Junkyard Find: 1983 Toyota Cressida Wagon, Salty Pacific Ocean Spray Edition

by Murilee Martin

Published: June 10th, 2015

junkyard find 1983 toyota cressida wagon salty pacific ocean spray edition

Since we had some rusty Junkyard Finds recently and I just spent a couple of days driving around San Francisco looking at ocean-salt horror-story cars, let’s continue with the Toyota Rust theme and check out this frighteningly oxidized San Francisco Cressida.

Cars in the non-mountainous regions of California mostly don’t rust much, unless they’re air-cooled Volkswagens. Sometimes you’ll see old Detroit cars in California with rusted-out trunk floors (from rainwater leaking in during the winter) or rust beneath vinyl tops, but that’s about as bad as it gets… unless you live within a few blocks of the ocean. In that situation, you get salt spray kicked up by big waves, plus the constant damp and fog that neighborhoods right on the ocean get. The damage tends to start on top and work its way down. Eventually, a good-running Toyota becomes more of a rusty cheese grater and must be scrapped.

This Cressida has San Francisco N Zone residential parking permits stretching from 1994 through a couple months ago. The Richmond District gets plenty of salt and chilly fog, being one of those SF neighborhoods with summer high temperatures in the 40s.

The owner of this car experimented with several types of rust-covering fillers. This appears to be Sculpey and Rustoleum.

I got so obsessed with documenting the rust “repairs” that I neglected to shoot the interior of this car. The icky Children’s Interactive Expo T-shirt as a seat cover is the only interior shot I took.

The 5M engine might still be a runner. Only one way to find out!

#1980s #1983 #1983ToyotaCressida #Cressida #DownOnTheJunkyard #Junkyard #JunkyardFind #Malaise #MalaiseEra #Rust #Toyota #Wagon #StationWagon #SanFrancisco #ToyotaCressida #RustyCars

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.

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CincyDavid on Jun 15, 2015

My parents were over last night, and my dad was bragging about the 10 years worth of Hamilton County Park stickers on the windshield of his little SUV...triangular stickers lined up along the driver's side edge of the windshield...some people also make circles of the stickers, since they are shaped like pie-shaped wedges. Thrifty Cincinnati West-Side Germans like to show off how old their cars are...

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- Corey Lewis on Jun 15, 2015
  
  LOL! I almost mentioned the park triangle-circle stickers on here the other day, but I figured nobody would care or know what I was talking about! I think I prefer them in a circle rather than lined up, it looks like a little multicolored pie. And now, I know exactly what your father sounds like, accent-wise, just from that bit of information. He would say the word plaza, as "plaeh-zeh." "I went with Kaeethey to the plaeh-zeh, but they didn't haev what we wanted."
  
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CincyDavid on Jun 15, 2015

Yup, that pretty much covers it...they are old school enough to say "please" instead of "excuse me" and some other Cincinnati colloquialisms. At least they don't pronounce "cash" as "caish" like my grandparents did...or call the couch the davenport, or have dinner at noon, and supper at 6. Lots of West Siders, and Northern Kentuckians also seem to end every sentence with "and that". I have no clue what it even means, but I have noticed lots of older folks saying that. Funny how quickly language changes. I blame national media exposure for the destruction of local accents...everyone sounds like TV anchors now. If I could get my kids to stop using the word LIKE multiple times in each sentence, I would be tickled.

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- Corey Lewis on Jun 15, 2015
  
  I kinda think it's just getting further away from the "original" generations of that part of town, with their undoubtedly terrible mixed English, since they were just off the boat! I have been around long enough to notice whether people are native Cincinnatians by how they speak now. I'll have to listen for "and that." I haven't noticed that before. I notice "and them" at the end of sentences when referring to even just one or two specific people. Other things: "Ideal" for idea. "Show" used for TV shows and/or movies. It's all just "show." I'm from the Indiana side, so I don't have any of this, and I'm very careful not to pick it up. People never can tell where I'm from, and I wanna keep it that way.
  
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- CincyDavid on Jun 15, 2015
  
  @Corey Lewis The "and that" comes out more like "an at"...used to know a guy, now deceased, who ended every sentence with "and everything else on that". Now if I can get out of town visitors to eat goetta for breakfast, and Skyline or Gold Star chili for lunch, and a Frisch's Big Boy for dinner, we're all set.
  
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