trinacriabob

lunch or "Cafe 150" stop? - - - - - I'm going to go back in time with the spotting. This would have been October 1: Second-gen and final Aurora - spotless - 3.5 V6 and gold package From the tropics to the tundra, complete with the little Cuba sticker in the rear window ... there's a story behind everything.

Midwest

Not because I like this song, but because I recently learned that such a song even existed. Fairly nutty premise for a song. I've seen her on TV, she reminds me of the grown up version of a girl who lived 6 or so houses up the street from us, and I like her LESS as a result of reading her bio, despite her being a NYU grad.

Some end of month spotting Here's my favorite version of the FWD Bonnes and you can see the trestles holding up "the El" tracks over State Street Spotless, 11 to 13 years old, and in downtown St. Paul ... this could have been owned out of state and brought up into the Land of 10,000 Lakes A renegade 2005 to 2007 (?) Grand Prix confidently taking a left turn and dwarfed by the archdiocesan cathedral in St. Paul. I couldn't believe how many of these very last GPs I saw in the Twin Cities, both in excellent and deplorable condition, and still running strong.

An extra scoop of ice cream or gold star if this is an original factory color. Wow. Look at the tiny window for the rear quarter. The colonnades of the next decade (even if this Eldo is B-pillar-less) were obviously derivations and the way GM put the PLC in the everyday American's driveway en masse. Those were the days.

That would have been cool. I circled out and back using Minneapolis (airport) ... ridiculously good Southwest fare. Stories, indeed ... having people wave to you or pointing at you, pulling your hair out looking for parts, haggling with people to restore the rust spots, etc. but you're right about living only once. Would prefer a colonnade coupe with either the 260 V8 or the inline 250 6, and no A/C, to toy with. I know those engines. I periodically look for those. If there was a cheap "even firing" V6 in excellent condition from the late '70s or early '80s that could be swapped in, that would make this more attractive. I had a feeling this unit would rumble like an earthquake if I cranked it over ... but then I could have been surprised. The lady's husband needed to be around for me to ask more questions and look at it more carefully.

Right, too new for you. My "niche" here seems to be the championing of these GM colonnade coupes from this era. Could an "even-firing" 231 c.i. V6 from the next few years that followed slip into this engine's place, just like THM 350s could be slotted where THM 200s used to be (having had that done for a previous car, which was the right thing to do)?

From some vantage points, without badging, it looks very Mazda-like.

So, I'm far away, in the land of fall colors, driving along in the U.P. of Michigan, and I see this old but familiar Buick in a driveway. No, it can't be. I pull off and find a spot where there is room to park. I take out my phone and set it to camera mode. It was a '76 or '77 Regal colonnade coupe. It had the V6 badge. The lady of the house comes out the door and I explain to her that my dad used to have one of these as a second car. I asked if it was for sale. She said that her husband would know the details, that he wanted to rescue this piece of history from going into oblivion, and she gave me their number after we talked a bit. She didn't know much about the car. I explained to her how it was a '77 as opposed to a '76. She said it ran. I suppose I could have turned over the engine, and hear the "odd firing" V6 come to life, but I felt that would have been so random, having just walked up to it. I asked if it had the original engine and transmission. She said she thought it was original. With all the info I knew about the car, I suppose she deduced I wasn't a flake. There was a good deal of rust on it, especially at its base and where the bumpers hook onto the car. The interior fabric is tattered. It's the pale blue base cloth interior. On the other hand, the gizmos are nonexistent. Sure, it has power steering and brakes, but no power windows, tilt wheel, or any of that. Also, as I expected, it didn't have A/C! This thing was hilarious. The price would be low. I still have their number somewhere. Mechanically, it would be very simple, with no bells and whistles. It could be fun to have this .... and it could also be a money pit to bring it back to being presentable. Would you have done it (moved toward buying it) or would you do it (if it's still available)? Photos: Parts of it look okay and parts of it look weathered: you can see the rust at its base ... also, check out the V6 badge! The area where the bumpers slotted into the ladder frame had seen better days ... there was a fair amount of rust I guess this household is voting for "RUMP." I didn't know you could do that. (I swear I didn't trim the photo.) The crossbars in the grille mean it's a '77. The '76 had the basic "Parthenon" grille, with only vertical bars in the grille. I didn't even lift the hood. You'd see that compact engine pushed up against the firewall! I was driving toward scenic sights that were on the checklist, not this Regal from yesteryear. WWCGD? What Would C&G-ers Do?

private

I am contemplating what the next Dodge Charger might be like. I hope the progression is a good one. If it's a change like, say, from the '76/'77 Cutlass Supreme to the '83/'84 Cutlass Supreme, then I'd be okay with it. I'm talking analogies here. The latter of the Cuttys mentioned above kept all the good qualities of the former ones, but in a slightly smaller and lighter package. You could tell that they were lighter when driving them, but they still remained great cars worthy of their name and heritage. I spend too much time thinking about what this future car might be like. *sigh*

Right, I had forgotten about the Pine Barrens. I don't know if the cranberry fields are in the Pine Barrens or they are two separate places. The one thing that stunned me is how close Matawan (of 1916 infamy) is to NYC. I had always thought that that waterway emptied into Egg Harbor, or somewhere down there, along the Atlantic Seaboard. Mostly, I know Bergen County because of relatives - and the way down to Newark Airport as well as the way up along the Palisade(s) Parkway back to the New York state line. When I'd visit, I would take the NJ Transit buses to get into Port Authority in Manhattan on the cheap and riding with entertaining people along the lines of Maude or Rhoda was guaranteed.

I lost a college friend to this brand of wench. I was in the wedding party. In the course of his marriage, he has handed over his testicles to her on a silver platter. - - - - - response to thread: Belly

Things have changed. Rental car rates are way up. Weekly pricing is mostly gone. The per day rates are high, and they seem to hold on the weekends. Some better prices can be found via Costco's car rental program, any discount codes you may have, and/or renting from satellite urban and suburban locations rather than airports. Still, it appears that rental rates are going to remain higher and that the bargains we've seen will be less frequent.

Being that this is a thread of ve-hickle spotting in October, would that imply that those of us posting here are hicks ... or that we have an affinity for them? I'm wondering if there is somewhat of a hick quotient in the cranberry flats in the middle of the Garden State. I couldn't believe how unpopulated it is as one drives from Philly to Atlantic City, for example.

Are we not in enough pain? The election, the SCOTUS confirmation, domestic terrorism, coronavirus, stimulus gridlock? WTF is this that Scott Peterson's verdict and process might be revisited? Given that they put a man on the moon some 5 decades ago, nothing ought to surprise us. Still, unbelievable ... in a bad way.

Scratch

I'd take it, sell it, buy a new $29K Dodge Charger with the proceeds, and save the rest ... like a good tightwad.

Got the power steering fluid changed. It had been about 4 years and 50,000 miles since I last did it. Feels good to refresh the car like this every now and then.

Saw an immaculate white (pure as the driven snow, get it?) 2004 or 2005 Monte Carlo base ... the last one to have the sideways Coke bottle headlamps. So, it had the wheel covers and no spoiler, revealing the hump with the CMSL that you rarely see in most MCs. I remember these 3400 V6 cars being rated at 21 city and 34 highway. They sipped fuel. Toward the end of their respective model years, Chevy dealerships were "giving" these away, yet they weren't bad cars at all and time has proven that.

I think it is a scanner. It has to be. I use block printing on any envelope I write, so it wouldn't be an issue for the scanner. But for cursive that is sloppy, too ornate, or written with a different hand by people from other countries, I wonder how the scanner might pick it up. Some mail has get rejected and require hand sorting. But also how the mail moves. Payment centers seem to be in Charlotte, Philly, Chicago (Carol Stream comes to mind), Dallas, and Phoenix. So, if you're sending a letter with a payment from Seattle to Dallas to a PO box for a regular monthly bill and you put it in the mailbox at noon, shouldn't it be picked up by the addressee in 2 days? Wouldn't it be on the plane that night or the very next morning? A commercial aircraft or a freight company's aircraft? And, then, wouldn't the zip code and the bar code cause it to get priority handling to that certain PO box because it's a prominent credit institution with a lot of volume? Don't know. I've seen that it's about 3 days for most of my things to post as received, and sometimes 4.

A random thought that's being going through my head the last few days: Flies gravitate toward turds, do they not?

Saw "Green Book" twice and I could see it again. Epic! Given that he picked up the car in front of Carnegie Hall, I KNEW there would be some great cinematography of the car crossing the George Washington Bridge to head westward and out of NYC ... and there was!

This is cool. What's a little off is that most of the building is so vanilla, but the curved part makes a strong statement. Styles are hard to pin down sometimes. I don't know if this is art deco or a style they used for movie theaters in SoCal post WW2 which they called "streamline moderne" (learn something new every day). Loved this place, even though it is no longer recognizable as such and hasn't been a theater for a long time. The second caption was hilarious. Incredible looking interior on this vehicle. The only thing that's weird, and probably always will be to me, is how consoles are now about as wide as the control area between the pilot and the first officer on a jumbo jet.

I remember that the Kia Stinger was well received and, now, some reviews of it aren't as favorable as the initial impressions. It looks like it's built on a variation of the Optima platform, but I'm not sure of that. On a different tangent, a random thought that sometimes goes through my mind is that I'd like to take a tour of how the post office system works. They probably don't do that anymore, and certainly not now. When I was in the cub scouts, we got to tour airliners and we got to tour military ships. I would like to see how a first class letter is routed from beginning to end and how, nowadays, they'd deal with bad handwriting for addresses and such. It's part of always wondering how things work.