2017 Fiat 500e

Here's an unusual sighting this far east. The original U.S. market Fiat 500e battery electric vehicles were solely developed for to meet California mandates for zero-emissions vehicles and were only ever offered for sale in California and Oregon, the two states with the largest percentage of electric vehicle sales. They weren't even advertised outside of those two states, probably because Fiat supposedly lost more than ten grand on each sale.

The front wheels are turned by a 111 horsepower electric motor, powered by a 24-kWh lithium-ion battery pack. With an EPA claimed range of 84 miles, one can assume that the car wasn't driven here to Indianapolis from the west coast, or if it was, the driver had a lot of time on their hands and a heck of an extension cord.

Car and Driver tested a 2013 500e and noted an 8.4 second zero-to-sixty time and an elapsed time of 16.7 seconds in the quarter and an 80mph trap speed. Sticker price for 2017 was nudging $34,000 which is a lot for such a narrow focus car, if you ask me. It's sure adorable, though.

This one was photographed with a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and an EF 24-105mm f/4L IS zoom lens in November of 2024. 

1977 Mercury Grand Marquis

Here's the less pretentious cousin of Lincoln's Continental, a Mercury Grand Marquis from 1977 in Dove Grey. It's hard to pick the year because they hardly changed between '75 and '77, but the Dove Grey color only showed up in '77, replacing Silver Metallic in the Marquis palette. Its current owner wants you to know it's packing the 460 V-8 with a bit of aftermarket badge work. 

You can tell it's a Grand Marquis from the wide bodyside rub strip that runs across the rear fender skirts. A Marquis Brougham would have had fender skirts but no rub strip, and a vanilla Marquis wouldn't have fender skirts at all, nor a vinyl roof. The Marquis and Marquis Brougham came with a 400 V-8 and the 460 as an option, but the big motor was standard in the Grand Marquis. Of course, by 1977 we were well into the Malaise Era and even the massive 460 (that's 7.5L if you prefer metric) only put out 197 SAE net horsepower.

This was the pinnacle of size for FoMoCo sedans, and among the very longest postwar autos. The mid-'70s Continental, Marquis, and LTD were enormous cars. The final year before the downsizing, a '78 Grand Marquis with the 460cid mill stretched 229 inches between the bumpers and tipped the scales at over 4600 pounds. That's nearly two feet longer than a current base F-150.

In the early '80s my mom's trusty Malibu wagon gasped its last and my folks bought the Mercury Colony Park station wagon the neighbors across the street were selling, basically a Grand Marquis that could transport a whole soccer team. Us kids thought it was cool because it had every plush-bottomed luxo feature in Ford's arsenal at the time. Alas, that experiment lasted only a week or so, if I recall correctly, before mom refused to continue trying to negotiate parking lots and narrow streets with that four-wheeled supertanker.

This one was photographed in August of 2023 using an iPhone 13 Pro Max.

1930 Chrysler Six Series CJ Royal Sedan

Chrysler's Six was thoroughly revamped for 1930 with the CJ series cars. Smaller than the full-size Chryslers and Imperials, the CJ sat lower to the ground and featured hydraulic brakes and suspension dampers.

Under the hood was the same trusty Chrysler flathead inline six, now displacing 196 cubic inches and rated at 62 SAE gross horsepower. Unlike the previous year's model, the new 1930 Series CJ sported a pressurized fuel system with a mechanically-driven fuel pump driven by the engine's camshaft, rather than relying on gravity feed from the tank to the carburetor float bowls.

With its combination of updated mechanical systems and wooden spoke wheels, the 1930 CJ was straddling the line between antique and more recognizably modern auto designs. In fact, Chrysler was a bare handful of years away from introducing the Airstream.

This example was spotted in Rochester, Indiana in September of 2013 and photographed with a Samsung Galaxy SII cell phone.

1979 GMC Caballero

While the Chevrolet El Camino dates all the way back to 1959, when they added an open bed to the 2-door full size Chevy Brookwood station wagon, it wasn't until the 1971 model year that GMC began offering their own version of it.

Christened the GMC Sprint, it shared the platform of the Chevelle sedan & wagon, just like its Chevy sibling.

For the 1978 model year, the Sprint name was changed to Caballero, Spanish for "gentleman" (literally "horseman") possibly to reflect the Spanish themed name of the Chevrolet original.

Riding on the Malibu chassis with the wheelbase stretched nine inches (to 117"), the Caballero had a bed that was a bit over six and a half feet long, capable of swallowing the standard 4'x8' sheet of plywood, if you didn't mind some of it sticking up over the tailgate.

The original '78 Caballero had an eggcrate type grille, while the horizontal bars and single headlamps on either side of the one in the photo identify this Beige-and-Camel Metallic two-tone example as a 1979 model. 

Standard under the hood would have been the L26 3.3L pushrod V-6 with a 2-barrel carb, rated at 95 SAE net horsepower. A buyer dismayed at the thought of trying to drive a pickup loaded with up to 1,250 pounds of cargo using such a dismal little motor could instead opt for either the 2-barrel 4.4L L39 V-8, which put out 120 horsepower, or the LG4 305 V-8, which made 160 horsepower with a Rochester Quadrajet carb.

This one was photographed using a Hasselblad Lunar and a Sony Zeiss T* 16-70mm f/4 OSS zoom lens in August of 2021.

1966 Ford Mustang GT Convertible

The "corralled pony" in the middle of the grille with a horizontal crossbar but no corresponding vertical crossbar tells us this Mustang convertible is a 1966 GT model. Other GT tells are the fog lights, rocker panel stripes, and the (duh) GT fender badges.

The chrome accents make the styled steel wheels pop and the Nightmist Blue is such an attractive color on these clean-looking early First Generation 'Stangs.

The fender badges tell us there's a 289 Ford Small Block V-8 under the hood, and the fact that it's a GT means that it's either the 225 horsepower four-barrel motor or the gnarly K-code 289, rated at 271 SAE gross horsepower. Statistically speaking, it's almost certainly the 225-horse, or "A-code" motor. Of the slightly less than 5,500 K-code Mustangs sold in 1966, something like six percent went into convertibles. A GT convertible is something of a rarity in itself, representing only 12,520 of the over 607,000 Mustangs that sold that year.

This one was photographed in June of 2024 using an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and a Panasonic Leica 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens.

1955 Ford F-250

Ford's F-series of pickup trucks started with the 1948 model year. Called the "Bonus-Built" line, they were all-new designs, replacing the prewar carryovers that had resumed civilian sales after VJ day. They offered a stronger frame, V-8 engines were available at every level of the lineup, including the light-duty ½-ton F-1, and were the first domestic pickups to offer telescoping hydraulic shock absorbers, which were marketed as "Aircraft-Type" shocks.

The Bonus-Built trucks were replaced for '53 with the new "Triple Economy" series of trucks. This was when Ford went to the triple-digit nomenclature that has hung on to this day. The half-ton F-1 became the F-100, while the ¾-ton F-2 was transmogrified into the F-250.

The F-250 had a wheelbase eight inches longer than the F-100, at 118", and had a heavier duty suspension, rear axle, and 8-lug wheels. The wheels make it an unusual choice for hot-rodding, as disc brake conversions aren't really available, so the driver of the '55 F-250 in the picture is something of an iconoclast.

Engine choices for 1955 were either Ford's 223 cubic inch Mileage Maker  OHV inline six, rated at 115 SAE gross horsepower, or the Y-Block 239cid OHV V-8, which put out 130 horses.

This one was photographed in October of 2024 using an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens.

1994 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight Royale

A few models in Detroit have enjoyed unusual longevity. The Chevrolet Corvette and Ford Mustang, for example, celebrated their 71st and 60th birthdays, respectively, in 2024. Almost no other model name has had such an enduring run.

In the photo above is one of the closest: Oldsmobile introduced the 88 in 1949. Its predecessor, the 1948 Olds 78, was powered by a 257cid straight eight rated at 112 horsepower, but while it carried over the Futuramic postwar Olds styling of its predecessor, the 88 featured Oldsmobile's brand new Rocket V8. The 303 cubic inch Rocket had overhead valves, a 7.5:1 compression ratio, and put out 135 SAE gross horsepower.

The 88 nameplate remained in production through ten whole generations, and the Bright White 1994-'95 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight Royale is an example of that final generation. (Its grille was slightly different to the '92-'93 models, and the car received a mid-cycle refresh that gave it a more rakish snout for '96, which is how we can pin down the model year.)

The tenth generation of the 88 was the second one after the car had gone to a front wheel drive platform in 1986, and this '94 Royale would be powered by the GM corporate 3800 V6. This was a Buick-derived port fuel injected pushrod 3.8L motor rated at 170bhp SAE net. When Car and Driver tested a '92 Eighty Eight Royale LS, they recorded an 8.8 second zero-to-sixty and a 107mph top speed.

Oldsmobile axed the 88 name after the 1999 model, finishing a fifty year run, among Detroit's longest.

This one was photographed in November of 2023 using a Canon EOS 7D and the excellent EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS zoom lens. 

1996 Buick Skylark Custom

Buick used the Skylark name on its midsize cars from 1964 through 1972. These were on the same GM A-body platform as the Chevrolet Chevelle and Oldsmobile Cutlass. After a brief hiatus, the nameplate returned on the smaller 1975 Skylark, which rode on the Chevy Nova/Pontiac Ventura X-body platform.

It made the jump to front-wheel drive in 1980 as the Buick flavor of the Chevy Citation and then spent the final years of the Eighties as an N-body compact, along with the Pontiac Grand Am and Olds Cutlass Calais.

For 1992, the fifth generation Skylark appeared, riding on a stretched and widened N-body. It had a weird sort of "beaked" chrome grille and came with either a SOHC version of the Olds Quad4 motor or the 3.3L GM corporate V6. The styling was weird and somewhat off-putting to Buick's normally stodgy buying demographic and so for 1996 it received a mid-cycle styling refresh with a more conventional snout, like the Bright White 1996-'98 Skylark Custom sedan in the picture above.

Available in two trim levels, Custom and Limited (the slow-selling Gran Sport got the ax), the refreshed Skylark had a more conventional dashboard, shared with its Olds Achieva stablemate, to match the more conventional nose. The base motor was now the 150bhp DOHC 2.3L balance shaft equipped GM corporate version of the Quad4, and either trim level could be had with a 160bhp GM 3100 pushrod V-6.

The Skylark name was retired after the 1998 model year, as was the entire idea of a compact sedan offering from Buick, unless you count the short-lived Verano model of the 2010s.

This one was photographed with a Fujifilm X-T2 and XF 16-80mm f/4 R WR OIS zoom lens in May of 2024.

1969 Pontiac Grand Prix SJ

Since its debut in the early Sixties, the Grand Prix nameplate had been used for Pontiacs large sporty coupes on the GM B-platform, analogous to the Buick Wildcat and Chevy Impala SS. For the '69 model year, however, Pontiac boss John Z. DeLorean commissioned an all-new Grand Prix.

This one rode on a stretched version of the midsize A-body platform, called the G-body, and was Pontiac's entry into the soon-to-blossom "personal luxury coupe" market. (The next model year, Chevy would launch the Monte Carlo on the same chassis.)

With front bucket seats, a console with a floor shifter, and a cockpit-like instrument panel that oriented the gauges and controls toward the driver, it fit in with the sporty image that DeLorean wanted Pontiac portraying.

Available in base or sportier "SJ" trim levels, powerplants ranged from a 2-barrel 265 horsepower 400cid V-8 to a snarling 390 horsepower 428 H.O. V-8 with a four barrel and dual exhausts.

The Castilian Bronze 1969 Grand Prix SJ in the photos has the 428 H.O. and was actually an original example with less than 14,000 miles on the clock being sold at the Mecum auction ony a mile or two down the road.

Car and Driver tested a 1969 Grand Prix with the regular, non-H.O. 428, which developed 370 SAE gross horsepower. Their test car had a 3-speed automatic and a 3.23:1 rear end and managed a 6.9 second zero-to-sixty time and a 15.3 second quarter mile at 91 miles per hour, topping out at a buck twenty. Price as tested was $5,674, which was pretty spendy for the era, more than you'd pay for a contemporary Hemi Charger.

This one was photographed in May of 2022 using a Nikon D7100 and a 16-80mm f/2.8-4E zoom lens.

2001 Aston Martin Vanquish

Launched in the early Nineties when FoMoCo owned both Jaguar and Aston Martin, the DB7 actually began life as a replacement for the Jag XJS.

Canceled, then revived as an Aston, the big 2+2 grand tourer actually rode on a chassis derived from the one that underpinned the the V-12 coupe from Coventry. The first ones to hit dealerships for the 1994 model year were powered by a supercharged version of Jaguar's AJ6 3.2L inline six, rated at 335 SAE net horsepower.

For 1999, the coupe got its styling zhuzhed up a bit, the Vantage tag appended to its name, and a honking big 5.9L DOHC 48-valve Aston Martin V-12 shoehorned into the engine bay. This motor belted out 420 horsepower and made the DB7 Vantage a seriously fast car, even if its two-ton curb weight kept it from being blindingly quick.

In 2001, Aston launched its new halo car, the Vanquish, which looked for all the world like a steroid-enhanced DB7 V12 Vantage, distinguished externally mostly by the bulging haunches needed to enclose the monstrous 285/40 ZR 19 rear tires, but under the skin had a completely unique aluminum chassis with a central carbon fiber backbone, developed with input from Lotus.

Intended to go head-to-head against the Ferrari 550 Maranello, the Vanquish was a limited production (300 cars/yr) vehicle with an astronomical price tag and performance to match.

The V12 in the Vanquish was bumped up to 460bhp and zero-to-sixty times were in the mid fours with an honest 180mph top speed.

New, that Bowland Black coupe in the photo would have set the buyer back an eye-watering $235,600, or more than four hundred long in today's coinage. It was photographed with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and an M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens in October of 2024.

1973 Jaguar XK-E Roadster

For 1971 Jaguar introduced the Series 3 E-Types (known as the XK-E over here). Standard power steering, an optional slushbox in all models, and improved disc brakes at each corner were among the changes, but they weren't the ones that set tongues to wagging.

Externally the car sprouted newer, uglier bumpers with rubber overriders. To comply with US impact standards, cars sold in North America had grotesque, chunky rubber blocks affixed, to the front end in 1973 and both fore and aft for '74 and on.

While a few were still sold with the 4.2L DOHC inline six, the big news under the hood was Jaguar's new V-12. This was a 5.3L (326 cubic inch) DOHC motor that was initially intended to be fuel injected but debuted with four Zenith-Stromberg sidedraft carburetors instead. Stateside, this '73 Pale Primrose drophead two-seater would have had a 7.8:1 compression ratio and been rated at 241 SAE net horsepower.

Road & Track tested a 1973 convertible with a 4-speed manual, and the V-12 pushed the 3,450 pound ragtop to a top speed of 138 miles per hour. Acceleration was reasonable for the dawn of the Malaise Era, with a zero-to-sixty time of eight seconds and a 16.2 quarter at 89 miles per hour, and the big cat circled the skidpad at 0.73g, comparable to the contemporary Corvette or 911. (R&T lamented that the loss of compression ratio made the '73 noticeably slower than the '72.)

Base price back in '73 was $8,475 and the total for the magazine's test car, including $521 for air conditioning, was $9,665. That's $68,635 in constant dollars, but at the time it was a Corvette and a half, or half a Ferrari Dino.

This example was photographed with a Canon EOS M and EF-M 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM zoom lens in May of 2019.