In a world of chaos, turmoil, and despair, there is Window Shopping. It's not merely a Zoom call among Car and Driver's various staff members and hangers-on, though it is that, too. It's certainty, calm, and reassurance when it's needed most.
Heeding the call for elation once again, Window Shopping's internet-scouring challenge this week is to find American cars from the 1980s that don't suck and can be purchased for $30,000 or less. It's all about moolah for malaise.
Who are this week's contestants? There's C/D contributor Jonathon Ramsey from verdant Parts Unknown, Kentucky. Technical Something or Other K.C. Colwell, who was born during the 1980s but wasn't eligible to be purchased during this competition. Editor-in-chief, and still redolent of that new-editor smell, Tony Quiroga. Senior editor Joey Capparella, who was born in the 1990s, and that makes his work title mostly ironic. And Road & Track's John Pearley Huffman, who was already Midwest Regional Sales Manager for Circuit City in 1986.
At least one of the gang here asserts that all cars from the 1980s suck. He makes a strong case. Choices this episode include a diarrhea-brown truck, a sedan even people who owned one forget was a reality, a yellow thing with a Kenwood stereo, another thing this writer can't recall several minutes after the show, and, duh, a Mustang.
Come along for this magical journey back to a time when the world seemed at least as screwed up as it does now. And yet, somehow, we survived.