Loading ...Roger that, she’s honey. 🙂 1962 Lincoln Continental convertible. I think its a damn shame what happened to modern day cars. Unnecessarily complicated. The 1950s cars were the best imo. Still in use in Cuba.
American cars were still ok up to 1970, (1970 peak horsepower 375 HP from 350 cube) but you could see they were cheapening them up during the ’60s and down hill rabidly after 1972, because of unfair competition from under priced imports, they had to cut corners. Recycled steel, and they rusted out.
The 1950s cars had high quality thicker steel. Gresham’s law, the bad drives out the good.
Another thing I remember. The odometers only went to 100,000 miles. It was common for used car dealers to turn the clocks back. After the car changed hands a few times, the car would drop dead on the final owner, and the odometer said 95,000 miles but really had about 275,000 miles, so American cars got a bad reputation. Three year loans were common, and many bought new cars every three years.
I remember when we were kids, my friends father had a 1960 Oldsmobile two door hard top convertible they called it. His father was a salesman. He traded it in with 80,000. (We all loved that car, we called it the “shark”)
One night four of us were cruising the main drag, and we saw the used Olds on the front line in front of the Oldsmobile dealers lot. Naturally we pulled over to get our last look and memories of that car. Then a dealer comes out and opens the doors and starts to give us the sales pitch.
One of the boys got behind the wheel, and noticed the odometer was on only 5 miles. Then we confront the salesman. “His father owned this car and it had 80,000 miles on it. What the hell do you call this?” The salesman was a little shook up, and said they rebuilt the car. The car was mint, and ran smooth and strong when traded in with 80k for a new 1965 model.