Autos Repair

My head often returns to the rockin’ 58 Chevy Impala and entrance of those notorious triple round tail lights. A few years following, owners soon discovered that the equally classic 59 Cadillac bullet tail lights fit so nicely in the same holes back there! Still rocks today!

My Pop was a Chevy Lover. He had a a couple of 1948 models, a blue 1951 and 1954. All were two door models. He upgraded to a beige and gold tudor 1956 car. That was easily one of my most favorites. Subsequent came a godawful grey 60 Bel Air with ugly fins and 4 big doors. Completed with black wall tires and those dumb half hubcaps that forever fell off. He regained my admiration a couple years after with a red 1962 Impala coupe. Another one of my favorites.

Unfortunately, my Dear Old Dad never regained his coolness in my book as he migrated back into a series of ugly 4-door Chevrolets. Yes, they were Impalas, but, no, they were not cool. For whatever reason, he purchased all of these new off the lot, and swapped each one for the next one. Lucky for me, the two he had while I was in High School and able to drive were 4 door Imps, with 283s, and those same half hubcaps. I made him mad when I took them off and painted the rims black. He made me put them back on. Nicely, they came off so easily! I tore up the tranny in one of them performing nutral rams up and down the strip. The only rubber I ever got involved some sand on the road!!! I have often wondered what a cool dude I might have turned into if Dad had held onto any of the early Chevs! I am reminded every time I see one at a car show!

Prior to retirement, I ran a mobile car washing and detailing company. I can recall many of our classic car customers wanted their cars washed and detailed, and a special detail prior to putting them into storage to protect them from the elements. Our franchisees dealing in colder climates gave each of their customer’s cars a complete full detail and wax prior to the owners putting a cover over them and storing them for the winter.

In areas such as Florida, Scottsdale, and the Palm Springs area, our franchisees would detail the cars in late spring, as the snowbirds went back home and then they would park the cars in a climate controlled facility. There was an interesting article the other day in the Palm Desert Sun which featured a small business owner that owns a climate controlled facility called; The Vault. The article appeared in the “It’s My Business” section and was titled; “Safe, Climate-Controlled Place to Store a Vehicle” by Cathy Strong.

The owner recommended that vehicles these stored at temperatures between 78 and 81 degrees at all times in a humidity-free environment, as this protects the leather, paint, and wood. Yes, that would be my experience as well, and by keeping it indoors, the tires would also be in good shape. And speaking of tires I can recommend that a car be put up on blocks, so it does even better, as does not to ruin the tires if they become deflated over the long storage period.

Just putting a vehicle in any type of storage can be a serious mistake especially in Arizona or the California desert where the interior temperatures of some storage units can heat up like ovens. Realize, that in some places in Arizona the temperature never gets below 100-degrees for weeks on end even in the middle of the night. An antique car just can’t handle that, and you’re liable to ruin the paint, the plastic, wood, and all the rubber inside the car, outside the car, and in the engine compartment.

The year was 1980 and Gary Numan’s Cars was at the top of the Music charts. In Britain at the time and throughout Europe, fast cars and so called ‘Yuppys’ were the order of the day in what becoming an increasingly competitive and socially divided world, prior to the technological advances brought by the infant information age.

At the Geneva Motor Show in March that year a car was revealed that was to technically change the future design of most road cars – The Audi Quattro.

The four-wheeled drive turbocharged road car, rally car and angular designed coupe, stole the show and proved that Audi with the new Quattro really had made ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ a massive advancement through technology.

The original or Ur Quattro as it became known, as opposed to subsequent quattro models with a small q, was not the first 4×4 road car; this honour is held by the Jensen FF.

However the innovative four-wheel drive system that Audi developed for the Quattro, did away with all the previous problems of additional driveshafts and extra weight. The Quattro team had produced a practical solution that amazed the motoring world of the day and led the way for the development of all modern 4×4 road cars.

Audi in the 1970′s was not the most avant garde of the stoic German manufacturers, however they had a young and enthusiastic research and development team and more importantly, since 1969 the financial backing of owner Volkswagen, which was needed for the Audi Quattro to be born.

The seeds of the Quattro had sprouted three years before the car was launched in 1977 when chassis engineer Jörg Bensinger and a team of Audi engineers were visiting Northern Scandinavia to evaluate the performance of another Audi car, the front wheeled drive 100 series saloons.

In the summer of 1986, Vauxhall acquired the cult British sports car company, Lotus, and the motoring world wondered what on earth the maker of the Viva and Cavalier family saloons was going to do with the high performance car maker. They had to wait three years to find out.

Take a normal family saloon car and stick a 3.6 litre Lotus Engine in it and what do you get?

The Vauxhall Lotus Carlton which in 1990 became the fastest saloon car in the world capable of speeds up to 176 mph.

Vauxhall Motors had been owned by US automobile giant General Motors (GM) since 1925 and since 1962 when GM acquired German manufacturer Opel, both companies had regularly shared the same designs, engines, components and cars under different badges for their respective markets.

The early Carlton’s were modest relations of what was to come.

The first Vauxhall Carlton or Omega as it later became known in Europe and the US, was the British version of the Opel Rekord from Germany.

The Mark 1 Carlton was a typical 1.8 or 2.0 litre petrol four door large family car aimed at the middle market to compete with the Ford Cortina and Granada. A spacious and comfortable real wheel drive motor with reasonable performance, it was also available as an estate car.

Yet despite many interior design upgrades and a diesel version, sales were not spectacular.

The Mark 1 Carlton was mostly built in Germany and assembled at the Vauxhall Luton plant from 1978 until 1986 when it was replaced by the Mark 2, which was to become the basis of the Vauxhall Lotus supercar.