Shoe by Gary Brookins and Susie MacNelly for October 02, 2009

… and the rest of the car ought to be.

Is that a Deadsota he’s driving?

You DO know you can go back and edit your posts, don’t you? :))

I know how the Perfessor feels. Eventually I had to shoot my old Chrysler and put it out of my misery.

That’s one way . 4 quick budget killing words .

A typical auto repairman. Come up with the worst possible diagnosis, use a lot of unnecessary, but expensive, parts and then charge a totally insane price for it all. Almost the same as calling a plumber.

It could be a Belchfire8 from another strip.

D.O.A.

If he tried to scrap it, the scrap dealer might charge him to haul it away. I still say go for the half a Yowza.

Did he drive by a grassy knoll?

Don’t you believe it! Those ‘59 cast iron Torqueflites are rugged as a team of mules! The one in my 1960 Chrysler New Yorker comes out of second gear at full throttle at 95 miles per hour! I have NO idea how fast it will go but it goes by 100 like it didn’t even know it was there!!

No the thing you see on the under side of the hood is sound absorbent padding. It’s still there in mine too. As Tom McCahill ( who used to write the car tests for Mechanix Illustrated magazine – that cost 25 cents back in those days) said, at 120 miles per hour it’s as quiet as a Rolls Royce! There are springs to hold up the hood too, you don’t need a prop like they have in the new cheap quality cars! They built QUALITY cars back in those days. You just have to like fins to keep them for fifty years, and I do!

BigChiefDesoto: Right on! Most of those old DeSotos and Chryslers had those great Chrysler “Hemi” engines (of course, gas wasn’t much of a problem then), the best engines ever produced, IMHO. One of my brothers used to have an old ‘57 DeSoto, with the pushbutton transmission control on the dash - fantastic car.

Hi Ushindi: The 1958 Chrysler 300D had a 392 cubic inch Hemi. At Bonneville it ran 156.387 miles per hour. That’s a two and a half ton car that will carry six full size adults and also carry an eight foot Christmas tree in the trunk with the trunk lid closed, so it wouldn’t even damage the tree while bringing it home at 150 miles per hour! The New Jersey turnpike police used to use them for unmarked patrol cars because a Chrysler 300 was a better police car than most police cars were – and there wasn’t very much else that could ever outrun it. Show me any standard production car that ANYBODY makes nowadays that will do this! By the way, as far as reliability and service cost goes, except for tires and brake shoes, I haven’t put a hundred dollars worth of parts in mine in the last thirty years.

Well, if he sold the old Desoto as an antique, he could get a good used car.

I can’t remember which comic it is from, but there used to be a car called the Belchfire Hotfoot.

You guys take me back. I bought a ‘56 Chrysler Windsor in 58 for $1800. Once I put a new set of Firestone Butyl rubber tires on it in ‘62, doing 80 was like sitting in your living room chair and not covering any ground.

I got whacked from the left side at an insersection once that resulted in very little damage. The other full size car didn’t fair nearly so well. Wish I still had that boat. Nice.