Project Cars--You Get to Vote on "Hold 'em or Fold 'em"

isellhondas · February 2015

Millenias were not good cars and the ones with that Miller Cycle engine were the worst of all.

I sold our next door neighbors a Millennia once and thank God they bought a warranty with it because it
was nothing but constant trouble and it was the non Miller version.

Same thing with MPV vans. Just trouble!

andre1969 · February 2015

I thought the second-gen 929 was a really nice car. Very bad driving position for me though, because with the air bag, they made the steering wheel stationary, with no tilt. At the time, the salesman told me they couldn't make a tilting steering column that had an airbag.

Apparently, Mazda didn't get the memo, because some years later, I bought a used '89 Gran Fury ex copcar, and it had tilt AND an airbag. I forget what years the second-gen 929 was sold, but I'm sure my Gran Fury pre-dated it. IIRC, mine had a 10/88 build date.

berri · February 2015

Here's the thing; back then Detroit was making so many lousy cars that Japan could just do what they wanted and still move the metal. Many Japanese dealers had waiting lists.

Mr_Shiftright · February 2015

It's true. Japan couldn't build a car bad enough to make the competition look good.

isellhondas · February 2015

One of the guys I used to work with started when our store opened in 1980. He said that EVERY new Honda was pre sold before it arrived and 600.00 was added to every sticker.

He said that people would follow the transport trucks into the store. They would yell, " I'll take that one!"

People would pick a color, put down a deposit and wait six weeks.

He said it was fun back in those days. He retired early because it was no longer fun for him.

Mr_Shiftright · February 2015

We used to have a joke at the local garage in the 80s, when we heard an ambulance siren: "Oh, that's just another Cadillac dealer having a heart attack". A friend of mine used to have a small used car lot in the Mission District of San Francisco. One day he calls me up one morning and says "hey I just took in a very clean Corolla if you know anybody". I told him I'm come down and look at lunchtime. Already gone when I got there. I remember this because the car was bought by a "Miss Guitar".

ab348 · February 2015

isellhondas said:
One of the guys I used to work with started when our store opened in 1980. He said that EVERY new Honda was pre sold before it arrived and 600.00 was added to every sticker.

He said that people would follow the transport trucks into the store. They would yell, " I'll take that one!"

People would pick a color, put down a deposit and wait six weeks.

He said it was fun back in those days. He retired early because it was no longer fun for him.

Up here in the early to mid-80s the Honda dealer wouldn't even let you pick a color. Your name went on the wait list when you put down a deposit, then you would wait weeks for the call. Then the call would come, you would show up and they would offer you the one car they had for you. No choice of color and a hefty dealer profit surcharge added. If you didn't take it I don't know if you got your deposit back or not.

A lady I was seeing in the late '80s (likely should have married her actually) bought an '85 Prelude new from them. As you might recall those were red-hot in the market when they first came out and stayed that way for a few years. She got that same treatment. The only choice she had was transmission. Color was whatever they got in. Hers was metallic gray. Car was nice enough, but the stories she told me about how they dealt with her during service made me never want to do business with them. Strangely, she didn't mind paying $600 every time she brought it in for for an oil change for some "preventative" service/parts replacement. She kept the car until they told her it was too rusted underneath to be safe. I wasn't seeing her by then and always wondered if they made that story up just to get a car in trade.

stickguy · February 2015

a friend of mine had a roommate with a 1st gen Prelude (the ones that looked like a toad). This was in the late 80s to early 90s. I just remember that the car rusted out so much it broke in half.

boomchek · February 2015

Lol, broke in half. I know it sounds funny although it shouldn't be.

My first car was an 82 Honda Accord (bought in 95). It had about 2 inches of rust eaten away from the front fenders, each tire was different size and make, and when I lifted it on the jack to change the wheels the jack went through the floor so I had to prop it on the suspension.

The exhaust broke off while I was driving downtown with a few friends (it overheated at the same time), the fuel filler neck was so rusty that half the gas I put in would leak out right away (I changed that myself), and the dashboard was moldy because the previous owner replaced the windshield and sealed it poorly with tar like substance.

But it was my first car and I loved it. Paid $350 for it, learned to drive stick on the way home in it, and sold it for same money I paid for it about 6 month later.

toomanyfumes · February 2015

I had a1980 Toyota pickup whose frame rusted to the point that the box was touching the cab, probably keeping it from breaking in half. This was around 1988.

isellhondas · February 2015

I think I've seen ***ONE*** of these and I have to really wonder WHY, exactly they were eve produced?

http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/cto/4911532208.html

A Saabaru! Imagine trying to find body parts or a rear glass for it!

So, I guess the Saab stores had to stock Impreza mechanical parts for these.

fintail · February 2015

Is the rear glass different than a Subaru? I've always seen it as a WRX for those who don't wear a flat brimmed sideways Monster cap. I bet that front clip is hard to find. Kind of a cool car, but them's a lot of miles.

Mr_Shiftright · February 2015

Well on the plus side, if it was built by Subaru, at least it will stay running. However, scary number of miles for a Subaru 2.5L engine. They made a turbo version of this car, too.

isellhondas · February 2015

I'm just wondering why Saab and Subaru decided to create such a car?

I can't imagine many were ever sold.

fintail · February 2015

This is when GM was involved with both brands, right? That might explain it, they love a rebadge.

isellhondas · February 2015

Yeah, I forgot about that.

qbrozen · March 2015

yeah, GM had everything to do with it. Their typical rebadging game. I think the bigger offender was the 9-7X. Just awful.

andre1969 · March 2015

Towards the end, I believe that everything Saab was peddling was shared with something else. The 9-2 was a rebadged Impreza. The 9-3, although it wasn't blaringly obvious, was on the same platform as the Malibu, G6, and Aura. The 9-5 and Saturn L-series had some commonality. And the 9-7 was nothing but a rebadged Trailblazer.

Oddly though, I tended to prefer the Saab versions to the other cars they were based on. The styling just seemed more pleasant, somehow. And, the interiors usually seemed to be of a higher caliber.

benjaminh · March 2015

$5k for that 2005 Saab 9-2 would make more sense to me if it had c. 100k miles. But asking for 5k for dead brand with 180k seems like a reach to me.

andre1969 · March 2015

I know cars tend to last longer than they used to, but still, my attitude is that at 180,000 miles, it's essentially a free car. Or maybe a couple thousand bucks at best. Unless it's some heavy-duty, over-built Diesel truck...and even those can be troublesome. There's a guy at work who just unloaded a 2004 F-350 at around 180,000 miles, because it needed about $5,000 in repair work. Lots of sensors and such, plus the turbo on the Diesel was starting to go. Guess he was down to his final stroke...

benjaminh · March 2015

andre: How many miles did you have on your Intrepid when it died?

andre1969 · March 2015

It had a bit over 150,000 on it. It was still running well when it got totaled out, and probably had a lot of life left. The damage to it wasn't all that bad, but given the age and mileage, book value was low enough to total it. out. I briefly thought about trying to fix it myself, until the insurance adjuster mentioned that if I did that, I'd have something like 90 days to get it Maryland inspected, and then only have a salvage title issued. So, I decided to quit while I was ahead. I got about $2000 for it from the insurance company.

Even though it was still running well, I figured it was time for something else. I could have fixed it up, only to have the transmission crap out a couple months later, and then I'd have a car worth nothing. Well, maybe $300...that's the salvage value the insurance company assigned to it, if I had wanted to hang onto it.

Mr_Shiftright · March 2015

A car with 180,000 miles and running well is like an 85 year old man playing tennis well on a sunny day---you just never know what happens next.

jpp75 · March 2015

isellhondas said:
One of the guys I used to work with started when our store opened in 1980. He said that EVERY new Honda was pre sold before it arrived and 600.00 was added to every sticker.

He said that people would follow the transport trucks into the store. They would yell, " I'll take that one!"

People would pick a color, put down a deposit and wait six weeks.

He said it was fun back in those days. He retired early because it was no longer fun for him.

The $600 markup is a pittance compared to what my family spent on repairs for the domestic cars my dad forced us to buy (Ford, Mercury, Lincoln, Chevrolet) in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

We spent tens of thousands of dollars to try and keep those vehicles running.

uplanderguy · March 2015

I've said it before, but I must walk-between-the-raindrops. I've never had what I consider an expensive fix on any single one of my thirteen new domestics from 1981 to now.

I know this, I'd have refused to pay sticker price yet one dollar over it, on any car. To me, that tells you what kind of dealer it is.

I remember seeing a "+$2,000" sub-sticker on the first new '84 Corvette I saw, and I thought it was total B.S. If the manufacturer thinks you can make a profit at sticker, why add more? I know, I know....because people will pay it.

isellhondas · March 2015

Cars sell for what they are worth to the people who want them.

Miatas were selling for 2-3000 over MSRP when they came out in 1990 and people lined up.

Even PT Cruisers were selling for over MSRP when they were first introduced.

Imagine THAT!

uplanderguy · March 2015

I have a good friend, older than me, whose Dad was a Packard-Studebaker-Nash-Willys dealer in a smaller town in Illinois and sold the business in 1956. He then went to work as a Sales Manager at a Pontiac dealer nearby. My friend said his Dad said that he'd never seen anything like it....the Pontiac customers would 'walk in in a trance, having pen and checkbook in hand, wondering when to sign'. LOL He hadn't seen that in his previous car life! LOL

Several years later my friend was lobbying his Dad to buy a new Lark. He said his Dad said, "I spent enough time as a 'missionary'". LOL

omarman · March 2015

The "late 1980's and early 1990's" were not exactly great moments in car history but still kind of hard to imagine spending "tens of thousands" to repair 3 Ford products and a Chevy purchased new during that era. I bought a new Ford Probe in '89 and my late wife bought a new '92 Dynasty and by 1997 we had to have the transmission rebuilt in the Dodge. After that, we kept the Dynasty another 7 years with no more major issues. The Probe was basically a trouble free Mazda product yet even before that, a girl I went to college with had a 3rd gen Honda Civic ('84?) which destroyed its engine when the timing belt snapped. That girl was so disgusted with Honda that she wanted something domestic!

Just to be clear though...I'm not saying any of this anecdotal evidence changes the history of the car biz. Japan Inc swept over the market and I freely admit that GM was a shell of its former self even before bankruptcy. But I also agree with uplander, that if Detroit iron from that era was so bad as the stories told about them now, then why are there still more 80s domestics on the road now than imports? I'm even convinced that the Tempo/Topaz twins will eventually outlive every CamCord ever built during that same time! Domestic trucks have outlived the BTTF imports in the same way. Remember Marty's ride? Not many of those left...

uplanderguy said:
I've said it before, but I must walk-between-the-raindrops. I've never had what I consider an expensive fix on any single one of my thirteen new domestics from 1981 to now.

I know this, I'd have refused to pay sticker price yet one dollar over it, on any car. To me, that tells you what kind of dealer it is.

I remember seeing a "+$2,000" sub-sticker on the first new '84 Corvette I saw, and I thought it was total B.S. If the manufacturer thinks you can make a profit at sticker, why add more? I know, I know....because people will pay it.

Mr_Shiftright · March 2015

Well for one thing there were far more domestics on the road to begin with---what you're seeing basically is that the domestics could sustain more casualties than the Japanese makes. Think of it as the Russian front in the Great Automobile War of 1968--1988. It was a war of attrition.

Also 80s domestics were very cheap to buy used, generally easy to work on, and very cheap to fix. Just as an example, you couldn't buy rebuilt Japanese carburetors and they were a devil to work on. And let's face it, when a Buick hit a Corolla, who do you think won?

stever · March 2015

Limited experience here too - my '82 Tercel outlasted our '89 Voyager with few issues. The Voyager went through three head gaskets, all covered by the 7/70 warranty (one was paid for with "after warranty" assistance).

Can't complain about the miled up '09 Grand Caravan though. Yet.

fintail · March 2015

Tons of old Japanese cars still on the road here - 80s Accords and Camrys aren't uncommon (to be fair, I see an old Cadavalier or Tempo now and then too). The west coast might be the only place where old Japanese pickups survived. I saw an 80-83 style Toyota 4x4 just today. I see old Japanese vehicles at least as often as a Celebrity or Fox LTD, etc.

Some part of what one sees on the road has to with original sales, not just poor rustproofing - they sold a lot more F-series, Silverados, and D100 (or whatever) in 1984 than Marty McFly Toyotas.

On the project car theme, brown never looked better

uplanderguy · March 2015

One time I was working at an office in western Michigan (on Lake Michigan, in fact). A guy had an old Volvo that was like George Washington's axe (second engine, third trans, or something like that). He had some plaque that Volvo gives out for cars with over x-hundred-thousand miles. He was hitting me up with "American cars just don't last". I then proceeded to point out five or six twenty-year-old Chevy Caprices in the large company parking lot and lot next door...far-more than any other car of similar age.

And I might add that by the mid-to-late-eighties, I'm thinking that big Chevys weren't all-that-much 'best sellers' anymore. And this was a long way from Detroit.

andre1969 · March 2015

The main reason Japanese cars from the 70's and 80's are so highly regarded is that they were relatively simple for the most part. Think about it...even by 1980, the biggest Japanese car was the Cressida. A nice little car, but in domestic terms, it's not even a Granada. And as Japanese cars go, it was an anomaly. Most of their cars were fairly basic...stick shift transmissions, no a/c, and so on. The Japanese came up short in a/c, automatic transmissions, and rust proofing. When the domestics built a rust-prone car it was front-page news...i.e., Vega, 1976 Volare. When the Japanese built a car that DIDN'T rust, it was considered a miracle.

The domestics fared poorly with smaller cars mainly because they had intermediate and full-sized cars down to an art. And they were able to produce them economically, and pass the savings on to the customer. For instance, a 1976 Accord stickered at something like $3995. In the GM ranks, that would get you a Nova Concours V-8 sedan, which was the same price. A V-8 Camaro started at $3927. Even an Impala 4-door sedan started at $4927, and included a standard 350 V-8, automatic, power steering, power brakes. You couldn't even get a fully automatic transmission on an Accord until 1980.

If the Japanese had tried to compete head-to-head with something like, say, a 1980 Caprice, you can rest assured it would have been an utter failure. It would cost about twice as much. Its a/c and automatic transmission would fail in record time. And it would rust so bad that it would make a '57 Plymouth look like the epitome of excellence. KnowWhatIMeanVern?

Mr_Shiftright · March 2015

That's true---the domestics could not compete in the small car market. The D3 was also behind on technology (with some exceptions, like AC and automatic transmissions)---the D3 missed the boat on electronic fuel injection, on radial tires, rack and pinion, disk brakes-----oh yeah, the US might have *had* these things but they didn't implement them into mass production.

Also, having been a young man at the time, I remember one big problem the domestics had---it wasn't durability, or power, or even price---it was that they just couldn't run right. The Japanese and Europeans took a ground-up approach to emissions but American engineers tried to bolt new things onto old things. It simply didn't work well.

andre1969 · March 2015

I can still remember my Mom letting her 1980 Malibu warm up for something like 5 minutes on cold days, and even after that, it would still stall out half of the time when she went to pull out of the driveway...even when it was newer! It would try to stall out on me, but I learned fairly quickly how to feather the gas pedal to keep it from dying completely.

My '82 Cutlass Supreme, OTOH, would usually make it out of the driveway, but then it would pick a more dangerous time to stall...when I had to pull out and merge onto the major 4-lane road just up the street!

texases · March 2015

Well, when the Japanese finally went to EFI, they did a good job, but they persisted with nightmare carb/vacuum hose setups for quite a while. Something about not wanting to pay Bosch royalties for FI patents?

Mr_Shiftright · March 2015

They did stick it out with carbs a long time, but the carbs actually worked very well. The Japanese tend to take a long time doing their homework.

texases · March 2015

Yes, they ran great when new. I just wouldn't want to tackle an '85 Prelude's vacuum leak now...

Mr_Shiftright · March 2015

That's what smoke machines are for Tex!

boomchek · March 2015

andre1969 said:
Towards the end, I believe that everything Saab was peddling was shared with something else. The 9-2 was a rebadged Impreza. The 9-3, although it wasn't blaringly obvious, was on the same platform as the Malibu, G6, and Aura. The 9-5 and Saturn L-series had some commonality. And the 9-7 was nothing but a rebadged Trailblazer.

Oddly though, I tended to prefer the Saab versions to the other cars they were based on. The styling just seemed more pleasant, somehow. And, the interiors usually seemed to be of a higher caliber.

The Saab 9-3 was I believe based on an Opel platform which was probably some kind of GM global platform, and so was the Saturn L Series. The second generation Vue was also same as a European Opel SUV of some sorts.

Funny enough I've seen some hard core enthusiasts rebadge their Saturn Astras with Opel badges too. I almost never see any of these on the road nowadays.

My mom had an early 2000's Saab 9-3. It had high mileage and big accident history when it came on trade for cheap at my dealership I worked at back in 2010. Cosmetically and mechanically it was good. My parents bought it for $2000 (wholesale as-is) which was a good deal as I helped them sell it privately few years later for about $5000. I drove it a few times and it was ok, nothing spectacular. Plastics felt cheap, and the dash controls had typical confusing Saab quirkiness to them.

The one thing that they had issues with was getting a second key and fob for it as it was at the time Saab shut its operations. The fob had to be sourced at some parts supplier that still had some fobs left over but it took weeks and wasn't cheap.

My mom enjoyed it for what it was, as she felt she was driving a "upscale" brand car for the price of an economy beater.

hpmctorque · March 2015

qbrozen said:
yeah, GM had everything to do with it. Their typical rebadging game. I think the bigger offender was the 9-7X. Just awful.

I saw a silver 9-7X parked in front of a restaurant last week.

hpmctorque · March 2015

"

Mr_Shiftright said:
That's true---the domestics could not compete in the small car market. The D3 was also behind on technology (with some exceptions, like AC and automatic transmissions)---the D3 missed the boat on electronic fuel injection, on radial tires, rack and pinion, disk brakes-----oh yeah, the US might have *had* these things but they didn't implement them into mass production.

Also, having been a young man at the time, I remember one big problem the domestics had---it wasn't durability, or power, or even price---it was that they just couldn't run right. The Japanese and Europeans took a ground-up approach to emissions but American engineers tried to bolt new things onto old things. It simply didn't work well.

"

I bought a new '86 Pontiac Grand Am with the Tech-4 (aka Iron Duke) and 5 speed manual. It had fuel injection, but it was very agricultural otherwise. Nevertheless, I got 188,000 miles out of it before it blew the head gasket. I was debating whether to have the head gasket repaired, but a hit and run when it was parked caused enough body damage that I junked it. It was very low maintenance, and somehow wasn't plagued by the reliability problems that D3 cars of that era were known for.

hpmctorque · March 2015

isellhondas said:
Cars sell for what they are worth to the people who want them.

Miatas were selling for 2-3000 over MSRP when they came out in 1990 and people lined up.

Even PT Cruisers were selling for over MSRP when they were first introduced.

Imagine THAT!

I had a work colleague who just had to have a PT Cruiser when it was introduced, and he paid over sticker for the privilege.

Mr_Shiftright · March 2015

My personal view of the 1970s and 80s and the "Car Wars" was that this period of time was actually (intentionally or not) the greatest consumer boycott ever conducted by the American public against a specific type of product. Even Windows Vista didn't suffer so much wrath.

fintail · March 2015

I remember PTs going for like 26K+, and desirable cars like SSR and Crossfire with 5K+ ADM. That went well.

stever · March 2015

Saw this pair at an open house last week that was getting prepped for an estate sale. Not sure if they'll try to sell the cars then too.

isellhondas · March 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
They did stick it out with carbs a long time, but the carbs actually worked very well. The Japanese tend to take a long time doing their homework.

I remember when the domestic cars had plastic caps on the carb adjusting screws so a person could hardly make any kind of an adjustment.

Of course, "sometimes" those little caps would disappear.

andre1969 · March 2015

Mr_Shiftright said:
My personal view of the 1970s and 80s and the "Car Wars" was that this period of time was actually (intentionally or not) the greatest consumer boycott ever conducted by the American public against a specific type of product. Even Windows Vista didn't suffer so much wrath.

I've always wondered what would have happened if the government didn't intervene, and start forcing the auto makers to build more economical cars. The 70's and 80's weren't an era of boycott so much, as an era of diversification. It wasn't until 1974 that small cars really got a foothold in the US, and it took an oil embargo to do that. Also, interestingly, that was the last year Plymouth held third place, based mainly on the popularity of its Valiant/Scamp/Duster lineup. Just different models of the same damn car, but their marketing really tried hard to make you think otherwise.

But, it wasn't long before big cars were selling in droves again. GM started work on downsizing their big cars, but it took an act of congress to force them to do it. When the government started talk of CAFE standards, GM's corporate average economy was the worst of the Big Three. It wasn't that their cars got worse economy, on average, than Ford or Mopar, but rather a much larger portion of GM's sales went to larger models, so they were staring at the biggest fines, once these standards went into effect and started tightening.

If there had been no oil embargo or government intervention, who knows how big cars might have gotten? I've heard that GM was thinking about a new range of engines in the 8-10 liter range, but that got shelved once fuel economy became a concern.

Demand for big cars was curtailed again once the second oil crisis hit, but still, they showed amazing resilience. In 1982 for example, either C&D or Motortrend tested a V-8 Caprice. That timeframe was about as bad as it got, as the economy bottomed out. Yet the typical Caprice, they found, was selling around sticker if not above, yet the newly-introduced Celebrity, which was supposed to be sort of a "family car of the future", and more economical, needed incentives to move on the lot, and was actually outsold that year by the Malibu...the car it was supposed to replace!

There was also a couple years in the early 80's that Oldsmobile was the #2 auto brand, beating out Ford. And one year, maybe 1983, even Buick passed Ford to become #3! And Buick and Olds were selling mainly on the strength of larger cars...not cheap compacts.

I'm sure that eventually, the auto makers would have had to get their act together...after all, you can only make a car so ponderous and thirsty, before consumers rebel. But then again, maybe not. After all, what's the #1 selling vehicle in the US today? And what's #2? Hint: It ain't an Accord or Camry, and in some configurations, it's longer than any car from the 70's ever got.

uplanderguy · March 2015

Some folks would think I'm lyin', but C&D had the '83 Caprice Classic on their "Ten Best Cars in the World" list...in its seventh year on the market in that (basic) configuration. (I have to say I like the '77-79 styling better than the smoother or more-bloated '80 and later looks).

andre1969 · March 2015

I prefer the '77-79 versions mainly because they had, in my opinion, a stronger identity. That, and they would change up the styles every year, so there was more variety. The 1980 Impala and Caprice did have one-year only grilles, but then they did a slight change for '81 and it stuck through '85.

The '83 probably was the best rendition so far, though, of the downsized Caprice. At least, with the 305/4-speed automatic. It was a good blend of power and economy, and by that time GM was getting the kinks out of its computer/emission controls, as well as the 4-speed automatic. I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that a few years later, GM started using the beefier truck 4-speed automatic in the 305 Caprice (and Parisienne) while the Buicks and Oldsmobiles with the 307 got the more fragile THM200-R4.

A '77-79 with the 350 would still be quicker, but with just a 3-speed automatic, fuel economy would suffer a bit. And the 305 in those years was just a 2-bbl, with 145 hp in '77-78, and only 130 for '79. There was a 4-bbl with 160 hp introduced for '79, but it wasn't offered in the big cars...just the intermediates. I don't think I've ever seen a test of an Impala/Caprice with the 267, but I'm sure it had to be a dog.

Project Cars--You Get to Vote on "Hold 'em or Fold 'em"

Comments

Helpful Tools

Most popular vehicles