2008 corvette yellow ford ranger pickup.
One rare factory item I saw years ago was a shift on the column on a 1938 Pontiac. Interestingly, in 1939 the column shift was pretty much standard on all domestic cars except Ford products. The column shift with a vacuum assist was a $10 option on the 1939 Chevrolet and almost all 1939 Chevrolets had this option. However, a cook at the school I attended had a 1939 Chevrolet that was a floor shift.
How about a manual transmission in a Chevy Lumina with the DOHC V6 engine from the late 90’s I’ve seen only 2 and I worked for GM and had access to fleets of cars. One was won in a NASCAR contest by a friend and ordered that way. The other was in a GM engineering fleet.
You mean the rounded curvy lumina? Like the body style of a 1998 model? I didn’t know those came in manual trans configuration.
How about a 4-cylinder manual transmission Ford Taurus? They made them for a very few years, I had a customer with one. Gutless. You’d better have a reservation if you wanted to merge onto the freeway.
I’ve seen one of those 4 cylinder, manual transmission models of Taurus before. At one time I went to look at a Taurus for sale and passed on it after seeing that powertrain configuration.
I kinda liked the idea of the old center headlight. Especially these days with the super aero angled plastic lensed lamps that have little to no cross-beam coverage. If one lamp is out you get nuthin on that side of the road. And some leave a dark area front and center.
Back in the early/mid 80s Subaru had a center halogen light in the grill as option. It was hidden behind a small door that had the Subaru constellation logo on it and was activated if desired by a dash mounted switch.
It was referred to as a passing lamp but worked well as a driving lamp.
Because I abhor misinformation, I want to correct the earlier “bad” information that I had posted regarding optional A/C on Packards.
I have finally consulted what is probably the authoritative reference source on Packards, and according to that book, Packard introduced optional A/C for the 1940 model year. And, the cost of that option was “only” $275, not the $1,080 that I had originally stated. However, to put even that $275 into perspective, that would translate into approximately $4,500 in 2013 dollars, so it was very pricey for its time.
These A/C units were offered for the 1940-42 model years, and it is believed that only about 2,000 cars (of a total production of ~ 200,000 cars for those 3 model years) were equipped with A/C. Whether it was because of the high price, or because the units ran constantly unless the compressor drive belt was removed, or because the evaporator took up most of the trunk space, the bottom line is that this option appeared on only about 1% of the Packards sold during that 3 year period.
The cars that were slated to be equipped with A/C were sent from the Packard factory to the firm of Bishop & Babcock, in Cleveland, where all of the A/C equipment was installed.
It is interesting to note that, despite the resumption of passenger car manufacturing in 1946, Packard did not again offer A/C until 1953. At that time, a totally different (and more practical) A/C system was installed at the Packard factory, and by this time, it was priced at $625.
@WheresRick In the Lumina, the DOHC LQ1 3.4l V6 motor was offered only from 1991-1994 in the Z34 optioned car. That combo (and the manual trans) was gone by the time the '98 cars came around. When the first of the “W” platform cars came out, they were available with a 4 cylinder twin-cam with 5-spd as well. I saw less than 10 of those. And no one ELSE knew those early cars came with a manual, either!
@asemaster and @ok4450–
The Ford Taurus with the 4 cylinder engine and the 5 speed manual transmission was called the MT-5. There weren’t very many sold. The lowest trim line was the Taurus L. The standard engine was the 4 cylinder and it was coupled to a 3 speed automatic transmission. A colleague of mine bought a 1987 Taurus L with this 4 cylinder and automatic. He thought it would give him good gas mileage. I bought a 1988 Taurus with GL with the 3.8 liter engine which came with a 4 speed automatic transmission with the highest gear an overdrive. My Taurus got better mileage than his and was more pleasant to drive. My institution bought some Taurus L models with the 4 cylinder and 3 speed automatic. I had to drive them to conferences and I was not impressed.
Thank you for the clarification on the manual trans Taurus. The MT-5 rings a bell now that you have mentioned it.
The minute I saw the manual gearshift I knew the better half would never go for it and to be honest, on a car like that I wasn’t keen on it either.
Passed on that one and bought a Mercury Sable wagon with the Vulcan 3.0 and auto transmission. That car served me extremely well for over 400k hard miles even if it was one of the uncoolest cars on the planet.
Super light which was on Chrysler products in the seventies. It was about three inches round and mounted to the grille. Wasn’t very popular I guess.
Manual transmission turbo Caravan. I have good memories in high school of that van all around with my first girlfriend.
Back in the late eighties, I worked with a guy who owned a 1978 Chevy Malibu wagon that had a factory 4 speed with a floor shift. Only time I’ve ever seen anything like that on one of those.
Another odd 4-on-the-floor: my early ‘65 (“64 1/2”) had one with a smokin’ 170 cid 6. Lots of fun, didn’t have to worry about speeding…
I believe the last time I was at the henry ford museum the Taurus they had on display was a MT-5. Up until that point I only seen one or two Tauri in sticks that were not SHOs. I forget the story behind the museum taurus, I believe it has 20k miles? on it.
Speaking of manual transmission cars, my brother owned a 1963 Buick LeSabre with a 3 speed manual column shifted transmission. He bought the car used at a really low price because it had a manual transmission, no power steering and no power brakes. My brother used to brag about the great gasoline mileage his Buick would get. At the same time, my parents owned a 1963 Buick LeSabre that had all the options including air conditioning and the larger engine. On a cross country trip of 350 miles where my brother and his wife were in the stripped LeSabre and my parents were following right behind in their loaded LeSabre, my brother’s LeSabre got 19;2 mpg and my parents LeSabre got 19.7 mpg. My parents were using the air conditioning and my brother’s Buick had no air so he had the windows open. The only thing my brother could brag about was that he could use regular gasoline and my parents Buick had a higher compression engine and had to use premium gasoline.
For a few years Chrysler offered the Tic Toc Tac on some muscle cars. That was the clock and tachometer combined into one gauge.
Plus, Pontiac had the hood mounted tach.