All three of these Toyotas are 2-doors. The Tercel is long gone. The Celica is also. The Camry is still around but not as a 2-door.
This is an interesting article about a prototype that Chrysler built of the Dodge Neon using lightweight materials (aluminum, titanium, etc.). They cut 600 lbs from a car that weighted 2,600 lbs. So after the lightweighting, it weighted around 2,000 lbs.
All the performance numbers were significantly better...
Renault built some electric vans... The world & technology wasn't ready...
2 page spread ad by Nissan showing a very large picture of a 1959 Cadillac 2-door hardtop...
Can't see this happening today...
Two cool cars... One with a motorcycle doing a wheelie and the other with the motorcycle jumping...
120 hp/liter for the 4 cylinder Lotus (highest specific output at the time)
The first Honda Odyssey. It was basically a tall station wagon (no sliding doors). Mazda's first "min-van", I think it was called the MPV, was also a tall wagon (regular doors).
My first year working at the Ford Design Center, one of my assignments was working in the Studio which was working on this car. They had finished the design and was going through design verification (where the early tooling mock-ups were being verified versus the actual full size clay design; to ensure that the styling was being carried out as it was intended, down to the last details of trims, moldings, etc.).
I was pretty shocked to see that they had built full size mock-ups of the exterior of the car using the drawings that were created, from the clay, using wood as the medium. I recall going to see the rear end of the car mocked-up in full size and full detail, to very tight tolerance, in solid wood!
It boggled my mind as to how much work that took...
Plus, when all the verification was done, all the mock-ups would be destroyed!
What a waste, I thought...
2-page spread ad by the tobacco industry against a proposed legislation against indoor smoking...
This article looked back at the year 1965. The Cobra, according to the article, cost $6,000 at the time. I think most of the other cars in the article were in the $3,000 to $5,000 range.
A guy I met at GM told me that in the late 60's/early 70's, they still had Cobras that were not sold & they were heavily discounting them to move them.
For the same money, he could buy a Lotus Europa.
Lotus was very successful in F1 at the time.
He thought the Lotus was the better, more high tech car (mid engine, fiberglass body with a central structural wishbone. Independent suspension, light weight, etc.) and that it would be the better car to have. So he bought the Lotus.
Who knew at that time that the Cobra would become so collectible.
One day, he brought the Europa into work (at the GM Design Center) and he gave me a ride around the Tech Center at lunch.
It was a very impressive ride, in terms of the ride and handling (amazing cornering...).
Didn't know that the Supra Turbo did 0 to 60 in 4.6 seconds, back in 1994... Pretty amazing number, even for today...
No comments:
Post a Comment