I had guessed you were driving an Element, from your avatar. What a great car, and the world is a sorrier place now that it’s gone.

Love, love, love seeing vehicles I never knew existed before, even ones that aren’t that old.

Haha, I get what you’re saying. It looks to me as though there are pillars in the doors that form the window frames, but there’s not one in the actual body structure. Thus, when you open the doors—which are reverse-hinged—it creates a single opening. A modern example of this is the 2019 Ford F-150 SuperCab.

I thought i’d Posted this earlier, but there is precedent. The Renault 4 van had a “girafon”, a “giraffe hatch” to allow the carrying of long or tall loads. They’ve just stylised that here.

Looks are subjective, but it still looks like a Chinese hodge-podge of styling efforts, derived from several brands. It is a better effort than many others, but not quite there yet. The Toyota, Chevy, and Ford mid-size offerings are stylistically more compelling for me and mine.

A well written article with both informal humor and evocative literary prose. Nice work.

So when are they going to re-make this, or just add a more modern and powerful engine / manual box:

Other than the Silverado, no it doesn’t.

I think it’s better looking than every Nissan sedan.

I think this this ticks just over into “collector” given that most of them were sheltered and appear fairly well-preserved. The hoarders generally leave them outside to rot. 

I must say, I’m warming to the idea of guys like this who stash away scores of cars for someone to do something with someday.

It beats turning them into refrigerators and beer cans.

These were hot pieces of garbage even when new. Plus they were unbelievably ugly. more often then not the entire coolant system would rot before 75k due to the awful Dexcool GM used during that time period.

Yep, I heard about that, but the best I could hope for in the mid-90s was $8/hr for the graveyard shift in a warehouse for the summer. 30-minute commute and we spent all our money on beer and gas.

There was also the HD Payload F150 which offers payload capacities in the 2500 lb range with a crew cab 4x4. It could also tow 12k lbs. If someone really wants a half ton with 5th wheel capability, thats it.

I have a 2012 Titan that I bought new, it now has ~118k miles on it and has only ever had one true repair needed... a new wheel bearing at 113k miles. Everything else has been just standard maintenance. It’s been an incredibly reliable and very comfortable vehicle for my family for many years. That’s the benefit of…

Given it didn’t tow more than some half-tons, and was colossally massive, slow and not particularly fuel efficient, it’s really no surprise.

My understanding was the ultimate price difference between and XD nicely speced out and a “real” 3/4-ton diesel with way more power just wasn’t enough to get people who were secure enough in their personhood to “settle” with the only slightly smaller but way less powerful Cummins XD trucks. I never cross shopped them,…

This is the correct answer.

For that matter, the idea that the scandal/gummint/”do-gooders” killed the Pinto. It was built - and sold well - through 1980 despite that being twice as long a production run Ford had planned for it a decade before and the fact it was fundamentally obsolete as a purpose-designed first or second car (the wagon came…

My 72 Impala is bigger than my brother-in-laws 2000 whatever Impala.