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Post by Philemon on Feb 28, 2005 11:33:07 GMT -5
HÉ !! Check this cool concept for the future VW Eurovan ... I wouldn't mind touring Europe with Better-Half in one of these ... www.verdier.ca/One of my friend still have his 1976 VW Wesfalia Camper ...  |
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Post by Kensterberg on Feb 28, 2005 11:43:09 GMT -5
Phil -- hate to tell ya, but I think that VW has killed the idea of a retro-Vanagan. Which is too bad, 'cause mini-vans in general need some style, and that concept (based on a VW concept for the retro-Vanagan) has style in spades.
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Post by Philemon on Feb 28, 2005 11:48:00 GMT -5
Well ... We could always hitch-hike !  ! Or get back on the bike saddle ...  |
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Post by strat-0 on Feb 28, 2005 11:48:28 GMT -5
It does look pretty cool. I wonder what the sticker will be.
I kinda miss those air-cooled pancake engines. The harder you ran them, the better they ran.
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Post by ScottsyII on Mar 1, 2005 5:29:02 GMT -5
My friend had a good ol' Hardy Kombi Van.... boy did he run that thing hard... it was actually a tradesman's van, and his dad found the anchorages for the seats and converted it to a family bus!
That thing ran up and down from Adelaide to Marion Bay ( A good 400km trip) god knows how many times...
Only problem was that the electrics on alot of Australian built Kombis (hard to believe, but yes for some time they did assemble VW's here for a long time!) were downright dodgey... the Kombi in particular had a disposition for setting itself on fire.
One evening on his way down to the beach, a smokey smell was detected...
Minutes later the thing was by the side of the road engulfed in flames.
It was an undignified ending.
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Post by rockkid on Mar 1, 2005 8:17:16 GMT -5
Shot of the sons new car he bought himself. Black one in the rear.... gold Nissan is mine & the Ford  is the other halfs.  |
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Post by RocDoc on Mar 1, 2005 14:39:27 GMT -5
Ooops, let me UN-stretch this screen by stacking the images instead of side-by-side...   Old silver '89 Volvo 740 Turbo has pretty much breathed its last at 165,000 miles...spewing oil through its intake/blowhole after the timing belt 'skipped' out of position a few months back. It still drove but kept getting worse and worse. Now it's sitting in a patient's(who's a foreign car mechanic) backyard after he told me, it's time to just let it go... Just last summer I had someone fix a shitty looking fender too...exterior looks real nice but mechanically, feh. I want one of those Pontiac Vibes...standard 5 speed manual(or a 6 speed if I'm lucky enough to luck into the 190hp GT package)built on a Toyota Matrix base...drove one last week. Nice pick-up even with 150 horses... |
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Post by rockkid on Mar 2, 2005 8:12:57 GMT -5
Well you’ll sure not get the life out of a Pont that you did that Volvo, good luck.
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Post by RocDoc on Mar 2, 2005 19:23:42 GMT -5
But it's not really just another shitty(ie short-lived)GM car, 'Kid.
I'd definitely NEVER get another 'American' car with a manual shift, unless it had some sorta foreign pedigree too...this thing's a large percentage of Toyota stock.
My Sis had a Celica GT that went 150,000 miles...and Toyota's general go pretty long.
And the reluctance for a manual shift in an 'American' car goes back to a Chevy Cavalier station wagon which I took in for a clutch adjustment at a Firestone store and was told that there's some sort of a closed system which they couldn't touch to get the trans working 100%(which they said is pretty common in American made manuals, possibly some sorta made-up BS story, I dunno...)...so they fixed it ½-assed and I still ended up getting soaked for 700 bucks. Plus they held the car til I paid...fuckers!
I honestly shoulda walked and taken the bus for awhile...
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Post by Kensterberg on Mar 2, 2005 19:42:52 GMT -5
Yeah, mechanically that Pontiac is 100% Toyota Matrix. In turn, the Matrix is cobbled together from bits of the Celica and Corolla. Extremely reliable, though it seems like the people who buy the 190 hp version wind up disappointed in the high-revving nature of that motor. Americans tend to like their torque right off the bat -- low revs. But the Japanese have a thing for winding up little four cylinders to 8,000 rpms to get max. power. IMHO the Japanese approach is more fun, but I'm hardly the typical American.  |
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Post by strat-0 on Mar 2, 2005 21:00:15 GMT -5
Scottsy - yeah, those old air-cooled engines do have an unfortunate tendency to go up in flames. Doesn't make much sense, but it seems they tended to be coupled with poor electrical systems. I've seen many the VW Bug on the side of the road in flames. The squarebacks liked to short out (battery and voltage regulator under the back seat where the floor pan rusted out, or the seat springs contacted something). Not good.
Doc - pretty cool little car! 190 horses ain't too bad, really. Back in the late 70s, after stricter emission controls and before the catalytic converter and computers came to the rescue, it was all the carmakers could do to get that much hp out of a big V-8! Some of these rating are suspect to me, though - they are torturing the specs. As Ken notes, you gotta turn eight grand to get that, and that makes some people nervous. Torque is the thing. Displacement and aspiration give it to you, right off the line and on through the power curve. Some of these young "tuner" enthusiasts might get rather euphoric if they could get in my li'l old Chevy with the small block 400 and the nice cam and nail it. But that's my little secret - everyone can't have one these days; it would honestly be very environmentally unsound. I actually wouldn't mind venturing into the tuner world - taking a rice-burner and putting a blower and nitrous on it. But not the goofy looking foils, and tires with no sidewalls that make it ride and handle like a mule cart. But I always go for the sleeper. I'll hang on to my small block Chevy for now.
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Post by stratman19 on Mar 2, 2005 21:13:03 GMT -5
Give me torque; give me low end; just give me a good hole shot and I'm happy!  |
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Post by RocDoc on Mar 4, 2005 14:15:02 GMT -5
If that's not a lyric somewhere, it effing should be, Smokie!
It's got that sorta 'Hey Little Cobra' gearhead vibe just spilling off of it...
...it seems like the people who buy the 190 hp version wind up disappointed in the high-revving nature of that motor.
Yeah, and for that reason, I'm hoping to get my shifting skills a bit more fine-tuned for the benefit of my wife.
Shit, the test drive I took with the 5-speed, I was just bangin' away trying to see what sorta speed/pickup the thing had...but I was rough. I didn't grind, but like both Ken and Strat are saying, I pretty much felt like I needed to get it revved pretty high for the next shift to 'feel right'...going by the feel and sound of the motor.
But my wife was already protesting the feel of a standard shift car, figuring that I'd give her(AND needless to say, our little Matas...8 months today!)instant whiplash as I go through the box...
I had a friend who had an Audi Quattro with a 6 speed and he could shift that smooth as silk, generally. I gotta ask, are the Euro/Scandinavian manuals NOT as characteristically 'hi-revving' as the Japanese cars?
So maybe the learning curve to shift this one smoothly is going to be BIGtime steep?
Quixotic?
Fuck.....
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Post by strat-0 on Mar 5, 2005 0:26:00 GMT -5
It's not the revs, Doc, it's the clutch. You'll have no trouble in a short time, if it's a good car. |
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Post by Kensterberg on Mar 5, 2005 1:08:28 GMT -5
The Audi has a lot more torque down low -- which makes it easier to shift smoothly without much practice. You'll get the hang of the clutch in the Pontiyota with a little practice. And you'll probably find that when you don't rev it waaaaay up, it's easier to shift smoothly.
I test drove a Honda S2000 before I bought my current Bimmer. Man, that thing was just brutal -- if I were gonna go racing it would be a top contender, but for a daily driver it's just too raw for my tastes now. But when you rev it up, it goes like a scalded cat! Absolutely no torque down low, but over 6,000 rpm that little motor is a monster. 240 hp from only 2.0 liters!
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is the other halfs.
