Latest / In Wheel Time Podcast / Forgotten Sixties Cars | Underground Houston | Land Rover Sport Review

Transcript

Forgotten Sixties Cars | Underground Houston | Land Rover Sport Review · In Wheel Time Podcast

• 0:04
  Don Armstrong: All right, time now for Jeff's car culture, we call it.
• 0:07
  Don Armstrong: This week, 60s cars that we don't remember.
• 0:10
  Don Armstrong: Do we really need to remember them?
• 0:12
  Don Armstrong: Well, you're going to help us out.
• 0:13
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, you might remember one or two, but vaguely.
• 0:15
  Jeff Dziekan: So here we go.
• 0:16
  Jeff Dziekan: And this opening pick right here, this is actually a Plymouth Valiant Signet.
• 0:19
  Jeff Dziekan: The Signet was an upscale version of the Plymouth popular Valiant Compact.
• 0:24
  Jeff Dziekan: It was comfortable, reasonably stylish, and perfectly respectable, which is another way of saying nobody's hung a poster of this car in their garage in 40 years.
• 0:33
  Jeff Dziekan: Moving on.
• 0:34
  Jeff Dziekan: The next one is a Rambler AMC.
• 0:37
  Jeff Dziekan: This Rambler had one of the coolest names of the decade.
• 0:40
  Jeff Dziekan: Unfortunately, the car itself didn't leave quite the same impression.
• 0:44
  Jeff Dziekan: AMC sold plenty of them, but today most people remember the company's later oddball choices like the Gremlin and the Pacer.
• 0:53
  Jeff Dziekan: Hey, we like the Gremlin.
• 0:54
  Jeff Dziekan: I had a good friend of mine, Kathy that grew up with a she grew up with a high school friend that had a uh pacer.
• 0:59
  Jeff Dziekan: It was a cool little car.
• 1:00
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh that was the fishbowl.
• 1:02
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, no, no, the gremlin was the fishbowl.
• 1:04
  Jeff Dziekan: Well, the pacer, yeah, you're right.
• 1:05
  Jeff Dziekan: The pacer.
• 1:06
  Jeff Dziekan: I was thinking of the another one.
• 1:07
  Jeff Dziekan: Anyways, Rambler American is the next on the list, and the millions of Americans once drove the Rambler American, but spotting one today feels uh about as good as finding a payphone that still works.
• 1:19
  Jeff Dziekan: They were dependable, affordable transportation for people who cared more about saving money than impressing the neighbors.
• 1:25
  Jeff Dziekan: Wasn't exactly the recipe for a long-lasting frame.
• 1:28
  Jeff Dziekan: That would be the AMC Rambler.
• 1:30
  Jeff Dziekan: Next one, uh, the Mercury Meteor.
• 1:34
  Jeff Dziekan: The meteor existed in a strange space between Ford and Mercury, where buyers weren't entirely sure why it existed.
• 1:41
  Jeff Dziekan: It wasn't a bad car, it wasn't an exciting car, it was just there.
• 1:46
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh and it was green and boring, uh, which might explain why even many Mercury fans forgot about the meteor, even though it was part of the lineup.
• 1:55
  Jeff Dziekan: How about that?
• 1:56
  Jeff Dziekan: Forgot about it.
• 1:57
  Jeff Dziekan: Next one.
• 1:59
  Jeff Dziekan: One of my favorites, and I did see one of these, and I do remember this car is a Mercury Monterey Breezeway.
• 2:05
  Jeff Dziekan: Oh my god.
• 2:07
  Jeff Dziekan: Mike, we're uh oh, we're we're gotta go one more.
• 2:10
  Jeff Dziekan: I think you gotta go one more.
• 2:11
  Mike Marrs: You need one more?
• 2:12
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, that was the meteor.
• 2:15
  Jeff Dziekan: There's the breezeway.
• 2:16
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh, the breezeway featured one of the strangest production car features ever offered.
• 2:21
  Jeff Dziekan: The rear window rolled down.
• 2:22
  Jeff Dziekan: Oh, yeah.
• 2:23
  Jeff Dziekan: Seriously, Mercury claimed it improved ventilation, which it did.
• 2:26
  Jeff Dziekan: It also guaranteed that anybody seeing one would immediately ask, Wait, why is the back window doing that?
• 2:32
  Jeff Dziekan: Now, this was ahead of its time because now you got pickup trucks with the window goes down.
• 2:36
  Jeff Dziekan: But look at the roof line in the back.
• 2:38
  Jeff Dziekan: I know it's jacked.
• 2:39
  Jeff Dziekan: It's I like it.
• 2:40
  Jeff Dziekan: I like that car.
• 2:41
  Jeff Dziekan: I'd I'd do things with that car.
• 2:43
  Jeff Dziekan: The next one, Mike, is a Chevrolet Biscayne.
• 2:46
  Jeff Dziekan: The Biscayne was a budget-minded full-size car.
• 2:48
  Jeff Dziekan: Millions were built, but it lacked the flash of an impala and the prestige of a caprice.
• 2:53
  Jeff Dziekan: It perfectly it was a perfect example of a vehicle that was everywhere once and almost nowhere today.
• 3:00
  Jeff Dziekan: That's true.
• 3:02
  Jeff Dziekan: Mercury Comet Cyclone.
• 3:04
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh, I had a friend of mine that had a Mercury Comet and it was a cool car.
• 3:07
  Jeff Dziekan: He had velocity stacks on it and twid bowls on the front.
• 3:10
  Don Armstrong: Did it have those great big nostrils on the front of it?
• 3:12
  Jeff Dziekan: It the hood was so chopped up for the velocity stacks, we don't know.
• 3:15
  Jeff Dziekan: Uh, the cyclone had one major problem.
• 3:18
  Jeff Dziekan: It existed in the same era as the Mustang.
• 3:20
  Jeff Dziekan: That's a little like trying to become a famous rock star while standing next to the Beatles.
• 3:24
  Jeff Dziekan: It was actually capable of performing, it was a performance car, but it spent most of its life in somebody else's shadow.
• 3:32
  Jeff Dziekan: That's a cool car.
• 3:32
  Jeff Dziekan: I drive that today.
• 3:34
  Jeff Dziekan: And lastly, Don mentioned turbocharges in the first part of the show.
• 3:37
  Jeff Dziekan: Oldsmobile F-85 Jetfire.
• 3:40
  Jeff Dziekan: Look at that, baby.
• 3:41
  Jeff Dziekan: The jet fire deserves far more attention than history has given it.
• 3:44
  Jeff Dziekan: This thing featured a turbocharger years before turbocharging became cool.
• 3:49
  Jeff Dziekan: Unfortunately, early technology brought reliability headaches, and the jet fire became one of the most overlooked performance experiments of the entire tech.
• 3:59
  Jeff Dziekan: Wait a minute.
• 3:59
  Jeff Dziekan: Is isn't that Marvin Zindler behind the wheel?
• 4:02
  Jeff Dziekan: I think guys got a half.
• 4:05
  Jeff Dziekan: Every one of these I would drive.
• 4:07
  Jeff Dziekan: So Buick had a version of that.
• 4:09
  Jeff Dziekan: They did.
• 4:09
  Don Armstrong: Was it the Skylark?
• 4:11
  Jeff Dziekan: I believe I think it was.
• 4:12
  Jeff Dziekan: I think it was the Skylark.
• 4:14
  Don Armstrong: But uh same platform.
• 4:15
  Don Armstrong: So my my buddy Ross Putnam that had the hot rod.
• 4:18
  Don Armstrong: Um, uh somehow, some way, I guess he got grandma's car or something.
• 4:22
  Don Armstrong: Uh it was a four-door sedan, uh, this body style.
• 4:26
  Don Armstrong: Right.
• 4:27
  Don Armstrong: It was white, and we called it whitey.
• 4:29
  Don Armstrong: And I'll never forget the evening that it had rained.
• 4:32
  Don Armstrong: Pardon me?
• 4:33
  Don Armstrong: It fits.
• 4:33
  Don Armstrong: Code.
• 4:34
  Don Armstrong: And it uh it was uh uh parking, it was a strip center, strip mall at an intersection.
• 4:39
  Don Armstrong: The intersection was Hillcroft and Brazewood, and there was nobody there after all closing time, and they had no curb stops.
• 4:47
  Don Armstrong: So you get out there and you'd floor it, and that right rear tire would just spin up to yeah, and uh we'd do donuts, all six of us in the car.
• 4:57
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, that's my memories of that car.
• 5:00
  Don Armstrong: Put the heavyweight guys on the right wheel, pretty much.
• 5:02
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, very good.
• 5:03
  Don Armstrong: Mr.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Mars has Mr.
• 5:07
  Don Armstrong: Mars has driving destinations, Houston Hidden Underground, Mr.
• 5:11
  Don Armstrong: Mars.
• 5:11
  Mike Marrs: Yes, sir.
• 5:12
  Mike Marrs: We had uh quite a few things I want to point out here about the uh Houston Hidden Underground.
• 5:18
  Mike Marrs: And starting off with, if you everybody that drives around Houston, particularly if you happen to go out the Katy Freeway while they were doing the big widening job here years ago and made it what the widest freeway in the world.
• 5:28
  Mike Marrs: Yep, you could see all of the utilities that are underground.
• 5:31
  Mike Marrs: I mean, there's gas lines down there, there's water lines, there's sewer lines.
• 5:35
  Mike Marrs: Phone companies spent millions of dollars on that project trying to get their underground equipment over and get it out of the way.
• 5:42
  Mike Marrs: So when you're driving over these roads, unless you're on the tenth story of a stack of freeways, you don't really think about what's underneath you, but there's a lot of stuff that's down there.
• 5:53
  Mike Marrs: Now, there's also a couple of other things that are down there in the Houston, and one of those is the Buffalo Bayou Sistern.
• 6:01
  Mike Marrs: Now, I wasn't aware of all this stuff that was going on down there whenever uh back in whenever so this was started in 1926.
• 6:13
  Mike Marrs: It was a project that was built in 1966 when Houston was growing so fast they needed more drinking water storage.
• 6:19
  Mike Marrs: And they so they came up with this plan to make it one of the earliest underground reservoirs, which is unusual in Houston considering the static water level, the ground water level.
• 6:30
  Mike Marrs: But this thing holds 15 million gallons of water, and that's what kind of what started out helping maintain the water pressure while the city was growing.
• 6:38
  Mike Marrs: Now it's the size of one and a half football fields, and it's actually supported by 21 columns that are built down here underneath this area.
• 6:48
  Mike Marrs: And each one of them is like 25 feet tall.
• 6:52
  Mike Marrs: Now, it's been in business for 80 years, it's been working, and uh the engineers have done some repair leaks and repaired some leaks, but they took it out of service actually in 2007 for realistic use of supplying water for the city.
• 7:07
  Mike Marrs: Now, it's still been down there ever since, but then during the Buffalo Biopark redevelopment, instead of tearing it down and trying to fill in this massive area, they opened it up for tours.
• 7:20
  Mike Marrs: So, some things to that to really notice if you happen to take this tour, 221 concrete columns, 25 feet tall, 15 million gallons of water when it was operational, 87,500 square feet down here under the ground.
• 7:36
  Mike Marrs: And if you stand there and it's quiet to where you can do an echo, it takes 17 seconds.
• 7:41
  Mike Marrs: Your echo will actually run for 17 seconds across here.
• 7:45
  Mike Marrs: And so it still has that little thin layer of water at the bottom, so it reflects it and it makes it look even bigger.
• 7:53
  Mike Marrs: Now, the other thing that's going on downtown Houston, and I'm sure some of you guys have heard of it.
• 7:59
  Mike Marrs: I have never heard of it until recently when I started looking for this stuff.
• 8:02
  Mike Marrs: There were rumors, but there is an underground tunnel system in downtown Houston.
• 8:08
  Mike Marrs: Now, it was started in 1935, and what it was done was to connect two buildings together because of the heat and the rain and everything.
• 8:15
  Mike Marrs: So it was just a convenience thing that actually started.
• 8:19
  Mike Marrs: But now there's now six miles of interconnected tunnels beneath downtown.
• 8:24
  Mike Marrs: And dozens of office buildings are connected.
• 8:27
  Mike Marrs: There's restaurants, there's coffee shops, there's convenience stores, there's even some banks down there.
• 8:32
  Mike Marrs: So that these people that are downtown working, I mean, you can literally go downtown and go underground and stay down there literally all day long.
• 8:40
  Mike Marrs: And it's just uh a lot of that reason, again, it was started because of the Houston summers and uh the late afternoon thunderstorms that make a mess of it that we have, that we're still dealing with, obviously.
• 8:51
  Mike Marrs: But if it's 98 degrees outside and the humidity is up at 80%, and you want to walk down two blocks down the street to go to a restaurant, by the time you get back to your office, you're not gonna be in the best of shape as far as heat goes.
• 9:03
  Mike Marrs: So you go downtown, you go down into the tunnel system to the restaurants, the coffee shops.
• 9:08
  Mike Marrs: If you want to do walking, because you want to get in shape, there's long corridors that you can walk, just like at a mall.
• 9:14
  Mike Marrs: It's almost like a mall down there.
• 9:16
  Mike Marrs: But uh, you got to be careful to make sure you don't get lost down there because it does wind around quite a bit.
• 9:22
  Mike Marrs: So that's two places underground in Houston that most people don't think about because of the water tip table that's in the ground and the fact that it's out of sight, it's out of mind.
• 9:32
  Mike Marrs: So if you're looking for some place to go this summer in the Houston heat, here's two places that you could go to get out of the heat and find someplace a little bit different to hang out.
• 9:41
  Don Armstrong: Good story.
• 9:41
  Don Armstrong: Okay, thank you, Mike.
• 9:42
  Don Armstrong: Appreciate that.
• 9:43
  Don Armstrong: Uh, Houston Hidden Underground.
• 9:46
  Don Armstrong: I've been down there in that I haven't been to the cistern, but I have been to the tunnel system, and you can get lost real easily.
• 9:54
  Jeff Dziekan: That's understandable.
• 9:55
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, I think most of those shops down there are closed, but it's still, I don't know what part of it's open and closed.
• 9:59
  Don Armstrong: I don't know anymore.
• 10:01
  Don Armstrong: So go.
• 10:01
  Don Armstrong: Thanks, check it out.
• 10:02
  Don Armstrong: Thank you, Mr.
• 10:03
  Don Armstrong: Morris.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 10:09
  Don Armstrong: I had the opportunity to drive the 2025 Land Rover Range Rover.
• 10:15
  Don Armstrong: It is built in Sully Hill, United Kingdom.
• 10:19
  Don Armstrong: Just thought you'd like to know that where it's built.
• 10:22
  Don Armstrong: Available trim levels, dynamic, and the autobiography.
• 10:27
  Don Armstrong: I had the Sport Dynamic S E P H E V.
• 10:33
  Don Armstrong: That is a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.
• 10:36
  Don Armstrong: Mid-size SUV.
• 10:37
  Don Armstrong: Now you'd think that this would be full size.
• 10:39
  Don Armstrong: Nope, mid-size.
• 10:40
  Don Armstrong: Five seats in it.
• 10:43
  Don Armstrong: That would include the driver, clearly.
• 10:45
  Don Armstrong: It was all new in 2023.
• 10:47
  Don Armstrong: We're just now getting this in the press fleet, but I'll tell you what.
• 10:51
  Don Armstrong: Oh my god.
• 10:51
  unknown: What?
• 10:52
  Don Armstrong: Good looking.
• 10:52
  Don Armstrong: Good looking, B.
• 10:53
  Don Armstrong: Ooh, it is absolutely beautiful.
• 10:56
  Don Armstrong: Exterior features, smooth arrow body lines, modern yet conservative, all horizontal and slick design throughout.
• 11:08
  Don Armstrong: Front and rear lighting is no frills, but is extra sleek.
• 11:12
  Don Armstrong: As a matter of fact, the rear tail lights are kind of like built in to the it looks like the body work on this.
• 11:19
  Don Armstrong: Like shaved in.
• 11:26
  Don Armstrong: I know, I know I think I know what you're talking about.
• 11:28
  Don Armstrong: It's not the same thing.
• 11:29
  Don Armstrong: Okay.
• 11:29
  Don Armstrong: Big wheels are really straightforward and good looking.
• 11:36
  Don Armstrong: There's nothing fancy about anything.
• 11:38
  Don Armstrong: It draws your attention.
• 11:40
  Don Armstrong: The whole thing is just slick.
• 11:41
  Don Armstrong: How else do you say it?
• 11:43
  Don Armstrong: It's a good looking car.
• 11:44
  Don Armstrong: Overall design gets high marks.
• 11:46
  Don Armstrong: What could use improvement?
• 11:48
  Don Armstrong: Don't get gray.
• 11:49
  Don Armstrong: Gray is boring.
• 11:51
  Don Armstrong: Why would you get a gray car?
• 11:52
  Don Armstrong: It's almost as if you here.
• 11:54
  Don Armstrong: Let's go ahead and get the car um sprayed as a primer.
• 12:00
  Don Armstrong: Let's do the gray primer.
• 12:01
  Don Armstrong: They don't use red primer anymore.
• 12:03
  Don Armstrong: I don't know why, but anyway, it I just don't understand gray cars.
• 12:07
  Don Armstrong: But whatever.
• 12:08
  Don Armstrong: Interior highlights.
• 12:10
  Don Armstrong: I love the uh interior.
• 12:13
  Don Armstrong: It's just kind of like the exterior.
• 12:15
  Don Armstrong: No frills looking.
• 12:17
  Don Armstrong: Interior is ultra conservative in its design.
• 12:21
  Don Armstrong: Materials top-notch with comfortable seating surfaces.
• 12:25
  Don Armstrong: The infotainment screen is tablet style, kind of small, actually, in comparison to some of the ones that we see today.
• 12:32
  Don Armstrong: Um, simple conservative controls for the HVAC.
• 12:36
  Don Armstrong: And uh, as far as cargo and trunk room is concerned, it is smallish with the second row up.
• 12:43
  Don Armstrong: Again, this is a mid-size.
• 12:44
  Don Armstrong: Look how slick that is.
• 12:45
  Jeff Dziekan: Yeah, it looks nice.
• 12:46
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, now this is a brand new car.
• 12:47
  Don Armstrong: You'd think, well, wait a minute.
• 12:49
  Don Armstrong: That's kind of like the old stripper models of the Nova back in the 1970s.
• 12:54
  Don Armstrong: No, this isn't.
• 12:55
  Don Armstrong: Hardly anything.
• 12:56
  Don Armstrong: Can't even compare it.
• 12:57
  Don Armstrong: What I liked about it, the simplicity of the look.
• 13:01
  Don Armstrong: What could use improvement?
• 13:02
  Don Armstrong: Some of the screens and the infotainment screen, a little complicated to maneuver through.
• 13:07
  Don Armstrong: I think that I would go back to school on that one.
• 13:10
  Don Armstrong: But like anything else, you buy a new car, you get used to it, and then yeah, it's no big deal.
• 13:15
  Don Armstrong: All right.
• 13:16
  Don Armstrong: So, what's it got under the hood?
• 13:18
  Don Armstrong: A three-liter inline six-cylinder that turns up 454 horsepower and 487 pound feet of torque.
• 13:28
  Don Armstrong: This isn't the big V8.
• 13:30
  Don Armstrong: This is the three-liter inline six.
• 13:32
  Don Armstrong: Toes up to 6,600 pounds.
• 13:36
  Don Armstrong: And if you want to just get on the gas only, it gets 21 miles per gallon.
• 13:42
  Don Armstrong: Not bad considering you get this all this horsepower.
• 13:46
  Don Armstrong: Yeah, I know.
• 13:46
  Don Armstrong: Isn't it beautiful?
• 13:47
  Don Armstrong: To see it in person is just truly stunning.
• 13:50
  Don Armstrong: I got 28.3 miles per gallon over 381.8 miles.
• 13:56
  Don Armstrong: What I liked about it, the power.
• 13:58
  Don Armstrong: Plenty, it's always there.
• 13:59
  Don Armstrong: What could use improvement?
• 14:01
  Don Armstrong: Absolutely nothing.
• 14:02
  Don Armstrong: Uh, maybe a full electric would be interesting to drive.
• 14:06
  Don Armstrong: Now, I did not get the 110-volt charge cord with this vehicle.
• 14:12
  Don Armstrong: For some reason, they didn't include it.
• 14:13
  Don Armstrong: I don't know.
• 14:14
  Don Armstrong: It would have been nice because I can plug it in here at the house and then at work, they have a 110-volt outlet there.
• 14:21
  Don Armstrong: And so I could have probably got a lot better gas mileage if I plugged it in all over the place, but I did not.
• 14:26
  Don Armstrong: So I want to be sure and transparent in that regard.
• 14:31
  Don Armstrong: What I liked about it, the air suspension, one of the best, plenty of control, but my God, the ride is just to die for.
• 14:38
  Don Armstrong: Um, what could use improvement there?
• 14:41
  Don Armstrong: Nothing.
• 14:41
  Don Armstrong: Base trim price,$95,100.
• 14:46
  Mike Marrs: I was sitting here thinking, how pretty is that car?
• 14:49
  Don Armstrong: Price has tested$96,725.
• 14:52
  Don Armstrong: Base model price$79,450.
• 14:56
  Don Armstrong: Uh, let me just say this before I get into the competitors.
• 14:59
  Don Armstrong: This is was actually shocking to me.
• 15:04
  Don Armstrong: Um, because I have driven vehicles in the$130,000 category.
• 15:09
  Don Armstrong: This beats them.
• 15:10
  Don Armstrong: Wow.
• 15:11
  Don Armstrong: This is probably one of the nicest vehicles on the market today.
• 15:16
  Don Armstrong: As far as reliability concerns, I don't have them.
• 15:19
  Don Armstrong: I don't know anything about that.
• 15:20
  Don Armstrong: Uh I might want to check into that if you're interested in this, but I'll tell you what, if you're interested in a super luxury, beautiful vehicle that has lots of horsepower and you want to impress the neighbors, I think I'd check this one out.
• 15:34
  Don Armstrong: Okay, here are the competitors.
• 15:35
  Don Armstrong: The Lexus TX PHEV for 80,000, the BMW X5 PHEV for 76,000, and the Mercedes GLE PHEV for 72,250.
• 15:47
  Don Armstrong: Next week we review the VW Tigwan SUV, which is a complete redesign.
• 15:52
  Don Armstrong: I think you'll be interested to hear what I have to say about that.
• 15:55
  Don Armstrong: So you don't like great cars, do you?
• 15:57
  unknown: Boy, I'll tell you what, man.
• 15:58
  Don Armstrong: If if if I were a rich man, which I am not, uh, I would seriously consider buying something like that.
• 16:05
  Don Armstrong: The wife would love it.
• 16:06
  Don Armstrong: I had don't have a wife, but you gotta buy the wife, then you get to buy her.
• 16:09
  Mike Marrs: And I think that color's got a lot to do with it.
• 16:11
  Mike Marrs: That brilliant red.
• 16:12
  Don Armstrong: Golly, it is it's stunning, is what it is.
• 16:16
  Don Armstrong: Hey, if you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email.
• 16:18
  Don Armstrong: The address here is info at inwheeltime.com.
• 16:20
  Don Armstrong: We're back after this quick break.
• 16:21
  Don Armstrong: Stay with us.
• 16:26
  Don Armstrong: There you go.
• 16:27
  Don Armstrong: All right, time now for this week's auto history.
• 16:30
  Don Armstrong: Mr.
• 16:30
  Don Armstrong: Mars, it's all yours.
• 16:33
  Don Armstrong: And we cannot hear you for some reason.
• 16:36
  Mike Marrs: Forgot to turn the mute back off.
• 16:37
  Jeff Dziekan: Oh, that's all right.
• 16:38
  Mike Marrs: And so this week, uh coming up this week in auto history, some of the things that we noticed uh we thought were interesting.
• 16:44
  Mike Marrs: You may want to follow up on Tuesday, for example, on July the 14th, way back Queen in 1960.
• 16:51
  Mike Marrs: The uh Jaguar, Don's one of Don's favorite production uh companies, produced the last of the XK150.
• 17:01
  Mike Marrs: Now, this is the final model of the XK sports car series that began with a 120 in 1948, had leather, walnut interior, 3.4 liter at 150 horsepower, and it was part of what helped bring Jaguar into a name as a world-class sports car manufacturer.
• 17:22
  Mike Marrs: And then uh also on Wednesday this coming week, July the 15th, Ford began production of the revolutionary Taurus.
• 17:30
  Mike Marrs: Now, this is a mid-sized sedan, and it got away from the boxy styling of the early 1980s that Ford was using.
• 17:37
  Mike Marrs: So it had some aerodynamics, had front-wheel drive, and it was supposedly this is a driver-focused interior, and it became real successful immediately, and it really helped push Ford back into the competitive position of the family car market, and uh a lot of people followed it in a styling.
• 17:55
  Mike Marrs: Then uh on the July the 16th, 1980, GM introduced the X-Car platform.
• 18:03
  Mike Marrs: Now, this was a front-wheel drive X-car lineup that included the Citation, the Pontiac Phoenix, the Oldsmobile Omega, the Buick Skylark, and this was GM shift from traditional rear-wheel driving compact cars to try and get into the more fuel-efficient front car market because of the fuel crisis that we'd gone through in the 1970s.
• 18:27
  Jeff Dziekan: Real quick, Mike, when I worked for Turbo Hydromatic on the line, I was making transmission uh low and reverse clutch housings for that car, and it was uh recalled quite a bit because of my work.
• 18:39
  Jeff Dziekan: Your contribution, you contribute to that.
• 18:42
  Jeff Dziekan: No, it was a it was really a cruddy, cruddy operation, but that's right.
• 18:45
  Mike Marrs: I understand.
• 18:46
  Mike Marrs: So uh moving on to July the 17th, Volkswagen introduced the new Beetle.
• 18:51
  Mike Marrs: Now, I say new Beetle, it's gonna look a lot like the old Beetle, but it has front-engine front-wheel drive vehicle.
• 18:57
  Mike Marrs: Uh, it's basically built on the golf platform, and it did a lot of brought in some new engineering and stuff that was not available in the original type one, and it re re-ignited the whole Beatle Mania thing that came up through the Volkswagen.
• 19:13
  Mike Marrs: Then uh July the 18th, the final classic Volkswagen Beetle is built after they've made 21.5 million that were produced worldwide.
• 19:22
  Mike Marrs: They actually stopped building that model.
• 19:24
  Mike Marrs: And lastly, July the 18th, this one, the GM ignition switch compensation program begins.
• 19:32
  Mike Marrs: Uh, 11.5 million vehicles in the U.S.
• 19:35
  Mike Marrs: It was, I never understood all this about what was going on.
• 19:39
  Mike Marrs: It was to me, it was silly, and it was even sillier after all that that they still put a key ignition in some of the vehicles for years and years.
• 19:49
  Mike Marrs: Anyway, some of the things that are coming up this week in automotive history that you might want to look into.