Moving down 1979, here’s another Olde-Golde issue full of ads.
Starting with another Le Car ad:
By July’s issue, GM have narrowed down their enormous Ad from May.
The Monza is still here, now cheaper!
The RX-7 looked great, the 626 not bad either. But this?…
Mario Andretti’s side income (cleverly capitalizing on an F-1 championship-winning year).
And if Mario can, why not Niki Lauda?
Now feast your eyes on some tasty accessories:
See the 1980 look.
That Parking Guard screams C4 Cactus to me.
Ok, see ya at the next post.
I remember seeing some of these ads when I was a boy. I was only six yrs old when this magazine was printed. Way too young to drive a car, let alone be even interested in driving.
Thanks for sharing these ads. 🙂 Come to think of it, besides the ads of Road & Track, Car & Driver, Motor Trend, Road Test. It could be cool to see vintage ads from overseas magazines like Wheels magazine from Australia.
I think I hadn’t yet started reading R&T at that point–I think it was around ’81 when I started picking them up at the supermarket when my mom would take me along. But I remember some of those ads, because they ran for a couple of years.
Of all the cars advertised in that issue, I think the Fiesta is likely to have been the longest-surviving.
Fiesta ran from 78-80 was gone after 1980 replaced by the escort. Those era Hondas stayed around on roads long after the Fiestas were gone. I had a Fiesta from 85-90 and it was pretty lonely ownership. I saw more Fiats than Fiestas in that period.
Actually the Fiesta continued through today, now in its 6th generation. Ford simply quit importing it into the US after 1980.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Fiesta
sorry I was referring to import into US not manufacturing.
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of individual Fiestas having survived on the road than of the model, but point taken. And I overlooked the Honda ad–though I haven’t seen either a ’79 Civic/Prelude or a ’79 Fiesta in a very long time!
The Fiesta was first imported for late 1976 and stayed til early 1981.
Considering a Fiesta started at a few hundred dollars LESS than the Mazda GLC (admittedly a slightly bigger car) it’s amazing that for a few years the GLC (seemed?) to outnumber the Fiesta. I guess the GLC’s automatic transmission helped.
FWIU the Fiesta may have started out well-priced but it was slammed by the weak dollar/strong D-mark of the day. At the same time Ford was selling the Pinto more and more on price alone as it got outdated.
After the movie “Grease”, one of the Mazda dealers in Louisville, Ky., was hanging a pair of fuzzy dice from the rear-view mirrors of GLCs and selling them as Greased Lightning Coupes.
How about the shortest-lived?
Triumph, closely followed by the Le Car and Alfa.
Or maybe the “designed for durability” (hahaha) X-Cars.
Mazda ran those silver-background magazine ads for years in the 70s-80s. Very distinctive, and they had a nice look.
The Jaguar on the cover looks a bit if a lump. No wonder it did not make production.
I beg to differ, but that is a question of taste, so all I would say is, like it or hate it, it was probably the most influential Jag prototype during the last 40 years – the styling is reflected in all the coupes and some of the sedans to this day.
That Pininfarina XJ Spider reminds me of the XJ220, especially around the tail. I looked up the XJ220 design and it was done in-house, specifically inspired by the XJ13, but I wonder if the designers had seen this concept?
I think it has an even closer resemblance to the XK8
That would represent about the right development timeframe for Jaguar too.
(I kid, I kid!)
Those Prismatek Reflectors were truly awful accessories. Can’t say I miss seeing them.
I don’t think I ever saw those on anything but Z cars, The Mustang one is really tacky. I do recallseeing something like those on W126 Mercedes though, and I like how those look, not sure it was the same maker though.
They were pretty popular on Porsche 924s and 944s. I don’t recall seeing one on a Mustang though.
Oh wow, I didn’t even realize those weren’t factory installs on the Porsches, I have seen those, many in fact. I figured it was either an option or in some brief point in the production run they were used. Those work pretty well, evoking the 74+ 911 reflector arrangement
My father still to this day puts those sheepskin seat covers on every vehicle he owns. I once saw a Hayabusa with a sheepskin covered seat ……uck
That Jaguar on the cover looks a decade ahead of its time.
My parents have the sheepskin covers in their 2002 Mercedes-Benz E280.
Partly to protect the upholstery. Partly to keep their buns warm in the winter (the car didn’t come with heated seat options when they bought it secondhand).
The XJ Spider Article will be posted tomorrow, so save your comments for that… 🙂
But indeed, XR7Matt got it right- it does resemble very much to the XK8 (it’s vice versa, more to the point).
This takes me back, we had coco mats in several cars and I remember both the reflector inserts and louvers, often on the same 924 or Z-car.
“Panic at the pumps – have we been had again?” R&T 1979
Yes, and one of many times!
Who is the gentleman in the Maremont Turbo-Flow muffler ad? Generally, when a person’s photo is featured prominently in an ad, complete with a quote, it’s because the person is somehow famous. I can’t find any mention of his name in the ad, and I don’t recognize him.
I remember darn near all of these. Thanks for the trip back in time. Now if I could only find an MG Mitten ad and one for one of those seat cover thingies made out of the big beads.