Cult of Personality [LORE] [FINAL RESULTS]

[VicVictory]

1967 Lavache Ramjet W410R

@Awildgermanappears

Today’s topic is possibly the quirkiest of quirkies to come out of the Muscle Car era. It’s not the 305 horsepower 410 cubic inch engine that’s so weird, or the mile-long boat it’s in. No, that was all normal.

Listen to this exhaust note. Sounds odd, right? Certainly not something you’d expect from a V8 bruiser. So what could it be?

The LaVache Ramjet W410R. That, my friends, is a narrow-angle V6, pushrod engine, of gigantic proportions.

As if that wasn’t weird enough, let’s add on that it’s a full-on station wagon. And like many wagons of the era, the LaVache has a third row. But it’s not a set of pop-up rear-facing jumpseats in the trunk, but rather a full size, foldable forward-facing set. Interior appointments were quite nice, as well, with deluxe overstuffed vinyl bench seating in all three rows and a split-bench slider in the front.

What a way to pile 8 of your closest friends in and go to the drag strip.

Oh, and in case that confuses you, yes, there is an entire subculture of hot-rod station wagons. Gotta get them groceries fast!

Scoring:
Mainstream Culture - Muscle Cars: Medium (Currently in 6th)

[VicVictory]

1961 Anhultz Minimas Concept

@Elizipeazie

What you see is a tiny postwar European car, one that likely choked city streets or served as runabouts for the masses when gas was expensive and economies were still weak, right?

Well, this particular one was found at a car show in Tucson this last winter. And as far as the States go, it is extremely rare. More so that a great number of cars that we’ve already covered here, including import-only models.

Anhultz, in the late 50’s, began a design study for a small, quirky car to be produced in “limited” numbers as a test market. This live-market concept was an interesting one, with a few hundred units being shipped to various countries. As one might imagine, a cramped 5-seater with a sub-1 liter engine wasn’t exactly popular in the States in 1961 when this experiment occurred. The results were different overseas, particularly as the Minimas was cheap to buy, own, and maintain.

But rare doesn’t always mean better. It takes true passion and dedication to commit to owning a car with such limited appeal and support around here. It’s interesting to see, and the little Anhultz got quite a bit of curious attention. But when polled, none of the contributors to this blog were interested in even driving it, much less owning one.

Perhaps why they’ve almost all rotted away.

Scoring:
Counter Culture - Classics: Very Low (Currently in 14th)

[VicVictory]

1987 Oldman Darwin GL

@stm316

Australia. The land where all the animals want to kill you, but the cars are pretty chill. In fact, a lot of the cars from the 80’s on from there were actually a lot like ours, only much less disappointing.

Take, for instance, the 87 Oldman Darwin. This is an Australian take on the sport sedan. About the size of an intermediate American car. V8 powered, too, albeit in the form of an all-aluminum 32-valve SOHC. Perhaps a bit exotic for our Budweiser-swilling pallates at the time, but quite nice. With 208 horsepower, it had a lot more grunt than most of what was offered, without horrible gas mileage either.

OK, so maybe it got a bit too odd for us when it showed up as a 4-speed floor shift manual and front-wheel drive, and that’s too bad. More of them really should have been sold over some of our other offerings here. I mean, the Ardent Chancellor? Booooring. The Darwin? Flat out fun by comparison, with a 7.4 second 0-60 and top speed of 131 MPH.

Clean examples are fetching high prices and showing up more often at show and shine events.

Maybe the best thing to do is go for a walkabout with one, mate.

And I promise never to do that accent ever again.

Scoring:
Mainstream Culture - Classics: Very Low (Currently in 5th)

[VicVictory]

1971 Bogliq Maverick AE

@HighOctaneLove

When fast is the name of the game, the Bogliq Maverick 700AE comes up. With its 323 horsepower, 427 cubic inch (or 7.0 liter, thank you very much Moldva) V-8 engine, Bogliq came to fight in '71. It was thrown up against the likes of the Vega Alameda, and of course nemesis Ardent’s offering in the Marathon Super T/A.

In 1971, this baby had a 5.9 second 0-60, and could damn near hit 150 miles per hour. Faster on both counts than the Vega and the Ardent. Truly, this was a burly big-block king of the era. And this king had one of the best stereos of the era as well.

In a rather remarkable reversal of the status quo, however, the Bogliq cost a significant chunk of change more than the Ardent in the day. We’re talking 25%. And Bogliq’s complicated quad-carb setup on the Maverick had some very negative ramifications with regard to maintenance and reliability.

Someone might want to let the King know that he’s got arthritis.

Scoring:
Mainstream Culture - Muscle Cars: Very High (Currently in 1st)

[Elizipeazie]

well THAT was brick wall for my project…

[Madrias]

1973 Sinistra Savage 662 MCI

Released as a brutal response to pressure from Bogliq and Ardent in the late 60’s, the Sinistra Savage started out as a FWD muscle car that could handle with the big guns. 464ci of big-block V8, and early adoption of the Radial tire, gave the Savage a leg-up on competition. High starting costs kicked it back down, though it didn’t fair too badly in Motor World Review’s 1969 article, despite the quirks and price.

With continued pressure being applied, Luke Sinistra took the same chassis and gave it a mighty 662ci power plant, which was initially planned on just being a rally special. The ‘prototype’ mechanical fuel injection system was refined enough to make it feasible to mass-produce, and while the Savage 662 isn’t exactly rare, genuine examples are a little harder to find. With Sinistra selling 662ci power-plants as crate motors, often complete with transaxles, to anyone who was willing to pay the price, many 1973 Savages had their 464ci engine replaced with this unit. And many others, often originals, had their engine and transaxle pulled for unique engine swaps with other cars.

But, for a short time, the worst thing you could see at a stop-light was the tell-tale triple-tipped exhausts and the “Tri-Valve Injection” badge, right next to “662ci” as your only warnings to lighten your foot, because you won’t win this.

[Bmaggiori]

BDM presents the new Aquila 2300 (1982)
With a 2.3 engine, produces 126 hp and 174Nm of torque… No, it’s not a beast, but do the job for those who want a Budget Fun Car. . .

Cult - BMaggiori - BDM - Aquila.car (30.9 KB)

[VicVictory]

18-ish hours left. As it’s Halloween tonight, I’m going to do the remaining reviews after the close of submissions.

[Ornate]

1989 Accursio Marinus

(OOC: Due to exams, I didn't really get to write much of a lore for the Marinus in the CSR, and since I'm done with them for the year thought this would be a good place to talk about the 1st gen Marinus)

Since the company’s first foray into automobiles from motorcycles in 1955, the company stuck with making mini cars to stay within their expertise of high-revving small engines. Although as time went by, the company’s dedication to small cars didn’t change. After being unable to get much market traction worldwide with the Accursio 1000 due to reliability issues and bad rust proofing, Accursio looked to reduce their running costs and started to cooperate with a Japanese carmaker known for making motorcycles and small cars. Accursio would help their Japanese counterpart avoid tariffs in European markets, in exchange for having access to their product line and being able to modify them for the local markets. This exchange would bring Accursio’s two main into existence, the Criceto, which was offered as a sedan and as a coupe, and the Cavia, which was offered as a hatchback or as a mini-MPV.

However, as time went by, mini-cars would start to fall out of the vogue for subcompacts and the trend would only start to be noticeable for Accursio in 1986, which saw a large decrease in sales over a two-decade period. With this, the development of the Accursio Marinus would start. The Marinus was designed in mind to be a sportier competitor to most “white-goods” subcompacts that were available at the time and at the same time, be able competitive price-wise both in purchase cost and running costs. To achieve comparable, and in most cases better, fuel economy than their competitors, the Marinus had an undersquare turbo engine tuned for economy, this coupled with the light weight of the car due to its size and use of aluminium panels allowed the ‘89 Marinus to deliver 34 MPG as well as a 0-60 time of 7.4 seconds.

Accursio, being a car manufacturer known for small cars, had a history for having trouble breaking into the US car market. Accursio 600 found itself too small for even the counter-culture movement in the 60s and lost to German compacts. The second attempt to get a foothold would come in the 70s with the Accursio 1000s were originally supposed to be resold in the USA with the help of a company that was known for being an amalgamation of small manufacturers but the found themselves losing their spot to the French at the negotiations table. Due to this, Accursio did not have a strong dealership presence. In order to counteract this for the US release of the Marinus, Accursio made a stronger attempt at recruiting independent dealerships as well as encourage the motorcycle dealerships the company had in the country to take orders for the Marinus.

Fun fact: The Accursio Marinus became the first Accursio to not be named after rodent after the company abandoning of using engine-sizes for model names in 1977.

[nerd]

Sofa S1100-TE. It works in the shop. And for our special importers.

[VicVictory]

Submissions closed. Moving on to final reviews.

Unfortunately, the Sofa mentioned above was submitted with both the model and trim year outside of the acceptable range.

[VicVictory]

1982 BDM Aquila

@BMaggiori

We reach into the bin of misfit toys for today’s episode, and pull out… the 1982 BDM Aquila.

Not impressive enough to be a dominant sports coupe. Not economical or practical enough to be a dominant economy car. But still easy to find on the road or for sale, oddly enough.

Well, BDM did a few things right, at least, to carve out a place in posterity for this model. First off, they were relatively inexpensive, so buyers who were less picky were apt to pick them when other models were in short supply or when there were good sales. Second, and not well known at the time, the Aquila was very solidly built. They don’t really rust unless they’re horribly abused, and though their engines are often abused by owners who don’t really care that much about their car, they still hold together pretty well.

So then why weren’t they dominant back in the day? That would be thanks to the drivetrain packaging. The 2300cc straight-4, mounted sideways in the bay, had a high-lift sport cam from the factory, and notoriously rich tuning. Like, not unusual for a brand new Aquila to belch black smoke under heavy acceleration. As for that heavy acceleration, its 9.1 second 0-60 was pretty good for the time, especially though an automatic transmission. But the whole package kind of sucked the life out of the car, much like a proverbial vampire. Much better sports coupes exist, and the Aquila probably would have been better off “detuned” and sold to the masses as a commuter.

That doesn’t stop people from picking one up on the cheap and trashing the ever-loving crap out of it.

Scoring:
Counter Culture - Jalopy Culture: High (Currently in 5th)

[VicVictory]

1989 Accursio Marinus

@Ornate

Have turbo, will travel. That is the motto of the Accursio Marinus. Well, probably not, but it should have been.

We’re talking about the '89 Marinus, for those keeping track. You know, the one with the 130 horsepower 2-liter turbo-six and the really funky short-geared 4-speed manual gearbox, and equally funky exterior styling.

You know which one we’re talking about, and chances are you’ve seen one around recently. Maybe at the farmer’s market, church, or the DMV. It seems like they’re everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Well, a ghost might be a good analogy for it. The Accursio Marinus was another one of those cars that looked great on paper, but once released to the public, became a little less than popular. Its near Bogliq-like price helped move units, even with its horrible transmission. And once they moved, they kept moving. The Marinus is notable for amazing fuel economy, despite turning almost 3200RPM at highway speeds. And having a 7.4 second 0-60 is kinda nice for those days where you just want to get up and get away from it all.

It’s one of those iconic “run it into the ground” type cars from the 80’s. Though if given the choice, most of us here prefer the Shromet Mystic.

Scoring:
Counter Culture - Spiritual Classics: Medium (Currently in 6th)

[VicVictory]

And last but certainly not least…

1973 Sinistra Savage 662 MCI

@Madrias

Warning: Goliath is on the loose again. All 662 cubic inches and 456 horsepower. Oh, and Goliath pounds the ground from the wrong wheels, too.

Meet the '73 Sinistra Savage 662 MCI. This is what Sinistra envisioned as the next evolution of the muscle car, but had the unfortunate timing of coming out right before all hell broke loose with gas prices. 8.3 miles per gallon certainly wouldn’t cut it.

But for a brief time, this luxobarge got to claim its spot as King of the Hill over the Bogliq Maverick, before the hill was washed away by the rising tide.

6.4 second 0-60, and a monstrous 164 MPH top speed out of a nearly two-ton iron battleship is nothing to scoff at, even if Sinistra did have a little front-wheel drive fetish not shared with enthusiasts.

If you can find one, this is now among the rarest of all pre-Embargo muscle cars, and is sure to attract all the right attention. And probably some of the wrong attention as well.

Scoring:
Mainstream Culture - Muscle Cars: High (Currently in 3rd)

[VicVictory]

Alright, that’s it folks! Thanks for tuning in and for your submissions the past six weeks. Your lore cars have fought to carve out their place in automotive history, and here’ are the final rankings. Congrats to all!

Categories and FINAL Rankings

Mainstream Culture - Muscle/Pony Cars
1971 Bogliq Maverick AE
1965 Vega Alameda 389
1973 Sinistra Savage 662 MCI
1972 Birmingham Brickham GSX
1985 Morton Corsair III 5.0
1970 Denver SPX
1982 CMV M48 R
1967 Lavache Ramjet W410R
1977 Epoch M20 Falconeer GT8
1969 Vega Saetta 220 EM
1965 Meijer Hellfire V12 GT
1968 Jaffil Hercules
1977 Dixiecar Strength 169

Mainstream Culture - Classic Cars
1978 AEKI Skeva Turbo
1961 Epoch M20 S2600
1985 TSR Mont Royale Turbo R
1984 Rennen Angeles MT-R
1987 Oldman Darwin GL
1976 IP Freeway Star 1300 Astro
1976 Jager Mirage SE 335
1982 Bogliq Celestial 2000LT
1962 Stark Turion A270

Mainstream Culture - Hot Rods and Sports Cars
1989 Lagau M12iiT
1979 Rutherford Martlet T
1987 Genra GXM Turbo
1988 Atera Zeta Sport
1975 TSR Comet Turbo
1980 Retro Age Motors F4FC
1973 Pfeil-Hunsrueck Base
1987 Lagau APG N
1968 IP Flaire II 2600 GTV6
1983 Yotata Grand Colorado V8
1985 TSR Comet Turbo 2 RS

Mainstream Culture - Retro Motor Sports
1982 CMV M48 R
1986 LHE Satalite Mk3 X4RS
1988 SBA Gracelet 2.0 Ti Integral
1986 Triton Lexion T-RS Turbo
1987 Genra GXM Turbo
1981 Besffusci Fidenze RS TT
1984 Rennen Angeles MT-R
1986 Hugi Legero Mk1.5 TRX
1983 Epoch M20 Falconeer GT6
1978 AEKI Skeva Turbo
1985 Mitsushita Kuruan G-Lusso

Mainstream Culture - Drift
1986 Neko CX-1 (Base)
1987 Meijer Asaha Ittei-DM44
1970 Bramble Procida Five
1985 Mitsushita Kuruan G-Lusso

Mainstream Culture - RestoMod
1969 Epoch M40
1973 RAM Marova X 333 Cammer
1987 Deer and Hunt Fallow Rut
1980 Arai Starling Gti
1972 Epoch M30 Regalis
1959 PMI Usurper Cannes

Counter Culture - Spiritual Classics
1971 Bogliq Fanatic Engage
1981 Sakura Starfire Tz
1960 Franklin Passenger 1600E
1977 Atera Atom SC
1984 Shromet Radiant
1989 Accursio Marinus
1970 Sakura Duchess (D30)
1982 Rado Adventure 140 Turbo
1966 SEAB Typ 171
1983 Yotata Grand Colorado V8
1974 G&W Seax 2700 L
1970 Bramble Procida Five

Counter Culture - Motor Sport
1957 Birmingham Renton 1500 Tourer
1965 Rutherford Sparra 1
1959 Epoch M10 A1500
1970 Mitsushita Kitty 100GT
1982 Bogliq Celestial 2000LT
1976 Jager Mirage SE 335
1973 Mouton Premier 1100 R
1980 Arai Starling Gti
1974 G&W Seax 2700 L
1975 Meijer Monte Carlo Turbo
1977 Atera Atom SC
1985 G&W Stamford Interceptor 2.2 M

Counter Culture - Classics
1966 Estrada Citadel Mk.1
1988 Barricada Navetta S25
1976 Kingston Vagant II 2300
1976 Saint 300W
1971 Bogliq Kitten Si
1960 IP Icarus Mk.1 2500
1980 Bopas Tachanka
1973 ACA 300
1973 RAM Marova X
1978 Denver Quest Coupe
1971 Benson Bayside Special
1975 Seppa 2000 Deluxe
1972 Sakura Asura Roadman V8
1961 Anhultz Minimas Concept
1978 Diamond Bureau Coupe
1969 Rado Communt 67 Standard

Counter Culture - Import/Export
1960 IP Brigadier (Army Spec)
1983 Matteo Miglia Legatus
1988 PMI Hajimeru Katei 1.3 Turbo
1978 AM Talon 2T
1988 Contendiente Lince Copa
1986 SBA Gracelet Mk.3
1959 Epoch M10 A1300 Trayback
1987 Meijer Asaha Ittei-DM44
1970 IP Colibri Mk1
1981 Monolith A480DLS Permanent
1973 Velkolepy Popular
1973 DAAG G11
1966 Vincent Meteor Mk.2 3500p
1981 Lagau M12-GT
1989 Brickfields Razak
1971 Bogliq Mackaw Touring

Counter Culture - Jalopy Culture
1971 Bogliq Fanatic Engage
1989 Proletariat Marmot 77T
1976 Saint Hawk 190
1983 Conte Estrato Copa
1982 BDM Aquila
1987 Deer and Hunt Fallow Rut
1982 Rado Adventure 140 Turbo
1977 Dixiecar Strength 169
1972 Sakura Asura Roadman V8
1980 Bopas Tachanka

[Mikonp7]

@VicVictory

1980 Bopas Tachanka

We talked about this once already Vic

[VicVictory]

So get some whiteout to fix it on your screen.

[Watermelon3878]

@VicVictory

1982 CMV M48 R

Middle of the pack in muscle, but it never really was meant to be muscle.

Now top of retro motorsports, that’s more like it!!!

[CarManiaC667]

this is great concept man, though i have to read more replies

[Watermelon3878]

This thread died 11 months ago. E l e v e n m o n t h s