Cars I shoulda bought

240Z.

As I get older, I find myself thinking about the cars I should have bought.
There are two.
One is the Datsun 240Z (“DAT-sin;” as in “that”).
Datsun is now Nissan.
The 240Z was a really great car, the one that put the Japanese on the map.

Triumph TR250. (Mine was the same color.)

What I had instead was a 1968 Triumph TR250; called the TR5 in England.
It was one of the worst cars I’ve ever owned.
I bought it because I had a Triumph TR3 in college, a really great car, and I wasn’t about to buy Japanese — I could still see that column of oily black smoke towering above the Battleship Arizona.
Except now both our cars are Japanese, and I even have German cars in my past, much to the dismay of a friend who survived the firebombing of London.
Triumphs were ill-suited to day-to-day use.
Ours began rusting almost as soon as I got it.
It would also dislocate its rear-mounted muffler if backed into a snowbank.
The muffler input was on the left side, and the twin exhaust outlets were on the right side. If backed into a snowbank, the muffler rotated and pulled the input, which was just clamped.
The bologna-cut exhausts looked great, but I had to wire the muffler into place with bent coat-hangers. —Fixing everything at a shop cost a fortune.
My Triumph had no salt-protection, so it rusted to smithereens.
About the only advantage it had over a 240Z was you could fold the top down.
That was a manual job (not power), and the snaps that held it in place were cheap plastic and broke.
I had to replace a few, and we hardly ever put the top down. It was too much trouble — and too risky.
The 240Z was everything the Triumph should have been, plus it was dependable.
My Triumph only crippled once; I had to clean out the gas-tank. The drain was plugged by leaves and rust. Beforehand it would stutter if I gave it full-throttle.
The 240Z had an overhead-cam six-inline engine, what my Triumph should have had.
It also had independent-rear-suspension (IRS), all the rage at that time.
The TR250 was also IRS, but it was slap-dash.
The frame slung under the rear-axle, so there was little room for movement.
It was also fragile.
A friend was off-road rallying a TR6 (what the TR250 later became), and kept telling me what he wanted to do was graft his TR6 onto a TR4 frame. —The TR4 wasn’t IRS; it was a solid rear tractor-axle, just like the Model-T.
His IRS was always crippling — plus it was hard to handle.
My TR250 was also heatless. It had a heater, but ran cold.
I had to stitch up canvas coverings for the grill, but even they made little difference.
It didn’t run hotter until I blanked off the radiator, and that had to be removed in Summer.
The 240Z was essentially a GT coupe. The TR250 was a roadster sportscar.
The 240Z would have been a much better daily driver; my TR250 was ill-suited — it was noisy and drafty and rain got in.

Triumph GT6+.

Triumph also made a GT coupe, the GT6+.
It was essentially the Triumph Spitfire with a GT body, and a six-cylinder engine.
I almost bought one instead — they looked that pretty!
But the TR250 looked more butch.
Plus with a GT coupe you couldn’t put the top down.
The GT6+ was also smaller and more cramped than a 240Z; only two liters of engine displacement.
A 240Z is 2.4 liters; a TR250 was 2.5 liters, but a sewing-machine motor.
The 240Z was extremely well recommended. I should have listened, and forgot about the Battleship Arizona.


Fiat 124 Sport Coupe.

The other car is the Fiat (“FEE-at;” as in “that”) 124 Sport Coupe, sort of an ersatz Ferrari.
Fiat is Italian, and I think they owned Ferrari back then — maybe they still do.
The 124 Sport Coupe is only a tiny four-cylinder engine, 1,500 to 1,800 cubic centimeters of engine displacement.
But I think it was double overhead cam.
I began noticing them at car-races; they were attractive, especially if red, which most were.
Classic Italian styling with Italian mechanicals.

Chevrolet Vega GT. (Mine was red with a black stripe.)

But what I ended up with was a red 1972 Chevrolet Vega GT, also an ersatz Ferrari, but only in appearance.
Vegas were the worst engineering General Motors ever brought to market.
Their engine-block was cast aluminum without cast-iron cylinder-sleeve inserts.
Lawnmower and motorcycle engines are often cast aluminum, but usually have cast-iron cylinder-sleeve inserts.
Linerless aluminum engine-blocks (like the Vega) were acid-etched in the cylinder-bores to render a bore-surface similar to cast-iron.
But they didn’t wear well, and the block would warp if overheated.
Despite that, the Vega GT was the best-handling of the economy minicars; e.g. the Ford Pinto, etc.
The only car that handled better was the German Opel GT, so good it was outlawed in stock minicar racing.
New Vega GTs were incredibly stiff.
I remember the first time I drove one; roadtesting the one I bought — used at two years old.
“Wow!” I thought. By comparison my TR250 was an aluminum ladder; flexing every which way.
I had hurled the Vega into a corner, and it immediately took a set. It was much more stable than my TR250.
But that stability was not long-lived.
Part of what made a Vega GT so stiff was body-structure that soon rusted away.
This was especially true up front. That chassis-stiffness was a function of the fender-wells, which rusted away.
Within years, everything rusted away, and all that was left were the front-end engine and suspension-mounts, which then collapsed.
You could see that — nearly every Vega ended up dragging its front-end lower to the ground. (Mine did the same thing.)
They ended up almost as unstable as my TR250.
My 1972 Vega GT was a gorgeous car that eventually dumped on me.
Who knows if a Fiat 124 Sport Coupe would have been more satisfying, but I’ll never know.
I should have got one.

GTI. (Mine was white like this one.)

I did purchase one well recommended car, a 1983 Volkswagen Rabbit GTI.
We had already bought a used Volkswagen Rabbit, 1978 four-doors with automatic transmission.
We both liked it, especially my wife, since it had automatic transmission. She couldn’t drive stick-shift. (The TR250 and Vega were both four-speed floor-shift.)
But the GTI was very highly recommended, like by Car & Driver, a car-enthusiast magazine I get.
So I roadtested one at a nearby Volkswagen dealer.
Sold! It was way more powerful than our 1978 Rabbit, but it was standard transmission. Back to a car my wife couldn’t drive.
It was a great concept.
Make the lowly Rabbit a pleasurable performance car by upgrading the motor for American conditions, plus add five-speed standard transmission, good tires, and sport suspension.
Obviously engineers and enthusiasts had played a part, making it handle well despite it being front-wheel-drive.
But it had a high-pressure fuel system exposed to road-salt.
It needed that high-pressure fuel system for its fuel-injection.
Everything was right out in the open.
A steel-tubing fuel-line rusted, and started spraying gasoline all over.
I had to replace everything, even the fuel-pump.
Everything was so rust-damaged it couldn’t be undone.
I managed to get reinforced high-pressure rubber tubing, so I wasn’t fixing the leak with replacement parts, which cost a fortune.
I fixed it, but thereafter quickly sold the car.
By then we had bought our next car, illustrated below, which was All-Wheel-Drive (AWD).
The GTI wasn’t. It was more likely to get stuck, like in our driveway, which I had to keep clearing.
It never got stuck, but was more a handful than our AWD Civic.

AWD Civic wagon. (Ours was this color.)

Our 1989 AWD Civic stationwagon was the BEST car we’ve ever had.
Not only did it never get stuck, but it was also automatic-transmission, so my wife could drive it.
It was small, yet incredibly useful.
Easy to drive, and very stable. I had replaced the water-balloon standard tires with sporting Goodyears.
It wasn’t very powerful, yet fast enough.
We drove it over 160,000 miles and it never failed us, although I went through three batteries and a completely new ignition-system.
We’d probably still be driving it, but my wife had an accident with it that totaled it, mostly because it was old.
I was tempted to fix it anyway — it wasn’t that damaged, but gave up. It was too old.
The AWD Honda Civic stationwagon wasn’t recommended specifically, but all Honda Civics were recommended generically.
To me this was proof yet again that I shouldn’t be enslaved to the recommendations of Car & Driver magazine.
I once drove our Civic to roadtest a four-speed ’55 Chevy hardtop with 400 cubic-inch Small-Block, a car very similar to what I dreamed about all through college.
The ’55 Chevy was a turn-off. Way more powerful than our Civic, but our Civic was much more friendly.
Quieter and more stable.
I got back in our Civic and drove home.
No sale! —Like, what did I ever see in that thing?
It was intimidating. Too much racket!
Our Civic wasn’t the fun my GTI was, but -a) my wife could drive it, and -b) it didn’t throw hairballs at me.
“160,000 miles, and never in the shop,” I used to say.

So now there is one more desirable car perhaps I shouldn’t be passing, the newer Ford Mustang.
It’s highly recommended, but there are two problems: -1) It’s not All-Wheel-Drive, and -2) Performance to me is no longer hot-rod performance, it’s function over the long haul.
What’s appealing about the Mustang is hot-rod performance.
I’d need standard-transmission, which cuts out my wife.
Beyond that, so what! What sense does hot-rod performance make stuck in traffic twiddling the stereo-knobs?
And 98% of what I drive isn’t flat-out performance.
It’s day-to-day shoveling; pillar-to-post.
So appealing as the newer Mustang is, I probably won’t buy one.