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Classic Cars What Will Be a Future Classic?
588 messages, Last post on Sep 06, 2009 at 3:54 PM
You are in the Classic Cars Forum. Your Host is mr_shiftright
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I think Chrysler did the best they could with the limited resources they had with that LeBaron Maserati. Unfortunately for Chrysler, it didn't succeed, in part because of introduction was delayed by snafus. Well, it did succeed in polluting the Maserati name without lifting Chrysler's reputation.
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Replying to: hpmctorque (Dec 30, 2008 6:38 pm) I agree with the appeal of Edsels nowadays being the watching a train wreck fascination. The Titanic of cars. There is no getting around the awful styling and the over dependence on gimmicks like the transmission and the floating speedometer. The idea that something could stand out as the ugliest car of 1958 is pretty overwhelming. It's not like there was a shortage of ugly designs that year. It was no doubt the year that killed the tail fin and that whole line of design. I do wonder if they had started with the 59 design whether it would have made a difference. It was so much more subdued and the gimmicks were gone. I'm always amazed that Ford bothered to toll up for the 60s. By the time the 60s came out the decision to kill Edsel had already been made. Why not just rattle off more 59s and call them 60s? I guess we don't get any more cars named after people between the Henry J and the Edsel.... |
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...was that aside from a few gimmicks and oddball styling, it really wasn't that different from other FoMoCo products. Of course, Ford wasn't the only company toying with the idea of prominent vertical grilles such as the Packard Predictor: 
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...looked similar to this? 
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Replying to: hpmctorque (Dec 30, 2008 6:38 pm) Was this supposed to be a merger of equals as well? 
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Replying to: lemko (Dec 31, 2008 2:32 pm) I've always figured the guy who designed the Edsel must have moved over to Pontiac. That center nose thing went on for quite a bit at Pontiac.
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"Was this supposed to be a merger of equals as well?" The LeBaron-Maserati (can't recall the exact name of that model) was more of a licensing deal or business arrangement between Lee Iacocca and the then majority owner of Maserati. I believe the surname name of the latter person was DeTomaso. The idea was to provide Chrysler with a luxury model, in the hope of providing the Chrysler brand with a halo effect. |
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Replying to: lemko (Dec 31, 2008 2:25 pm) I've never seen these particular pictures. I wonder where they were taken at. They don't look like any Packard factory buildings I've seen in Detroit...but then I've only really ever seen the front of the old plant and offices at 1580 East Grand Boulevard, Detroit (would highly recommend not driving down there today!). Bill
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Replying to: lemko (Dec 31, 2008 2:32 pm) That Verduro Green sure was popular, but I could never stand it. Looks like an olive! Funny, usually you saw the same colors, but with different names, across the GM brand spectrum in any given model year, but I don't remember this green on anything else other than '68 Pontiacs. Does anybody else? I made the Edsel comparison to my first college roommate's '68 Bonneville Brougham four-door hardtop one time many years ago. He was offended, but later conceded a similarity after he'd looked at some Edsel pictures. Bill
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While the debate in this discussion about how to categorize such K-car offshoots as the '80s Voyager/Caravan turbi-4 minivans and Chrysler Mark Cross LeBaron T & C woody convert may still elicit opinions, the February '09 issue of Collectible Automobile suggests that the PT Cruiser convertible is a "future collectible" candidate. I agree with Shifty, that the K-car derivatives mentioned above are not classics, nor will they ever achieve that status. Neither will any PT Cruiser, for that matter. However, I don't disagree with Collectible Automobile on the Cruiser convert; it may, in time, become a collectible. Then, again, it may not. Time will tell. I'd classify those '80s Mopar twins as collectibles, though. Why? As a first attempt to inject performance in a minivan, and as a car that revived the convertible (after Detroit had discontinued them, in the '70s, and many had given the open top concept up for dead), they are innovative and interesting enough, and rare enough, to earn the respect of being something more than just old cars. While the first mass produced (76,000+ manufactured between '05-'08, according to Collectible Automobile) retro convertible shares some of those same qualities, it's too early to predict whether it will garner enough interest to become collectible.
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