Back in the old days cars for third world countries often had low compression because of shitty fuel, don't know if that is going on here, I thought it was more of a thing in the 50s and 60s.  Yeah, the hp numbered seemed low to me too, maybe a cam that focuses on torque more than HP, or cheap carb or both.

This is cool as hell, but too nice and expensive to use as a weekend junk and materials hauler, probably too weird for Cars and Coffee (“Oh, sorry bud, I will get our of your way so you can pick up the trash”). Maybe VW shows if that is your thing.

Is that a thing? Always just kind of thought the valve stem was an asymmetrical bump that was just kind of there.

“much bigger" I don't know if I hate my phone or my limited fine motor skills more.

Always thought these were hideous.

People talk about today’s cars being mad ch bigger than they need to be for the job they do. Welcome to the 70s, where they sold large, heavy two door coupes by the 100s of thousands each year.

The point is regular folks just pay tax on their homes and income generally at the rates that were written into the law. While people with a lot of money move things around and call them different names and often avoid it.

I noticed that too, but the paint looks awfully original with all the stripes and sun baked parts. New paint can hide a lot of sins, but this looks like the factory finish.  

Modern safety standards are crap. They focus solely on crash tests, we get thicker A pillars and turret topped cars we can’t see out of as a result. Yes, we should make cars safe in a crash, but current standards lead to more accidents (I don’t know how many times I have been coming to an intersection only to see a…

Yeah, as autos have been massively embiggened the definition of sports car has expanded too.  The latest craziness I saw was a Kia Stinger being lumped in with some sports car ten best list.  But I will add that child seats in the back of a small two door coupe, such as an old Porsche 911 or 924/944 don't disqualify.

Agree about everything except the lots of rust, I see some, but the rust through on the body looks remarkably absent, at least this Midwesterner.  Still, it's a $3000 dollar truck.

Because used prices are up so much are leases have higher residuals after 3 years?  If so wouldn't that make lease prices lower?

Take a Sunbeam Alpine GT:

I really had to dig in the memory banks and thought I was going to have to go with some generic story, then I remembered the day I got my first car. It was a ‘66 Sprite, bought from a shop that I think had acquired it on a Mechanic’s lien. Anyway, a few hundred dollars passed hands and I was on my way. Home was only…

I can’t find a seat height dimension, but the Civic is 55.7 the inches high and the HRV is 63.2. Front seat headroom is within .2" of each other, so unless the HRV's roof is 7.5" inches thicker than the Civic's the seat height is substantially higher in the cute ute.  

Whoops, you forget the all important "availability"

Had to make sure the plebes knew it wasn’t a Chrysler Sebring

Just commenting here to say this is good Jalop--thanks for excellent car related content.

Poor kids...

100% agree.  Federal crash standards and testing will have vehicles with tank turrets instead of a greenhouse soon.