Shrinking Expectations
on 05/15/2013 at 02:38 PM
They have been showing some of the old Hawaii 5-0 series here with the excellent Jack Lord. The cars are (I think) all Fords circa 1968/9? they look like aircraft carriers wallowing around on their pogo stick suspension.
I saw a repeat episode of CSI last month where the killer was driving my old car, a 1975 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron. Talk about your aircraft carriers. 233 inches long - 19 1/2 feet! - 80 inches wide, 124” wheelbase, 5100lb. Square as a brick. My two door Imperial was actually a hair bigger than the four door ‘74 Lincoln Town Car, another brick on wheels. Gorgeous. Whale-asaurus. Total Moby. Leather everywhere, and power everything. 440 engine. 10mpg. But man, what a ride. I could lay down across the back seat with room to spare, and I always joked that my first apartment was smaller than the trunk. Biggest damn car I’ve ever seen. And for mega-size land yachts, it actually handled quite well. The hood had to be at least 6 feet long. The front fenders had these little lights on top that would light up when you had the turn signals on, but they also lit up when you pressed the gas pedal too hard. With an emissions strangled 225hp, those lights were almost always on.
I should have kept it and restored it. I bought it used for $2000 in 1982 and spent the next year putting parts in it. Finally I sent it to the junkyard, because it needed a new part for the automatic vacuum operated parking brake release and they were not to be found, so it could not pass insepection.
05/16/2013 at 08:53 AM
