James Bond might have driven Astons, but George Smiley was a Rover P6 man. Alec Guinness gave Smiley international TV fame two years after Star Wars, and two years after P6 production ended. Guinness was…
Posts tagged Cars of the 1970s
Cadillac Seville Mk1: Arriving in Style
Usually, big corporate decisions aren’t made on the Friday before Christmas. But in the case of the Cadillac Seville, that’s exactly what happened. Circumstances dictated the urgency. On December 21, 1973, a breezy, cold and…
Flashback: The Yaki Imo Man’s Suzuki
Feeling down? Need some comfort food? Don’t worry, the Yaki Imo man is here to help. In this flashback, we take a trip through the OldMotors archives to Japan, circa 1976, and this Suzuki Carry…
Ford Fairmont: The First Fox
The Ford Fairmont was Dearborn’s first “downsized” car. Unlike GM, Ford started at the middle of its lineup post-OPEC and worked outward. But like GM’s “Project 77” cars, what became the Fairmont actually started off…
1978 Oldsmobile 98 LF9: Distressed Diesel
By 1977 it had plenty of hsitory. Oldsmobile’s flagship Ninety Eight dated back to 1941 (spawned to replace the 1940 series 90) and had ridden GM’s big C-body with Cadillacs and primo Buicks ever since….
Peugeot 604: Sochaux’s Chief Executive
The 604 was Peugeot’s first “executive car,” and the first time in 40 years that it had fielded a large car at all. Though the 402 was a fairly big car for a pre-war European,…
Ford Bronco Mk1: A Horse Untamed
It could be fairly said that 1964 was Ford’s year of the horse. That April, Ford’s epoch-defining Mustang debuted at the New York World’s fair. The Mustang not only created an entirely new market, it…
Jensen Interceptor: The Best of Bromwich
That huge glass hatch, that wide look and that V8 burble – it can only be a Jensen Interceptor. Of course, there was more than one interceptor – the name dated back to 1950. But…
Citroën DS23 Pallas: A Fitting End
It’s been said many times, but it bears repeating – the Citroën DS was probably the most ambitious production car project of all time. The DS23 Pallas, seen here, was the ultimate version of it…
Fiat Brava: Could’ve Been a Contender
A trip to the film archives takes us back today to OldMotors’ very own 1981 Fiat Brava, then just an unloved old car from a largely forgotten make. Better known as the 131, Fiat changed…
Volvo 242 GT: Adding Spice
You never hear about it now, but the mid-to-late 1970s were a really rough time for Volvo, both in Europe and North America. One response to trying to improve things was the short-lived but flamboyant…
Buick Apollo: Stuck in the Middle
You’d think that a “smaller” car launched just before a fuel crisis would be almost a sure fire hit, but not so with the Buick Apollo. It might have been smaller but it wasn’t “small,”…