Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 Okay, What's up with all this design analysis business? 

I would love to have a first gen Riviera.
But would I want to start with this?  Especially for 4,500 dollars!

I'm just mulling over various cars that I'm considering buying.

I've got this recent infatuation of finding a modern car that can resonate with Classic Hot Rod and Custom car themes from the 1960's.

Similar to the way my '66 Riviera was supposed to reflect themes from the 1950's. It was lowered, raked, with Moon Discs and wide whitewalls. It may not have been pristine, but the design was clean. No vinyl top and Buick built these with "custom looking " grilles and tail lamp panels. It didn't take very much to make them look really sleek.

If you look back at "the little books" from the 1950's, you'll see that many of the cars featured were new or almost new cars. Early 1950's Fords and Chevys. Even something like a Forty Ford was less than 15 years old! 

Moving into the 1960's  there were so many special models, like the Oldsmobile Starfire, Ford Starliner, Chyrsler 300 and all kinds of big coupes. Later there were Personal Luxury Cars like the Thunderbird,  Grand Prix, and Riviera. 

One way to reference this, is to see which cars were popular with the guys building Lowriders, at the time. Full size Coupes, Luxury Personal Cars, and Trucks. All American makes, of course.  Lowriders kept the flame of custom car building burning during the period that mainstream enthusiasts had moved on.

Looking at what's available to work with Today, and it's pretty disappointing. Nothing but four door sedans.

I've considered these, the Cadillac DTS, Lincoln Town Car, even the smaller Chrysler 300. Some of these have already been out of production for more than a few years. They are certainly cheap enough. If there was a way to make an acceptable custom looking car out of one of these you would have comfortable and practical Daily Driver. 

These cars may be out of production, but they are not as far out of production as a '58 Chevy, '60 Ford, '64 Cadillac and even older cars from the 1950s. These cars are now really old, like well over fifty years old. By any standard they are antiques, and are not really suited to regular usage. 

Back in the Day, when a guy stripped the chrome off his shoe box Ford or lowered and flamed his Chevy coupe, he still had a car that he could reliably drive to work. Just think of the Hirohata Merc and the 1953 article, "Cross Country in a Custom." The Merc was what, less than five years old? 

The article is available on the website, Custom Car Chronicle. https://www.customcarchronicle.com/cc-builders/barris-kustom--shop/cross-country-in-a-kustom/

The detours were the worst.

The problem is that these older cars now either need a lot of work, or they are just very expensive. From my vantage point they are all just too expensive. Take away my "car guy" card, but I don't  think that an older car is really worth more than a modern one. 

Wouldn't it be nice to take a five year old car and be able to turn it into lowered cruiser? A car new enough that it wouldn't need any real repair? 

There's that old saying, "Never meet your heroes" and it applies to most old cars. Viewing them from the Today's perspective they all come off very poorly. The styling can be dramatic and impressive, but usually that's where the impressiveness stops. All of the running dynamics are usually pretty poor, power output, handling, braking!!!!! and fuel economy, or lack thereof.  The interior amenities and ergonomics will be lacking. We won't even mention the lack of passenger safety provisions.

Of course many of these areas can be improved by the copious application of greenbacks. 

But what do you end up with? A very pretty and shiny old car that makes nice noises when you start it up. Except that you don't start it up that much. You're saving it for the car shows, right? Better just to take your new Tahoe. 

Most of the guys that I know that have restored or "restified" muscle cars almost never drive them.

Looking at it from a strict dollars and cents viewpoint it just doesn't seem like you can get enough bang for the buck.  

I started this blog concerned with doing things on the cheap. If I had an extra thirty grand or more lying around, I could buy something like a nice Forty Ford or "66 Chevy Impala. There's nothing new about that. Cash gets you what you want. So I'm looking for some alternatives. 

You have to scratch your particular itch. Define what it is you want, and try to satisfy that craving. It might call for some creative thinking.

Driving around town I am confronted by hordes of Mercedes, BMWs and even Teslas! But I just don't find myself lusting for one. New Cadillacs and Lincolns just seem too blah to even care about, except for maybe the Aviator and Navigators! But new cars are out of the running because I really can't and won't try to afford one. 

I used to drive a '56 Cadillac, White over Aqua, a great 1950's color combo. I ran wide whites on the stock hubcaps, and it was low, not because I lowered it, but because the springs had sagged, just enough! It did look extremely cool rolling down the street, but the driving wasn't that cool. It felt like I was looking over the hood of an old bus when I was driving it. It drove like one too. I'd had newer model Cadillacs which were much better. My '64, was better, but wasn't as good as my '70 which was quite surprising, considering it's size. My '77 was a modern car and it was a great road car. Then jump to my '94 Seville STS. 

It sounds kind of silly and obvious that a newer car will drive better than an old car, who wouldn't know that? It takes a special person to drive a vintage car everyday. As much as I liked my '70 Mustang, it was really pretty terrible compared to my 2007. 

I bought that 2007 brand new, the same year that I bought my F150. We used that car as the family car for years, everyday driving and vacation trips with the two kids in the back. I wanted a GT convertible of course, but as the car that my Wife was going to be driving, and eventually my Daughter after she learned to drive, I figured that the 200 hp. V6 coupe would be more than enough. Which it was, and has been. To be honest my Wife could have handled a GT easily enough, she was the main driver of my 300 hp. Cadillac STS before that. 

The '07 Mustang is still around although it's taken it's knocks. I am the kind of guy that will dote on my own cars keeping them clean and maintained. The '07 fell into the pit of not being "my" car, but the family car. It then became My Daughter's car. It then became a "rare" car. I rarely drove it, rarely thought about, and rarely washed it. 

I'm not sure yet which car is going to work out for me, so the search and the discussion will continue.