Porsche 928 There’s a lesson somewhere in the apparent failure lack of success of the 928. Or course, Porsche AG may be having the last laugh. (Photo via LandSharkOz’s desktop images page, taken by Andrew Rosario’s wife (according to the attribution)) Click for high-res photo

Porsche 928

There’s a lesson somewhere in the apparent failure lack of success of the 928.

Or course, Porsche AG may be having the last laugh.

(Photo via LandSharkOz’s desktop images page, taken by Andrew Rosario’s wife (according to the attribution))

Not quite faithful to scale

Not quite faithful to scale

Love the custom paint

Love the custom paint

Mr 4 chose the Moon Eyes rod. Nice!

Mr 4 chose the Moon Eyes rod. Nice!

HotWheels Oldsmobile 442 Kustom

On the weekend I was at the shops with my wife and kids, Mr 4 and Miss 1. Mr 4 is amassing quite a collection of toy cars (carefully vetted by Daddy, of course, for depth and breadth of model selection, and general issues of taste).

We were shopping for shoes, which is fairly annoying when you’re 4, so as a reward Mr 4 was allowed to choose a car. His selection was the Moon Eyes rod (it’s the 3rd pic in the set above), which has a flip up roof and rear deck which reveals that the rod is actually mid/rear engined. Cool.

But, I also noticed that HotWheels is currently on the brown bandwagon with more than a few emphatically brown models in the current lineup. They had a few brown variations on canonical hotrods, Willys coupes, woody wagons and a T-bucket but the best of the lot was the Olds 442. Even the wheels are bronze!

Move the Torana to get to the... Torana

On the Twitter today Andrew Matthews pointed to Clint Halliday’s recent photos from the South Australian All Torana Day.

There are some beautiful Toranas in the 108 photos.

For my money, the finest would be the apparently factory stock SL/R 5000, still on the original wheels. This 3.3L coupe is pretty nice, too.

I do have a soft spot, though, for the earlier LC/LJ series of cars. This one in metalic brown with GTR mags and this one rocking on thin whitewalls are particularly cool.

But for a little bit of history, it’s hard to go past the (orange counts as brown!) Hatch Hutch (these are quite the collectors item as the tents tended to deteriorate).

1969 Mazda 1500 This really was my car a few years ago. I don’t normally name cars but this one was called Elwood. (No, it was not named for the Blues Brother.) This is it leaving Canberra for Brisbane. It was my daily for about a year, before I sold it to buy a Renault 16TS. Elwood had a slightly later 1800cc engine mated to the 1500’s original Borg Warner 3-speed auto. It ran 4-wheel unassisted drum brakes. It stopped well enough, but perhaps not as quickly as is safe these days and with no brake feel. The beige was probably the original colour but it had been repainted in a very thick acrylic. The interior was in good condition, brown vinyl. For something that looked like it could have worn Alfa Romeo badges (and indeed was designed by Giugiaro when he worked for Bertone) it was hilariously antiquated. And beige counts as brown. No, you shut up. Here’s a few more photos of Elwood. (Main pic via my flickr)

1969 Mazda 1500

This really was my car a few years ago. I don’t normally name cars but this one was called Elwood. (No, it was not named for the Blues Brother.) This is it leaving Canberra for Brisbane. It was my daily for about a year, before I sold it to buy a Renault 16TS.

Elwood had a slightly later 1800cc engine mated to the 1500’s original Borg Warner 3-speed auto. It ran 4-wheel unassisted drum brakes. It stopped well enough, but perhaps not as quickly as is safe these days and with no brake feel. The beige was probably the original colour but it had been repainted in a very thick acrylic. The interior was in good condition, brown vinyl.

For something that looked like it could have worn Alfa Romeo badges (and indeed was designed by Giugiaro when he worked for Bertone) it was hilariously antiquated.

And beige counts as brown. No, you shut up.

Here’s a few more photos of Elwood.

(Main pic via my flickr)

1983/4 RX-7 Turbo Allow me to indulge my supreme nerdism about early RX-7s… In Australia this is called a Series 3 RX-7. People will tell you all sorts of stories about what makes a Series 3 a Series 3. The things that identify this particular car as a Series 3 are the high-shouldered seats and the barely visible vents in the lower front bumper. Or you could see that this car is a turbo and know that what we call a Series 3 is a direct result of the power upgrade that the factory bestowed on the RX-7 when they gave it the 12a turbo from the Luce/Cosmo luxo-barge twins in late 1983. (Australians will tell you that the Series 3 is a 1984/5 car, and that is mostly true and is a good rule of thumb as most 1983 RX-7s in Australia are Series 2.) But, the Series 3 and the power upgrade. The RX-7, as originally conceived, is sort of a massive facelift of the RX-3/Familia Rotary. Anyone who argues this point is willfully ignoring that both the RX-3 and RX-7 wore Savanna badges (as the car in the pic above does). Unlike the RX-3, which had a leaf-sprung live rear axle, the RX-7 has a coil-sprung 4-link live rear axle. So far so good. But, the RX-7’s rear axle design is such that under hard cornering it binds, that is, it gets itself situated in such a way as to become rigid with the body rather than supported by the springs. This leads, in normal road conditions, to undesirable handling traits such as snap oversteer and particularly snap oversteer while accelerating. When the factory decided to up the RX-7’s power from about 110hp to about 150hp they also decided to try to fix the handling. A bit. So all the cars after the introduction of the 12a turbo engine had the mounting for the lower control arms of the 4-link live axle moved just a tiny bit to try to take out some of the snap oversteer under power. And because that was a change to the chassis pressing, all RX-7s from late 1983 on had the same rear axle mounts. There are a few other tiny detail changes, too. The windscreen wipers are different and the windscreen squirter is a single nozzle rather than two (or vice versa, I can never remember that one). And the front suspension strut-tops are corrugated in the Series 3 and flat in the Series 2 (though I know of one car, that was never crashed, that had one flat and one corrugated strut top. It was a late ‘83 car. Go figure). But, in their infinite wisdom, the factory, or their local distributors, also decided that the 12aT was only suitable for the Japanese Domestic Market and everywhere else in the world (AFAIK, some weird things popped up in Greece recently) got the plain ordinary 12a which had been the RX-7s lot from 1978. Except the United States which received the semi-mythical GSL-SE which received the fuel-injected 13b, also from the Luce/Cosmo twins. Oh, yeah. The car above? Love it. It’s brown, obviously. And it has the red interior which people hate, making it all the more desirable in my eyes. And it’s the turbo, though I am actually an atmo rotary fan. But the thing that makes this car? Factory steelies. Yeah. Click for high-res photo

1983/4 RX-7 Turbo

Allow me to indulge my supreme nerdism about early RX-7s…

In Australia this is called a Series 3 RX-7. People will tell you all sorts of stories about what makes a Series 3 a Series 3. The things that identify this particular car as a Series 3 are the high-shouldered seats and the barely visible vents in the lower front bumper.

Or you could see that this car is a turbo and know that what we call a Series 3 is a direct result of the power upgrade that the factory bestowed on the RX-7 when they gave it the 12a turbo from the Luce/Cosmo luxo-barge twins in late 1983. (Australians will tell you that the Series 3 is a 1984/5 car, and that is mostly true and is a good rule of thumb as most 1983 RX-7s in Australia are Series 2.)

But, the Series 3 and the power upgrade. The RX-7, as originally conceived, is sort of a massive facelift of the RX-3/Familia Rotary. Anyone who argues this point is willfully ignoring that both the RX-3 and RX-7 wore Savanna badges (as the car in the pic above does). Unlike the RX-3, which had a leaf-sprung live rear axle, the RX-7 has a coil-sprung 4-link live rear axle. So far so good. But, the RX-7’s rear axle design is such that under hard cornering it binds, that is, it gets itself situated in such a way as to become rigid with the body rather than supported by the springs. This leads, in normal road conditions, to undesirable handling traits such as snap oversteer and particularly snap oversteer while accelerating.

When the factory decided to up the RX-7’s power from about 110hp to about 150hp they also decided to try to fix the handling. A bit. So all the cars after the introduction of the 12a turbo engine had the mounting for the lower control arms of the 4-link live axle moved just a tiny bit to try to take out some of the snap oversteer under power. And because that was a change to the chassis pressing, all RX-7s from late 1983 on had the same rear axle mounts. There are a few other tiny detail changes, too. The windscreen wipers are different and the windscreen squirter is a single nozzle rather than two (or vice versa, I can never remember that one). And the front suspension strut-tops are corrugated in the Series 3 and flat in the Series 2 (though I know of one car, that was never crashed, that had one flat and one corrugated strut top. It was a late ‘83 car. Go figure).

But, in their infinite wisdom, the factory, or their local distributors, also decided that the 12aT was only suitable for the Japanese Domestic Market and everywhere else in the world (AFAIK, some weird things popped up in Greece recently) got the plain ordinary 12a which had been the RX-7s lot from 1978. Except the United States which received the semi-mythical GSL-SE which received the fuel-injected 13b, also from the Luce/Cosmo twins.

Oh, yeah. The car above? Love it. It’s brown, obviously. And it has the red interior which people hate, making it all the more desirable in my eyes. And it’s the turbo, though I am actually an atmo rotary fan. But the thing that makes this car? Factory steelies. Yeah.

fro:

Datsun.

I’d forgotten the smell. I’d forgotten the skinned knuckles, the order in which things must be undone and put back together. I’d forgotten the weird angles. I’d forgotten the times to gently persuade, and the times to smash. I’d forgotten the feel of it.

And despite the wrongness, despite the patina, despite the pain: I can’t wait to take this car to Alpine, and realise I have forgotten how to drive a real car.

Rock on, Fro. Rock. On.

(this post was reblogged from fro)
1970 Dodge Charger 500 If an orange Charger plays Dixie, what would a brown one play? (pic via Mopar Muscle Magazine’s readers rides. This one belongs to Ted, from Gray, Tennessee who restored it from a “beater”. Nice work, Ted!) Click for high-res photo

1970 Dodge Charger 500

If an orange Charger plays Dixie, what would a brown one play?

(pic via Mopar Muscle Magazine’s readers rides. This one belongs to Ted, from Gray, Tennessee who restored it from a “beater”. Nice work, Ted!)

1971 (ish) Chrysler CH-series Hardtop The CH had a 115-inch wheelbase and a total length of 197 inches, making it stupidly massive in Australia and, should it have been made available in the US, a “compact”. Go figure. Take particular note, in the sadly blurry press photo above, of how the vinyl hardtop does not extend to the tops of the doors or encompass the full B-pillar. You don’t get that sort of quality accessorising these days. (Pic via Herman’s Mopar Info. Be sure to check out Herman’s own CH Hardtop which was once brown itself!) Click for high-res photo

1971 (ish) Chrysler CH-series Hardtop

The CH had a 115-inch wheelbase and a total length of 197 inches, making it stupidly massive in Australia and, should it have been made available in the US, a “compact”. Go figure.

Take particular note, in the sadly blurry press photo above, of how the vinyl hardtop does not extend to the tops of the doors or encompass the full B-pillar. You don’t get that sort of quality accessorising these days.

(Pic via Herman’s Mopar Info. Be sure to check out Herman’s own CH Hardtop which was once brown itself!)

loudpop: Ferrari 275 GTB-4 Seriously, magisterially, brown. Click for high-res photo

loudpop:

Ferrari 275 GTB-4

Seriously, magisterially, brown.

(this post was reblogged from loudpop)
Lotus Esprit Turbo I’m not entirely clear whether these brown “James Bond” Esprits were just for the movie or whether they were available in showrooms. Lotus Esprit Turbo says that they were painted copper to show up better against the snow in For Your Eyes Only. Apart from the horrible 007 logos that look like they were designed and applied by the Hethel work experience kid, the whole package has a cool every-option-box-ticked vibe. PS: Bonus blimp action! (Pic via Louts Esprit Turbo) Click for high-res photo

Lotus Esprit Turbo

I’m not entirely clear whether these brown “James Bond” Esprits were just for the movie or whether they were available in showrooms. Lotus Esprit Turbo says that they were painted copper to show up better against the snow in For Your Eyes Only.

Apart from the horrible 007 logos that look like they were designed and applied by the Hethel work experience kid, the whole package has a cool every-option-box-ticked vibe.

PS: Bonus blimp action!

(Pic via Louts Esprit Turbo)