Kurt's Cars - The Super Salmon `76

When gas hung above $4 per gallon, and most of us were rethinking every trip we took in the car, I thought back to some of the vehicles that I enjoyed in the past. Some were fuel efficient, and some not so much. The Super Salmon was not so much.

Born in what some call "The Malaise Era" for Detroit Iron, Sherry and I bought this 1976 Chrysler Town and Country station wagon for $800 off a car lot in Everett. Despite the tired looking exterior and faded "wood" sides, the car had a rebuilt 440 V8 and transmission, plus rebuilt suspension and ice-cold AC. Some of the floors were rusty (I couldn't find replacement floors to save my life), but all the electric windows worked. I lowered it 2 inches all the way around, which gave it the look of a 21-foot long sled. We joked that the hood had its own zip code. Even though it was huge, it drove like a smaller car; not like a Prius, but more like a Malibu or Cutlass.

Its fuel consumption was a monumental and consistent 8 mpg. Yes....eight miles to a gallon. You could run the car hard and get 8mpg. You could run it easy and still get the same mileage. You could run it all day and it would start again the next, plus blow cold air on your face. The Super Salmon was a like a suburban tank in wood trim, the precursor to the SUV and a disco-era status symbol in the neighborhood according to a friend; she recalls seeing the roads in and around Kennedy Space Center teaming with schools of Super Salmon back in the mid 1970s.

Eventually, the Super Salmon was relegated to dump-run vehicle when my parents were doing major renovations on their home. In time, the car's sweet options started to quit one by one. Finally it was put up for sale; one person offered my Dad $275 for the car, to which he replied, "Make it $325...I just filled the tank." The new owner used it as an engine donor for another monster sized Chrysler product - an early 70s Imperial sedan. He had the 440 out by the end of the day.

The Super Salmon lives on as legendary in our family, for its fierce reliability and the generally swanky cut of its jib. Rock on Super Salmon...rock on!