I used to bounce myself out of CC every time I came across it. And that happened quite often.
Time was, I started off my internetting at Barnfinds.com. Great hosts in Jesse and Josh, great chat amongst the commenters. And great cars to chew the fat over.
So when I started to research my comments, I would keep coming across this site called CurbsideClassic.com. Quite often. There was always interesting stuff buried in here, but the homepage also invariably featured the totally and utterly meh like this Holden Apollo.
So as soon as I got the information I needed, I’d bounce myself out of CC.
Then I started to wonder why something like this moribund slice of superbland held anyone’s interest. And slowly, inexorably, I got entangled in the CC web.
I mean, this Holden is just a rebadged Toyota Camry. And that’s about it from me.
But someone here on CC is going to have something interesting to say about this car, however small that tidbit may be. Or someone else could have a belter of a story involving adolescent hijinks.
It’s that randomness that makes CC a more holistic universe. Out there, news is being commodified into dripfeed, algorithmically optimised to confirm your previous point of view. But not here.
Make no mistake, this image says everything about why I’m here. The 20th century’s greatest artform alongside popular music. Pure, perfect, dynamic shape. I love looking at it over and over. I love reading and writing about it. And I love chatting it with real-life superheroes like Lt Dan.
But I don’t want an echo chamber, I need a perspective multiplier.
Through the words and images of Ed Stembridge, Edward Snitkoff, Yohai71, Joseph Dennis, Tatra87, Jon7190, William Stopford, Big Paws, Johannes Dutch, Jim Klein, JJ Powers, Brendan Saur, Kyree S. Williams, J P Cavanaugh, Tim_Finn, Jason Shafer, DougD, Jim Brophy, and Vince C (just to go through the last few homepages of CC), I get a fantastic random feed around the general subject I love.
And then there’s Paul, who seems to be posting with more vigour. Watching him ease away from classics without giving them up is a real example for me.
I’ve enjoyed CC Newsstand lately; that conversation has been good. Heated sometimes, but really robust. I think it signals a great shift in focus without CC having to discard its heritage. Quite the opposite in fact.
It makes me want to write about current stuff as well – which I haven’t really been motivated to do before. But there’s so much shade to be thrown at the automotive scene right now. Dark, dark shade. And I want to start with some love.
So next week I’m putting out a QOTD for top five best current shapes and sharing mine.
I’m starting to figure things this way; the day after a car is launched, it’s yesterday’s news.
And from that moment on it can bear scrutiny as a classic. Or otherwise.
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Further reading
William Stopford touches on the badge engineering between Holden and Toyota here.
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Sorry to disappoint, Don – but I have nothing to say about this car.
But to get into the spirit of things, I will ask a question. How were these accepted in your market in comparison with the real Camry? In the US we got Chevy/Pontiac/GEO versions of Toyotas (manufactured in the same plant) and they were consistently poor sellers (with lower resale values) than their Toyota-badged siblings. Did GM have any better luck selling these under their “store brand” down under?
Don’t know anything about their market penetration. Toyota rebadged the Commodore as a ‘Lexcen’ trying the leverage the Australian design angle through the name of the designer of the winged keel that wrested the America’s Cup from America.
Interesting piece. I look forward to seeing which cars people feel are the best modern shapes.
Well, I for one am very glad we snared you away from that other site. 🙂 The actual content of their posts are essentially For Sale ads. Not much nuance, context, or genuine history.
As to the Camry, I’ve spoken too much on that subject already.
But what I find interesting is how the Camry became the object of so much scorn on the internet, yet it continues to dominate the segment along with the Accord and these old used ones around here are considered gold among young kids who want cheap, reliable wheels.
I think part of the reason the Camry, and by extension Toyotas in general, has become an object of scorn is because of their ubiquity; they are the Default Car, the safe choice to make when you know nothing about cars or don’t really care but just want a reliable transportation appliance that will make no demands. Unlike the Big Three back in the olden days, Toyotas have no outstanding virtues to inspire passion in the brand, to set them apart from the herd. In that, their position in the automotive pantheon is akin to that of a perfectly-managed Rambler.
Barnfinds had a similar feel to CC – off the beaten track and respectful. I still stick my head in, and scroll down the homepage with a couple of imaginary thousand dollar bills in my pocket.
I understand the appeal of the “For Sale” sites like Barn Finds and BAT. Because I stopped mentally shopping some years ago, the appeal is mostly lost on me. But in terms of competition, that’s the way to go: BAT, is very successful commercially, and BF is undoubtedly more so than CC. In fact, we’re a bust from a commercial POV, sad to say. So maybe I’m a bit prejudiced against them out of some jealously. Especially since it’s a format that generally requires a lot less work!
Aha! As I long suspected!
Why, you aren’t Sir Hon Don, or Dr Don, or Proff Andreina of Automobile Quarterly and Georgeanos, as you have so often, and – it must be said, pretentiously – claimed to be. Humpf.
Why, you turn out to be in fact no more than Don The Dag, and a member of my club as it so happens. (For those Damn Foreigners here who must insist on Knowing Stuff, a “dag” is very roughly approximate in Australeeze to a “nerd” in Americaneeze, though it lacks any of the venom that “nerd” seems once to have had: call it “affectionate nerdidity”). If You Foreigners happen to research this, you will also find that a “dag” is also the piece of hardened shite that sticks round about a sheep’s bottom, but I am not referring to that meaning, and shame on you for finding that out. Or amusing).
Exposed as you now are, MR A, I am glad for you that seem comfortable in this new, honest identity, and as a fellow dag traveller, I endorse entirely your assessment of why it is that this site appeals so consistently. It is the site for the lover of the automotive unwanted, the ill-regarded, the forgotten, the uninteresting, the valueless, the over-familiar, the traffic-fillers, the exotic-but-odd-variation, so much more besides: in short, it is a home for the automotive homeless. Long may it prosper.
Now as it happens, Your Ordinariness Dag Andreina, my dear and most ancient father owns this very model of “Holden”, and, as a fully Toyota-built ’90’s Toyota which local rules dictated must be sold as a Holden in their dealerships (and which thus sold in weeny numbers to local Holden loyalists seeking Toyota-type reliability in a small Holden who thus unwittingly ended up in a Toyota anyway ), it has been a thoroughly lovely………device. Why, it even has the missing hubcaps of the one in your photo, notable because those are all on it that has failed.
Why, it’s true, no exciting tale of the over-named Apollo can be told about it, but that is perhaps its very point – no tale or memory or COAL worth the while, but as a CC, entirely in the class of gold.
Why, or why the hell not, to CC, and the dags thereon.
Or the ones therein, or about (or any other persnickety variation you fellow nutters will be thinking might apply. Now go away, I have seen an interesting numberplate).
I don’t have much to add about the Holden either. In NA these Camry’s were rock solid cars, and was the first generation that had a major impact on the midsized car market in my area. My wife had an ’88 that she really loved and speaks fondly of to this day.
I really enjoyed your musings about CC and how you got sucked into the CC vortex. A similar thing happened to me. I didn’t intend on staying around, but this site is just loaded with such great material that is outside the traditional box of thinking, I just couldn’t leave. And with PN giving me the opportunity to write, he has help fulfill a life long desire. I have to say I have enjoyed the CC Newsstand too, although I haven’t participated in much of the banter. I still like following the industry and enjoy the technical aspects of modern vehicles, I can’t say I have any real passion of them. They are just too different from my true loves in Automotive history.
“Make no mistake, this image says everything about why I’m here. The 20th century’s greatest artform alongside popular music. Pure, perfect, dynamic shape. I love looking at it over and over. ”
This says it all for me too – this is my passsion. I have long agreed with this sentiment about these cars being a wonderful art form. Despite the cars the longer lower wider mantra not exactly being the most practical designs, they are by far the most beautiful (in my eyes) and the ones that keep my fuels fired.