It’s mind-boggling to me that the cars I grew up with are now classics. Admitting that would force me to face entropy and my own mortality and I just refuse to do that on a Friday. But If I have to, the right way to do it is by watching RadVentures.
Watch this trailer for the upcoming series and you’ll know what I mean but note this is not a Radwood joint:
The video is hosted by friend of Jalopnik, Ryan Symancek.
But first up I must say I don’t agree with the statement about character and it exclusively belonging to the narrator’s favorite generation of cars. Even if such statement is not explicit, I think it’s implied (maybe accidentally) in the footage. But one generation of cars having character does not preclude the rest of them from having it, so I’ll let it slide.
Slide like the F-150 Lightnings and 240SXs in the vid. The footage is fun enough as it is, but I found myself carspotting like a kid in a backseat whose family is on the way to a shopping mall with a Sears or a Radio Shack.
There’s the ninth-gen F-150s, the first- and second-gen 240s, an Audi 4000CS Quattro, a first-gen Range Rover, and a Himalaya Defender 110 (perhaps a Rover One-Ten.) There’s even an APC for good measure which I’ll leave to you readers to identify since I know next to nothing about military vehicles.
And the video has left a welcome sense of estrangement from those cars that invites me to revisit all the other wonderful machines of that vintage. Machines such as the Lightning’s rival, the Chevy 454SS. Together those pickups make me mourn the simplicity of the trucks of my youth. The video invites me to recall the ambitious Ford Taurus SHO, or the 300ZX, which is easily one of my favorite Nissans of all time.
It would feel cheap to just show some ‘90s era BMWs — the best BMWs — or Fox-Body Mustangs in order to elicit the nostalgia the show is clearly going for, but the series seems like it will have a broader perspective and this can only mean good cars await.
The series drops on February 26th, so you’ve got one week to pick up your favorite ‘90s era junk food. I’m gonna track down some Andy Capp’s Hot Fries and see if Pizza Hut will exchange my ancient Book-It for a personal pan. This series oughta be good.