My first Audi 5000CS Turbo Quattro...way back when.

One day when I was browsing Craigslist and stumbled across an ad for a 1987 Audi 5000TQ for the princely sum of $250. After a brief conversation with the owner I realized that the car was only a few blocks from me in SE Portland. My roomy Tim and I walked over to check it out and found that the car was amazingly clean but wouldn't start. The owners had recently had some work done at a local shop that did not specialize in these freakishly complex cars and they had apparently not fully understood the intake system. The car had made it from the shop to their house, then failed to start. The owners didn't seem to appreciate what a jewel they had and were basically selling the car for scrap value. I immediately gave them the asking price and towed the car home behind my roomy's Vanagon. After some brief troubleshooting I disassembled the intake pipes and reassembled them paying close attention to the vacuum hoses. After I'd finished the car fired right up and idled smoothly. I put several thousand miles on that car and came away from the experience a huge fan of these cars.

These first couple pics are within a few weeks of buying the car. It came with the bored smoothy 15x6" wheels and I scored these Borbet'ss off Craigslist for a couple hundred. These 18" meshies came from a fellow VW/Audi fan in the Seattle area. I had never had any car jewelry comparable to these and couldn't resist.

Mercedes Unimog Expedition Vehicle on the street in Portland, Oregon

I spotted this monster on the street in NW Portland by World Cup Coffee. I love the addition of the dual sport motorcycle on the trailer hitch carrier. I believe it's a KTM. If anyone knows the origin of the plates on this thing feel free to comment. Who needs a vacation home when you have one of these?

1972 Cadillac Coupe Deville rescued from a field.

I dragged this car out of a field in Vancouver, Washington intending to use it as a powertrain donor for the 1955 Pontiac Hearse Panel. In the interest of accurately assessing the car I washed it, put a new battery in it, replaced the fuel pump and filters, flushed the fuel lines, and started it up. Well, it has only 56k miles on it and run like it! I then washed the car and made the mistake of polishing the surprisingly intact paint. One pass with the DeWalt buffer made me reconsider parting it out. The results are evident. They used damn good paint back in 1972! The roof had some rust so off it came. The Dayton Wires fell into my lap for a price I couldn't turn down and suit the car perfectly. The next step in this super low budget cruiser project is to take a coil out of the springs to get the stance right.

1977 Mercedes Benz 450sel 6.9

In 1977 the 450sel 6.9 was the fastest sedan in the world. This car cost around $70,000 in 1977 dollars. Brock Yates wrote an epic road test/review at the time in which he drove from Ann Arbor Michigan to Road Atlanta Racetrack, ran the car on the track for hours, then drove back to Ann Arbor with no mechanical failures. When I find the link, I'll update this post with it. If you've seen Ronin or Lost Highway you've seen one of these legendary cars in action.

1955 Pontiac Hearse Panel

This is a 1955 Pontiac Hearse Panel that I traded for a rusty Chevy pickup. It was hand built by Superior Coachworks formerly of Lima, OH. This is one of the last hand build/coachbuilt vehicles made in the US. Each one was built to order for a particular funeral home so no two were truly identical. Most hearses were ordered on Cadillac chassis making this Pontiac even rarer. I haven't been able to find pictures or production figures for any other Pontiac panel hearse models. This might be the only one.

1977 Toyota Corolla 3TC 4speed

I found this little badass on Craigslist for $200 with a blown head gasket. It had a bulletproof 3TC backed by a 4 speed manual. I replaced the blown head gasket and flushed the oiling system with a bit of ATF and the car drove like a champ. I had the wheels laying around from a Datsun 510 project I'd sold off some months prior. The fog lights were $15/piece from Discount Import Parts. The Ansa dual outlet muffler came off Craigslist for cheap too. Sold the car to a cute neighbor girl and as far as I know she's still driving it.

More garage pics of the 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix

Here's the 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix wearing 15x8" Z/28 Rally Wheels. The wheels came to me from a client that was cleaning out his garage. My exhaust guru Mike Oldfield built this lovely custom exhaust setup in about 2 hours. The guy is an artist with tubing. The reason it's offset to the passenger side is the lack of a cutout for dual exhaust in the transmission cross-member.
I took this thing on the 2013 Oregon 500/500 rally and had a blast with my lady. It ran like a champ and handled great. I've since traded it for a 1979 Chevy LUV that will be featured in a future post.

Pearson Air Museum

1977 Pontiac Grand Prix

Here we have a 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix model J, the bastard child of a NASCAR flavored Monte Carlo and some sort of slutty Italian thing.  It has a 2 barrel low compression 301 Pontiac V8 with a TH400 3 speed automatic transmission.
As loathsome as many of these malaise era cars can be, this one drives quite well. With a freakishly tall rear-end gear ratio (~2.07:1?) it also gets surprisingly good gas mileage (~22mpg) and handles pretty well on 265/50r15's in front and 275/60r15's in back on 8" and 10" wide wheels respectively. With only 54k miles on it in the last 35 years it steers nicely and with the RTS (Radial Tuned Suspension) handling package it corners quite flat.
 Ditching the stock single exhaust for a cat-less dual exhaust made a huge difference.

Also,I'm including a pic of a 1959 Jaguar MKIX that I just replaced the rear springs and shocks on, just because it's pretty. Had to have custom leaves built locally at Benz Spring Co. because the originals had rusted to the point of snapping and are NLA.