Royale isn't a higher trim level then Royale Brougham, is it?
Why has this car got alloy wheels and mine's got (PITA, Cheesy) hubcaps?

While researching Volkswagen on wikipedia, I found a picture of a Rabbit that looked incredibly identical to the one that my family had a few years ago. Same year, same eterior color, interior color, wheels, and trim level. In fact, it was so similar to ours that I thought it was ours for a minute, but it has a California license plate, and how would our old car ever have gotten to Ca;ifornia? Although, that is the only car other than my dad's 1974 Olds Ninety-Eight, that we sold instead of taking to the junkyard.

Here is the picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:82_VW_Rabbit.jpg

I ran into an orange Porsche 914 today. They're very tiny 4 cylinder cars and I don't think I had seen one before. I liked how the Porsche letters were just above the trunk door.

A Volvo C303 in the parkinglot outside my work.


A nice 140, custom paintjob and blacktout taillights.


An old Ford.

Heh heh, I see you're driving one of your old Volvos atom Nice


Anyway, found some pictures I took a couple years ago (2005-2006) of some interesting cars:


A strange car I never knew existed, I guess it was only sold in Canada (note the Ontario plate)



A "Pontiac Firefly" How silly, huh?




Late-70s Eldorado for sale, it has been on the dealer lot for many months. I can undestand that, seeing as it gets about 7 MPG
I would still take it though, if I had any money, that is




An old AMC sedan.
A Concord I guess? From around 1979 or so?

This name was indeed only used in Canada (and Middle-East if I remember well), but this is just a rebadged 3rd-gen Suzuki Swift, known as Geo/Chevrolet Metro in USA.

A propos Geo Metro: why it (and its drivers) has such a bad reputation in America?
It's similar to the Yugo in the 80ies and the Ford Pinto in the 70ies.

Just because its a small car? Or due its bad quality -which is wrong, because since years Suzuki has always a positive pole-position in the break-down-statistics, just behind Toyota, but before Mercedes and Audi.

In Europe the Suzuki Swift, the original of the Geo Metro, is known as a reliable small car, but without any special reputation in positive or negative relation.
In 1993 I drove a Suzuki Swift as a rental car on Corfu/Greece. It was o.k., but nothing more or less.

Yes, cars that size do not have a good reputation in America, no matter how good or reliable they may be. They are just considered "cheap" and "crappy" because they are so tiny. The same is true for the Aveo, Tercel, Echo, Yaris, etc...

No, it really is bad. Rattly, loud, no luxuries, incapable of highway speed.
Small cars don't have the same image problems in Canada, but hypermilers are still the only ones who like Metros.

Today I took a person home to Minneapolis and driving along Hiawatha Avenue @44.903834, -93.198856&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl" title="http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Hiawatha Ave/MN-55 W @44.903834, -93.198856&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&um=1&sa=N&tab=wl" class="bbcodee296a8e400b1097f6ad1dd47468a1e2c">Google Maps I saw an Austin Healey. I met up to the car at a stop light, and talked over my passenger (we let them ride up front usually) at the driver. I asked if it was a 1960, and he said it was a 1953. I then asked if it was a Nash Healey, and the man informed me that 1953 was the first year of the Austin Healey. I was in love with that car at first sight, and it could easily be worth 80,000 dollars in its current restored condition. It was sweet!
Here is a picture of one, but the one I saw was painted burgundy:


I had with me one of my Rush CDs that I was playing in the car earlier (but not then). The album "Moving Pictures" has the song "Red Barchetta" on it, and the song instantly flew into my mind when I spotted that beautiful ride.

Rush: Red Barchetta (live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe_csQvx0go

You're kidding
Geez, the taxi drivers in my city would get shot if they did that
In NYC, there is even a mandatory bullet-proof partition between the front and back seat. It's a dangerous world we live in
Though it's nice to see that your little corner of it is better Good luck not getting mugged, buddy

Also I found a video of a Red '69 Super Bee set to that song you mentioned

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epr144KsKGI

No we don't have partitions, and that is probably one of the reasons we can't do pickups in Minneaapolis unless they call our office phone. I was still low on the value of the Austin-Healey. I think 150,000 is an acurate *starting* point! [jaw drop]

The car whose picture I posted in another topic has a moonroof, heated front seats, and a tape/cd player.

You mean the Sebring? Nice!

But in USA the max speeds are not so high, no?
In Europe these small cars are used without problem on highways/freeways. Though that distances are probably smaller...

Okay there were two series of Austin-Healey in 1953: the 100 and the 3000. I don't know which one this was (I didn't know enough to ask), but I was enamoured with it nonetheless!

Not so high? Almost all freeways are 70 mph (112 kph), even 75 (120 kph) in some western states. I don't how that is low? Although I suppose that compared to Europe where there in no speed limit that might be considered "low"

Yes, 112 km/h is the "not very high" that I mentioned.
In Belgium it is 120 km/h, in France 130 km/h, and loads of small cars use highways at these speeds (or more). The Suzuki Swift work as well as others for that. But I agree that for long trips it is not as good as bigger cars: driving a small car on highway for 1h is much more tiring than a bigger car with better sound isolation, handling, etc.

Unlimited highways are only in Germany, and this concerns only some parts of their highways, not whole network.
Also some (or all?) in Italy have a 150 km/h limit.

I'd be surprised if a 3-cylinder Metro with 50-somnething horsepower could go much faster than 130 km/h (82 mph), and it'd be really hanging on for dear life at that speed!

A short story about Italian higways. My mother took a trip to Italy a few years ago (2003) and she rode on the freewy in a taxicab that she swore had the speedometer just under 200 km/h! I find it hard to beleive that the tires didn't blow out at that speed (though maybe the taxi had special racing tires fitted on it )

@taxiguy: the quality of tires is different in different countries - an in the USA usually the quality is lower than in Europe.

At my round-trip in 1993 I was wondering about the plenty of bursted tires and tire-parts besides the highways, many more than in Europe.
At shops I've seen, that in the USA the tires are much cheaper (alloy wheels, too) than at home. It has some reasons...

Some years ago, Audi (or VW?) had problems with US-customers. They complained, that the comfort was getting lost. The reason was, that they've mounted premium high-speed-tires
on the cars - which were senseless in the USA. So they called the cars back and have changes the tires to the cheaper, smoother US-version.