Can you imagine what the interior of a 200K car owned by one of today’s dog lovers smells like?? Maybe that’s why parts stores now have an entire aisle full of products promising to “make your car rain-forest fresh” again…Every knob in the car has a little pine-tree thingy hanging from it…
“I’ve not forgiven Ford yet for a lonely New Year’s eve standing by the side of the highway at midnight instead of being with my friends, nor for having to push one to the side of the road during rush hour on a busy highway while people honked and nearly ran me over, among other things”.
@oblivion–My late father didn’t care for Fords for a similar reason. When he was shopping for cars, he would not look at a Ford product. I asked him once what he had against Fords. He replied, “You have to crank them a long time to get them to start in cold weather”. I had never noticed that more cranking time was required with a Ford product than any other vehicle when the weather was cold. What happened was that my dad went to a college dance and had his family’s Model T Ford. During the dance, the temperature dropped drastically and when my dad and his date got in the car after the dance, my dad cranked and cranked, but the Model T didn’t fire up. My dad’s family had not sprung for the optional electric starter. Their Model T was started with a hand crank. His date left with someone else before my dad got the Model T to fire up. I said, “Look on the bright side. If the Model T had started more quickly, you might have had really had something going with that date, you wouldn’t have met mom, and I wouldn’t be here”. My dad responded ," Now you know what I have against Fords".
At any rate, I think this may be a good reason to spring for the optional electric starter on a Model T Ford even though it makes the machine more complicated.
@db4690–my dad was really good at making comments like this. He was 34 when he bought his first car–a Chevrolet. He owned Chrysler products, GM products, a couple of Ramblers and a Studebaker, but never seemed interested in Ford products. However, the final car my parents owned was a Mercury Sable, although my dad had given up driving when that car was purchased. My parents wanted a Buick Century sedan, but the salesman tried to put them in a Buick Skylark coupe. They decided if the sales person didn’t want to sell them what they wanted, they would go elsewhere. They got a good deal on the Mercury Sable, and it did fit their needs.
In addition to a long, trouble free life I’d like to have more footroom for back seat passengers in an ordinary car. A car does not need to be extremely long to get this. I can recall ordinary cars from the 1930s and 1940s that had plenty of footroom in the back seat area.
Goods seats in a car and a clean undercarriage in a truck. Nothing worse then breaking things underneath while doing things trucks have to do.
Superlative is highly variable. And highly subjective.
A superlative truck to me is very basic, cheap, no larger than necessary to provide utility, and without any innecessary options. A superlative truck to my neighbor is huge with a crew cab, tons of options, heated leather bucket seats, lots of accessories, lots of chromium, and two-tone paint.
A superlative car to me has comfortable seats, rock-solid reliability, and economy… however yesterday it was the Jaguar 5-off sports car that Top Gear just tested and wrote about…that won;t be mass produced. Of course, when my kids are with me it’s a Bentley Cabriolet. Then again, “Big Daddy” Ed Roth built a few superlattive cars in his day. As did George Barris.
In short, my own opinion of superlative changes depending on the application and the day…and my mood at the moment.
@ Oblivion,fair enough,the two worst vehicles I have owned-have been a Ford Focus and a Honda Passport.I’m not saying Mopar doesn’t have some good stuff,I just never get the combo I wanted.Thier timing and marketing leave a bit to be desired,case in point the Nitro fiasco and the unavailability of a Diesel engine in the Dakota pickup(they had one-why in the world didn’t they offer it? I guess it would have took away from Ram sales{but it would have taken away from Ford and GM also{remember the minivan?} Dodge has a few things I like.ever seen a “YellowJacket”?-Kevin
Given my needs…a pickup with cargo room for lawncare/handyman/scrapping…but as somebody who also regularly needs to parallel park, how 'bout a cabover pickup?
My “plain ol’ cab,” shortbed F 150 is already good in that respect, but I bet a cabover version could be made to be no longer than a large sedan.
Don’t know that it’d ever sell in quantities sufficient, but the next size up in trucks is chock full of cabover Isuzus and Mitsubishis. It’d at least pique my curiousity…
I think there is a market for a low cost, reliable, easy to work on vehicle. I don’t think that every manufacturer can build one though. As others have said…boring.
Vehicles have become very complicated for the average person to work on them. My wifes 96 accord’s fuel filter was buried in the engine compartment. It was almost impossible to touch…let alone replace. I can name horrible examples like this on every vehicle (foreign and domestic) I’ve owned since the late 70’s.
Huh, sounds like they ought to bring back the ole 61 Falcon and Greenbriar vans. Cabover, 4-6 cyl, 2 speed, stripped down but maybe a 1000# payload open bed.