QOTD: What's Your Pick at the Cheap '80s Metal Buffet?

Matthew Guy
by Matthew Guy

Imagine for a second you’re living in Canada in the mid-‘80s. The Edmonton Oilers have brought the Stanley Cup back to Canada for the first time since 1979, and it’ll stay in the Great White North until the next decade. A broad-chinned lawyer was just given a landslide victory to lead the country and the Tunagate scandal meant one could no longer enjoy tasty canned fish for supper.

That Detroit barge in the driveway is looking a bit haggard now, especially with the copious amounts of salt being dumped on the road every winter. Sure, we’re in the go-go ‘80s, but who wants to blow all that dough they’re charging for Hondas and Toyotas? A couple of new dealerships have set up shop in town, filled with cheap Eastern Bloc and Korean cars. But which one will you choose?

For half a dozen years in Canada (nearly the length of one average winter), Skoda foisted its wares upon the public. That’s right, above the 49th parallel, one could buy a new Skoda 120/130 fitted with a rear-mounted water-cooled engine and a sideways-opening front trunk. Displacing 1.3 liters, the four-door sedan used 55 Cold War horsepower to motivate its sub-2000-pound weight. Acceleration was not death-defying but surviving a front-on collision would be, as there was nothing but an empty trunk and a few pounds of Czechoslovakian metal to keep that roadside moose out of the passenger compartment.

To the Lada dealership then, where the Ruskies were peddling a 75 hp 1.5-liter Samara. Brittle interior plastics and t-square styling might send some customers scurrying, but real Canadians knew – from experience with that Niva across the showroom – that the mechanical bits were relatively solid. Available initially as either a 3- or 5-door hatch, this front-driver was advertised at $4,995 (about $9,600 in 2017 dollars). фантастика!

What about that funny little new dealership across the road? Hun … Hon … what? Hyundai? Well, let’s see what they’ve got. This rear-drive, 5-door Pony looks like a good fit. A 1.4-liter Mitsubishi-derived engine makes about 70 hp and is priced a few hundred dollars more than the Eastern Bloc machines. Fitted with windows and doors and not much else, its switch blanks are labelled, so you know what features you don’t have, ya cheapskate hoser. It’s at least a cheap way to roll in new wheels with a warranty. Plus, you’ll get to learn how to use a manual choke.

So what’s your choice? Will you write a cheque for a rear-engined Czech? Plop down some rubles on the Samara? Or saddle up with a Korean Pony?

Matthew Guy
Matthew Guy

Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.

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  • APaGttH APaGttH on Jun 20, 2017

    I choose to walk, ehhh. Because any of the possible choices are going to put me in a position where I'll be walking a lot.

  • Don1967 Don1967 on Jun 20, 2017

    I very nearly purchased a new 1986 Pony as my first car. Looking back it probably would have been a better choice than the 1980 Pontiac Lemans which nearly bankrupted me with its endless repair bills. What the Pony lacked in finesse it generally made up for in old-world-Mitsubishi simplicity. Give it an annual oil spray and it wasn't a half-bad cheapskate car; certainly better than anything from Eastern Europe.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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