Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

Legends of the Fall; Part Three. (Really?)

I've still got a little more to say on the subject.

Settling?

Maybe a four door version could fill the bill? 

This Santa Rosa car was listed on CL at 3,000.00.

For some reason Acura leather is kinda fragile.

While the sedan is a handsome design, in my eyes, it lacks the  special intensity of the second Gen coupe. Front end styling is similar, but the back end is quite different. This particular example looks to be in pretty good shape, and the price is also reasonable. However I just don't find this car as desirable as the sedan that I bought back in the mid Nineties; the Cadillac Seville STS. Which I bought in lieu of a new Acura legend!

It's just my preferences, but at this point, I don't need a family friendly sedan. But coupes are not that common among more modern car lines.

Acura replaced the Legend coupe with a smaller Accord based model; the CL coupe. The first generation was available with a four cylinder or V6 engine. 

I bought a used CL for my son while he was in college. When I got him a newer replacement Acura, I took over the CL. It was a very nice car, and it had the four cylinder motors tied to a five speed manual transmission. It was a very plush design, smooth, comfortable and it returned pretty good fuel economy.

A very nice car, but the word that comes to mind to describe it.. is demure.

While I liked the car, the styling and performance was a bit too unassuming and mild.

The second generation CL was a bit bigger with more substantial styling and all were V6 powered.

The big advantage of the second gen CL is that they are newer and therefore can be found in much better original condition. The disadvantage is that as an Acura, the first owners bought them to drive, and it's hard to find an example with lower mileage. My goal is to find a car with enough of it's original service life still left to provide me with a few years of fun. 

I think that the second gen is an improvement on the initial version. I'm not sure if they were available with a manual transmission, I've never seen one offered for sale with a manual.

The second gen CL might be an acceptable alternative, but then again, it might not.

However if you remember back to my post about Cadillac Coupe de Villes, if the later versions don't elicit the same emotional response as the early versions, then maybe settling for one as a substitute is a poor idea. I mean if you don't get the same charge form thinking about the substitute, then maybe you won't be satisfied.

This was really brought home with my experience with my '97 Buick Riviera. The Riviera had a lot of nice attributes, especially the running gear and driving dynamics, especially when compared against a classic model. However it just didn't register much on my emotional scale. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, since I bought it to give me a tie in to the ROA, so it wasn't about the car itself, so much. It was what the car represented. That didn't work, I just was never going to warm up to that model Riv, and I decided not to waste my time and sold it. 

I remember when Porsche ads in car magazines boldly proclaimed; "Accept no substitute!"

Of course, this is really only applicable to people that have the means to actually buy a new Porsche. Most of us will have to settle for something much less expensive that still provides the needed satisfaction.

Compromises can't be avoided in life, but it's important to maintain some of your focus.

You can only fool yourself so much.

This whole Legend controversy played itself out over many months, and I eventually decided that I didn't really need/want one after all. Instead, I found myself being pulled in a much different direction.

I think that it's about time that I take a cue from Forrest Gump, and end this discussion; "that's all that I've got to say about that!"

In other words, I've moved on.