Originally Posted by dragon16

Last night, in the absence of spare time to pull and test the plugs, I thought I'd plug in the block heater for a few hours, and see if it makes a difference in starting. Sure enough! It still took a little more cranking than I would consider normal for this car, but for the time being I'll attribute that to the fact that the battery was not well charged, and cranking was not as fast as it probably should be. But once it fired, it purred like a kitten right from the start. No coughing, no smoke. It sounds like a good possibility that I've got my answer. Going to get a whole new set of GPs ordered today.

So to that end, I gather that I should stay away from the Autolite brand plugs. Aside from that, my local NAPA carries NGK, Champion, Bosch, Echlin, and Beru. Any particular brand recommendations and/or warnings?