Old car for sale. Can onlt do 254 MPH. Best offer.

[Bluenarrow]

American cars were built to last.

[CrashII]

American cars were built to last.

[cough]Ford Pinto[/cough]

[Hawkeye07]

American cars were built to last.

[cough]Ford Pinto[/cough]

Funny you should mention the Pinto. Back in the mid '70's my neighbor was extolling the virtues of his fairly new Ford Pinto. It just so happened to be parked right next to my '73 Chevy Vega hatchback. So I said "Let's take a walk out to the parking lot and compare." When we got there I asked him to open the hood (British Bonnet?) and I opened my Vega's hood. Then I said "Now drop it." The Pinto hood landed with an empty tin can sound. I dropped the hood on my Vega and it landed with a heavy clunk. The heavier construction quite surprised my neighbor. He quit bragging about the Pinto after that.
I've heard many people make negative comments about the Chevy Vega over the years although most of them had never owned one. Personally I loved my little '73 Hatchback. I had started looking at them in '72 but I thought they would be fold up like an accordion in a crash so I was reluctant to buy one although the price was right for a young sailor with a wife and kid. But in '73 I took one out for a test drive, liked the handling and comfort and bought it. Crash-worthiness? I was proved wrong the hard way. While on my way to the grocery store to purchase some coffee for the Mrs. I drove through an intersection on a green light. Unfortunately a driver in a Ford F150 approaching the intersection from my left also thought he had a green light even though all the other lanes on his road were not moving. He hit me broadside on the left side and spun my little Vega around 180° in the roadway. I escaped with a slight bump on the head. My little Vega needed a new door, rear view mirror, rear quarter panel, side window, rocker panel trim piece, rear tire and a paint job. Above and beyond that incident it always had good gas mileage and surprisingly it handled very well in the snow. Even now, forty years later and many cars later, that little '73 Vega is still in the top three on my list of Favorite Cars I Have Owned.