1963
Buick Riviera
401 Nailhead V8 · 325 hp · automatic · 4 seatsArctic White over blue leather
$340 / day
These are not categories. They are cars.
Six restored American cars, kept in one building in Detroit, rented by the day to people who will actually drive them. You pick the car — the specific car, with its own paint, its own gearbox and its own history — not a size class and a shrug.
Six cars. Every one of them a specific object.
Decade
Gearbox
Body
6 of 6 cars
1963
Buick Riviera
401 Nailhead V8 · 325 hp · automatic · 4 seatsArctic White over blue leather
1965
Ford Mustang
289 Windsor V8 · 225 hp · 4-speed manual · 4 seatsRangoon Red over black vinyl
$265 / day
1970
Chevrolet Chevelle SS
396 big-block V8 · 350 hp · 4-speed manual · 4 seatsCranberry Red over black
$395 / day
1967
Pontiac GTO
400 V8 · 335 hp · automatic · 4 seatsStarlight Black over parchment
$355 / day
1959
Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz
390 V8 · 345 hp · automatic · 5 seatsEbony over white leather. The fins.
$520 / day
1969
Dodge Charger Daytona
440 Magnum V8 · 375 hp · automatic · 4 seatsRally Green. Nose cone and wing, as built.
$610 / day
Nothing in the building matches that combination. and start again.
Old cars are old. Here is exactly what that means.
None of this is a warning against renting one. It is the difference between a great day and a bad afternoon on the shoulder of I-94, and you should know it before you pay rather than after.
Four-wheel drums stop from 60 in about twice the distance you expect.
Only the Chevelle has front discs. Everything else is drums all round, and they fade when they get hot. Leave four car lengths, not two, and brake earlier than instinct tells you. This is the single thing people get wrong.
The steering has play at the straight-ahead, and that is correct.
Recirculating-ball steering has an inch or two of slack in the middle. It is not broken and it does not need fixing. You steer these with small continuous corrections rather than setting a line and holding it.
These engines do not enjoy stationary traffic in August.
Big-block engines in a Detroit summer will climb the temperature gauge in a jam. Pull the heater on and it will come back down — that is the trick everyone who owns one uses. If it reaches the top of the gauge, stop and call us. We will come out.
Lap belts in front. No airbags in any of them.
The Eldorado had no belts from the factory; the ones in it now were added in 1998 and they are lap belts. No car here has a child seat anchor point, and we will not fit one — the structure is not designed for it. Under-eights cannot travel in these, and that is not negotiable.
You will be photographed constantly and talked to at every light.
People will wave, follow you into car parks, and tell you at length about the one their uncle had. Most of our renters end up enjoying this. If the idea of it makes you tired, take the black GTO rather than the green Daytona.
One garage on Milwaukee Junction, and two people who know these cars.
Every car here is maintained in the same building it is rented from, by the two of us. Nothing is subcontracted and nothing is stored off-site. When you collect a car it has been driven that week, because a car that sits is a car that breaks.
We are not a museum and we are not a wedding company. These cars get driven, they collect stone chips, and we would rather that than have them polished into ornaments. The paint on the Mustang is 1965 paint, and it looks like it.
Rates include the maintenance, the insurance floor, roadside recovery anywhere in the Lower Peninsula, and a tank of fuel. What they do not include is written on the terms page, in full, before you pay.
Riviera interior, as delivered