Focus your attention on the SVT Focus

Those of you who read yesterday’s post about the Pontiac Solstice will know that I started off with a roadster and ended up singing the praises of the coupe even though I didn't have one to show you.  Well, lookey here at what I found!

For some reason, I thought the one I’d seen by the police station was blue when in fact, it’s silver -a brain fart on my part, evidently.  I’m probably on some kind of watch list now for being seen pulling into the police station parking lot to take photos of cars, so I hope you find this sighting of a Solstice GPX coupe worth it.

As discussed yesterday, the Solstice GPX has a supercharged 2.0L 4 cylinder engine with an impressive amount of horsepower per cubic inch of displacement.  Today’s featured car also has a 2.0L 4 cylinder under its hood.  It’s not quite the little terror on wheels that the Solstice GPX is, but I wouldn't have any qualms about driving it, anyway.  I present to you, a 2004 Ford Focus SVT that I spotted at a Ford dealership the other week.

I’ll try not to go off on a tangent here, but longtime readers may recall a post where I gushed over the brand new Focus ST with its 252 HP turbocharged 2.0L 4 cylinder, 6 speed manual transmission, and racing seats that had an MSRP of $27,000, wherein I was briefly distracted talking about how much German tourists love lift trucks (somewhat street legal monster trucks, and Oh, yes, German tourists do love them!) and stalled out said Focus ST while driving it.  They may also recall a post that was supposed to be about a Mercedes C230 Kompressor that had me digressing to include a Saleen n2o (Saleen’s nitrous-infused, 225 HP version of the Focus).  Well, if you don’t have the moo-lah to pony up for a brand new Focus ST, and you don’t have the time to track down the rare Saleen n2o Focus, but you want a hot hatch Ford, the Focus SVT is your car…. Just not this one -it’s overpriced at $9,788.


Here is a new Focus ST from the car show for you to see.

Back to the car at hand...

Today’s Focus SVT is a 2004 model (nearly 10 years old) with 94,000 miles on its odometer.  The asking price of nearly $10,000 is, in my opinion, unrealistic, considering the dealership probably owns it for between $3,500-$4,500 -unless they had to give way too much trade in allowance on it to make the deal work out for whatever this was traded in for.  Still, like the overpriced base model Solstice roadster from yesterday, that’s not the buyer’s problem until they end up overpaying for the darn thing.  A more realistic price on this Focus SVT with this kind of mileage would be around $6,500 or so to start, and even then I’d recommend haggling it down a bit.

I’m pretty sure I've written previously about Ford’s Special Vehicle Team (SVT), probably in a post I wrote about the Ford Contour now that I think about it.  Anyway, the SVT is a great program for squeezing performance out of the Ford lineup of vehicles.  In 2004, they put the squeeze on the Focus.  A stock 2004 Ford Focus ZX3 (the designation for the 2 door hatchback) featured a 2.0L 4 cylinder that produced 130HP.  That was plenty for propelling a little car like that around.  But where’s the fun in putt-putting around unless you can tear up the roadway, and rack up a few speeding tickets while you’re at it?  Am I right?  With that goal in mind, the SVT enhanced the little car’s handling with improved independent front and rear suspensions that included MacPherson struts and a 22mm stabilizer bar in front, and a 21mm stabilizer bar in back.  They tuned up that 2.0L to make 170 HP, and, realizing that eventually every driver would need to slow down, enhanced the braking system with the addition of discs all around instead of just at the front.  They also replaced the stock front discs with vented disc brakes to dissipate more heat and cut back on brake fading.  For 2004, this was an impressive little set up.  There’s no turbo charging or Nitrous boost like in the ST or the Saleen n2o, but in a little hatch like this, you can find plenty of trouble to get into with 170 HP.

The current US market doesn't even have a 2 door hatchback version of the Focus available (though you can get them in Europe), so we’re not totally comparing apples to apples here because those extra doors on the new Focus ST do cost money that needs to be factored into the MSRP.

So, we already know that a new ST carries a sticker price of around $27,000 for a loaded up model like the one I drove, but the bottom line starting MSRP is $24,115, according to Ford’s website.  In 2004, the SVT Focus ZX3 had a base price of just a hair under $18,000.  That evens out to be a $679.44 increase for each of the 9 years between the 2004 performance Focus offering and the present day’s performance Focus.  Factor out maybe $100 from each of those steps to account for the difference between a 2 door + hatch ZX3 and the 4 door ST, and we’re still at $579.44.  In other words, the cost of a performance-tuned Focus has gone up by about a third since 2004.  Of course, one could also say that the price of a Focus SVT has gone down by 46% since it was new if we’re going based on the inflated asking price of this used one.  Better yet if we go with a more realistic asking price of $6,500, which would mean the price dropped by about 64%.  Nice when we can make depreciation work to our advantage, eh?

Clearly, performance Focii (is that right?  I never know if it‘s appropriate to pluralize a car name like that, nor am I sure that‘s even the correct pluralization of the word Focus -oh well.) don’t hold onto their resale value the way that a Solstice GPX, and certainly the GPX coupe do.  This is due in large part to the fact that there are plenty to be had, and Ford is still making them.  Besides, the rule of thumb with cars that have the potential to be classics or collectible is this: the more impractical a car’s design is in terms of accommodating passengers and their stuff, the more valuable it tends to get as time wears on (you may have noticed that the coupe and convertible versions of older cars tend to be the ones that collectors seek out and pay top dollar for).  The Solstice can seat two, and the Solstice Coupe can seat 2 but lacks storage space for its own removable hard top panel, making it the picture of impracticality.  A Focus -even the ZX3, can seat 4 adults (5 if you really pack ’em into the back seat) and have room for hauling around your luggage.  Funny how that works out, don’t you think?          

Pontiac Solstice

To round out our summer drop tops for this week, we have a Pontiac Solstice to look at today.  These cars were only offered as 2006-2009 models because they went away with the Pontiac brand when General Motors decided to scrap the name that had started out as its performance division.  It’s kind of a shame, because these are nice little roadsters.  Gone too, is the Solstice’s twin with different fascia and badges, the Saturn Sky roadster, which went buh-bye along with Saturn at right around the same time Pontiac bit the dust.

Unlike yesterday’s Capri, a Solstice is a car I wouldn’t mind owning.  Brand new, a base model came with an MSRP of around $21,500.  A base model is what we have today, even though it appears to have been outfitted with an aftermarket hood with scoops that would suggest it’s got a turbo or supercharger it needs to feed air into -it doesn’t.  Of course, this one is no longer new.  In fact, it’s a 2007 model.  The used car lot I spotted it in has it priced at $16,995 with right around 15,000 on its odometer.

That price strikes me as a bit on the high end of things.  Initially, I had assumed that this was a GPX model based on the price point, which would have made its price a really nice deal.  However, it’s not a GPX, and it’s not a good price.  We’ll get to the GPX designation in a moment.  For now, let’s do a bit of comparison shopping, shall we?  A quick online search yields a 2007 base Solstice with 38K miles, and an asking price of $12,995, another one with 25K miles for $12,575, or an ‘08 model with 19K miles for $14,995.  I mean, that aftermarket hood looks cool and all, but I don’t think it boosts the car’s value that much.  Well, $16,995 is just an asking price, and you could ASK for just about anything, I suppose.  It doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.

I took my time looking at this Solstice, and I’ll admit, it’s in very good condition.  It appears to have an aftermarket stereo that possibly has navigation in it, so that’s a nice feature…  Still not nice enough to justify the pricing.  The car lot may be into this thing for anywhere between $9,500-$13,000 depending on how crazy they went with the bidding at the auto auction, but that’s not the consumer’s problem when the competition is all priced thousands less.  Of course, there’s always room to negotiate, and I hope whoever buys this Solstice does just that, or they’ll be overpaying.

By now, you may be wondering what this car’s buyer would be getting for their money.  Clearly, this is a nice looking little roadster.  It’s got a wonderfully aggressive road stance, all low and wide, and nice curves that still bear plenty of definition as if it’s flexing its muscles for you to behold.  It’s little, but it thinks it’s mighty.  At a curb weight of 2,860 lbs, the base Solstice features a 2.4L dual overhead cam inline 4 cylinder that has 173 HP and 167 lb-ft of torque to spin those rear wheels that propel the car forward along with up to two people inside.

Had this car been a Solstice GPX, a price like $16,995 would be fantastic.  A GPX version has a 2.0L engine.  I know, you’re thinking, wait, isn’t that actually smaller than the base model?  Yes it is.  That 2.0L inline 4 cylinder has a surprise for you though… a dual scroll supercharger that boosts output to 260 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque.  That’s a huge amount of power to pull from an engine so itty bitty.  To top it off, back when there were still Pontiac dealerships, you could take your new Solstice GPX in to one, and pay for a dealer installed tuning modification that adjusted the computer and added 2 more sensors to boost output to 290 HP and 340 lb-ft of torque!

Sure, the GPX weighs in at 2,976 lbs -over 100 more than the base model, but it’s also got nearly 100 HP to make up for that -more if it’s got that dealer mod.  By the way, that dealer mod figure is huge on a HP per square inch of displacement basis.  A new GPX had an MSRP of $26,515 to start.  Used ones I found online range from around $18,000 on up to about $23,000 for the more recent model years.  Considering the newest Solstice you can get nowadays is already 4 years old, that’s not too shabby for resale value.

The Solstice GPX sounds pretty sweet, and if I was going to buy a Solstice roadster, the GPX is what I’d choose.  But, I’m not really a convertible person.  I prefer coupes.  Good thing then, that there just happens to be such an animal as a Solstice coupe.  To be fair, it’s technically not a coupe, because the roof isn’t fixed in place.  It’s actually a Targa with removable roof over the passenger and driver area.  Of course, once you remove that roof, you’re kind of screwed unless you’re at home when you do it, because the panel is too big to fit in the trunk of the Solstice, and God knows there’s no room in the passenger compartment for it.  Oh, those accursed logistics!

If I bought a Solstice, it would be a GPX coupe.  These are actually quite hard to find  and when you do, good luck getting the owner to want to sell it -any Solstice coupe, but especially the GPX coupe.  I checked with the Pontiac Solstice Forum online, and according to an aficionado on that site, there were only 1,152 Solstice coupes built (with an additional 101 that have non sequential VINs, of which 781 were GPX’s.  Of the overall number of coupes, 956 were sold in the US market, and I‘m not sure of the breakdown of GPX to regular, but I suspect it was heavy on the GPX‘s.

It‘s usually not common to see these coupes, but I used to see one nearly everyday along Plymouth Ave in Minneapolis.  Somebody near the police precinct seems to own one, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same shade of blue that today’s roadster is.  The GPX coupe also happens to be one I’d recommend to collectors and prospect buyers.  Of course, they can’t be had cheap.  The one I found -and I stress that I was only able to find ONE Solstice GPX coupe listed for sale online outside of Ebay (which also had only 1) was a 2009 model with 2,478 miles priced at $26,978 -so basically, the same as what a GPX roadster cost brand new back in 2009.  The one on Ebay has under 2,000 miles and is priced at $35,000 to start.  I think that’s one prospector who’s trying to strike a bit too early in the game.  He ought to keep it garaged and only put a few miles on the odometer here and there while he gives it another couple years to appreciate before asking that kind of money for the car.  Of course, they’re rare, but boosting the premium this soon just seems like price gouging if you ask me.  Still, consider that the number of GPX coupes can only go down from however many are out in the world today.  Consider also, that some of the GPX coupes are being used as track toys and racers, which tends to accelerate the rate at which they end up getting wrecked.  The rarity will only increase with time, and compared to its mechanical twin, the Saturn Sky Roadster (Red Line instead of GPX), the Solstice should be the more valuable of the two in the long run regardless of which car’s aesthetic people might prefer.  It will have the edge in value because of its heritage as a performance Pontiac.

Capri by way of Germany, Australia and the U.S.... Mercury Capri, that is.

Yesterday’s post featured an attractive and jaunty little silver roadster (with removable hard top), and today, we’ve got another silver drop top to look at.  The words “attractive” and “jaunty” maybe don’t apply so much to today’s car.  No, this car brings to mind terms like “middling” and “somewhat tolerable“.  It’s not horrible; but it’s not good either.

So, with a complete lack of drum roll or trumpeting, allow me to unveil today’s car.  Introducing the no great shakes 1991 Mercury Capri.  -To be fair, yesterday’s Alfa is a tough act to follow when we’re talking inexpensive summer fun rides.  If I’m  being completely honest, I should admit that I probably am being too rough on the Capri because of the contrast I’m seeing between the two cars.  Since we’re all here anyway, we might as well go for a spin, though, eh?  Let’s talk Capri.

Historically, The Mercury Capri never did gain a great foothold because throughout its three incarnations, it was three very different automobiles.  This means that the only thing really linking this 3rd generation Capri to the second and the second to the first, or first to the third for that matter, is the fact that they all bear the same name.

The very first Capris were made in Cologne, Germany, named after an Italian island, and sold under an American name plate.  So, it’s an import masquerading as a domestic car.  This is something automakers like to do sometimes to try to toe-in to market areas where their brand lacks appeal otherwise.  In the case of the 1970-1977 original Capri, that demographic involved folks who wanted sporty compacts for cheap but were more interested in European type handling than American straight line muscle.  So it was, the first Capris were kind of like junior Mustangs built for twisty turning instead of white knuckle speed.  They had kind of cute, stubby hatchback rear ends and were decent looking little cars that could be had for under $2,500.  

The Second generation Capri spanned 1979-1986 and was pretty much a badge engineered fox body Mustang.  In terms of performance and achievement, this era of Capri was the tops, accomplishing a fair amount of winning on the racing circuit.  This stands to reason, because at this point in its evolution, the Capri was a straight up pony car.  If you ever find yourself wanting a Capri, this is the one to get, and shoot for an ASC (American Sunroof Corporation) McLaren -a convertible if you can find one -incidentally, this same car lot where I found today’s Capri used to have one of the McLaren convertibles years ago before it was sold to the new owner (the convertible is actually quite uncommon and its creation was a very intensive process).

Well, no sense in dwelling on the Capri I wish I could have shown you today.  Here at Automozeal, we get what we get, and we don’t pitch a fit (a mantra that my nephew’s preschool instills in their pupils).  So, here’s what we get:  a 3rd generation Capri.  No longer a pony car, and quite far behind any of the European hot hatches and roadsters that its original generation sought to compete with.  This Capri was dreamed up to complete with the Mazda Miata.  Considering that this, the last generation Capri, only lasted from 1991-1994 and its mother brand isn't even in existence anymore,  you can probably guess how well that battle went for Mercury.  It didn't help that these Capris were front wheel drive, either.  In fact, that’s probably the most important reason why they didn't succeed when we’re talking little cars without a lot of muscle that rely on handling characteristics to make or break them as vehicles worthy of  being parked in a buyer’s garage stall.

This Capri does get back to its roots a little bit, though, insofar as it is once again pretty much a foreign car sold under an American name plate.  The 3rd generation Capri is based on a Mazda 323 and was made by Ford’s Australian division.  Word has it that the Capris the Australians built for their own market were far more durable and reliable that the ones that got sent state side.   I don’t know what’s to account for the difference other than perhaps some lower standards on the part of the Aussies?  Who knows?

The styling of the Capri leaves a bit to be desired if you ask me.  Had it been offered for sale a decade prior (while the pony car Capris were still on the market), its visual appeal would have seemed cutting edge even though it's essentially a kind of flattened wedge shape with the edges smoothed down.  As it sits, firmly planted in the 1990’s, the styling seems like a slightly aerodynamically rounded-out eighties idea of cool that was left just a bit too plain and planar to pull the aesthetic weight that a car like yesterday’s Alfa can, for example.  It's not ugly, but there's definitely something lacking in its aesthetic offerings.  It's hard to pinpoint a thing that's just not there, but something is missing.  It could be as simple as a strake or angle to accentuate a planar shift, or an ever-so-slightly chiseled fender flare... it's hard to say for sure what would have been best, but there's a lack of definition in this body's form, and that makes it hard to find things to appreciate about it.

Some Capris were outfitted with a body kit that made the tail end look a bit like a Ferrari 308 and featured a speedster-like double-hump cover over the rear seating area of the car, so that Italian name isn’t totally wasted on the formerly German made, then American made, and most recently, Australian made car.  Primarily, it seems, you’ll see these kits on Australian Capris, with a few making their way to the states.  But it doesn’t seem like you should have to buy a kit to make a car look appealing, does it?  After all, that’s what car designers are paid to do.

In 1991, the base level trim Capri featured a 1.6L dual overhead cam inline 4 cylinder engine with 100 HP and 95 lb-ft of torque.  It could be had with a 5 speed manual or a 4 speed automatic.  100 HP isn’t a lot, but it’s more than enough to propel a car of this size, weighing in at 2,385 lbs.  Bump it up a notch in trim levels, and you get the XR2 Capri, which features a turbocharged version of the 1.6 that’s good for 132 HP and 136 lb-ft of torque along with independent rear suspension.  The XR2 could be had only with a 5 speed manual transmission for just over $15,500 in 1991 money.

In today’s money, more than 2 decades after today’s car left the showroom floor, this base model Capri with 115,000 miles ticked onto its odometer is listed for sale at a price of $1,995 at the car lot I spotted it in.  To put things in perspective here; a 1991 base level Mazda Miata with similar miles sells for around twice as much in today’s dollars.  A Capri XR2 model might fetch more, but it would really depend on what kind of running condition it was in.

Here’s what my plan would be if I was somehow forced to buy a 1991 Capri.  For starters, it had better be the XR2, and it had better be priced around 2 grand or less (that's money I could have put in my hypothetical Alfa Romeo Spider Quadrifoglio fund, you know!).  From there, I’d drop a few hundred dollars on the Clubsport body kit so I could stand to look at the silly little car sitting in my driveway.  I’d take it out around town running errands and whatnot, and probably have a pretty good time, but I’d rather have the pony Capri or better yet, yesterday’s Alfa.      

         

Alfa Romeo Spider

Today’s car is one I feel all nostalgic about.  When I was a freshman in high school, my dad took me along with to Stew Hansen’s Dodge City, which was the Dodge dealer in downtown Des Moines (they’ve since relocated to a suburb).  My dad is a Mopar guy at heart and was there for something or other that probably had to do with the Plymouth Voyager my family had at the time (which was later replaced by a Dodge Caravan after my brother totaled the Voyager when a lady t-boned him at an intersection).  I’m sure the real motivation for the trip was so that my dad could check out the other stuff in the show room. 

I actually have a pretty vivid recollection -like watching a home movie almost, of walking into that Dodge dealership and looking at the cars they had.  For example, I can distinctly recall seeing a green Plymouth Duster on display outside of the show room and feeling particularly unimpressed with the fact that it looked like a Dodge Shadow/Plymouth Sundance with a different badge and a spoiler.  I guess that’s not such a horrible thing though, considering the original Duster was just a fastback version of the Plymouth Valiant.  At the time, it just didn’t sit well with me, and even today, I don’t find the cars to have much appeal.  In light of the fact that there was a used Dodge Daytona sitting outside, and a brand spankin’ new Dodge Stealth sitting inside the showroom, the Duster just couldn’t hold a candle to the cars it was surrounded by.  

The Stealth is a car I’d like to profile sometime if I can find one to take a picture of for you these days.  It’s really just a Mitsubishi 3000GT, but was made for a shorter period of time.  Hey, remember there was that Viper TV show that was basically like one big product placement ad and the Stealth featured prominently in it as second fiddle to the Viper?  No?  Well, it didn’t last long, but it did exist and I remember watching an episode of it and thinking the cars were cool but the show sucked. 

I should probably just get to the point of this all already.  So here it is.  Back when I was in high school, Dodge dealerships sometimes doubled as Alfa Romeo dealerships, and back in 1992, Stew Hansen’s sure did.  The one thing in that show room that I kept gravitating toward wasn’t the Stealth, certainly not their minivans, and not a Plymouth Duster, either.  What I saw, and what I wanted, was the cherry red Alfa Romeo Spider.  The car was beautiful, and aside from a casual longing for the far-too-small-for-Tom Selleck Ferrari 308 that Magnum P.I. used to cruise around in on TV with his head sticking out the top,  the Alfa Romeo Spider was the first Italian car I can recall really admiring as something I’d like to have for myself someday (cars like the Testarossa were certainly cool, but too overblown for my tastes at the time) .  Later that year, I went to Des Moines’ rather pitiful version of an auto show and made a point to track down the Alpha Romeos to gawk at.  Somewhere, my parents have a picture of 14 year old me sitting in the driver’s seat of an Alfa Spider with a huge, stupid grin on my face. 

What I saw at Stew Hansen’s and the auto show were 4th and last generation versions of the Spider…  though word has it that earlier this year, Alfa Romeo struck a deal with Mazda to develop some new spiders based on the Miata (MX-5) platform –Yay!  Anyway, the nice thing about the Spider is that in all the years it has been made, from 1966-1993, it changed very little in looks.  It’s nice because the Spider features beautiful design work by a certain car design firm in Cambiano, Italy known as Pininfarina –after its founder, Battista Pininfarina, who opened up shop in 1930, though Battista’s son, Sergio did the design of the Alfa Spider.  This firm does absolutely fantastic work, and ranks up there right next to Giugiaro’s Italdesign in my estimation of what constitutes a top notch car design firm.  

As a side note, I did realize that an Alfa Romeo Spider was quite out of my league when I was a kid who didn’t even have a license yet, but I did make an earnest attempt at talking my dad into picking up another of Sergio Pininfarina’s designs in the form of a junky little Fiat 124 roadster that was sitting out in the elements at a farm where my dad’s friend Joe lived and built dragsters.  That little car was in really rough shape.  Poking around inside the Fiat, I was quickly fascinated and a bit disgusted when I discovered a mummified toad had curled up and died on the floorboard on the driver’s side of the vehicle.  In retrospect, it’s a good thing my dad thought better of dragging that little Fiat home with us, or I’d probably still be fixing crap on it and hauling petrified wildlife out from its nooks and crannies.    

  Anyway, back to the Spider and its good looks.  Over the years, things changed only slightly for the Spider.  Initially, they had more of a rounded rump, which was later resculpted to what is known as a Kammback, (named for Wunibald Kamm, a German Aerodynamicist) which features a rather abrupt chop-job at the rear end of the car instead of rounded out lines flowing from the sides, around to the tail end.  Due to safety standards, the chrome bumpers were for a while, replaced with black rubberized ones, and later with color keyed bumpers, and the signature triangular Alfa grille went from all chrome and a bit rounded to more plastic with chrome-like appliqué and more angular shape.  Still, all spiders are nice looking cars.. some are just nicer looking than others.  

The Alfa I’ve got for us today is a 3rd generation spider.  It’s a 1989, and it’s top of the line, too.  In its day, the Alfa Romeo Spider could be had in various trim levels.  In the late 80’s, the base trim package was called the Graduate –named after the 1967 Dustin Hoffman movie in which a gorgeous little red Alfa Spider stole a number of scenes.  MSRP on a 1989 Graduate Spider was just shy of $17,000.  Next up the scale is the Veloce (think velocity to get its translation –it means rapidly) with more bells and whistles and better/more options for just over $20,000 brand new back in 1989.  Then, of course there’s the Quadrifoglio (AKA “four leaf clover”) which was the top level trim package, and featured an optional hard top (which our example today is wearing), special side skirts, special chin and rear spoilers, 15” rims with a design exclusive to the quadrifoglio package, and buyer’s choice of 3 colors –red, black, or silver.  All for about $23,500.  In 1989, there were 3,950 Spiders made by Alfa, and I don’t know what the breakdown is of Quadrifoglios vs. Veloces vs. Graduates, but what it does mean is that while these cars aren’t particularly rare, it isn’t common to see them either, and probably less common, I would guess, to see a Quadrifoglio. 

All Spiders featured the same mechanical bits, however.  Under the hood is a 2.0L inline 4 cylinder engine that produces 115 HP and 122 lb-ft of torque and is paired with a 5 speed manual transmission.  This set up will get drivers about 21 MPG in the city and 27 on the highway.  No matter where you see one, whether in city traffic, on the highway, or in the driveway, these are dashing little cars and always a pleasure to look at.  Here’s some good news, too.  This one I’ve got pictures of today was sitting out at Ellingson Classic Cars and is for sale for $7,950, if anybody is interested.  

Riviera on Rims

The Buick Riviera is one of the best known names in the Buick line even though they haven’t been made since 1999.  There was a new Riviera concept car unveiled at the auto show this year, though, and the nameplate had been in existence since 1963 prior to being discontinued.  Prior to ‘63, the Riviera name was used a kind of trim level designation, so we‘re not counting those cars as true Rivieras.

The Riviera is not so much a muscle car as a “personal luxury car” along the lines of a Mercury Cougar, Cadillac Eldorado, Oldsmobile Toronado, Ford Thunderbird, or Chevy Monte Carlo.  They’re meant for some performance, of course, but mostly, they’re about swagger, which is why I often associate them with sleazy guys who use lousy pick up lines in dimly lit bars.  

Today’s Riviera has been made into a Box, which if you’ll remember an earlier posting discussing the differences between a Donk, a Box, and a Bubble, is kind of a subset of the overarching “Donk” designation (that in its purest form, pre-dates the 1980’s).  The “Box” moniker refers to a car with boxy 80’s design lines that has been outfitted with oversized rims.

This is a 1984-85 model in my estimation and it was parked in the street outside of my neighbor’s house up the block in a no parking zone, obstructing the bike lane… not that anybody in my neck of the woods cares about stuff like that.  After all, people aren't supposed to go around shooting each other, either, but that happens with an alarming frequency in my area.  In fact, just a couple weeks ago, there was a story on the news about a homicide several blocks up the street from my house that took place in the back seat of a really decked out Box Chevy that I’d often seen cruising the North side.  The news crews got to the scene before the car/crime scene had been towed away for processing, and so its image was featured prominently in the news stories.  The owner/driver of the car/shooter is okay and isn't being charged with anything, so it would seem it may have been a case of a carjacking gone very wrong for a would-be carjacker.  Justified or not, it’s no good to have stuff like that happening.  The point is, that in comparison with hauling out a gun and plugging another person with a bunch of lead, parking in the bike lane doesn't seem so bad… I know, I know, slippery slope and what not, but if I let myself get worked up over all the stuff people do around here that they ought not to, I wouldn't have time for anything else.    

I've met and talked to the lady who lives at the address where this car was parked, and she seemed nice enough. She likes my dogs and has one of her own which ended up getting shot by the police while they were serving a high risk warrant /raid at her address.  The pup survived, but she’s still hoppin’ mad about it and told me all about her intent to sue the police department over it.  I don’t know if the lawsuit worked out as well as she had hoped, because I would think if she won a big settlement, she would have moved up out of that crappy rental property, which is still somewhat riddled with bullet holes from an incident the summer before last (or maybe it was last summer) when a guy shot up the house in passing by.  I've never talked to the guy who lives at the house with my neighbor lady.  While she’s away at work, he can usually be seen sitting on a chair outside the front door all day long, usually in his pajama pants.  Cars stop briefly, blocking the bike lane, the occupants approach and they greet each other and exchange pleasantries and whatever else, and then they go on their way.  This pattern isn't indicative of anything good, and it would be nice if the guy’s (alleged) stream of income was such that he contributed to the local tax base, but as long as they keep it low-key and there are no more bullets flying around in my neighborhood, it’s not something I’m going to fret about.  Though really, having a flashy car like this box Riviera pull up and clog the bike lane isn't exactly helping to keep things subtle and low key, even if they were only stopping by to say hello.          

Getting down to the nitty gritty, let’s explore the specs on a 6th generation Riviera.  In 1985, the Riviera was a front wheel drive car that could be had as a coupe or a convertible.  MSRP on the convertible was right around $28,000.  Don't let the blue vinyl top on this one fool you.  It's not a convertible, it's a coupe.  A Coupe would run between $17,500-$18,500 depending on which engine option was selected.  Those options were as follows:  A 5.0L V8 that made 140 HP and 255 lb-ft of torque, or a turbo charged 3.8L V6 with 190 HP and 300 lb-ft of torque.  Neither one is particularly great in terms of gas mileage, rating around 15 city and 20 highway for the 5.0 and 15 city and 22 highway for the turbo V6.  Not bad for its day, but not good by today’s power standards, that’s for sure.

The original factory rims on an ‘85 Riviera were 15”.  Just an eye-ball guess on my part is that the rims presently mounted on today’s car are 24”.  I like to see flashy cars, but to anybody thinking of outfitting their car like this, I really want to drive home the point that oversizing rims like this is definitely eye-catching, but it’s also very rough on cars.  For starters, all the air and rubber that would ordinarily surround the metal wheel and absorb road vibrations and shocks has been reduced to a rubber band type tire, which means a lot more shakes and shimmies make their way through to the rim, which shakes on up to the suspension and can quake and shiver the crap out of the car.

The very street this car is parked along is a rough patch of road (crumbling infrastructure here in Minneapolis, you know) and is rife with potholes.  Hitting one of the signature Northside road craters with this car is going to ram what rim hard.  It could bend the rim, and/or slam the weight of the car down with enough force to cause the fender and wheel well to smack down against the rotating tire; shredding both.  There’s very little travel room left in that wheel well, so it wouldn't take much to bring the two into contact.  Even if it’s just the rubber that gets shredded, I promise you that a 24” tire isn't cheap... let's just say that you’d have to spend a lot of time hanging out on your front stoop in your pajammy pants to make up for it.