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“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
I like station wagons.
My family has never owned a station wagon.
"Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration is minding my own business."
Calvin Coolidge
Originally Posted by Swordsmyth
Look up Steve Morris
No way.
Go suck yet another lemon, Chevy freak.
Last edited by acptulsa; 06-03-2023 at 08:50 PM.
Today we pretend like we no longer have station wagons. But we're up to our eyeballs in what we now call SUVs. Back in the day, the army Jeep was an SUV. Wagons were wagons, whether based on car chassis, or installed on truck chassis like this International Harvester.
I spent more hours in the back of one of these than I care to admit... exactly like the photo:
Jer. 11:18-20. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you." -- Matthew 12:28
A Gran Torino Square, er, I mean Squire? Starsky and Hutch meet the Brady Bunch? Kind of a cramped third seat, but better than even the full size Shovrolets.
Dad always went full sized, until the gas crunch. I learned to drive in a Country Square.
Why 1971-76 full sized GM wagons had useless third seats (or virtually no under floor storage)--and a major weight problem.
The fifteen seconds that process takes doesn't seem like much, until a rainy day.
I hated always looking out the back, so I kept the seat folded down and put one of the throw pillows from the couch back there. I could sit, lay, look forward, sideways or backwards, lol...
Jer. 11:18-20. "The Kingdom of God has come upon you." -- Matthew 12:28
Oh. Sorry your dad didn't spring for a full size. Not that the Gran Torino wasn't big enough. It was. But the big(ger) Ford wagons offered these:
Growing up we had a 66 Polara wagon, 67 Colony Park and a 73 Grand Safari, all big blocks.Oh. Sorry your dad didn't spring for a full size. Not that the Gran Torino wasn't big enough. It was. But the big(ger) Ford wagons offered these:
Did they all have third row seats? Did you ever try to seat adults in any of them? Did that work in anything but the Polara?
Did the Safari's tailgate ever break down halfway closed? I saw that happen to a GM wagon owner once, though I was too little to remember which of the four brands it was.
Last edited by acptulsa; 06-04-2023 at 08:26 AM.
All had 3rd row and with 6 kids there was no need for anyone over 4' tall to try and fit. You're right though the Dodge was the roomiest for the 3rd row passengers but with the Mercury my sis and I could share the second row seat and crowd the younger ones in the "way-back".
I drove all 3 and the 390-4v out performed the 440-2v and the 455-4v by lots, light up second gear and chirp 3rd with a C6 lots..
I remember broken back glass on the Pontiac but not the gate itself..
I'm six three and I find the third row of a Polara wagon quite roomy for two adults. Better than the middle row of any minivan I've sampled, though harder to enter and exit.
Yeah, the pre-smog 429 Country Square was a dog. Dad actually loaded the car so heavy that we found a hill in Seattle it couldn't climb. Seven liters is enough to move a Class 7 truck!
I never understood Detroit's insistence on choking huge V-8s with two barrel carbs. I guess many consumers wanted bragging rights on engine size, but wanted at least eleven mpg. All I know is it was the bane of the Golden Age of the American car. A 340 Barracuda would dust anything with a two barrel, even if it had 120 extra cubes.
Last edited by acptulsa; 06-04-2023 at 09:19 AM.
Imagine sitting in that seat watching an out-of-control Mack truck that's about to smash into the rear of the wagon!
I'm bumping this thread because of this:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...lover-accident
This is an infuriating result of government meddling in car production.
Full size station wagons would be very unlikely to "roll over" in an accident, even if at high speeds.
But because Uncle Sucker made it impossible to produce and sell a full sized, V8 powered, heavy and low center of gravity station wagon anymore, that forced everybody who needed more vehicle into an SUV, which are now nothing but cookie cutter copies of each because of government "safety" mandates, and they are STILL top heavy and prone to deadly high speed rollovers.
The other thread was not the place for me to vent, but $#@! a bunch of NHTSB.
Thanks again, Tricky Dick...
Last edited by Anti Federalist; 02-23-2024 at 03:19 PM.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
Ford had an upgraded Country Squire version in the mid 70s that had three bench seats in that space, one facing aft, and two facing inboard, with room for 6 small humans, for a total of 12 people.Oh. Sorry your dad didn't spring for a full size. Not that the Gran Torino wasn't big enough. It was. But the big(ger) Ford wagons offered these:
Last edited by Anti Federalist; 02-28-2024 at 09:31 AM.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
JETWAY 707
Here is a youtube channel of someone trying to restore one.
I don't know how many were made or have survived.
Our local college had a fleet of stretched Checkers for their motorpool in the 60's and 70's.
Last edited by sparebulb; 02-23-2024 at 06:33 PM.
Why Are There No New Cars (Almost)?
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2024...w-cars-almost/
By eric -February 28, 2024
If you want a new car, your choices are few – because there aren’t very many left to choose from. Ford doesn’t sell a single new car – other than the Mustang, which is a specialty coupe/convertible that’s not a very practical car. No more Ford family sedans. No more Ford economy cars, either. Lincoln – Ford’s luxury marque – sells only crossovers and SUVs.
And that’s generally true across the line.
Most major automakers – the preferred term now that they mostly don’t sell cars – sell crossovers and SUVs and pick-ups, primarily.
But why have cars – sedans especially – become so scarce?
There’s one word for it.
Government.
Not the market. The latter hasn’t been the driving force behind what used to be the car business for at least the past 20 years but the interposition of the government between car buyers and car makers (as they once were) goes back almost 60 years, to the ’60s – which was when the government began telling car manufacturers how to design cars and what equipment they had to come standard with – such as seat belts – whether car buyers wanted such equipment or not.
From small things, big things.
One of the big things happened when the government created an “energy crisis” – and gas lines (as well as high gas prices).
Having created the problem, government imposed its solution. Italics to emphasis the force behind it, a characteristic of everything the government does.
Even when it “asks.”
The imposition was something called Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Which is to say, enforceable requirements. These CAFE standards were – and still are – government posited miles-per-gallon minimums that every car company’s fleet of new vehicles had to comply with. If not, the government imposed costs in the form of fines that made the noncompliant cars more expensive and thus harder to sell, the idea being to make them harder for people to buy.
People were forced, in other words, to “save gas.” By denying them choice.
The large sedans and station wagons (the latter often having three rows of seats and room for 7-9 people) that were once the most popular cars were shoved off the market in favor of smaller cars, which – for a time – was almost all you could buy.
Assuming you didn’t want a truck. Which – at the time – most people didn’t because (at the time) trucks were basic and crude rigs bought be people who need to carry and pull things – rather than comfortably transport people. But then someone – at Ford, interestingly enough – found a “loophole” in the CAFE regs.
The air fingers quotes are there to make a derisive point about the gaslighting way words are used to make us feel shameful about figuring out ways to avoid what government imposes, using force.
Anyhow, the “loophole” in the CAFE standards was that trucks were held to a lower standard than cars and it was Ford’s bright idea to turn a truck into a high-riding car with 4WD called the “SUV.” Thus was born the Ford Ranger pick-up based Bronco II and (later) the first generation and hugely popular Explorer.
Everyone else followed suit.
The artificially created SUV boom was underway. It was the result not so much of people wanting to drive around in high-riding, truck-based 4WD vehicles but because such vehicles served as the de facto replacement for the family-sized sedans and wagons that were – on account of CAFE – no longer being made.
The CAFE-compliant smaller cars that were still being made were too small – especially in the trunk – for other than commuter car duty. They lacked the room that family cars and wagons used to offer. No automaker has made a car that can carry more than five people in decades. And even the biggest new sedans – which are now all high-priced, low-production luxury-brand sedans such as those sold by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Lexus and Audi, etc. – are not much larger than the mid-sized cars of the pre-CAFE era of the early-mid 1970s.
By the late ’90s and into the early 2000s, SUVs began to evolve into “crossovers” – which is a vehicle that looks like an SUV but isn’t based on truck-type underthings. Crossovers don’t qualify for the “loophole,” which was closed during the Obama era (all passenger vehicles are held to the same CAFE standard, which is now about 35 MPG on average and headed to nearly 50 within just a couple of years from now).
But they have become the final nail in the car’s coffin because they ride and handle much like cars and so don’t handle like truck-based SUVs. They also offer even more room because of the layout. Crossovers – unlike SUVs – are typically front-drive (rather than rear-drive) based, with smaller and transverse (sideways) mounted engine/transaxle assemblies that take up less space than a truck-SUV’s front-to-back-mounted engine, transmission and rear axle.
Even a small crossover – let’s use the current VW Taos as an example – has a lot of room inside its very small (relative to the standards of the pre-CAFE past) footprint. It is only 175.8 inches long. For reference – and comparison – a 1972 Chevy Nova, which was considered a compact-sized car back then, is 189.4 inches long. But the little Taos has lots of room.
More room than a 1972 Cadillac, in fact.
It has 27.9 cubic feet of “trunk” behind its second row – which is more than a ’72 Caddy had in its (actual) trunk. And with its second row down, the little VW’s capacity for stuff swells to 65.9 cubic feet. And if you need to carry seven, the Taos’ slightly larger brother – the Tiguan – can do that, too.
And that’s great, if you don’t object to driving a four cylinder-powered crossover to get what you used to be able to find in a V8-powered family car.
Which you can’t find new anymore.
Now you know why that is.
And soon, you won’t be able to buy a crossover or an SUV that isn’t a device – on account of the fact that the CAFE standards are about to go up to nearly 50 MPG, which is a standard vehicles can’t comply with.
That will leave devices that look like crossovers and SUVs – and the government will, at last, have achieved the goal it set for itself 60 years ago.
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” - Arnold Toynbee
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