My first car - a used '73 Grand Prix SJ with the vinyl top.
455 SuperDuty Pontiac mill, dual exhaust. 120 mph speedo that I'd peg past 120 until the needle hit the odometer reset stem, and then she was still accelerating.
9-12 mpg - and that's highway at 55. Regular gas with a fill tube behlnd the spring-loaded rear license plate - very low and a pain to fill in cold weather without gloves (or with them) - that cold metal is nott good for yer skin and with the strongly spring-loaded license plate, if you lost yer grip cuz of cloth gloves, it'd snap your fingers like a jumbo mousetrap.
Still have the car. In storage. May be a retirement hobby project.
As a Midwestern car, it has a bit of minor cancer and some paint bubbling, so it'll need a bit of sanding and repainting, a total overhaul of the mill, a new tranny, tires, and ... well a lott. Hope I live long enuff to finish the project.
Factory audio in it is AM/FM-8-track tape deck. How utterly cool s that?
The last year it ran was 1983 or 1984. Stored since then. It slid off an icy road and acquired some suspension damage and at around the same time I inherited my uncle's '76 Monte Carlo (350CID mill), so rather than pay for the suspension work, I just stored it and used the Monte Carlo. My uncle' was my dad's adopted brother - who was actually my dad's aunt's illegitimate son from a fling with some Italian sailor. So my grandmother, The Sergeant, took him in as their adopted son to cover up for her sister's indiscretion. He went by the name Poncho (not his real first name, a nickname) - and he was an alcoholic who died at 47 from liver failure due to alcoholism. Since he was an alcoholic, he'd lost his drivers license and he lost his job as a roofer by falling off a roof and shattering his elbow and arm. So he moved into the upstairs of a tavern and worked as a barkeep downstairs. Perfect setup for an alcoholic, right? He hardly drove the Monte Carlo. When he died and left it to me, it had less than 25,000 miles on it even though it was a 9 or 10 year old car. My mental image of the odometer was 23,7xx when I gott it.
That Monte Carlo was also an 10-14 mpg guzzler. Once I gott some munny whilst working my way thru law skool, I gave it to my dad who needed a young 350 Chevy mill to replace his crappy Olds 305 with the notoriously soft cams that wore down after 50,000 miles. So dad did the engine swap and junked the rustbucket remains of the Monte Carlo and the toasted Olds 305. I had a few bucks from working 20 hours week as a research scientist and teaching, so I bought a used Mazda B2200 pickup with a bedliner and cap.
My dad was nott an educated man nor particularly bright (he apparently suffered some hypoxia during birth according to the story), butt with engines and cars (and speedboats) he was Mozart. I could tell stories to illustrate, butt suffice it to say that I am a dude who is very much NOTT easily impressed, and I'm still amazed at some of the engine work my dad did with no manual and no references on an old Nordberg straight six from a Century wooden inboard - I've since found ~OUTT that it was a marine-ized version of a design for a Hercules truck engine. He overhauled the entire thing - soup to nuts - with zero manuals and zero technical data. Had to make his own gaskets as there was no 'stock' parts available for that rare model. And that sucker put into the Century inboard ran like a Swiss watch for years until he finally sold it. And that boat is still running today - same motor with no major work since dad overhauled it in the early 1970s. Dad moved his lips (slowly) while reading, butt when it came to anything mechanical, he just knew how to play.
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