my first foreign car..

[frenchy]

well like most of us here i grew up with chevy's and fords and pontiacs and dodges and for the most part i didn't complain .. if i needed a car i'd look around and see what was available and if it fit my needs and i could afford it i bought it .. no real mystery there .. and while i liked chevy's i had nothin against fords or chryslers .. i pretty much owned a few of each . but i didn't break down and get a foreign car till 1980..i had friends who had toyotas and hondas and datsuns and of course who didn't have a volkswagon ?? but i stuck to the american cars cause after all i was an american and it was only right .. even after the two oil embargo's the arabs laid on us i still drove an american car that at that time probably got about 16 miles to the gallon .. on a good day , with no wind against you , goin downhill all the way .. but one nite on a lark i stopped at this place on route 22 in i think its springfield .. called dodgeland .. i think they changed their name to autoland before i moved to florida .. they were one of the first super dealers .. and they had just about everything there but they mostly sold a lot of dodges .. of course that changed as time went on hence the name autoland .. i guess they didn't wanna put all their eggs in dodges basket .. so i saw this little datsun number and thought ya know i can see myself drivin that .. but the trick to the deal is to not look or get excited so i just walked around kickin some tires and stuff and a salseman came out and started puttin on the full court press .. you like that car there ?? ehh .. i dunno .. tell me about it .. so he starts off on his speil and i look it over .. it was a 79 so it was a little over a year old .. but it was in great shape .. so i looked at the price they had on the window and nahh.. you want too much for it .well this guy didn't wanna let me get away so he said well if i drop the price can we make a deal tonite . i said i dunno how much you wanna drop the price ?/ and back and forth we went .. i mean we danced .. he was tryin to lead but i wouldn't let him so he called in the big boy .. his boss .. and when i say the big boy i ain't kiddin this guy was about 450 pounds easy .. so we danced some more . finally the big boy said to the first guy here's my lighter go out and set that car on fire cause i can get more for it from insurance .. at the time i smoked so i said here take my lighter too just in case his don't work .. i wanna see this ..so we danced some more and they finally gave me a great price .. they dropped it by a grand and it was already a pretty good price when i went in .. and the salseman kept say so can we make a deal tonite and i said well lemme think about it .. i could see the smoke commin outta his ears when i left .. but i went back the next day and said ok and then the dance started again .. well that was if you made the deal last night .. now its back to the original price . i said ok then .. see ya bye and he stopped me ok ok you can have it for that price and i drove it home .. it was one of the best cars i ever owned .. it was a datsun 310gx .. a 5 speed with a hippy sunroof and velour interior that had seats that went all the way back and the back seats folded down so i could throw guitars and amps back there like a station wagon .. but it looked really cool .. only problem was the color .. that ice blue that sorta blends in with the sky and the road at dawn and dusk .. i got hit 4 times in one year .. always by a girl .. and they always said the same thing .. where did you come from i didn't even see you .. by the time it happened the third time i said yeah i know i know you didn't even see me.. how did you know ? call it a lucky guess .. anyway i saw some pics of a the same exact car and saved em . of course this one is like 34 years old .. but its in great shape for 34 years old .. man i loved that car .. it got about 36 miles to the gallon back then and sometimes 38 .. and that was all around drivin .. so anybody here have a car they miss for one reason or another ??

    

[flippr 2.0]

I rebuilt this completely by myself,from mechanics to bodywork.i did everything.

1968 ford fairlane 500

[Wayne Goodwin]

Nice ..

[Wayne Goodwin]

[flippr 2.0]

SWEEET  shagging wagon

[frenchy]

i had a 4 door 67 fairlane in daphne blue back in 77.. it only had a 6 cylinder tho .. i had a girlfriend who had a red one with a 289.. it went a little faster but it used a lot more gas .. but neither one of em got better than 18mpg .. that was the 6 .. i think the 8 got about 14 mpg .. 

p.s. you did a nice job too.. 

[flippr 2.0]

9 mpg on a good day,i put in a 460 Lincoln engine,i took it to Englishtown a few times for the "show n go".

[flippr 2.0]

now i'm doin burnouts in this.

[frenchy]

i bought a car from a guy who used to race down there all the time back in about 75 .. it was a 64 nova that had a 3 speed jerry rigged from the column to the floor and he bolted bucket seats to the floor .. put in a racin sterrin wheel .. he never put an 8 in it tho cause he changed his mind and used somethin else which was why i ended up with it .. they used to call me speed racer in a little red nova .. lemme see if i have a pic of that old bastard ..

[flippr 2.0]

sweet car frenchy

[ProblemAgain]

oh oh....

 Reply by frenchy

And now we have the koreans and fiat just bought chrysler .. not so much for their cars but because i gives them a place to launch their new fiats from ..and soon enough the chinese and the indians will be exportin cars here too if they can ever get the emmisions right........

i hate to tell you this but.......

jaguar and landrover are both owned by an indian company...Tata Motors, the largest indian car company...so if you know someone who drives a set of those you can say they have a nice set of tatas....

and the chinese have bought volvo...

[flippr 2.0]

are Fords still made in Mexico?

[ProblemAgain]

a couple models are assembled in mexico and a lincoln as well