#Watusi twin

[bobauthorman]

#Archie Comics #Jughead's Diner #Jughead Jones #Company Bones #Baby #Fruit costumes #blob monster #Dinersville #waitress #neon signs #secret lab #Beanie #gelatin #Watusi twin #Alternate universe #This was a mad series #comic book #panels #scans #Sal's Secret Lab

[lemonlabouff]

TEXT 🩰 LA TWINS

Lemon: Guess who nailed their Wagon Wheel Watusi routine for the Miss Sugarplum Fairy pageant on their first try!!

Lemon: Spoiler alert: It was not me. It took all day to nail it and now I can't feel my legs. Please buy me cupcakes to keep my strength up while I suffer.

[djsaimura]

青山 蜂でDJ YAZIくんろうしゅくんとでレギュラー化される事になったパーティーUnderground Playground vol.2です！！継続は力なり。 初回は営業再開直後3/18にDJ YAZI君と共に蜂で東京小箱シーンの為にもなにがしか協力しよう！やはりパーティーして人を呼んで盛り上げようとなって始まったパーティーで、直訳すると地下の遊び場 で地下の無い蜂🐝だけどw 我々が失いかけた遊び場を守りたいという一心で始まりHaruka (Future Terror / Twin Peaks)やTOMO HACHIGAくんなどと前回はYuikaプロデュースD&Bフロアや4FではWatusiさんRaymondなどのVinyl Setなど有志が集まり大盛況に終わりました！今回もYAZI君とHACHIGAくんに引き続き出ていただき、Brunaやクロエ、DO SHOCK BOOZEくんなどありそうでなかった組み合わせのダーク/ハード/インダストリアル/な3Fテクノフロア、2FテックハウスフロアではFranzo Kolms (PBR Recordings / Latex Records / from UK)をゲストにGO YAMAZAKI/hidemi (Lotus)/Silver (YABITO)/513 (InfinitySense)/OYU、4F:Techno/Houseフロアでは Brenna Ryan/Amari (Signum)/Isao aka Lucas/LIKO/nyaoc/DILAとと都内各所で活躍しまくってる興味深いラインナップが揃いいまから非常に楽しみです！粗削り野外パーティーYABITOも段々とブラッシュアップされてきて今年はなんとTwinpeaks(Haruka&DJ YAZI)を迎えるという事でこのパーティーもサポートしてもらってます〜 今回はmodule時代PAでお世話になってた浅野くんにお願いして CDJ2000NEX2×3をリースして3Fに入れてるので機材面も万全の体制で臨みますゆえぜひご来場くださいませ！！ 5/27(sun)15-23:30 青山 蜂 Underground Playground Supported by YABITO Door 2000yen https://www.facebook.com/events/2244218292472332/?ti=icl https://jp.residentadvisor.net/events/1099036 3F DJ YAZI (BLACK SMOKER / Twinpeaks) DJ SAIMURA (TECHVANE) TOMO HACHIGA (HYDRANT) DO SHOCK BOOZE (TOTEM TRAXX) Bruna (VETA) Chloé Juliette 2F: Guest DJ: Franzo Kolms (PBR Recordings / Latex Records / from UK) GO YAMAZAKI hidemi (Lotus) Silver (YABITO) 513 (InfinitySense) OYU (BLACKBOX) food: KANSUGI 4F: Brenna Ryan Amari (Signum) Isao aka Lucas LIKO nyaoc DILA VENUE: 青山 蜂 / Aoyama Hachi Shibuya4-5-9,Aoyama BLDG 2F-4F,Shibuya,Tokyo,Japan 東京都 渋谷区 渋谷4-5-9, 青山ビルディング 2F-4F #青山蜂 #aoyamahachi #djyazi #djsaimura #djsaimuraworks #aiaiai #aiaiaidjsaimura #techno #technoparty #techvane #yabito (青山蜂 / Aoyama Hachi)

#aiaiai #djsaimura #techno #techvane #technoparty #aoyamahachi #yabito #djyazi #djsaimuraworks #青山蜂 #aiaiaidjsaimura

[bloodforvinyl]

Do you have records in your collection that are just there for the heck of it? Maybe they have ridiculous cover art, or they are inside jokes, or they are simply there to placate someone else in your household.

Pieces of my collection are like that. And some are records I bought because I thought ”Why not?”

Did I need a 45rpm of Satanic doo-wop music that is signed by the band? Apparently, the answer was yes.

This little 45rpm is hilariously over the top evil music. For real, it is Satanic doo-wop. And it is catchy as hell, too.

Twin Temple has masterfully recreated the sound of the music that poured out of jukeboxes in the corner malt shops of the late-50s and early 60s.

The vocal work from Alexandria James is amazing. She sings with a low and soulful voice similar to that of Amy Winehouse. Her wonderful voice is backed by a 50s style harmony group that completes the sound.

And the lyrics are excessively Satanic.

The juxtaposition of lyrics praising the Beast with Many Names with upbeat and wholesome music strikes me as so incredibly funny.

Imagine sharing a milkshake with your high school sweetheart in her poodle skirt and bobby socks while bouncing in your malt shop booth to the music and singing along…

Pleased to meet you, Satan’s my name

I can make you sin, I can make you feel pain

I can twist, I can make you seduce me

Wanna do the Watusi?

You can call me Luci

I don’t know when I will spin this record. But, I like the fact that I own it.

#IFTTT #WordPress #Vinyl #Blog #Records #Music #Albums #Reviews #Music News

[thesunlounge]

Reviews 352: Lilipulu

The Glowing Pin of Growing Bin keeps shining its light on delightful oddities, this time around taking in the Four Amazing Tracks of Lilipulu. Based around studio jam sessions helmed by Sergey Luginin, the EP sees the audio mastering wizard and a handful of friends unfurling a compact and eclectic set of weirdo jams taking in styles and shades ranging as far apart as polyrhythmic tribal ritualism, baked desert rock, narcotizing sunshine krautpop, slow and stoned Afro-fusion, baggy dub disco, liquid space funk, and majestic prog electronic. The whole thing is refreshingly anti-concept, with no weighty thematic underpinning or quasi-pretentious narrative to obscure the wild and wooly freak grooves proceeding across each side of vinyl. Instead, we are treated to a special moment in time..to an afternoon of sonic adventure, spontaneous creativity, and divine inspiration…when a group of friends surrendered to the flow of the universe and let it guide their spirits into an alchemical ritual of psychedelic jamming and improvised studio experimentation.

Lilipulu - Four Amazing Tracks (Glowing Pin Records, 2020) “A1” sees mutant percussions crashing together with buzzing rainforest rhythms as handclaps give the drunken flow extra momentum. Idiophones lock into a two-note shaman refrain, shakers move violently as a four-four techno kick enters the scene, and the intensity continiously ebbs and flows, with elements dropping away and new drum layers emerging to beat out urgent polyrhythms in counterpoint. Sometimes it all devolves into a cascade of splattered smacks and disjointed drum psychosis, with shakers attempting to hold down a groove as caterwauling flams and anxiety inducing finger rolls overwhelm the mind. Elsewhere, squelching frogs sing strange songs while layers of tribal drum insanity rush the body through a thrilling jungle chase scene, which then gives way to heatwave drone clouds and buzzing cascades of abstracted fire. And by the end, the overwhelming world drum ceremonial begins transmuting and reversing in time, transitioning from ritualistic mania into spaceage laser fight. “A2” is an easy contender for track of the year, and begins with a single note blues riff jangling over pulses of thunder bass. As a propulsive krautrock hypnobeat drops, we find ourselves riding a sweat-soaked post-punk groover down a scorched desert highway, with stoner basslines popping, tambourines jangling, fragile feminine falsettos cooing, and angular guitar harmonics generating heatwave mirages. At some point the rhythms pull away, leaving bass and guitar to chug wildly through a polyrhythmic rainfall of hand drumming. Suddenly, a psychoactivating wavefront of insectoid tremolo soars across the mix and rushes the groove back towards hallucinogenic pop perfection, with the vocals now locking into refrains of pure sunshine magic while basslines dance around tight motorik beats…the whole thing pulling my mind to the early krautrock and library pop of both Stereolab and Broadcast. And eventually, the vocals give way to psychedelic currents of Spacemen 3-style repeater fuzz while synthesizers cycle through groovy 60s themes, resulting in a pitch perfect flower power groove out, wherein bodies execute the watusi and swim in a polychrome LSD dreamworld.

The slow motion disco drum stomp of “B1” picks up energy as tropical hand percussion falls from the sky and subearthen dub pulses emerge from cracks in the ground. Then, after a heady pause, we drop into the groove, wherein fat ass funk basslines jam out and muscular dancefloor beats rock hard while the background explodes with electronic percussion accents and hand drums from all around the world. It’s not so far off from some Wolf Müller & Nikals Wandt joint…a sort of melting pot of tribal Afro-funk and interstellar prog rock that is only pushed further towards flamboyance by these stadium-sized laser chords that periodically soar over the mix…their distorted wavefronts carrying with them an ethereal haze of phaser strings while snares whip crack in support. At some point, it all breaks down into tapped metals and rainforest drum cascades while pan flute loops sing like birds of paradise. Then, launching back into the galactic groove, big blasts of synthesis growl over heady space guitar minimalism, as we now transition into a world not faraway from Mushrooms Project’s, wherein Floydian echo riffs palm mute over soundsystem basslines while acid rock disco drums stomp through a laser light wonderland. Those sinister stadium fuzz riffs land again towards the end, bringing with them awe-inspiring phaser orchestrations that result in one final rush of arena prog intensity before it all gives way to an outro of tribal drum psychedelia. “B2” closes the show with crickets chirping at dawn, spectral flashes of silver reversing in time, and phase-shifting string synths swelling into a glorious sunrise paean. Electrified marble cascades reflect blinding light as they threaten the rip apart the stereo field and narcotizing vocals speak strangely…like conversations from Twin Peaks’ red room repurposed for a progressive electronic lullaby. Emotive fretless bass slides enter and help transform the vibe towards ambient fusion and new age splendor while streaks of buzzing radiance flash then recede…all as the fluttering vocal abstractions fade in and out of focus. And towards the end, phasers whoosh wildly until everything is washed away by vibrato distortion, leaving only the songs of insects.

(images from my personal copy)

#lilipulu #sergey luginin #simple symmetry #sasha lipsky #sergey lipsky #ivan pustovalov #four amazing tracks #growing bin records #glowing pin records #basso #germany #russia #tribal #techno #post-punk #krautpop #stereolab #krautrock #cosmic funk #interstellar #afro-funk #pink floyd #space rock #space funk #progressive electronic #kosmische #balearic #studio jam #experimental #album reviews

[jonathanbelloblog]

Driving My 1950 Buick Special Deluxe: It’s Like 1950 All Over Again

Well, yes, a 1950 Buick Special Deluxe four-door sedan did come into my life recently. I confess at the outset it’s not my usual fare, what with its giant hunk of a straight-eight engine and ginormous chrome grille, as well as a cow-catcher so toothy that it proposes to serve—along with a pair of cannon-shaped overriders—as a first line of defense in cases of frontal attack. It does so in place, that is, of the actual huge bumper that resides behind and over which the chrome grille slats cascade for a protuberant effect. Not unlike a ’90s Oakland rapper with gold fronts and an overbite.

But as some of you will know, I’ve been laboring in the New York picture-car trade with my company Octane Film Cars and one of the shows we’ve been working on of late is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a comedy-drama about a late 1950s housewife who becomes a successful standup comedian. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded it five Emmys at the end of its first season, which it is a pretty good start. Though none was in the category of excellence in picture cars (which doesn’t exist, and for which we couldn’t take much of the credit, even if it did), the show has been lauded for its accurate—albeit highly stylized—depiction of the era. Cars play a big part in that and I’ve been honored to help out. But I’m not giving a speech here.

What I mean to talk about is this Buick. It was put to work immediately after purchase, spending three days in Tribeca the week before last, looking Fifties proud outside a “pop-up” version of the old, now defunct Stage Delicatessen. Parked next to a Ford Sunliner and a Checker cab on Lafayette Street south of Spring from Thursday through Saturday night, it was set decoration for a make-believe restaurant that served real food at real 1950s prices to the real 2018 public, with in-character actors not just portraying but serving as waiters and managers, with period décor, music, and menus, all assembled for the benefit of whoever could get in. It sold out immediately, of course. It was all done in the larger service of promoting the popular Amazon TV show in the experiential and hopefully viral pop-up way that seems unique to the 21st century. This is necessitated perhaps by the fact of so much of everything else being so basically fake. But I digress.

Getting to Tribeca meant a 75-mile round trip drive in a 68-year-old car I’d driven but once around the block before buying itand setting off for its first star turn in New York City. And in this context it is important to report that around the same time I was testing a $68,760 contemporary, a BMW 530e xDrive iPerformance, an all-wheel-drive plug-in hybrid with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, whose specification does say something about the intervening years. Complemented by an electric motor and batteries good for 15 miles of all-electric operation, this latest 5 Series variant represented for me despite its newish tech at least a bit of a return to form for BMW, and made for quite the modern sedan offering. It thus made for a perfect comparison with a big-ass Buick that was more than respectable in its day, but now 68 years the 530e’s senior.

Riding on bias-ply tires and with a lump of iron up front that looks like it got hoisted out of a tugboat, the Buick was never going to hold a candle performance-wise to the BMW, which is not just a good handling car but a good handling BMW. Driving excitement was once a given with this brand famous for its cars’ dynamic abilities, but lately they’ve been accused with some justification of having misplaced the Ultimate Driving Machine plot. However, if the 530e is any indicator, nimbleness has commenced its return journey to its old Bavarian home and not a moment too soon.

The good feeling was confirmed on a 24-hour round-trip to Pittsburgh in the Bimmer following the delicatessen extravaganza with the Buick. After several frustrating trips this summer to my ancestral home to watch the Pirates drop games at their picturesque bandbox, PNC Park, we hoped for a change in fortune by this time visiting mighty Heinz Field, where the first-place Steelers hosted the Chargers of Los Angeles. Given our historic luck, we weren’t surprised when the home team favorites blew a big lead in the second half before proceeding to choke and lose in heartbreaking fashion in the final seconds. Not that witnessing such a defeat wasn’t tough, but the twin 400-mile trips that bookended the football game were surprisingly pleasant, with 31 mpg to report, comfy seats, and standout performance from the 248 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque the boosted BMW four offers. The sprint from 60 to 110 mph is particularly impressive for such a little-bitty 2.0-liter thing. Or so I am told.

Much to my surprise, the Buick had rolled down the road on its own shorter journeys with ease. Despite its old-school body-on-frame construction, there is a feeling of utter solidity that today’s buyers rarely experience in this antique, owing at least partly to sheetmetal thick enough to have come from a shipyard.

You can seat six in the Special Deluxe—and probably eight in a pinch—because of a front bench that’s double wide, the passenger room enhanced by the Buick’s column-mounted manual shifter and utter lack of seatbelts. Speaking of that column shifter, Buick calls its three-speed the Synchromesh, but a basic familiarity with double de-clutching doesn’t go unrewarded here. Nor do serious reserves of upper body strength, as the car’s recirculating-ball worm and nut steering is decidedly manual despite its seeming infinite number of turns lock-to-lock. On occasion, I thought I even detected road feel but the operative driving theme was more nautical.

All that said, you motor serenely down the roads and parkways in this Buick, basking in creamy, low-down torque that few of today’s machines exhibit. The distinct joys of this long-ago obsoleted type of engine are lost to time, but you discover them for yourself when blatzing around town behind an eight-in-line Buick, gently stabbing the accelerator in top gear to elicit a heightened version of the soothing blub-blub sound and smooth, steady forward motion. The 263.3-cubic-inch straight-eight has so much urge down low it’s beautiful. But then you try to go faster and it too quickly runs out of breath, like a former Olympic weightlifter with COPD.

There’s no mistaking my Buick for a modern ride. Not just because of the portholes on its front fenders, three on either side, or the three-piece rear windscreen. Heading up Manhattan’s FDR Drive on the way home from the Mrs. Maisel pop-up, the Buick was holding its own, but then it began to rain. Its vacuum-operated wipers—which tend to slow down at speed and under acceleration—did not spring to attention and a defroster that couldn’t fog a mirror when Jackie Robinson was playing in Brooklyn didn’t help. Hydraulic drum brakes—if they weren’t called Jet Puffed they should’ve been—were a workout that worked, but just barely. And things got even more old timey when the Buick was holding forth on some of the many sharp and less well paved corners the Drive has to offer. Here the Special Deluxe lived up to both its names. That is to say, as long-ago-departed auto writer Tom McCahill might have put it, it cornered with the sort of body roll and brake dive you’d expect to see in a drunk celebrant performing the watusi on a frigate crossing the Atlantic in a bad storm. It’s like 1950 all over again.

The post Driving My 1950 Buick Special Deluxe: It’s Like 1950 All Over Again appeared first on Automobile Magazine.

from Performance Junk Blogger Feed 4 http://bit.ly/2QiDiRL via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Performance Junk Blogger Feed 4

[jesusvasser]

Driving My 1950 Buick Special Deluxe: It’s Like 1950 All Over Again

Well, yes, a 1950 Buick Special Deluxe four-door sedan did come into my life recently. I confess at the outset it’s not my usual fare, what with its giant hunk of a straight-eight engine and ginormous chrome grille, as well as a cow-catcher so toothy that it proposes to serve—along with a pair of cannon-shaped overriders—as a first line of defense in cases of frontal attack. It does so in place, that is, of the actual huge bumper that resides behind and over which the chrome grille slats cascade for a protuberant effect. Not unlike a ’90s Oakland rapper with gold fronts and an overbite.

But as some of you will know, I’ve been laboring in the New York picture-car trade with my company Octane Film Cars and one of the shows we’ve been working on of late is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a comedy-drama about a late 1950s housewife who becomes a successful standup comedian. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded it five Emmys at the end of its first season, which it is a pretty good start. Though none was in the category of excellence in picture cars (which doesn’t exist, and for which we couldn’t take much of the credit, even if it did), the show has been lauded for its accurate—albeit highly stylized—depiction of the era. Cars play a big part in that and I’ve been honored to help out. But I’m not giving a speech here.

What I mean to talk about is this Buick. It was put to work immediately after purchase, spending three days in Tribeca the week before last, looking Fifties proud outside a “pop-up” version of the old, now defunct Stage Delicatessen. Parked next to a Ford Sunliner and a Checker cab on Lafayette Street south of Spring from Thursday through Saturday night, it was set decoration for a make-believe restaurant that served real food at real 1950s prices to the real 2018 public, with in-character actors not just portraying but serving as waiters and managers, with period décor, music, and menus, all assembled for the benefit of whoever could get in. It sold out immediately, of course. It was all done in the larger service of promoting the popular Amazon TV show in the experiential and hopefully viral pop-up way that seems unique to the 21st century. This is necessitated perhaps by the fact of so much of everything else being so basically fake. But I digress.

Getting to Tribeca meant a 75-mile round trip drive in a 68-year-old car I’d driven but once around the block before buying itand setting off for its first star turn in New York City. And in this context it is important to report that around the same time I was testing a $68,760 contemporary, a BMW 530e xDrive iPerformance, an all-wheel-drive plug-in hybrid with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, whose specification does say something about the intervening years. Complemented by an electric motor and batteries good for 15 miles of all-electric operation, this latest 5 Series variant represented for me despite its newish tech at least a bit of a return to form for BMW, and made for quite the modern sedan offering. It thus made for a perfect comparison with a big-ass Buick that was more than respectable in its day, but now 68 years the 530e’s senior.

Riding on bias-ply tires and with a lump of iron up front that looks like it got hoisted out of a tugboat, the Buick was never going to hold a candle performance-wise to the BMW, which is not just a good handling car but a good handling BMW. Driving excitement was once a given with this brand famous for its cars’ dynamic abilities, but lately they’ve been accused with some justification of having misplaced the Ultimate Driving Machine plot. However, if the 530e is any indicator, nimbleness has commenced its return journey to its old Bavarian home and not a moment too soon.

The good feeling was confirmed on a 24-hour round-trip to Pittsburgh in the Bimmer following the delicatessen extravaganza with the Buick. After several frustrating trips this summer to my ancestral home to watch the Pirates drop games at their picturesque bandbox, PNC Park, we hoped for a change in fortune by this time visiting mighty Heinz Field, where the first-place Steelers hosted the Chargers of Los Angeles. Given our historic luck, we weren’t surprised when the home team favorites blew a big lead in the second half before proceeding to choke and lose in heartbreaking fashion in the final seconds. Not that witnessing such a defeat wasn’t tough, but the twin 400-mile trips that bookended the football game were surprisingly pleasant, with 31 mpg to report, comfy seats, and standout performance from the 248 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque the boosted BMW four offers. The sprint from 60 to 110 mph is particularly impressive for such a little-bitty 2.0-liter thing. Or so I am told.

Much to my surprise, the Buick had rolled down the road on its own shorter journeys with ease. Despite its old-school body-on-frame construction, there is a feeling of utter solidity that today’s buyers rarely experience in this antique, owing at least partly to sheetmetal thick enough to have come from a shipyard.

You can seat six in the Special Deluxe—and probably eight in a pinch—because of a front bench that’s double wide, the passenger room enhanced by the Buick’s column-mounted manual shifter and utter lack of seatbelts. Speaking of that column shifter, Buick calls its three-speed the Synchromesh, but a basic familiarity with double de-clutching doesn’t go unrewarded here. Nor do serious reserves of upper body strength, as the car’s recirculating-ball worm and nut steering is decidedly manual despite its seeming infinite number of turns lock-to-lock. On occasion, I thought I even detected road feel but the operative driving theme was more nautical.

All that said, you motor serenely down the roads and parkways in this Buick, basking in creamy, low-down torque that few of today’s machines exhibit. The distinct joys of this long-ago obsoleted type of engine are lost to time, but you discover them for yourself when blatzing around town behind an eight-in-line Buick, gently stabbing the accelerator in top gear to elicit a heightened version of the soothing blub-blub sound and smooth, steady forward motion. The 263.3-cubic-inch straight-eight has so much urge down low it’s beautiful. But then you try to go faster and it too quickly runs out of breath, like a former Olympic weightlifter with COPD.

There’s no mistaking my Buick for a modern ride. Not just because of the portholes on its front fenders, three on either side, or the three-piece rear windscreen. Heading up Manhattan’s FDR Drive on the way home from the Mrs. Maisel pop-up, the Buick was holding its own, but then it began to rain. Its vacuum-operated wipers—which tend to slow down at speed and under acceleration—did not spring to attention and a defroster that couldn’t fog a mirror when Jackie Robinson was playing in Brooklyn didn’t help. Hydraulic drum brakes—if they weren’t called Jet Puffed they should’ve been—were a workout that worked, but just barely. And things got even more old timey when the Buick was holding forth on some of the many sharp and less well paved corners the Drive has to offer. Here the Special Deluxe lived up to both its names. That is to say, as long-ago-departed auto writer Tom McCahill might have put it, it cornered with the sort of body roll and brake dive you’d expect to see in a drunk celebrant performing the watusi on a frigate crossing the Atlantic in a bad storm. It’s like 1950 all over again.

The post Driving My 1950 Buick Special Deluxe: It’s Like 1950 All Over Again appeared first on Automobile Magazine.

from Performance Junk WP Feed 4 http://bit.ly/2QiDiRL via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Performance Junk WP Feed 4

[eddiejpoplar]

Driving My 1950 Buick Special Deluxe: It’s Like 1950 All Over Again

Well, yes, a 1950 Buick Special Deluxe four-door sedan did come into my life recently. I confess at the outset it’s not my usual fare, what with its giant hunk of a straight-eight engine and ginormous chrome grille, as well as a cow-catcher so toothy that it proposes to serve—along with a pair of cannon-shaped overriders—as a first line of defense in cases of frontal attack. It does so in place, that is, of the actual huge bumper that resides behind and over which the chrome grille slats cascade for a protuberant effect. Not unlike a ’90s Oakland rapper with gold fronts and an overbite.

But as some of you will know, I’ve been laboring in the New York picture-car trade with my company Octane Film Cars and one of the shows we’ve been working on of late is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a comedy-drama about a late 1950s housewife who becomes a successful standup comedian. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded it five Emmys at the end of its first season, which it is a pretty good start. Though none was in the category of excellence in picture cars (which doesn’t exist, and for which we couldn’t take much of the credit, even if it did), the show has been lauded for its accurate—albeit highly stylized—depiction of the era. Cars play a big part in that and I’ve been honored to help out. But I’m not giving a speech here.

What I mean to talk about is this Buick. It was put to work immediately after purchase, spending three days in Tribeca the week before last, looking Fifties proud outside a “pop-up” version of the old, now defunct Stage Delicatessen. Parked next to a Ford Sunliner and a Checker cab on Lafayette Street south of Spring from Thursday through Saturday night, it was set decoration for a make-believe restaurant that served real food at real 1950s prices to the real 2018 public, with in-character actors not just portraying but serving as waiters and managers, with period décor, music, and menus, all assembled for the benefit of whoever could get in. It sold out immediately, of course. It was all done in the larger service of promoting the popular Amazon TV show in the experiential and hopefully viral pop-up way that seems unique to the 21st century. This is necessitated perhaps by the fact of so much of everything else being so basically fake. But I digress.

Getting to Tribeca meant a 75-mile round trip drive in a 68-year-old car I’d driven but once around the block before buying itand setting off for its first star turn in New York City. And in this context it is important to report that around the same time I was testing a $68,760 contemporary, a BMW 530e xDrive iPerformance, an all-wheel-drive plug-in hybrid with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine, whose specification does say something about the intervening years. Complemented by an electric motor and batteries good for 15 miles of all-electric operation, this latest 5 Series variant represented for me despite its newish tech at least a bit of a return to form for BMW, and made for quite the modern sedan offering. It thus made for a perfect comparison with a big-ass Buick that was more than respectable in its day, but now 68 years the 530e’s senior.

Riding on bias-ply tires and with a lump of iron up front that looks like it got hoisted out of a tugboat, the Buick was never going to hold a candle performance-wise to the BMW, which is not just a good handling car but a good handling BMW. Driving excitement was once a given with this brand famous for its cars’ dynamic abilities, but lately they’ve been accused with some justification of having misplaced the Ultimate Driving Machine plot. However, if the 530e is any indicator, nimbleness has commenced its return journey to its old Bavarian home and not a moment too soon.

The good feeling was confirmed on a 24-hour round-trip to Pittsburgh in the Bimmer following the delicatessen extravaganza with the Buick. After several frustrating trips this summer to my ancestral home to watch the Pirates drop games at their picturesque bandbox, PNC Park, we hoped for a change in fortune by this time visiting mighty Heinz Field, where the first-place Steelers hosted the Chargers of Los Angeles. Given our historic luck, we weren’t surprised when the home team favorites blew a big lead in the second half before proceeding to choke and lose in heartbreaking fashion in the final seconds. Not that witnessing such a defeat wasn’t tough, but the twin 400-mile trips that bookended the football game were surprisingly pleasant, with 31 mpg to report, comfy seats, and standout performance from the 248 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque the boosted BMW four offers. The sprint from 60 to 110 mph is particularly impressive for such a little-bitty 2.0-liter thing. Or so I am told.

Much to my surprise, the Buick had rolled down the road on its own shorter journeys with ease. Despite its old-school body-on-frame construction, there is a feeling of utter solidity that today’s buyers rarely experience in this antique, owing at least partly to sheetmetal thick enough to have come from a shipyard.

You can seat six in the Special Deluxe—and probably eight in a pinch—because of a front bench that’s double wide, the passenger room enhanced by the Buick’s column-mounted manual shifter and utter lack of seatbelts. Speaking of that column shifter, Buick calls its three-speed the Synchromesh, but a basic familiarity with double de-clutching doesn’t go unrewarded here. Nor do serious reserves of upper body strength, as the car’s recirculating-ball worm and nut steering is decidedly manual despite its seeming infinite number of turns lock-to-lock. On occasion, I thought I even detected road feel but the operative driving theme was more nautical.

All that said, you motor serenely down the roads and parkways in this Buick, basking in creamy, low-down torque that few of today’s machines exhibit. The distinct joys of this long-ago obsoleted type of engine are lost to time, but you discover them for yourself when blatzing around town behind an eight-in-line Buick, gently stabbing the accelerator in top gear to elicit a heightened version of the soothing blub-blub sound and smooth, steady forward motion. The 263.3-cubic-inch straight-eight has so much urge down low it’s beautiful. But then you try to go faster and it too quickly runs out of breath, like a former Olympic weightlifter with COPD.

There’s no mistaking my Buick for a modern ride. Not just because of the portholes on its front fenders, three on either side, or the three-piece rear windscreen. Heading up Manhattan’s FDR Drive on the way home from the Mrs. Maisel pop-up, the Buick was holding its own, but then it began to rain. Its vacuum-operated wipers—which tend to slow down at speed and under acceleration—did not spring to attention and a defroster that couldn’t fog a mirror when Jackie Robinson was playing in Brooklyn didn’t help. Hydraulic drum brakes—if they weren’t called Jet Puffed they should’ve been—were a workout that worked, but just barely. And things got even more old timey when the Buick was holding forth on some of the many sharp and less well paved corners the Drive has to offer. Here the Special Deluxe lived up to both its names. That is to say, as long-ago-departed auto writer Tom McCahill might have put it, it cornered with the sort of body roll and brake dive you’d expect to see in a drunk celebrant performing the watusi on a frigate crossing the Atlantic in a bad storm. It’s like 1950 all over again.

The post Driving My 1950 Buick Special Deluxe: It’s Like 1950 All Over Again appeared first on Automobile Magazine.

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