Junkyard Find: 1991 Subaru XT, Juggalo Inside
When I lived in California, I never saw a car covered with Insane Clown Posse paraphernalia in a junkyard. Colorado is a different story. When a Juggalo slaps some ICP stickers on his or her car here, it’s next stop, junkyard! Usually such cars are pay-it-no-mind Contours or Accords, and so I don’t really notice, but I’ve been not-so-secretly lusting after a Subaru XT as a winter driver and it pains me to see one end up like this.
Yes, this car is done. I just hope the driver was wearing a seat belt when the XT-versus-concrete-abutment incident occurred.
That’s right, no need to move a complicated lever (like older Subarus) or flip a confusing switch (like the AMC Eagle) to get four-wheel-drive in this car. Subaru had figured out by the time they built this car that throwing a center differential in the drivetrain meant that clueless drivers wouldn’t tear up their tires (or worse) by leaving their cars in 4WD for 3,000-mile drives on dry asphalt. Full-time!
Class of ’08! Well, young drivers sometimes have to use up a few cars before they get the hang of the driving thing.
Used to be, you put a Grateful Dead “dancing bear” sticker on your car to ensure that members of the law enforcement community felt an overwhelming urge to search you for contraband. These days, you want this sticker to get that reaction from John Law.
No amount of frame-straightening is ever going to make this car right. Next stop, Crusher!
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.
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Subarus are definitely popular here in Maine. Although I don't really see why because the fuel economy numbers are not very impressive. If people really think AWD is going to help them in the winter with all-season tires, then I don't know what to say. A FWD car with decent winter tires will do just as well and get better fuel economy. A guy I worked with back in 2000 owned two SVXs. Weird cars but they were unique looking. Coming from Southern Ontario where there are very few Subarus, it's still odd to see so many on the roads in NE. Used to be the same thing with Saabs here. But now that they're dead I guess I won't be seeing many new ones driving around.
Poor car