Stand By Your Limousine
In what is the greatest deal in the world, you can buy Tammy Wynette’s custom 1977 Lincoln limo for $7950.
And check out that interior!
I wonder what kind of mileage that thing gets? 2 mpg?
Here’s some Tammy and George for your Saturday night. If I only had her gallons of hairspray, I could light them on fire and get the 14 feet of snow out of my driveway. And speaking of The Possum, he’s about to embark on his last ever tour. I hope he lives up to his reputation and doesn’t show up to his last ever show.
First, I love the 70s. Second, what kind of pain went into singing “Golden Ring” together after the divorce? Wow.
howard:
February 9th, 2013 at 9:58 pm
And i thought they were the old chevrolet set.
efgoldman:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:03 pm
Apparently we both got lucky and didn’t lose power. Our plow guy finally showed up this afternoon, after mrs efgoldman and across-the-street neighbor had cleared enough to get her van out for church tomorrow. Which is cancelled.
efgoldman:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:06 pm
BTW the first link (to the sale announcement?) doesn’t work.
Erik Loomis:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:12 pm
Should work now.
The prophet Nostradumbass:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:15 pm
Does it have an eight-track player in it?
Tnap01:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:33 pm
Anyone know which medical research group is getting George’s liver?
Scott Lemieux:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:46 pm
Ain’t we got fun?
DocAmazing:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:50 pm
The Department of Defense. They’re studying it for up-armoring tanks.
Icarus Wright:
February 9th, 2013 at 10:58 pm
I once owned a shirt like those seat covers. Back when I was groovy.
Fuck yeah.
efgoldman:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:16 pm
Maybe so, but the Detroit iron of those days was absolute shit. I had a brand new ’74 Plymouth that, I swear, started rusting on the truck on the way to the dealer. The head of GM, at that time, drew a lot of negative attention by saying that the best car under 10 grand was a two-year-old Buick (it wasn’t.) There was the business with Chevy motors being put into Oldsmobiles (in those days they were different.) Ford Pinto; Mustang II; AMC Gremlin; Chevy Vega… shall I go on?
M. Bouffant:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:17 pm
Yow, he’s 81. If he doesn’t make that last gig I figure it’ll be ’cause touring finally killed him.
Richard:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:25 pm
Unfortunately, the last few shows he did have been sad affairs. The band plays for a half hour, they wheel George in, he does a few medleys barely able to be heard, they wheel him back out. Its a sad spectacle from what I’ve heard
Loud Liberal:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:41 pm
That interior looks like it was designed by the Daisy May Moses.
Major Kong:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:44 pm
If a Vega didn’t have rust it was still on the assembly line.
Leeds man:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:45 pm
“If I only had her gallons of hairspray, I could light them on fire and get the 14 feet of snow out of my driveway.”
Or, you know, a shovel. Kids these days.
Green Caboose:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:55 pm
Oh my goodness. I once spent a lot of time studying the 70s automotive transition from nearly-all-American cars to a shift towards foreign, especially Japanese, cars. A lot is made of gas prices, MPG, and the failure of Detroit to offer anything competitive in the compact car space. All that was true, and that probably opened the door to first the Germans (who could have made the market inroads that the Japanese did if they had a slightly better product and were a lot more responsive to the market) and then the Japanese.
But concurrent with the gas price problem was the severe product quality problem. In the 1960s the big 3 had essentially been taken over by their accountant groups (what we today would call “Finance”). And most specifically, by cost accountants. Their sole goal was to reduce product costs, with the implicit assumption that revenues would remain unchanged. The end result was increasingly poor quality and decreasing innovation – but for quite a while profits grew. However, it made the industry as a whole vulnerable to new competitors.
Each of the big three (yes, AMC was still around, propped up by the low-tech, high-popularity Jeep brand, but they barely count) responded differently. Ford probably did the best. They’d had accountant disease really bad – just look at the Fairmont-based Thunderbird and the Mustang II and late 70s Mustang – but they were able to shift to an engineering and marketing focus and launch a whole new line of cars in the 1983-1986 timeframe, and continued that innovation with successes like the Explorer. I never liked Fords personally due to their ergonomics and squishy suspensions, and I LOATHE that they more than anyone are responsible for the market in massive SUVs (yes, the Suburban dated to the 70s but like everything else GM had no idea how to market it until someone else showed the way) but there is no question Ford succeeded in the market.
Chrysler responded by becoming better accountants. Everything in the 1980s except the late-70s-created Omni/Horizon was a K-Car, including the Minivan. Very little innovation – almost every change was merely cosmetic. But they competed with low prices to match their low costs and owned that market niche. They had to kick out Iaccoca (who had done a great job getting them focused) in order to shift to an innovative approach. And even then board-level gamesmanship nearly killed the company, but that’s a later story.
GM, on the other hand, held on to the cost accountant viewpoint forever – I’m not sure they aren’t still dominated by this way of thinking. There are so many examples of this but I’ll stick to just two. First, the J-car – the same car with different trim levels was sold as a Chevy, Pontiac, Olds, Buick, and Cadillac – with price ranges from $7k to $17k. A cost accountant’s wet dream it violated almost every brand marketing principle in the book, hurting the credibility of every single brand in the stable (excepting only GMC). And, of course, it was as with all GM cars at the time a quality disaster. Second, the Fiero. Two-seaters were popular in the mid-1980s – shit, even Ford (in a decision from their cost accountant days) repackaged the Fairmont as the EXP two seater just to compete. But in order to gain approval from the cost accountants the GM engineers had to cut costs so much that: a) they had to marry the reused Chevette and Citations front ends to create the Fiero, and b) had to build it in an otherwise condemnable factory in Pontiac that still had 70-year old wooden floors. Still the Fiero sold well to the I-love-looks-who-cares-about-performance market for the first 2 years, but when the third year model fell from 90k units to 40k units (but now had a V6 and was attracting a performance following) the cost accountants dumped it.
GM never got out of that mold – ruining the Saturn experiment as it happened and killing off other brands with penny-wise-pound-foolish decisions year after year.
Erik Loomis:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:57 pm
My 2nd car was a Pontiac 6000. It was the worst car ever made.
Erik Loomis:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:58 pm
87 Pontiac 6000, that is.
Erik Loomis:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:58 pm
Too bad. I was half-thinking of finally going to see him play.
Erik Loomis:
February 9th, 2013 at 11:59 pm
I shoveled for an hour and fifteen minutes and basically got half done. I want to burn some Wynette hairspray. Much quicker.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:13 am
You should call a landscaper – they’re the same guys who plow in the winter – and get on their list. It is *so* worth it. Our guy started at $35/storm two years ago, he lost last year because there pretty much wasn’t any snow, and went up to $50 this year because gas went up, but its cheap at twice the price. For us it is so worth it, given our ages (I’m 67, mrs efg 58) and disabilities (I had a stroke Nov 2011 and 2 cardiac stents, mrs efgoldman has a systemic inflammatory disease that may be lupus.) Break down and spend the money. Of course if we have 5-8 major storms, like we did in 2005(?) you lose the lottery, but what the hell.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:14 am
You could also buy a snowblower.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:16 am
I drove a Chevette for an emergency rental once. I was terrified every minute behind the wheel that a truck was going to blow me off the road, or that some driver wouldn’t see me and run right over the car.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:23 am
The kick is, the first runs of Japanese imports really weren’t good cars at all. The Datsun (now Nissan) basic sedan – 200? – was made of solid steel, but with a lawnmower motor, more or less, hideously underpowered for its weight. The first Z sports cars were totally unstable on wet roads. Toyota imported sporty two-seaters (Celica? Don’t remember) that needed valve jobs in the first year or two. Early Hondas were rustbuckets.
BUT: They were all cheap to buy, and they all got great gas mileage (comparatively). When I was waiting in alternate day gas lines with my 318 V8 powered Plymouth, the Japanese compacts were whizzing by.
Erik Loomis:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:29 am
I could, but I like both complaining and not buying things.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:35 am
Well, then, keep it up and goodnight.
FlipYrWhig:
February 10th, 2013 at 1:31 am
Dad?
Magatha:
February 10th, 2013 at 2:10 am
OMG I love you.
Mrs Tilton:
February 10th, 2013 at 2:35 am
For $7950, does the bar come stocked? Or has George been for a ride lately?
DN:
February 10th, 2013 at 5:32 am
All this American car hate. I just don’t understand. This is Tammy’s car. If I hadn’t been busy getting married, having a kid, buying the leftmost corner of my house and mortgaging the rest – I would so buy that car. All this talk about Vegas and Chevettes and such like is so misdirected. This is Tammy’s Lincoln Limo – we should start a LGM fund so the proprietors can timeshare this beauty.
cpinva:
February 10th, 2013 at 5:35 am
no,
“Dad?”
my evil twin, “skippy” cpinva.
cpinva:
February 10th, 2013 at 5:40 am
i’m curious how much it cost new? i figure it was way overpaid for, to the tune of probably $100,000? you know, for all that “custom” work, that after nearly 40 years, still looks cheesy. geez, it actually looks like something a funeral parlor would own, to transport the bereaved to the cemetary.
Thlayli:
February 10th, 2013 at 5:47 am
And one of those high-tech ’70s radiophones?
Sherm:
February 10th, 2013 at 7:58 am
I shoveled from 930 to 1230, went inside for a sandwich and a couple of beers, and then from 130 to 400, and I still can’t leave my house bc the town has yet to plow my street. This I what get for mocking downstaters and their storm preparations. I’m on a dead end with nine houses and we got two feet. One plow came during the storm and got stuck, and none has returned.
Eggomaniac:
February 10th, 2013 at 8:04 am
Pretty much every Detroit car my family bought in the 60s and 70s had issues coming off the lot.
The best car we had at the time was my grandmother’s ’58 DeSoto, with the push-button transmission and the auxilliary gas-powered heater. It turned on a buck-fifty and got 7 mpg but it was still going ten years later @200,000 miles and seemed extraordinarily resistant to upstate NY’s salty winter roads.
Dad took delivery c. 1963 on a Pontiac station wagon that was custom-ordered from the factory to get the trailer towing package. It was delivered with the tailgate unpainted. The dealer took care of the problem but you have to wonder how it even got on the truck at the factory.
He bought a large Pontiac sedan a couple years later that had so many problems the dealer offered him a straight-up trade on the next year’s model.
He also bought a 66 Mustang convertible that would stay in tune for about three days and had a leaky top. I managed to ‘total’ it just 2 years later by rear-ending someone at about 10 mph on a rain-slick road. The damage to the front of the car was more than the trade-in value (I walked away with a scratch, the other guy had a slightly dented trunk hood).
Richard:
February 10th, 2013 at 10:19 am
If I lived close to Nashville, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I’m not sure it could make the drive to LA
Richard:
February 10th, 2013 at 10:25 am
Here’s a review of a fairly recent show. From what I hear, this was one of the better concerts. For some, he had to leave the show after a few numbers because of weakness and some were cancelled in their entirety
http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/09/despite_weakened_voice_george.html
Robert Farley:
February 10th, 2013 at 10:57 am
Was that the one we drove through the blizzard to Nebraska?
Charlie Sweatpants:
February 10th, 2013 at 11:17 am
“My 2nd car was a Pontiac 6000. It was the worst car ever made.”
Blasphemy! My family’s main vehicle when I was in high school was an 89 6000 LE, and it was a great car. Shockingly low maintenance and high mileage (would get around 30 highway), it handled well, had lots of space for people and cargo, and even had a bench seat in the front. My Dad and I drove it all the way across the country once and it finally died of extreme old age in 2002 at around 160,000 miles.
I’m not saying the 6000s hadn’t earned their cameo worthy reputation for shittiness . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl8mQhxhE_Q
. . . just that ours was really solid car. Underpowered, but very practical.
SatanicPanic:
February 10th, 2013 at 11:22 am
If the touring don’t kill him, then her memory will
Sherm:
February 10th, 2013 at 11:28 am
You could put your foot thru the floorboards in the backseat of my older brother’s vega if you weren’t careful. What a piece of shit. My chevette wasn’t much better, except that I got to fuck with people and tell them that I had a vette. People were often impressed, until I took them outside to show them.
scepticus:
February 10th, 2013 at 11:36 am
I once briefly worked in a band [which shall remain unnamed] that toured in Tammy Wynette’s used custom bus. (They lived in the bus, I rode on it for only a week.) The bandleader had a story about buying it, the central point being, Wynette was a barely functional addict. At one point, the deal required Ms. Wynette’s signature, and she was so out of it (pharmaceuticals/alcohol), the sale almost couldn’t happen. It did, but probably not legally.
The bandleader was boasting about what a great deal he got (her staff just wanted to get rid of it, regardless of what she wanted). Of course, he used ‘the note’ as an excuse to repeatedly screw the sidemen out of pay at every opportunity. “I gotta pay off that note!”
Major Kong:
February 10th, 2013 at 11:54 am
GM had a bad habit of building a good engine and then wrapping a shitty car around it.
They had great designers and engineers, but then the corporate bean-counters would get hold of it and start cutting corners.
Pretty soon you had a car that looked good on the dealer’s lot but within 3 years was a mess of annoying squeaks and rattles.
Major Kong:
February 10th, 2013 at 11:55 am
I actually have a ’57 Desoto.
It’s fun to drive (on nice days) because absolutely freak out over it.
Karen:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
Tammy’s best song
Anonymous:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:34 pm
You need a Wovel.
http://www.wovel.com/Products/
I am not affiliated but I own one here in Redmond, Oregon and it is a back saver.
wjts:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:35 pm
The link’s broken, but I assume it’s this.
Erik Loomis:
February 10th, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Yes. It was at its best at that point. It went down fairly rapidly, but I did hold onto it for about 4 years total.
Mike E:
February 10th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
My first car has yours beat, 1980 Oldsmobile Omega. I believe the ad line was, “The last car you’d ever want to buy.” I wish I had purchased the popsicle-green 70s Volvo with suboptimal compression instead.
expatchad:
February 10th, 2013 at 1:27 pm
WOW! Do you also have a live dinosaur in your yard???
(The Desoto is rarer!)
Major Kong:
February 10th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
I may very well have the only one in Columbus, OH.
I’d never even seen one before I bought this one.
Matt_L:
February 10th, 2013 at 1:47 pm
Growing up in So Cal we owned a K car, a 1980 Honda civic and a 15 foot’78 Chevy Maxi Van. The best thing was the Honda. Total sewing machine engine, no AC but it worked. My parents made me learn how to parallel park using the van before I could drive the Honda or take my drivers license test. The van was vaguely reliable, but the interior headliner and the paint started to degrade after five years.
The worst care we had was easily the K-car. After driving it every day during my senior year of high school, I have an instinctive loathing for American automobiles.
Uncle Ebeneezer:
February 10th, 2013 at 1:50 pm
If you do purchase this car, I hope you’ll get a Wayne LaPierre bobblehead for the dashboard.
jkay:
February 10th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
You know nothing of real Chevette pain and misery, efgoldman. It was the car I learned on. On the DC Beltway. Yes, with a stickshift worse than useless to the newb. And you haven’t yet mentioned that it couldn’t remotely climb, even nonhills, especially if you have to change gears. And it skidded at the slightest excuse.
First car I bought for myself was Japanese, of course. It was a low end Honda Civic, and yet, my God, it really, really worked right, for real and had great gas mileage. I knew because my family’d had a Datsun 210; yes, I remember zipping past the long gas lines, neener ;-).
Gone2Ground:
February 10th, 2013 at 2:11 pm
That ride is all kinds of cool. If you owned a limo service anywhere near Branson or Nashville, I would think you could make a killing….just from pictures of tourists with the “TW” logo on the side.
That car reminds me of the interiors of older homes in Las Vegas that I would see when I delivered flowers – all blue shag carpet and white wrought iron trim everywhere, and the flower recipients wearing negligees at noon.
the lingonberry jam:
February 10th, 2013 at 2:16 pm
My father arranged for me to have a Mustang II after I exited the Army. Unbelievable spaghetti under the hood because Ford tried to meet EPA emission regs by bolting on kludges. Both metric and SAE fasteners. Prone to overheating; hideously unreliable. If you dropped that car in the ocean, it would sink intemittently. Crappy vinyl “brougham” roof, crappy plastic trim inside and out. The most valuable thing about the vehicle was the platinum in the catalytic converter; also, the cigarette lighter worked well.
catclub:
February 10th, 2013 at 2:24 pm
I pick out hairspray for fueling a potato cannon ( spud gun)
and you have to make sure to find the stuff that has no water in it.
Just things that end in ane – ethane, propane. etc.
I think the best one we found was labeled for men. Makes sense if they are most likely to need to fuel a potato cannon.
Thlayli:
February 10th, 2013 at 2:36 pm
No-Show Jones, right to the end.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
The first brand new car my dad ever bought was a ’56 Plymouth Plaza with that same push button transmission (so my mom would learn to drive – she refused to try a standard.) It went into an out of storage (he was in the Army and went overseas), Finally one of my uncles got into an accident that bent th frame, and it wasn’t worth fixing. What a damned tank!
I wonder why Chrysler gave up on the pushbuttons? Now I see one of the smaller import companies (Mitsubishi?) is selling it.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 3:11 pm
For what that costs, he could afford a plow guy.
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 3:13 pm
Complete with a sound system to play the dirges!
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 3:14 pm
Win!
efgoldman:
February 10th, 2013 at 3:15 pm
Guys, too?
Left_Wing_Fox:
February 10th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
Beat me to it!
cpinva:
February 10th, 2013 at 4:31 pm
only Liberace.
“Guys, too?”
Tracy:
February 10th, 2013 at 5:09 pm
That is too bad. I saw George about four years ago – he was using a teleprompter, and the band was ordinary, but after a couple of songs, the voice warmed up and the next hour was a masterclass in singing.
The Dark Avenger:
February 10th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
Push buttons were also used on the AMC Valiant, as well as the first year of the infamous Edsel.
Karen:
February 10th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
Actually it’s Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad. The linked version has Tammy in a blue sequined minidress and gold lame’ go go boots.
Bill Murray:
February 10th, 2013 at 6:01 pm
once or twice
Linnaeus:
February 10th, 2013 at 6:04 pm
One thing you can often get left and right to agree on in the US is American car hate; a hate I don’t share, but I’m sure that being in a family with three generations of autoworkers has something to do with my point of view. Frankly, I’m surprised to this day that the auto bailout went through.
Major Kong:
February 10th, 2013 at 7:51 pm
I used to think that Liberace was straight because “nobody could be that gay”.
Malaclypse:
February 10th, 2013 at 8:14 pm
Nope. Eighty-something Buick Regal. Needed to have the sensor for the gas tank replaced (for a few hundred bucks) every few thousand miles. I finally said fuck it, I’ll use the odometer as a gas gauge. Then the odometer cable went out, so gas level was based entirely on mileage estimates in my head. Since I smoked a lot of weed at the time, that worked badly. When, one Monday morning, the car caught fire on the way to work, I pushed it into an abandoned field, took off the plates, and walked home happy.
expatchad:
February 10th, 2013 at 8:38 pm
And you will not see many in the future
Jon H:
February 10th, 2013 at 8:51 pm
I drove an 86 in college. I believe it was over 200,000 miles when it was run over by a truck in the middle of the night in, I think, 1994. I put a sign in the window, “for sale, cheap”, and a guy with a tow truck bought it as a project car for his kid. Paid me $200 , mostly ones.
The only really bad experience I had with it was after I put a gas filter in backwards, eventually killing the fuel pump.
Hit a deer carcass in western NJ, at 70 mph, and had no problems other than the rotting smell that developed and the blood spatter up the driver side front fender.
Marc:
February 10th, 2013 at 9:07 pm
Still looks like a great car.
NonyNony:
February 10th, 2013 at 10:11 pm
I may very well have the only one in Columbus, OH.
Holy Crap!
I’ve seen a 50-something blue Desoto driving around the north side of Columbus in the summer. Is that yours?
Gone2Ground:
February 10th, 2013 at 10:49 pm
Nah, queens have better taste than blue shag carpet!
Gone2Ground:
February 10th, 2013 at 10:53 pm
I bet it glides like a magic carpet.
My ’81 El Camino was a great ride, even got pretty good gas mileage on the highway. I drove it 100 miles every day and was happy to do it.
witless chum:
February 11th, 2013 at 10:28 am
Too many liberals would rather buy a scab-made car for some fairly illusory, in my opinion, benefits. So long as there’s a UAW, I’m not driving anything they didn’t build.
hickes01:
February 11th, 2013 at 11:28 am
Kong! Current agree with you more if I were twins. I had 2005 Monte Carlo SS and it was awesome. Great engine, looked cool, excellent winter handling, decent fuel economy and yet I still dumped it at 70,000 miles. It had a great design, but the execution was poor. The thing would go like hell, but the heater didn’t work below 30 degrees. (I live in Minnesota) The windows never seems to close properly and it was always whistling and squeaking. I liked that car, but I didn’t dare keep it.
hickes01:
February 11th, 2013 at 11:37 am
To my shame, my first card was also an early 80′s Omega and they were right, it was the last car I ever wanted to buy.
nyc limousine:
April 5th, 2013 at 2:04 am
This post is very nice it involved all the information that i want to know.