#AmericanCars

The Rare Rides series doesn’t often venture into Tough Trucks land, but when it does, it goes all the way. Before you is the International MXT, a practical pickup from the semi truck people.

TTAC’s Slack channel honed in on muscle cars the other day. As the discussion progressed, a question came to light which your author hadn’t previously considered. It’s a simple enough inquiry, yet there are many variables to consider.

Today we talk about the least sporty muscle cars.

Today’s Rare Ride is a peachy two-door wagon from a company in South Bend, Indiana that would cease to exist about a decade later.

It’s a Studebaker Champion Conestoga, from 1955.

Today’s Rare Ride hails from a time when American cars were glamorous — and often painted pink and bright green. It was a time when Brougham meant real luxury, and not just a vinyl roof accompanied by the faint glow of an opera lamp. Even with a tame white and brown color scheme, today’s convertible is big and bold, with the added panache of a prior celebrity owner.

Presenting the Hudson Commodore Brougham, from 1950.

What luxury sports car combines a multitude of components from other manufacturers with a custom-fabricated body all its own? It’s the Panoz Esperante, naturally.

Today’s Buy/Drive/Burn brings three big and brawny American luxury coupes from 1963. You’ll have to burn one — no exceptions.

Today’s Rare Ride is a Plymouth Barracuda, but not the one which generally springs to mind whenever someone mentions the legendary nameplate. Rather, it’s the first of the line. Let’s check out this special fastback.

Do you ever feel there just aren’t enough purpose-built racing cars that can also be driven on the road? Well, Consulier yourself with today’s Rare Ride.

Ugh.

Certain extraordinary circumstances can move a vehicle from the standard Rare Rides classification and into Concentrated Rides. Take today, for instance, where a concerned collector has gathered together 24 Chrysler Imperials in a California desert.

The why here is unclear.

We’ve done a couple of ranking challenges before, starting first with the Accord, then the Corvette, and following up a few months later with the Mustang. Today we rank a nameplate which has been in production longer than any of those — in fact, it’s the longest-running in America.

It’s the Suburban.

A recent edition of Buy/Drive/Burn included a Chrysler 300M from the turn of the century — a car which represented the third time Chrysler created a line of vehicles wearing “300” badges. The other day, the Internet presented the 300M’s closest ancestor, and my curiosity piqued.

And since we’re into coupes on Rare Rides lately, come along as we check out a big, bold coupe from Chrysler.

The other day, among the urbane, informed chatter happening in the TTAC Slack room, Adam Tonge suggested a little Buy/Drive/Burn trio to me. The year is 1999, and the subjects are full-size luxury sedans of the front-drive and comfort variety. Lincoln, Cadillac, and Chrysler are all represented, all wearing their conservative, double-breasted suits.

Come along, and select your turn of the century American luxury sedan.

Among the fairly common group of vehicles produced on General Motors’ B-body chassis in the 1990s, one stands out. It’s extra-long, fairly luxurious, a last-of moment, and unloved among the sort of people who collect older vehicles.

No, it’s not the Impala SS, which everyone overprices when it’s that Purp Drank color. It’s the Custom Cruiser, by Oldsmobile.

It will be a day or two too late by the time you read this, but: Happy Independence Day! It’s been a very long time since I felt compelled to cloak my appreciation of this country in the kind of irony frequently employed by my autojourno colleagues on Twitter and elsewhere, and I certainly won’t start now. The United States is far from perfect and I am afraid that some of the changes made here over the past fifty years have been profoundly negative in their effects, but it remains the proverbial city on the hill for many of the world’s citizens. As the song says, I’ve been around the world and I, I, I, I… haven’t seen any other place where middle-class families own property, start businesses, and create wealth like they do here.

While I certainly understand how many of my coastal friends and acquaintances no longer feel that the American Dream exists for them or for anyone else, I also feel compelled to note that we are doing just fine here in the Midwest. Where I live, four-year-old children play unsupervised outside and the police shake your hand in the street. Some time ago I accidentally left a $275,000 Ferrari out in front of my house overnight with the windows down, the keys on the center console, and my wallet next to them. Needless to say, nothing happened. I know that’s par for the course inside Mark Zuckerberg’s gates but my neighborhood consists mostly of stay-at-home moms and mid-five-figure household incomes. Come back to the real America, if you like, but leave your emotional support animals, your addiction to food-as-virtue, and your army of domestic staff behind you. Out here, people raise human children instead of “furbabies,” thoughtlessly consume GMO produce, and clean their own bathrooms. It’s considered character-building.

I know you won’t do it. Nobody is going to change sides. We are too deeply divided now into Blue And Red Tribes. We judge incoming information based on how well it conforms to our existing beliefs. Want an example? How about this: For over six decades, the automakers have been predicting that increased emissions, safety, and fuel-consumption standards would have a negative impact on the bottom line. The media alternately ignored and lampooned them for saying so. Now those same automakers say that Trump’s policies will have a similar impact and the media is treating it the way the Catholic Church once treated an ex cathedra pronouncement.

My response to that? It’s this…

When Mexican President Vicente Fox Quesada left office in 2006 after a six-year stint, he didn’t go quietly into political retirement.

With the advent of social media, the outspoken Fox gained the ability to launch barbs with ease and generally treat politicians like a well-used piñata. His latest target? Take a guess.

Following President Trump’s recent declarations — including a promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and a threat to impose a 20 percent border tax on Mexican goods — Fox spoke his mind on the issue, trolling Trump on Twitter and making statements on the U.S. auto industry that won’t get him invited to many parties in Detroit.