The Little Truck That Could, 1995 Ford Ranger A plain Jane little short bed two wheel drive Ford Ranger bought in April, 1995, in El Paso, Texas from Shamaley Ford. It was a replacement for a beautiful 1985 Ford T-Bird that was ruined by a mechanic whose reach exceeded his grasp. We will have...
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The worst vehicle I ever owned was not a car. It was not a truck either. What was it? It was a van. A Ford van. A 1978 Ford Club Wagon (Econoline) van. But it was not a delivery van. It was a passenger van. Yes, back in the 70s, even after the 73...
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Listener Challenges Radio Blowhard On May 14, 2008, Mando reported the following incident which we take to be an honest and accurate description of events: Saturday morning I was working in the garage listening to some local (Phoenix, Arizona) talk radio station. I was interested in the conversation because it was about gas mileage...
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The Lion of El Paso Tech One day I asked Mando how it was that he ended up attending El Paso Technical High School rather than my alma mater, El Paso High School. He gave the matter some thought and responded as follows: The Tech thing came down like this: In the seventh grade...
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SOMEWHERE WEST of LARAMIE RAM and the 1995 BMW 325is he drove to Texas. The car had recently been detailed, thus the brilliant sheen. Despite its age, the car has an on board computer that some say may have malfunctioned during the trip. Balderdash! Before the trip, the car had been taken to a...
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The Maverick was a huge sales success. Nearly 579,000 units were produced in its first year. This rivaled the record-setting first year of Mustang sales (nearly 619,000), and easily outpaced the Mustang’s sales of less than 200,000 in 1970. <–From wikipedia. (By the way, the complete wikipedia entry is quite interesting and includes a...
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Shown in the accompanying picture is The Lead Balloon, the small block Chevy powered ’41 Plymouth known in the late 60s and early 70s as the terror of West Texas. The actual, real car has vanished. It is quite probable that it does not exist anymore. If it is gone it is irreplaceable. If...
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Enrique (Henry) Munoz The SHOP‘S HUMBLE BEGINNINGS The ATASCADERO SPEED SHOP. Those four words can transport a tired old mind to a place far away, to a land and to times that still live in the hearts of the fortunate few who ventured there so long ago. To honor that place and those times,...
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