuns me for a second, a cool drip of blood mixing with the taste of adrenaline.
A while later and arses still numb from the cold there’s another stage down towards lough Eske. We park and walk along with the hoards of rally nuts. License plates from the North, from Mayo, Galway and Cavan, attracted to the thrill of speed in their wanna-be rally cars – Subaru’s and Twin Cams, old 3 series BMs and a souped up old-school-Supra.
We get a great spot where we might see a car roll on a high-speed natural chicane, so Dad says. The first cars come through cautiously, just nipping the green edges of the road, then the big boys come rallying through at blistering speeds. Modified and broken exhausts howl through the ears at deafening decibels and sure enough the back diff of a Twin Cam can’t control the power and she slides off, the driver barely straightening her up inches from a solid famine wall.
The blood in the veins of these men is like thick oil, lubricating their hot, over-boiling hearts. White knuckles, pace notes, adrenaline at full pump, eyes darting to see over the next crest, a special breed of evolved man, evolved from farm lads and mechanics, soon to be engineers. Men that consider a Massey Ferguson an alternative mode of transport.
Another day and my arse is still cold sitting on the wooden-slat seats of Mondelo Park. Will Gallop’s 6R4 is blazing around the place like a demented supersonic gnat. More than 420bhp ripping through the back wheels in a wee car based on your Granny’s Metro was complete insanity. Banned from group B rallying years ago and found a new home on the rally cross circuit. Along with old RS 200s, Audi Quatros and Lancia Delta Intergrales.
We walk through the infield to warm up; Josie McCloskey has a funny hat on, looks like a tire warmer and big Pat Johnson is cracking another joke and Jimmy is egging him on. Dad and Derek are watching a pit crew re-treading tires as it looks like it’ll be wet.
We had to leave the house at five this morning to get down here in time for the qualifying. The big 5 series BMW was redlined all the way out of Donegal, across the Petigo Road, never under a hundred through Fermanagh and up to 150 through Cavan. A few years later on the Virgina Road a wee boy would be killed and the cops would put an end to the speed too late.
The drive down had been as exciting as some of the driving that day, until Gollop celebrated his win by doing donuts on the manicured grass in the in-field. Totally maddened the folks in charge as they called out over the loudspeaker system for other drivers to refrain from doing the same, but the crowd was going wild. Grass roosters were shooting twenty feet up the air as he ploughed the field with his Metro.
The night before the Birmingham motor show we drove down to Dublin in the Pajero and Dad got pulled over on the Virginia Road and when the young Garda asked him if he knew how fast he was going he said “No” and the cop said “86mph” and Dad stupidly replied “I didn’t think she would go that fast” and the cop said “That and plenty more.” Then he gave the whole people dying on roads speech. Dad had a silly grin on his face ‘cause he knew he was in trouble.
The next day in Birmingham as we walked through the parking lot of the NEC admiring all the fancy cars, a security man came up quietly behind us ready to apprehend the three of us! We had to quickly explain that we were just car enthusiasts and we’re on our way into the show. He looked at us like he didn’t believe us, but after a long awkward moment he let us go and just told us to not look so obvious, especially with those Northern Irish accents, must have thought we were a bunch of terrorists! So off we went to hear Jeremy and Tiff do their car stand-up routine.
Will Gollop was in there to meet us in his usual black, red and gold livery, but this time plastered all over the body of a wide body Peugeot 306, a total beast of a machine. He was putting around 600hp down around the track, setting a pretty amazing pace. Then came a whole herd of blue Scoo-barus with 555 logos and the essential gold wheels. I think wee Colin McCrae was behind the wheel of one of them, years before he would become one of the most famous men in racing with video games based on him, bags of world titles under his kilt and a persona that made you wanna be him flying through a forest road with NO FEAR. Like many bright stars, his burned out early, fecking helicopters.
Back in ‘88 or ‘87 his Dad, Jimmy, battled Bertie Fisher in their near identical blue and white Sierra Cosworths in the Circuit of Ireland. Our hometown of Killybegs was a stopping point for them and Derek and I were in car-porn heaven with all the mad rally cars parked in the town. That weekend was the first time I saw a real M3 in the flesh, or a Cossie for that matter. I stared at them in awe, as a French farmer might a UFO if he found it in his asparagus patch. I reached out and touched them, slid my hand over their big rear spoilers and could still feel the heat radiating off their exhausts. These were the fantasy machines that only existed on telly or in a magazine and now here they were in fish-stinking-Killybegs. A visit from the Pope would have extracted less revere from me.
You don’t see the likes of them anymore, only an EVO or STI can instill that kind of passion in a young boy’s heart these days. I’ll glance at a Ferrari when one passes me, like once every three months on average, it’s the least appreciation I can give a piece of art. But five or six Scoobie and EVOs could pass me in a single day and I’ll stop and stare, crane my neck, nearly run off the road looking at them every time, much to the annoyance of my wife “Jesus Christ, just dive!” You know when archeologists and the like find some fish off the waters of Africa that they thought had been extinct for millions of years, but then it’s in some fisherman’s net, a living fossil, well, that’s kind of what EVOs and STIs are. Supras and Celicas are gone, M3s have become soft luxury cars. The last of a dying breed, I lament and paraphrase; Where Have all the Good Cars Gone.
Richard Burns died not long ago, McCrae is driving the big gold wheeled Subaru in the sky. None of the newer drivers make me wanna use their name in my head when I’m driving. We, the rally breed, need new heroes and often in a time of need they come from the strangest place, like Krypton, but this time it might be America, the good old US of A. They aren’t known for their rally skills, but your man Pastrana having leaned his skills from McCrae knows how to fling a car around. And he’s got the youth and charisma to spawn an entire generation of rally half-breeds. The next day I’m trying to go sideways in my M3, I think I will be him in my head; fast, ferocious and fearless. Until my wife yells at me.
Maybe what I really need is to go on a man trip with Dad and Derek. Find some nice cold, soggy weather and stand around with my hands in my pockets for a ten second glimpse at the arse end of a Corolla Twin Cam. To stand among men who worshiped the back-wheel-drive diff of a carbureted, not injected, Twin Cam 16v. Men who after the races will drive home sideways, with death only a heart beat away.
This is what mine looked like, but imagine this car after a drive-by-shooting
This is the Mitsubishi sister car - nice paint swishes
Oh, how the mighty have fallen; it was the fall of 1999 and I was a freshman in college at Park University and not a four-wheeled-internal-combustion-engine to my name. My school year started back in January and got myself to and from class on either on my trusty blue steed with pedals, completely frozen in the winter months, or caught a ride with some nice kind, caring person. This was a fine way to get about, but now with the addition of a girlfriend who lived exactly 183 miles from my door to her's and I wasn't going to cycle all that way.
The maintenance-man at the Heartland Center was fixing up two old cars for his son and said that one of them was coming up for sale if I was interested. It was a sliver 1989 Dodge Colt, with a four speed manual transmission. I should have said "No, I'd rather keep my sanity" but I really wanted the freedom of having a car: common sense always looses to passion. $800 later I was the proud owner of one dented silver bullet or grocery getter as my American compadres liked to call it.
After the Dodge Colt (re-badged Mitsubishi Colt for the US market) was fixed up, it was pretty reliable, well at least $800 worth of reliability. Except for one or two minor oddities which I discovered the first night the car was in my possession on my first 183 mile, each way, trip to my girlfriends.
The first wasn't too bad: when I put on full beams, the engine cut out. So, I just didn't use full beams, ever. DWS, Driving while squinting, became a terrible habit.
The second was a little more worrisome. Sometimes after coming to a full stop, like at a gas station in Macon, Missouri, at midnight, the car refused to start and I had to jump start it on the fly. Luckily enough, the Colt didn't weight too much and with time I found I could push her, jump in and needed no help.
When I began hearing a funny noise while turning the wheel, and after a few ill-advised midnight trips to see the girlfriend, I took the Colt to Bob at Northland Auto, . He replaced both CV joints and found I had a bad battery connection and that's why she was cutting out at a stand still. He fixed the CV joints and I found that by rocking the car back and forth, the battery made a good connection and I could be on my merry, scholarly way, never late for school again.
Then the key got stuck in the ignition, so I left it there and carried another in my pocket. Then I had to take her back to Bob at Northland Auto and he put in a new CV arm. That day as I drove it back home, the new CV arm popped out and I had it towed back to his shop.
I collected her the next day, as I had a big date with my girl and I was really excited to spend the whole weekend with her. But just a few miles further than I'd made it the day before, the accelerator pedal stopped working as I was approaching an intersection. I pulled over and popped the hood, flames three feet high attempted to burn my eyebrows off.
I grabbed anything of value out of the car, my school books, my tapes and CDs and I had my blue steed strapped to the rear, so I flung her off into the ditch and stood back waiting for the silver bullet to implode! But a very helpful young off-duty police officer, pulled up along side and casually dosed the flames with his fire extinguisher and called the Fire Department just in case.
Once again towed back to Bob at Northland Auto. A bunch of money later, car rewired, new throttle cable, I was back on the road, but my short lived love affair with this car was over and I had my eye on another.
A friend from school was in need of a cheap car and for a few hundred bucks, I handed over my woes to her with full knowledge of the past few months history. Grocery getter begone!
I like to write and I like to party, but mostly just the writing.
Disclaimer:
A lot of these stories are true ones. The memory of growing-up in and around Killybegs. When you hold a mirror up to small communities, sometimes there are those who don't like the reflection. Capote knew this only too well.
If you find the refraction just a little too much and would like the angle of incidence changed in your favor, please email me at georgevial@hotmail.com and I will be happy to make a name change here or there.
