Tuba Exchange...

[tubathig]

My favorite saying is "A more expensive instrument is cheaper in the long run" i also agree with schlep, run over a chicken

[Rick Denney]

small access plate under the passenger side carpet to reach the back plug on that side, the rear plug on the drivers side could be gotten to through the engine bay (but don't ask me if it was from the top or bottom!)

As I recall, it was through an access panel on the fender wells, ala the Buick Regal and other A cars of the late 70's/early 80's.

Rick "easy if you knew the secret--or had the factory maintenance manual" Denney

[Rick Denney]

Never said it was. It is a Ford Maverick. It is an excellent example of the awful little cars Detroit foisted on the American populace for a while. Dan said GM but was speaking generically. The Maverick was pretty generic.

Actually, the Maverick was not a bad little car at its price point. It was certainly no worse than the Toyota Corolla or Corona of the day, and certainly no worse than, say, a Volkswagen Squareback.

I owned (and subsequently built into a race car) a 1976 Toyota Corolla. That car was butt-ugly and had serious design issues. You didn't typically put more than 100,000 miles on one of them, by any means. I also had a '74 GMC pickup that was still running when I sold it to Ray Grim (for admittedly not much money) with something like 170,000 miles on it. Then there was the 1970 Cutlass that was then and still would be the most comfortable highway cruiser I've ever driven. We sold that car with over 100K miles on it, and it was still running fine when the idiot who bought it from use ran it into a bridge abutment the next day (he survived, but the Cutlass didn't). And then there was the '71 VW Campmobile that couldn't survive 100,000 miles if you carried it on a truck bed the whole way. It truly scared the fathers of potential dates, too.

The Vega was a reliable car--IF--you maintained them like a European car. They needed very frequent oil changes and scrupulous maintenance. People in those days thought of American cars in terms of their pig-iron V-8's and straight sixes. Those engines could really take abuse and people learned to abuse them. The Vega could not take that abuse.

There were real bowsers, of course, including the Pinto, all the AMC cars of that era (except the 'Cuda), and the Chevette. But you could include a 1200CC Corolla, a Squareback (especially the one with the "automatic" stick shift), and any French or Italian car at the lower price points in that company. These were all worse than the Vega in many ways.

But the 70's cannot be wholly rejected when this was one of their crowning achievements:



Of the 13,000 Urban Assault Vehicles (aka GMC Motorhome) they made during the '73-'76 production, at least half are still on the road, and some with half a million miles on them. Here's mine, without the nice, new paint of the coach above, but still going strong after 100,000 miles and 34 years of abuse:



Let's face it, most cars of that era were ugly because people wanted ugly cars. Nobody who wore a paisley shirt with 6-inch collar points under a polyester leisure suit has any cause to bring against car styling from that era.

Rick "who would rather buy something old whose quality and value in the used market is proven than something new that loses half its value instantly" Denney