I like theater… plays, actually, I like plays and performance art. However, I despise musicals. Still, I love my niece, so to show my support for her, I figure I can endure musical theater for an hour or two… or not.
I fell asleep somewhere along the line during one of the off-key belting out of tunes (acceptable, and even cute when kids do it, though), and woke up when the lights came up for intermission, during which time, the ushers started passing around a collection plate. -I might not have mentioned that my niece is enrolled in a parochial school (her November birth date meant she was too young to start kindergarten in public schools the year she was ready to enroll, so private school was the best alternative to waiting until the next school year). So, there’s a healthy dose of religion mixed in with her learning.
I hadn't anticipated getting hit up for money at my niece’s musical thingie, and I seldom carry cash. Luckily, I was able to locate a few dollars floating around in my bag and I put them in the plate -not because I want to encourage more musicals to be produced… Mostly, I did it because I felt like an asshole for sleeping through the first half of the show.
I vowed I would do better after the intermission. I didn't. Some of the religious content of the show must have seeped into my subconscious while I slept, because when audience applause woke me up as the show ended, I distinctly recall thinking to myself "Thank God it's over!" On the bright side, I felt very well rested as I walked out into the daylight, and I had a great drive back home to Minneapolis. The downside was that I spent however many dollars on gas to drive to St Paul, only to sleep through a musical, during which I got soaked for a few more bucks. One could bring up those old Visa or Mastercard commercials where they list the price of stuff but then bring up some sentimental thing that money ended up financing and claim it was “priceless”, only it wouldn’t even apply here, because I don’t think my niece even realized I was in the audience. The kids who were in the chorus were marched out of the theater and directly onto their school bus after the show, so I didn’t even get to see her afterward. Hell, I could have just stayed in bed this morning and later claimed I went to her musical!
In other acts of throwing money down holes, never to be seen again, a small road trip to Iowa in my sister’s Honda Odyssey (shown in the background of the photo with my motorcycle, and also a vehicle which this blog has covered with a link to mythology, even) ended up being more costly than anticipated. I’ve driven Mustangs long enough to know that there isn’t a whole lot of stuff I can get away with behind the wheel of a car like that. A ubiquitous gray minivan ought to be more or less invisible to law enforcement, I should think. I mean, who says to themselves, “Dang, those soccer moms really need to be taught a lesson -always whippin’ around with their hot-rodding minivans and grocery getters! Somebody needs to give them a citation!”? As it turns out, Iowa State Patrol says that very thing to themselves.
I openly admit, I was exceeding the speed limit. However, there’s a difference between speeding and dangerous driving. Considering that I was keeping pace with the traffic around me and that weather and road conditions were perfect, there’s no reason to hand a citation to anybody doing exactly what I was doing other than to generate revenue -and that sucks even more than having somebody shove a collection plate at you during intermission at a musical you didn’t even care for to begin with. Well, whatever. Enjoy your pound of my flesh, state of Iowa. I’m mostly stewing over the fact that of all the things I’ve driven lately, it was in a damn minivan that I got a speeding ticket.
Which brings us to our real feature today -a car that didn’t even seem like a good idea at the time it was made, and has spent the past couple decades reinforcing its status as a money pit. I spotted this little gem in the very same parking lot where earlier I saw the Cree SAM electric vehicle featured in the last post. Presenting the Chrysler TC by Maserati.
Behold, what looks like a rebadged Chrysler Lebaron is actually more like a rebadged Lebaron with some body tweaks by Innocenti (An Italian subsidiary of DeTomaso, whose friendship with Lee Iacocca at the time when Iacocca was running Chrysler and DeTomaso was running Maserati resulted in TC), made in Milan, Italy, and sitting on a modified Dodge Daytona chassis. These things were offered from 1989-1991 as Grand Touring cars. They were convertibles that also came with removable hard tops that featured porthole windows (or, in this case, we call them “Opera” windows, since the TC was trying to be all upscale). I don’t mind opera windows, after all, the cool old Thunderbirds had them.
In the first model year, 1989, a TC came with a price tag of about $33,000, which was a lot of money then. It also featured a 160HP 2.2L inline 4 cylinder turbo engine and a 3 speed automatic. The next year, 1990 saw a 3.0L V6 offered with 141 HP and a 4 speed automatic transmission along with a price tag of about $35,000. In its last year, the TC featured a specially made (by Maserati) 2.2L I4 turbo with 200 HP and an optional manual transmission. This came at a price of about $37,000.
The 200 HP 2.2L offered in the final year, paired with a manual transmission was probably pretty fun to scoot around in, I’d bet… Up until it needed engine work, at which point, things would get expensive very fast due to the cost of getting new parts for that Maserati motor. The fact that these cars only lasted for 3 years on the market is a good indication of how well they were received by car buyers. What was supposed to be a turning point for Chrysler -showing the world a sophisticated, upscale side to the brand by combining Chrysler looks with Italian performance and swanky interior treatments, was instead a flop for the brand. Why spend that kind of money to look like you’re driving around in a Lebaron that could be had for a fraction of the cost?
Here’s a Lebaron with some shitty hood scoops slapped on it to show you the similarities. Stand by while we briefly launch on yet another of my many tangents -Many years ago, my brother got his hands on an old Chrysler Lebaron coupe, which I borrowed a few times. Similar to how the TC’s removable hardtop had Opera windows, the Lebaron coupe had little circular lights on the interior at about where those windows would have been if it had been a TC. They were actually nice, solid fixtures with metal bezels. While the rest of the car was kind of crappy with one of those horrible digital dashboards and constant engine problems, I did like those light fixtures. But, back to the topic at hand.
Of course, the TC had company in its day. Longtime readers may recall two posts from a while back discussing another couple of cars from about this same era:
The Cadillac Allante, which used the formula of putting Italian body work into an American Grand Touring convertible (at even greater expense than what the TC cost)
...and the Buick Reatta, which was actually much cheaper than the TC and American designed (but plenty of people think it was farmed out to Italian design firms), made in an attempt to keep up with the trend set by the Allante and the TC. Neither of those cars lasted long or had many enthusiastic buyers, either.
Much like having to pay a speeding ticket from the Iowa State Patrol, or handing over cash to support not just musicals (which is bad enough), but religious-themed musicals (which are even worse due to every single song having to work in a God aspect) because you feel guilty for sleeping through the show; buying a Chrysler TC (by Maserati), a Cadillac Allante, or to a lesser extent, the Buick Reatta brand new when they were still being made, is to take a loss with little to show for it.
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