Practically Used Homestead Wheels

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

The Caddy fairly shouts "Made in America." And it makes people happy. Strangers wave. Pedestrians come over and pat the hood. When it rumbles into a gas station, attendants vie to check the oil of an engine built back when displacement was measured not in wimpy "ccs," but in cubic inches-460 of them cranking out 420 horsepower. Unless held back, it winds up to 85 or 90 on the doublenickel interstate, but traffic cops just grin like fools and salute as it steams by.

What To Look (And Not Look) For

Regal as it is, a '70 Cadillac isn't old, rare, or elegant enough to be a "collectible car," like a perfectly preserved, show-quality Stutz Bearcat, Deusenberg, or even a "T"-model Ford. Indeed, for daily driving, you should beware of any really scarce or off-beat cars—called "Specialty Interest Cars" in the auto press. An article I read recently suggested saving money by buying a Ford Fiesta, a blocky little Honda-fighter made by Kia of Korea and imported by Ford from '78 till the Escort appeared in '81. A generic econobox when new, it sells for $100—junk value—now, even if running well. It's an "orphan," a car whose maker is out of business or didn't sell enough cars to manufacture a good supply of repair parts. Mechanics and NAPA have forgotten it ever existed and you'd have to scrounge junkyards and bruise your own knuckles to keep it going.

Avoid orphans. Get a car that was popular in its day, free of serious problems and reasonably priced for its type so that it sold in substantial numbers. But pick your model year carefully.

MADE IN AMERICA
By swapping his new Mazda RX7 for a '70 Caddy, my friend cut his maintenance bills in half.

Neither Too Young...

If you can, avoid cars made after '73 or trucks after `79, the years in which government fuel-efficiency and air-pollution limits took effect. In '74, Lee Iacocca's great Ford Mustang became a "government car," the Mustang 2-fat, slow, and worth at most $5,000 today to a car collector ...while a '73 can bring $16,000.

To save weight, cars were "downsized" and steel-beam frames were replaced by unibody construction, where the framework is of the same sheet metal as the shell, a bit rolled or folded at the edgeskind of like corrugating paper for strength. As cars and power plants got smaller, performance was retained to a degree with fuel-injected, multiple-valve, turbocharged engines that are so complicated that, once the warranty expires, major service can cost more than the vehicle is worth.

Still more weight was saved with frontwheel drive, McPherson struts, and rack-and-pinion steering. But many such modern components are non-repairable. Replacements cost hundreds of dollars and installing them requires a $60/hr mechanic with small hands and a big shop. Old-fashioned counterparts—universal joints, tie-rod ends, coil springs, and shock absorbers—cost just a few dollars apiece and you can install them yourself with a medium-size adjustable wrench and big screwdriver.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print