All cars are Autopian cars in their own ways, of course, and simply loving your car makes it an Autopian car (and you, an Autopian).
But there are certainly some machines that resonate on what one might call an Autopian frequency, a vibration that comes from weirdness or earnestness or goofiness or an undefinable something else (or it may just be a missing wheel weight, you never know).
This evening, I’m wondering what vehicles you’ve owned or experienced in some way that you would consider “most Autopian.” And for inspiration, I’ve put the question to The Gang:
Mark Tucker
My most Autopian car, hmm … probably the 1991 Mazda Miata that I owned before my MG. It had 205,000 miles on it when I got it, and 250-something when I sold it. I paid $2,000 for it, with a factory hardtop and an extra set of wheels.
I sold the hardtop for $900, the extra wheels for $100, and eventually sold the car for $2,500. Had the entire car apart at one time or another, except for the engine and gearbox internals. It was my daily driver for eight summers, and my only car for two years. Stock except for a Hard Dog Fabrication roll bar, 2001 Special Edition Miata leather seats, and a MOMO Montecarlo steering wheel. I still kinda miss it.
Mercedes Streeter
My most Autopian car is my 2012 Smart Fortwo Passion Coupe. This car continues to serve as proof to me that dreams can come true. Further, this is the car that I used to prove to myself that I am capable of anything. Back when I was dirt poor, I used this car to tow motorcycle trailers some 20,000 miles and I’ve even driven it for a few thousand miles off-road.
Like me, this car has done things nobody ever thought it could achieve. I also have nearly two decades of encyclopedic knowledge mostly uselessly floating around my head. Cars will come and go in my fleet, but this Smart, as well as its five other comrades, will probably be with me until the day I die. I own far weirder and far more historically significant cars, but only Smarts are so distinctly … me.
Griffin Riley
My most Autopian car was my first car, a Scion xB. My Dad loved it, it took me to many a party and date, and it had an engine and sound system even folks in the early aughts would pity.
Second-most-Autopian was the Ford Bronco II we repaired, which I learned stick on. Dad forced me to sell it cuz he didn’t want me to flip on the highways between Tucson and Phoenix. [Ed Note: Stupid Dads and their love, so annoying! – Pete]
Adrian Clarke
Matt has asked us about the most Autopian car we have owned. As everyone is probably sick of hearing by now, I have a highly strung Italian car that has left me stranded a couple times. That’s probably my most Autopian car.
But I think my second most Autopian car would be my old Land Rover 110 Defender. 1990 G-reg, bought sight unseen from eBay for about £1200 (that will tell you how long ago it was). Decidedly non-turbo diesel, no power steering either. Ran out of breath at about 65 with the off-road tires singing. A one hour drive gave you a four hour headache. I lived in the Docklands. Did I need a Defender? Nope. Did I want one? You bet your right elbow banging on the driver’s door I did. Only reluctantly sold it because I wanted a motorbike to learn to ride on.
Stephen Walter Gossin
I suppose my Most Autopian Car would be the ’66 Citroen 2CV that’s currently sitting in my driveway. If you recall, I picked this car up last summer while helping Mercedes score her dream ’46 Plymouth from the same seller.
Interestingly enough, I find it to be a cool car and wicked unique, but it just doesn’t move my soul as much as my ’03 Stratus Coupe does. I’ll be replacing the soft top & the bullet-riddled glass windows (flat glass!) and getting it ready for sale in the upcoming weeks.
Torch
My most Autopian car may have been my Reliant Scimitar; technically strange (fiberglass body, front-mid engine, first split folding rear seats), famously owned by a princess with a horse fetish, built by a company that’s mostly thought of as a joke, shooting brake, weird gearbox (overdrive on rear drive, so you have 3 1/2 gear and a 5th gear) and just deeply, satisfyingly weird. Quick, too!
David
My most Autopian car was Project Cactus, a steaming heap that started out as a parts car for my main project, which I found out was in no shape to be a “main project” of any sort. The amount of work to put that thing together in a single month was shocking, but in the end, it became an Australian hero.
Had more than a few. Currently still have my first car, I daily a brick nose f350, I used to daily a 1991 bronco II 2WD(yes they made those) that had been lowered a couple inches in the front and had soft sidewall rear tires, and I learned stick in a 1951 chevrolet pickup that my dad got out of a farm field and we got running for the first time in decades, the list goes on.
If forced to go with just one of them I think it’d have to be my first car, a 1974 buick apollo. I’m the second owner, and I’ve had it for 25 years now.
That’s easy. It’s my 1984 Bizarro Mustang.
C’mere. Lemme tell you about this beast.
It was a 4-banger, naturally aspirated. No turbo or any of that silly stuff. But the suspension was the same as an SVO, and it had the wheel meat of an SVO (I know, because it wore out FAST, hombres!) and that weird biplane spoiler of an SVO but none of the cajones of an SVO. That said, it was SO FUN to drive on the mountain roads running from I-15 to the Palomar observatory (IYKYK).
I have no idea how this configuration came to exist, nor how it ended up for sale in Bumfuck Egypt, WV. And yet, here we are.
Did something to eff up the valves on it and ended up trading it in for a 1994 4-banger Mustang later on, no regerts but I sure did love that little car. Weird AF and that makes it the most Autopian car I ever owned.
There are sentimental reasons – such as driving into the clouds on said Palomar Observatory road (Cali 96 IIRC) singing “In your Wildest Dreams” with my girlfriend – but the fact that the car made that SO MUCH FUN is why it sits at the top of my list.
(My 71 MG Midget might come in 2nd on that list, also because of the weird tales I could weave around it, but if you’re not 1st, you’re last amirite?)
Hmm. We all love GMT400s around here, right? If so, my daily ‘96 GMC K1500 or my tow pig ‘99 K2500 qualify as Autopian-approved, I suppose.
It’s definitely Adrian approved, which let’s be honest is all the counts.
GMT400’s are one of the best-looking trucks of all time.
A baby blue Renault 12 I bought in college. I replaced the crank bearings in my apartment parking lot. It got totaled in a snowstorm but I bought it back for $200 and straightened the bumpers with a chain and a tree. Drove it for 2 more years and sold it to a couple of Iranian exchange students for $200. Then rescued them 2 days later when the rear brakes froze up because they didn’t release the e-brake.
My brown Saab station wagon. I loved it, and it was fast. It has been gone for a while now. I recently bought a Volvo s80 on Copart tor $550, and that is a stellar car, but i think i still like the Saab better.
Leased, not owned. VW Sportwagon, turbodiesel with a stick. Was black. Built like a tank, and had the trickiest sunroof I ever owned. I would still have it if they hadn’t pulled the rug out from under me, and just bought me out. Literally left me in the parking lot with no car and a reparation check for a couple thousand.
I would still have that car today If they had let me. Oh, and if a Porsche Cayenne hadn’t taken the front clip off it at the dealership while I was returning it. Best accident I ever wasn’t responsible for.
Gotta be either my ’80 Volvo 240 DL, 4-door, 4+3 OD manual. Such a block of steel that thing was.
Or, a totally emotional purchase, an ’87 Audi 5000 Quattro 5-speed. What a sweet car that was! But oh how temperamental. Perfect Autopian material
I knew my first car wasn’t going to be a ’93 Taurus SHO (black on black) once my grandfather put his foot down in it, and I ended up favoring an ’89 244 over an ’88 Firebird V6. (All automatics, unfortunately, though I ended up with the best autobox of the bunch anyway.)
My second and third cars – a $200 745 sometimes-Turbo and a $750 five-speed 855 with a throttle that was originally sticky and, for a time, hand-operated, both of which I bought with minor existing front end damage, the former of which I crunched harder when the old brake lines/calipers failed and then wrenched on regularly until it threw a rod and made me $200 back from the scrapper after I sold off a few parts, and the latter of which I traded (with different issues!) for an also-five-speed 244 – are my real answers.
(Edit: After I traded the 855 away, that 244’s clutch shattered into dust the next day, in the middle of the woods, after surviving an extralegal highway pull on the way home. While it was in the shop, the 855’s new owner asked me about the mud all the way up the firewall. It’d been down a technically-closed dirt road during mud season; I hit it in 4th and came out in 2nd hoping I wouldn’t need 1st. I felt like we were even.)
I like to think there’s something to be said these days for dual dash cupholders and triple gloveboxen in an appliance-blueberry, but the Yaris just doesn’t have the same “piloting a loose collection of parts down the road, utilizing a specific technique” feeling.
The five cars I’ve driven/owned long term have had a bit of personality. It took time and usually turning a wrench to find it. They’ve all been different but have all excelled at gobbling up miles.
Force a choice, and it has to be my old 2012 Cruze Eco manual. That car did a lot. Moving stuff it had no right to do, driving it places off pavement it had no right to be and generally being a reliable, dependable vehicle that was both fairly quick and fairly economical. The only times it left me stranded were when I ran out of gas. Which I did twice, and somehow managed to coast to gas stations. One was about three miles, mostly downhill. I got to be quite familiar with that car and its quirks. Great car.
my ownership history has been pretty pedestrian – the most Autopian one is probably that Super Beetle I had in high school, due to the familial relationship with the Torchbug
I think my most Autopian car was the 16V swapped 81 Scirocco I owned in my last year of college. I learned diagnostics and re-engineering the previous owner’s modifications. Then I bought a motorcycle and replaced it with a bone stock 84 Jetta. My other very Autopian ride is my lightly modified 1978 BMW R100S that I have since 1990. While I don’t ride it as much as I used to that bike is an integral part of my life I never want to sell
I once had an extremely autopian pickup. 89 f150 xl 300efi straight 6 single cab long bed 2wd. Think Torch’s Marshal, except white, and old man maintained. I loved it, and it was in extraordinary nice shape, until my sister ran it over with the tractor.
I could say it’s the small and light MR2 Spyder I used to have.
I could say it’s the 999cc subcompact Fiesta I used to commute in.
I could say it was my old vinyl seat crank window K2500 truck.
I could say it’s the ’72 Blazer in pieces in my barn.
I could say it’s the VW TDI that turned me off VW forever.
Honestly, as sappy as it sounds, anything you take care of or are proud to drive belongs here. The member collections have shown off an astonishing variety of stuff.
First was a 12 year old 1971 Volvo 144S – 4 speed, no overdrive – twin SU carbs.
It was missing the lower dash due to the previous owners pulling out the AC for some reason.
How I loved that car for the 2-3 years I had it till I locked up the motor – I thought back then it was due to not changing the oil enough or not getting a new oil plug after I did get the oil changed – but after reading an article here recently, I believe it may have been because I was running too much water and not enough anti-freeze in the radiator.
Either way, I killed it.
Followed was a 1972 Volvo 145E – again 4 speed, no overdrive and no AC – but a complete dash.
That car had numerous electrical woes until it finally died in front of my uncle’s house in VA Beach just a couple weeks before I was to leave for USAF Basic Training. Then a friend of my cousin backed into it when coming out of the driveway.
Then my Uncle died too – and soon thereafter I left for Basic.
Oddly enough – when I was in tech school at DLI in Monterey – I befriended a handsome, tall young man named Alex who drove – get this – his Dad’s old 1972 Volvo 164E – 4 speed w/ overdrive and AC!
I drove that car all over the Monterey Bay area, Central Coast, the length of California and back with Alex contentedly stretched out in the passenger seat – until – Yes – it died in his parent’s driveway in Susanville over Xmas/New Years break. So they had to drive us back to Monterey in his Dad’s new W123 Mercedes-Benz 300D Turbodiesel – special-ordered with heated seats and headrests in the back seat!
The Volvo was eventually repaired and returned to us in Monterey – but not before we spent a couple weeks that winter with his Dad’s old 1965 Ford Thunderbird, which the older Brother drove…
Sadly, Alex left for further training in Texas that spring. Last I heard, he wrecked the Volvo in a windstorm while towing a U-Haul trailer. The wind had caught the trailer while crossing the plains of West Texas, jackknifing the Volvo & rolling them both over. Alex survived, but the Volvo did not.
1988 Chevy K2500. Good ol’ GMT400. Four on the floor, column-shifted auto with overdrive. Bedsides had holes rusted in them, cab corners were gone, weird electrical gremlins from the two-battery camper package, and mismatched fenders/hood from the rest of the body because of patching/priming them. Never left me stranded anywhere.
Also the ’92 Ford Tempo with trash bags of foam shoved into the rust holes in the fenders and painted over. No floorboards to speak of. But it also never left me stranded.
58 VW bus, 64 Olds F85, 66 Charger, 72 TR-6 with swapped Corvette 327, 78 Ford Fiesta, 88 Mercury Scorpio, 07 Subaru Tribeca cover from 16 through 66. Lots of others that come close, but these are The Autopian collection. Learned to drive, wrench, do bodywork, shuttle family, debug complicated modern electronics, swap and rebuild engines transmissions, differentials and suspensions and had many good times. Learned a lot from the motley crew.
Definitely the van that inspired my name here. Somewhere on the way it subsumed my personality and I still want another one, even if it had problems with the most random parts I could conceive of.
1980 B1 VW Passat 1.6 4-speed, got it in my junior year in college.
My very first engine rebuild, the rebuilt engine was great, the rest of the car was an absolute shitbox.
Body was so rusted you could see the tarmac through the holes in the floor, had to carry a shovel head in my trunk to cover the rotted out jack points to change tires, suspension and steering were merely a suggestion. I remember doing 200km/h (about 120mph) in 4th gear with the engine screaming, and my passenger buddies screaming because the whole car was just floating and I was sawing at the wheel like a boat captain in a storm just to keep it on the road.
Drove it all through college, went on some epic trips, never left me stranded.
1985 Honda Civic – 4 doors, manual and… push-button 4WD!!!
Most Autopian:
1994 Ford SHO 5 speed, bought used in VA 2001 – maybe the ONE I most regret selling.
1996 Ford Thunderbird, bought used PA 1999 – 4.6 modular V8, modified 4R70W trans, 3.27 traction lok axle, converted to rear disk brakes from a junkyard Cougar. A highway missile back in the day.
1989 XJ Cherokee 4.0, bought used in PA 2002 – a 4×4 shitbox beater I adored.
1978 Ford LTDII coupe, bought used PA 1992, first car, malaise era barge with asthmatic 351 V8. Rust chunks fell off when you slammed the door.
BTW – have not owned less than 3 cars since buying the XJ in 2002.
I would love to say, the ’73 Citroen SM, that I looked at, as a 17 year old, in the mid-eighties. My dad talked me out of it. He was right.
How about the ’86 Saab 900, that I bought for $700, off of eBay. Sight unseen. I needed an adventure… Drove it from Long Island to Chicago. I had to tighten the bolts on the driver’s seat, on the New Jersey turnpike, and get the brake master cylinder replaced in Philly. Then, about a mile from my girlfriend’s house, in the south ‘burbs, after a 13 hour drive, the exhaust system decided to eject itself. I repaired it, drove it for two years, parked it on the street in Uptown, and sold it for $1000. How’s that?
I was talked out of a 1975 Pontiac Grand Ville 400 in 1992. I feel I chose poorly.
My electric Triumph GT6 conversion. It’s unfinished, frighteningly quick, cobbled together with mismatched parts, and is extremely sketchy..
Extremely sketchy is peak Autopian. I mean, look at project POStal.
My buddy’s manual 2013 Hyundai accent hatch. HEAR ME OUT! We’ve replaced everything on that car up to and including the entire drivetrain (using a brand new autozone engine, somehow it runs). Why? Who knows? That thing just crossed 200k miles, is worth a fraction of the time and money we’ve invested in it, and personally, I hate driving it. It taught us a lot about wrenching though, especially wrenching in a pinch, and is probably the foundation of our friendship. There’s not a person in the world who would look at it and think its a “cool” or “interesting” car, but I think all that makes it very “autopian”.
The most Autopian car of my life to date was my dad’s 72 Ford Ranch Wagon. It was a former police equipment car.
It was more bondo and fiberglass than metal at the end. I was driving it one day when it died on the road. My dad tried to get it to run by using an old can, a piece of copper pipe and some flexible tubing to drip gas into the carb. Not sketchy at all! Then tried to tow it home by dragging it behind his 79 LTD wagon (also not sketchy) leading to a ticket for illegal towing.
He repainted it in our gravel-floored garage. He did the head gaskets in that same garage. My dad willed that thing to stay on the road.
He bought it when I was three, and I (legally) drove it to the dump when I was 16. Once we were there we flipped it over to get the transmission out for someone. It still worked perfectly at over 300k miles.
I still sometimes dream about that car.
1971 Austin 1100 automatic. Weird transmission (in sump auto, I wrote a paper on it once), weird suspension (hydrolastic), should have been a hatchback but wasn’t, double decker boot, and a sideways radiator. Only car I ever had with a generator instead of an alternator and you could watch the lights dim if you were sitting to long without moving. Loved that thing! Simultaneously the smoothest ride of any car I’d owned, including a 94 LeSabre, but cornered like a sports car.
My grandmother’s early 80’s VAZ-2101 Lada. The only thing that could have made it more Autopian would have it been a wagon.