Cars

I think cars can be pretty neat. I need a bigger garage.

The newest addition to the fleet is this 1968 Austin America, here demonstrating what the British Car Experience is like. Ahem.

In reality, the car is great. Prior to my ownership, it hadn't been driven a lot -- I suspect the tires on it were the original ones -- and in the 150 miles or so between the seller's house and the shipping point, nearly every major system of the car suffered at least one failure each.

Click on the Austin photo for the whole story.

Or look at this page to see how I fit all these into the garage.

This 1968 Porsche 912 is in good shape, needing only minor tuning. The interior was installed by an amateur, but looks good to a casual observer. There are the kind of problems you expect to find in a 35-year-old car -- shot bushings in the suspension, tired engine -- but nothing serious. I'm working on a section of the website to tell the story of this car. Click on the photo for the beginnings of that.

This is the mighty Grand Wagoneer, grand-daddy of all modern SUVs, shown here in its element in the woods. It is equally at home at the country club. I bought this particular example on eBay. You just can't kill these things, though the ease with which they rust will make you wonder.

This particular one, a 1989, spent the first 11 years of its life in Pennsylvania, and so it needs some rust abatement before too long. The interior is in perfect shape, and it's got all the fancy modern features like remote-control locks and such, while retaining an exterior design little changed from 1962.

In mid-2001, the Grand Wagoneer was struck by a Honda Civic on the left rear corner while parked on the street.

Total damage to the Jeep: bumper bent about two inches, slight crease in the quarter panel. The Honda, on the other hand, is a candidate for the scrapyard.

This is the Miata. I like it, but as a sports car it leaves a little to be desired, I think.

Overall, the Miata is a very successful refinement of cars like the MGB, Elan, etc. It's got the reliability of a Japanese car (not surprisingly), but it has lacks the tin-can feel that you get with most small cars from Japan. The dashboard is made entirely of plastic, yet it's not plasticky. It's much more solid and reassuring than the average small Japanese car. I think that the gear ratios could be improved on, and the factory spare-tire placement makes the trunk useless, but otherwise it's close to flawless.

Part of the charm of the MGB, Elan, etc., though, was in the flaws. The Miata has no idiosyncrasies at all, and that makes it a little boring.

Mazda's Miata program has recently gone completely off the rails, in any case. The whole idea of the Miata was to produce a cheap little sports car. $20,000 is not cheap. And things like power windows, automatic transmissions, etc. absolutely do not fit into that category. Note that in the spirit of the cheap little sports car, mine is equipped with the pressed steel wheels.

I recently replaced the top on the Miata with an aftermarket cloth top with a glass window. (The Miata being of recent manufacture and Japanese, this is of course the only thing other than regular maintenance I've ever had to do to the thing.) The improvement in the looks and feel (being able to see out the back feels better) of the car is amazing.

The BMW 325i. In my opinion, no car gives more bang for the buck than the BMW 3-series. It is neither the fastest, nor the best-handling, nor the most comfortable, nor the least expensive car on the road, but it reaches what I think is the best compromise of all those attributes.

I prefer the looks of the older (E30) BMW 3 series. The newer ones (E36) are quieter, but they don't feel as quick, and it seems to me that they are much larger cars. YMMV.