1963 Ford Falcon station wagon

Ford President Robert McNamara's, "personal triumph was the Ford Falcon, which an associate described as being just like McNamara, "He wore granny glasses and he built a granny car."" - Thomas E. Bonsall, from his book Disaster in Dearborn - The Story of the Edsel.

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1978 Buick Skylark

Another car from the "Decline and Fall of General Motors" file. This car was built on GM's "X" platform, which had been around since 1962. By the end of the 70s this platform was positively stone age when compared to a car like the first generation front-wheel drive Honda Accord. And while the 3rd generation X-cars (built between 1968 and 1974), are popular collectibles, this 4th and last generation is considered best forgotten.

*The most valuable thing about this car might be its rear wheel covers, which are from a Pontiac and are correct to the '68 Firebird.
* This same platform was adapted to create the first Cadillac Seville. Using the company's oldest, cheapest platform to build a new car for the prestigious Cadillac brand?! Yep, that was how GM did business in these dark days.

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1988 Chevrolet Cavalier RS

Chevy sold 432,000 Cavaliers in 1986. But not many of them are still around. GM's first attempt at a compact front-wheel drive car was like a lot of its projects in the later 20th century.
1. The Cavalier was designed to play catch up with high-quality, technologically advanced cars from Japan. It failed to do so, thanks to GM's inability to compete and/or insistence on doing everything as cheaply as possible.

2. GM sold a lot of them, thanks to goodwill towards its brands (though that goodwill was fading quickly).
3. The Cavalier was a mediocre product that wasn't very durable, and a lot of people who bought them switched to an import for their next car.

4. Despite cutting all kinds of corners on the Cavalier, thanks to GM's bloated and inefficient management the company didn't actually turn a profit selling them.

From curbsideclassic.com:

"When the first Accord arrived in 1976, it roiled the US market, due to its exceptional refinement, lively performance, excellent space utilization due to FWD, and other qualities that endeared it to reviewers and buyer. The only folks that really hated it were the executives at all the other car companies. The Accord was one of the very few true game-changers."

"Keep in mind that the Cavalier (and the other J-Cars) were the first serious effort by GM to reclaim the huge compact car segment since its ill-fated Vega blunder ten years earlier. GM basically ceded that market to the Japanese, but they knew they could not be a viable long-term player without a competitive car in the heart of the post-energy crisis market."

The Cavalier was overweight and underpowered, and was just not in the same league as the Accord.

"This all set the Cavalier on a trajectory that it would maintain in its very long life: as a low-end car sold on its price and not on its qualities. Which turned the Cavalier into a $5 billion dollar blunder, since it never really became a profitable car line for GM, and its development was very costly. Which only sunk its reputation that much further. Undoubtedly it was the failure of the Cavalier and J-cars that gave Roger Smith the cockimany idea to create Saturn. Which of course ended up making that $5 billion dollar blunder look like success in comparison (Saturn lost some $12 billion over its life). How about getting it right the first time? Or making it right, instead of starting a whole new company?

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1980 Pontiac Firebird Yellow Bird

Trying to explain anything from the 1970s can be challenging. Like the fact that the enormous, garish vehicle pictured was what General Motors was marketing to women. You see, the Pontiac Firebird was considered the epitome of cool in the late 1970s, most especially in the form of the black Trans Am model. So GM decided that what the ladies needed was the same car in color-coordinated "Sky Bird", "Red Bird" and "Yellow Bird" editions.

Why were cars like this so popular? How did Ford manage to sell 352,000 gargantuan, land-yacht Thunderbirds in 1978 in the middle of an energy crisis? I guess one might as well try to understand why men wore leisure suits.

Observations:
* Most of these were sold with V-6 engines making only around 100 hp, so I hope you're not in a hurry.
* GM sold a vast number of cars with these expensive t-tops. I have seen someone driving around with their t-tops off about once in my entire lifetime.

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1925 Chrysler B70

The oldest car I've seen on the street in Seattle, and the oldest ever featured on this site. This car allegedly has a top speed of 70 mph, but I wouldn't test it.

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1965 Oldsmobile F-85

A favorite of mine, people tend to think of this as the Cutlass. But in these years, Cutlass was not a model, but an "appearance package." Thus it's possible to find for example the legendary 442 performance package on an F-85 fixed pillar coupe without the Cutlass package, as well as on the more common F-85 Cutlass Holiday hardtop.

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