>>My first car was a 1953 Oldsmobile. You could work on it without a problem.
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>AND stand in and move about the engine bay while you worked on it <s>.
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>> It got 23 mpg on the hi way and 6 mpg in the San Francisco, where I was born and raised. Then I got a 1969 VW Bug. The marketing hype said, “109 changes since the 1968 Beetle”! Well, one of those changes was the alloy the case was made of. This caused the engine to blow up at about every 20,000 miles. Not fun. Changing the muffler on my Beetle was a total pain!
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>My Bug (and Fiat) got an amazing mileage, though. Yet there was the old "cylinder number 3" problem -- this particular cylinder didn't get enough air flow to cool it during hot driving conditions and thus tended to burn valves. Happened to me on the French Riviera once. I STILL drove a few thousand kilometers all the way back up north to my home with three cylinders working, three people and their camping gear in the car, through Southern France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and half of Finland. When the car finally limped home and I turned off the ignition, the car made this long PSHHHHHHHH -sound and NEVER started again. It literally gave its life for me and my buddies!
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>Pertti

Now that was a faithful car! I have had a few problems (serious) which occured near the house. That is so much better than being far from home. I have AAA Plus, which allows a toll of up to 100 miles. I have had to use that twice, once on I 5 (109 miles total mileage to the house). The tow truck operator was from a small town off I 5, and did not charge for the extra 9 miles. If he was from the Bay Area you know he would have charged! :)