So many brands, so little time

So many brands, so little time

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines

November, 2005 - Jeff Koch

Doesn't anyone just like cars anymore?

As I travel from photo shoot to photo shoot, burning up gigs and gigs of CompactFlash cards in my wake, more than a few people have asked me what kind of muscle car I have. I'm more than happy to tell them a little about my long-suffering, oft-driven Mercury Montego. And four times out of five, the reaction is something along the lines of, "Oh, you're a Ford guy." Which, if I'm shooting their Buick or their Dodge, or their Hupmobile or their Fiat (for our other fine Hemmings publications), often instantly puts them ill at ease.

Once upon a time in my checkered car-writing career, I worked for a company that had a Pontiac magazine, a Mustang magazine, a muscle car magazine, a Mopar magazine and a Corvette magazine, among others. I wrote for the lot of 'em. And every car owner wanted to know, what kind of Mopar did I have? What kind of Pontiac is in my driveway? What flavor of 5-liter Mustang resided in front of my Cliffside Park, New Jersey, digs? Surely someone so young wasn't let loose in a Corvette? Everyone expected me to have something relevant to their own marque. All were disappointed. As if a 23-year-old pulling down $20K (in 1993 money) could afford the insurance on one of those.

Does owning a Ford-powered car mean that my only possible automotive loyalty is to the denizens of Dearborn? If you cut me, do I not bleed Ford blue? Am I in front of the TV every weekend, screaming for the driver of the Nextel Cup car with the headlight and grille decals that describe his generi-racer as a Taurus? Is everything else ever built by any other Detroit outfit worthless, pointless and inferior, simply because it doesn't have a Blue Oval in the grille? Does my car have quirks, while everyone else's has stupid engineering mistakes? When it comes time to purchasing my next new vehicle, will I only check what the local Ford, Lincoln and Mercury franchises have on offer?

No. On all counts.

Grandpa was a Chevy man, so my first car was his last: A 1976 Impala coupe eking out a meager 145hp (downhill). Dark green, no vinyl top, and a houndstooth-check burlap interior; I peeled the rub strips off the side and swapped out the full wheel covers for baby moons (until they rusted) then a set of Chevy pickup piepans, since the all-chrome ones eluded me. Five years, 50,000 miles and more tickets on the Garden State Parkway and the Pennsylvania Turnpike than I could count later, it was traded in on something I could afford the gas for. So am I a Chevy guy? Hardly. A GM guy? Not particularly. Still, someday, there will be an early 1970s Buick Centurion ragtop in my garage; an early Toronado has a strong lure for me as well. I modeled my living room after a 1964 Buick Riviera I had occasion to shoot. My mad lust for a Cadillac CTS-V isn't going to make me a Caddy man, either.

I will confess that Mercury is the only marque I've owned twice. I had a Cyclone GT with a 360-horse 429 I bought in 1994 and had to sell, virtually unimproved, a year and a half later. I bought my 351C Montego at the end of 1997 and haven't looked back. My innate desire to cruise the streets of L.A. in a 5.0 HO-powered Lincoln Mk VII utterly perplexes my wife, who thinks I need to be 90 years old, live in Miami and peek between the steering wheel and the top of the dash, my left turn signal perpetually on, in order to own such an animal. (And her taste is usually so right on...) I won't even tell her about my secret 1980s LTD LX fetish.

In between these two Mercurys was an ill-fated dalliance with a Mopar. (A 1973 Dart Sport 340 with sunroof and console automatic-one of about 1,000 built that year-if you must know.) Bought it in boxes, sold it in fewer boxes. Never drove it more than 15 miles at a clip-and only then back and forth from shops to somewhere safe to keep it while I built up the funds to get more done. Given what was going on with me at the time, it was just too much, and it went away quietly. But that doesn't stop me from lusting after a 1971 Plymouth B-body of some manner (probably a Satellite, realistically, considering my budget), and even a Volare Super Coupe, with the tri-color stripes splitting the maroon and flat-black body, seems brimming with potential. Driving that Spirit R/T-powered Shelby CSX a year and a half ago has helped me reconsider the turbo front-drive Mopar brigade. At a recent cruise-in, an Airflow got me wondering how it would ride on radial tires, or accelerate with a more contemporary compression ratio and gearing.

I've never owned an AMC, but that doesn't stop me from being fascinated by the notion of a Hornet SC/360 (or, knowing that they're as rare as they are, a clone) with my name on the title. An early 1980s Eagle SX/4 fastback (not the Kammback Gremlinesque body) also intrigues me, though it would more so if a V-8 were able to clear the AWD front end. But the notion that this somehow makes me a token Kenoshan is patently absurd.

The marque doesn't matter. Cars are cars. Each of the Detroit outfits built interesting stuff at one time or another. Everyone built garbage too (many will argue that too much was built, and still is).

I pull up to a photo shoot in my daily driver that is not only a hoot to drive but that hauls, among other things, a stepladder and my camera bag.

It's a tool. A fun tool, but a tool nonetheless. "Aaah," says the owner. "I see you're one-a them furrin' car guys."

I can't win.


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