Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Finding parts

Even the "newest" Festiva is now over 25 years old and parts are getting increasingly harder to find.  The local franchise parts stores are hit and miss on most parts but RockAuto continues to be a fairly good source. 

 
One owner '91 Ford Festiva GL. Picture taken July '18

Automobile manufacturers have been equipping their offerings with larger and larger tires. Econoboxes from the 80's and 90's were sold with mostly 13" tires and some, including all years of Festiva in the North American market, were shod with 12" diameter wheels and tires!!

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Following up...

In my first econobox to hot hatch evolution post I featured the Renault 5 and its Turbo and Turbo2 variants. One of my favorite YouTube channels is Jay Leno's Garage and his April 22nd post featured the same car so I thought I'd share that video for your enjoyment.




I did a bit of digging around and found another Petrolicious video...




We'd love to hear from you. What would you suggest for another econobox to hot hatch evolution post? See you next week!

Thursday, April 4, 2019

When econoboxes evolve into hot hatches... part 2.

For this post we'll return to North America and have a look at the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon twins from Chrysler Corp. Introduced in 1978 the Omni/Horizon was a five door subcompact produced in Belvedere, Illinois. Loosely based on the European Simca Horizon this hatchback was the first North American built front wheel drive vehicle to sell in large numbers.

http://dev.hatchheaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/dodge_omni_2_88.jpg
88 Dodge Omni, source in properties