Some further notes about me ...
* I used to live just a couple miles from the
Pierce-Arrow plant in Buffalo, NY. I drove and walked past it quite often. This was about 50 years after the last P-A came off the assembly line. I'm not around 90 years old
.
* I had a friend whose father was a multi-millionaire. The father (deceased by the time I met my friend) had around 200 cars, including at least one P-A, and some other rarities, like the
Kaiser Darrin. Said friend was the one that I was going to buy that 56 Chevy from. Unfortunately, a lot of the cars were stored out in a field in the desert under corrugated aluminum roofs and had been sitting for years. Only a few were in climate-controlled storage. I've also not talked to said friend in over 25 years, so I don't know what happened to all the cars.
* My ex-wife was a mechanic, so we always had a couple of somewhat junky cars around. For instance, the Volvo 164 I mentioned had virtually no upholstery remaining. The Caprice was missing one of those long metal and rubber strips along the door. The Cordoba was cheap, but the trunk/boot was rusted through. One of the VWs was missing a fender. You get the idea.
The newest car my ex and I owned was brand new in the 1990s. The oldest was probably one of the VW Beetles, which I think was from 1963. The most uncommon one was probably a
1989-ish Eagle Premier with the wide rubber strips on the sides. It was ... OK, but the tail lights stopped working a little bit after I bought it (used) and it was due to an electrical problem, which was waaaaay too expensive to fix.
I also live in the Phoenix, AZ area. Considering we get
299 days of sunlight a year and we don't get much snow, there are still a lot of older vehicles on the street. However, VW Beetles have almost completely vanished. I don't know why. Scottsdale is also relatively close and has a lot of classic car and exotic car dealerships (think Ferrari). There's also a classic car meet that's 5-ish miles away that meets every couple weeks.
One of the classic cars I'd love to own is a
1965 Buick Riviera GS. It's mostly impractical for anyone, at 10mpg and no airbags. Maybe no seatbelts, either. There are too many 1920s to 1930s cars that look spectacular for me to decide. Cord? Dusenberg? Bugatti? Delahaye?
The overall best car ever made, combining several car websites' lists, is an air-cooled VW Beetle (aka Type I). Various RWD Volvos also make the list. For me? I really like my wife's Nissan Rogue and my Altima is pretty OK. Toyota Corolla and Camry always make it onto the "best car" lists. Same with Honda Civics. I think Priuses (Priuss? Priuises? ) are fun.
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Again, not a gearhead or mechanic of any kind. I've just owned and/or appreciated a lot of cars.