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Classic Cars I spotted an (insert obscure car name here) classic car today!
17960 messages, Last post on Nov 27, 2009 at 6:08 PM
You are in the Classic Cars Forum. Your Host is mr_shiftright
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Damn, why are all the Shifty-mobiles 3,000 miles away? Lancia HPE--a joy only to the person sellling Lancia parts. Piece of junk. Only 50 convertible 200sx made because....nobody wanted any more than that! Yeah, have Italians chop the top off an 80s japanese car...good idea.....not! RE: Supercharged Graham---oh, someone will buy that and fix it up, definitely. They aren't worth that much money but it's an unusual car. The buyer will be buried financially but he'll have something few people have. |
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The Lancia HPE was one slick, sophisticated car in it's day, too bad they wre only good for about 5000 miles. That 250S was one of the cars that established Mercedes as a luxmobile brand in the US. I never heard the Daimler SP250 referred to as a Daimler "Dart", perhaps that was limited to the UK. They were indeed extraordinarily ugly which was a shame because it had what the Brit roadster buyers of the day craved, V8 power. |
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it's a Hemi Dart, how can ya go wrong? 
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on his '79 5th Avenue, touting how rare it was. Yeah, it was rare alright...I think of the roughly 55,000 NYers made in '79, "only" 15,000 of them had the 5th Avenue package! And if this guy's only seen two of 'em on eBay over the last year, he must not have been looking very hard! Seems to me like one pops up every couple weeks or so! Still, looks to be a nice car... I like that Mirada too. I always thought the Mopar J-body was one of the few cars that could actually carry off a carriage roof with some grace. Probably the lack of a B-pillar that helps out some. Even with those wheels, I like it! |
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Daimler Dart can bring big money, hard as that is to believe. It's a car only it's mother could love, but people do vintage race them, once they squared away the flexi-frame. It's supposed to be a pretty fast, good handling car, if you like driving a lizard I mean. Andy, I think by 1978 Lancia was nothing more than a Fiat. You might be thinking of earlier cars, when they made really fine rallye cars. "rare" is like....12 of something, not 6,000 of something.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Feb 27, 2005 11:45 am) Nope I wasn't thinking of cars from the classic Lancia era (Fulvia/Flamina/Aurelia). The HPE was essentially a Fiat but it was a pretty sophisticated one IRRC which was both it's beauty and it's downfall |
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| that 200SX convertible. However, the fact that they don't show it with the top up gives me cause for concern. I always liked that style of 200SX in general. | |
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It's hard to chop a car and get a good looking top to fit tight and right. I have rarely seen this happen. It either looks bad UP or looks bad DOWN. Personally, chopping an 80s Japanese car sounds pretty scary to me. There must be some monstrous scuttle shake on that baby unless they've welded railroad rails to it. Chopping a modern car is very risky business, since it is a unibody. Ever cut one side out of a cardboard box?....there you go... |
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Yeah, those NYers come up every other week. Seems quite a few of them survived, and many of them survived pretty nicely. Maybe, for the time period, they were a decently made car. Or maybe it's just luck... I bet that 200SX looks atrocious with the top up. You find very few aftermarket converts that look right. When I was younger I knew someone who had a Celica Sunchaser, and it was also awkward. On the SX note, today I saw a c.1991 240SX convert, the factory built one...it looked normal. I once had a dream about a Graham Sharknose convert...I have a thing for more outrageous deco cars. I bet that'd be one that really is "rare" |
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I got to drive a 1982 or so Dodge Mirada that had been chopped into a convertible. It was nightwatch blue with a white top and a blue leather interior. It was absolutely stunning with the top down, but looked hideous with it up. For one thing, they got rid of the rear side windows...both the opera windows in the C-pillar AND the fake-me-out hardtop side windows. So basically, with the top up it was all canvas-covered blind spot from the back of the door window all the way to the back of the roof. It did have a little parallelogram-shaped slit on each side though, a lame attempt at improving visiblity. Now that thing shook horribly when driving it. Everything that's bad about chopping a small unitized car like a 200SX is amplified when you do it to a big unitized car like a Mirada! As for being well-built, well, as much as I love the R-body, sadly, I'll be the first to confess that they were anything but! So I can't explain why the 5th Ave seems to have had such a good success rate? Perhaps they were bought mainly by older people with money who babied them more? I think that's one reason why those mammoth late 70's Lincolns seemed to have survived so well, along with late 70's/early 80's Oldsmobiles and Buicks like the Electra and Ninety Eight. I guess the R-body was just typical Chrysler of the time...bulletproof engines and drivelines with iffy electronics and bodies that were heavy and sturdy, yet somewhat slapped together and not rustproofed too well. The passenger-side door on my NYer is so far out of alignment (right from the factory, no doubt) that my legally-blind grandmother can spot it! |
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