Junkyard Find: 1981 Mazda GLC Sedan

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The Mazda GLC, aka Familia aka 323 was once a fairly common sight on American roads, but just about all of the GLCs were hatchbacks. Here’s a rare sedan that was able to hang on for 30 years before being discarded.


Mazda tried to play up the “driving excitement” angle of the GLC with this ad, in an attempt to differentiate the car from all the other sub-ton econoboxes of the era. With 68 horsepower under the hood, however, GLC drivers were wise to avoid hills.

1981 was the first year for front-wheel-drive in the GLC.

Imagine car shopping in 1981 in Great Falls, Montana: Mazdas, Dodges, and Fiats in the same dealership! Would you take a Strada, a GLC, or an Omni?




Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

More by Murilee Martin

Comments
Join the conversation
3 of 23 comments
  • Pacificpom2 Pacificpom2 on Jul 01, 2011

    Dad's was a KA Laser Ghia, 1.5 single carb 5 speed, alloy wheels and Mum's was a KC, GL 1.6, 5 speed with steel wheels. Dad ran his into the ground and Mum rolled hers and sold it to my brother, it soldiered on for a few more years.

    • SomewhereDownUnder SomewhereDownUnder on Feb 01, 2013

      Hah we had the equivalent of your KA. We had a yellow Mazda 323 5-speed 3 door. IIRC, it was a 1981. It got rear ended and written off. That era of 323 never seemed popular compared to the Lasers of the time.

  • Graham64 Graham64 on Jan 05, 2023

    Interesting how the dealers label is on the bootlid, rather than being on the rear window or the licence plate frame.

  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
  • Carson D The UAW has succeeded in organizing a US VW plant before. There's a reason they don't teach history in the schools any longer. People wouldn't make the same mistakes.
  • B-BodyBuick84 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport of course, a 7 seater, 2.4 turbo-diesel I4 BOF SUV with Super-Select 4WD, centre and rear locking diffs standard of course.
  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
  • Tassos Jong-iL Communist America Rises!
Next