Junkyard Find: 1982 Nissan Sentra Station Wagon
The Corolla has been with us since the 1966 model year, the Civic since 1973. The Sentra didn’t appear until partway through 1982, and first-year examples are quite rare (the closest I’ve come in the junkyard is this ’83 sedan). Here’s one that I found at a Denver yard a few weeks ago.
177,000 miles out of a Late Malaise Era econobox is pretty good.
Truly small station wagons, like small pickup trucks, are no longer with us. That’s a shame, because these things were very useful.
The E15 engine produced just 67 horsepower, but the car managed to get better than 50 miles per gallon on the highway.
The Sentra was also the first US-market Nissan to be branded as a straight-up Nissan, though this ad sneaks in the Datsun name.
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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For some reason I seem to recall my a/c being dealer-add on. It was a long time ago. I don't recall the 'economy' button. Mine a had a black square button with a blue light that you had to remember to press every time the car was started.
I bought one of these for $120 a few years ago from some crazy old lady when I was attempting a 24hours of Lemons run. Finally ended up having a salvage yard just pick it up and take it away.