went out for a walk. winter is coming down at the bottom of the world.
walked past the mechanic a couple of blocks down the street.
today there was old school detroit iron out the front getting decobwebbed after the dictator enforced lay up?
rhd conversions from back in the day.
- fine examples of the black art of aussie mirroring.

big caddie barely fitted into an standard aus street car park bay!!!!

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Must be funny to see those.

Having spent my later teenage driving years and my early 20's in Michigan, I was always the odd man out with some sort of birth control car.

1st it was a Mazda 808, then later the 914.

I was surrounded by Nova's, Cutlass', Caddy's, Mustang's, etc. Not a single one of them was capable of turning a corner at about more than 15-20 mph without massive tire squeal followed by either massive understeer, and/or a moment later massive oversteer when you got on the gas

Glad you're enjoying some of the local iron down under.

Those old 'Murican beasts had one positive effect for car enthusiasts: longer garages.

When we bought a townhouse built in 1966, I couldn't believe how deep the garage was…I could slide the 914 in sideways on dollies and still park two normal cars in there, one of them a Cayenne. Then I figured out I could just drive the 914. The moves on the way in were a bit Austin Powers, but it beat using the dollies!

My parents had a big old 1954 Fleetwood when I was very young, the back seat was a like a playground. And no seatbelts necessary, kids from those days bounced well.

In high school, my friend used to drive us around in his dad's black caddy. It looked just like the one you pictured. I think it was equivalent to the modern minivan since it could easily hold eight of us and 10 in a pinch. - Everyone was a lot thinner back then.

My buddy and I used to buy "winter beaters" for about $100 to avoid driving our cars in winter.

Usually this involved a painting party to customize some 70's era domestic land yacht that barely ran.

I can tell you the Po Po don't appreciate it when you make stencil of the Metallica logo and then paint the rear window black so that you can only see out the clear portion that says Metallica. That only lasted about a month before the "fix it" ticket resulted in that masterpiece being scraped off.

Porsche 911 aficionado's might not appreciate the rear deck logo . Remember, this was the 80's. NARP principle for 914's was in full effect.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_yzFc1rusI


Not up to Ian's production standards . . . it is what it is.

Guy I worked with had 3 of those Huge Caddies.
A Pink '59 Coupe, (that was his wife's car)
A '60 4dr hardtop, and '67 hardtop, that looked like the one in the picture above.

My god... it's an Oldsmoboat! Brings back memories of my friend's high school car. An Avacado Green 70 Vista Cruiser with a 455 4bbl. It would pass anything but a gas station. It had a huge hole rusted in the floor in the back seat. We used that for the "beer can ejector" so no one saw the underage boys throwing empty beer cans out of the windows.

And my buddies did the opposite. Decent cars all winter and then the spring beaters came out to be obnoxious in the college town.

Oh the memories of rolling around in a Corvair that was assembled from boxes without manual in 2 days. Then caught on fire when the carb sprang a leak. Funny part was the fire extinguisher didn't work and the only one who stopped was a Dino driving by.

Or the '67 Fleetwood. That was a tough park. I think it was longer than my supercab plow truck including plow. For those familiar with CT, a certain demographic in Willimantic loved that car...

And the piece-of-crap jeeps. The 350 swaps didn't help those.

Of course the 914 ran year round with Blizzaks in the winder and a spray bottle of windshield washer fluid in the cabin to help scrape ice.

i thought that was just a dubbed in sound effect for 70s tv show car chases!
now your telling me its real!

i was studying the details. the caddie had operable back quarter vent windows.
never seen that before. kids would have loved playing with those.

On a semi-related note, if anyone wants to see a great movie on how they keep the cars in Cuba running, watch Yank Tanks, it's fascinating.

2005 Magnum AWD..Tank..

I like this thread. Lot of memories came flooding back.
Phil that vid was as if it was me & my cousins working on their Nova’s

Here’s some yank tanks: My Dads ‘79 Caddy, Mom’s ‘78 Buick and my 914. Pic taken in early ‘86.