Dude, You're Weird. 1985 Fiat Bertone X1/9, 1967 Rambler American, 1967 Ford Bronco

These are all examples of classic vehicles I've seen before in Seattle, but all owned by the same person? That's some diverse taste.
* This Fiat is identical to one I spotted in Queen Anne.
* This Rambler is also nearly identical to another I spotted, also in Queen Anne. Note Ramblers were not sold new with cool Magnum 500 rims like those on this car.
* I've spotted any number of vintage Broncos; this one has tires that are orders of magnitude larger than those it had when it came from the factory.

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1977 Chevrolet Malibu Station Wagon

Kids today strapped into their booster seats will never know the the pleasure of carefree summers spent lounging in the back of a full-size station wagon. The Malibu of course is only "mid-size" and dwarfed by the King of the Road: the Caprice Estate wagon.

 

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Afternoon traffic with a 1929 Ford Model A Coupe

 Nothing unusual in Seattle!

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1972 Triumph TR6

Triumph sold a lot of cars in the US back in the day - between 20 and 30 thousand TR6's and Spitfires per year in the mid-1970s. As a British sports car, was it unreliable? No, no more than anything else built in those days. It appears to belong to the same owner as the Land Rover featured in my last post, and you can see another Land Rover in the garage.

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1971 Land Rover Series IIA

 A rare vehicle in the US, the original Land Rover (eventually called the Defender) was not sold here officially except between 1993 and 1997. Retired after 2016, Rover has reintroduced a new Defender for 2020. The 4-cylinder engine in this vehicle only has about 50 hp. Hard to imagine how it gets this thing moving. I'll be featuring the red Triumph in the last photo in the next post.

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Peaked in High School? 1976 Chevrolet Nova

 A guy you knew (loudly) drove this car to your high school. He was either:
1. That guy who beat you up and who died two years after graduation in a motorcycle accident.
OR
2. That poor kid who could rebuild an engine blindfolded and who now works at your Audi dealership and owns a house with a three-car garage.

I love the Max Max touches: homemade grill, mop and bucket paint job.

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1985 Buick Regal T-type

Though you wouldn't guess it, this car is as fast as a Corvette made the same year. Yes, once upon a time Buick of America sold cars to someone other than your grandmother. The owner of this car was kind enough to let me take a look at its turbocharged V-6, which he as upgraded with some of the performance parts that found their way into the final edition of the Regal-based turbos, the 1987 Buick GNX which was the fastest car built in America.

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Time is an illusion. 1979 Cadillac Fleetwood, 1955 Ford Fairlane, 1965 Plymouth Barracuda

There are some neighborhoods in Seattle where you can street store the cars you're (slowly) restoring.

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1967 Oldsmobile Toronado

Folks have forgotten what an admired brand name Oldsmobile used to be. It was for a long time the most popular mid-price car brand in America, with the Olds Cutlass frequently the country's best-selling car. Olds was also an industry leader in innovation: the first car with an automatic transmission (1940), the first car, along with Cadillac with a high-compression V-8 engine (1949) and the first mass-production car with front-wheel drive. That last car was the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado.

There's a long list of technical innovations created just for this car. I'm not going to go over them all, but take a look here. The early Toronados did have an Achilles' Heel - disc brakes were not available until 1967, and then only as an option. Depending on drum brakes to stop a 4,500 pound car with the engine and transmission up front is asking for trouble, and anyone restoring one of these cars includes upgraded brakes. 

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