Most of the time, when car enthusiasts picture an Oldsmobile Toronado, it’s the daring original version that bowed in the fall of 1965. That sleek machine, the first front-drive American car in 30 years at…
Posts tagged Cars of the 1980s
Daihatsu Rocky: Climbing A Stacked Deck
At first glance, you might mistake the Daihatsu Rocky for a Suzuki Samurai. But those chunky fender flares and that almost Dodge Ram-like face give away that this is something more unusual even before you…
Lancia Delta S4 Stradale: Group B As In Bonkers
It lasted just four frenzied years, but the Group B rally era was one of the wildest (and today best remembered) episodes in motorsports history. The Group B arms race of increasingly wild four-wheel drive…
Ford Cortina MkV: A Family Favorite’s Final Call
Just a few months later, it would be swept aside by the radically aerodynamic, lozenge-shaped Sierra, but in early 1982 the Ford Cortina MkV was still a market-dominating machine in the U.K. Indeed, even after…
Dacia 1300: The Original Romanian Renault
Something different today! Like many Eastern Bloc cars, the Dacia 1300 had an unnaturally long life. Changing economic and political circumstances, and some clever updating and modifying, meant that what began as a licensed 1969…
Subaru Turbo RX: Before They Were Stars
It’s 25+ years since the world got to know the Subaru WRX thanks to the exploits of Carlos Sainz and the late, great Colin McRae, to say nothing of Gran Turismo and Sega Rally Championship….
Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler: The Original Wrangler Pickup
The Jeep CJ-8 is most famous for being the first “Wrangler pickup,” even though there are two significant flaws in that designation. First, the CJ-8 was built long before the Wrangler name debuted (in 1987),…
Honda Civic Wagon Mk1: Van Or Wagovan
Is it a wagon, or a minivan, or a hatch? All three, maybe? One of Honda’s most important but least heralded 1980s moments came when the Mk3 Civic arrived in the fall of 1983. This…
Mercury Lynx: The Stray Cat
Oil prices cratered in the mid-1980s, but the effects of two successive gas crises freaked Americans out enough for them to line up for Ford’s first American Escort all through the decade. That anxiety helped…
Honda Accord Mk2: Marysville Made
The second-generation Honda Accord never gets as much attention as the first, and while it isn’t as significant a car on a global scale, it was the next step in Honda’s climb up the sales…
Saab 90: The Least Famous Swede
What do you get when you mate the front half of a Saab 99 with the back half of a 900? The Saab 90. In 1983, Saab decided to do exactly this to create a…
Lotus Excel: Hethel’s Best Kept Secret
It seems fair to say that the Lotus Excel is Hethel’s most underrated car. Nobody ever talks much about it, the company never again built anything like it after it was gone, and it dwelled…