#DownOnTheJunkyard

From the time of the first KdF-Wagens until distressingly deep into the 1970s, Volkswagens had air-cooled engines in back and rode on goofy 1930s chassis designs. Finally, the Audi 80-based Dasher showed up here as a 1974 model, but it wasn't until the following model year that the first true water-cooled VW went on sale in North America.

When GM introduced the third-generation Chevrolet Camaro for the 1982 model year, it was 367 pounds lighter than its 1981 predecessor. The third-gen Camaro had gained most of that weight back by its final model year of 1992, but it still showed plenty of early-1980s-style swagger. Today's Junkyard Find is one of the very last third-gen Camaros ever built, found in a Denver car graveyard recently.

Back in 2006, Jonny Lieberman reviewed the then-new Mazdaspeed6 for this publication. He deemed it ugly and slow off the line, but didn't question the reason for its existence. As it turned out, very few car shoppers felt the need to own a Mazdaspeed6, and it got the axe after just two model years. Here's one of the handful that made it out of dealerships, found in a self-service boneyard in Tulsa, Oklahoma a few months back.

Even by the standards of the far-flung General Motors Empire, the J-Body was found everywhere, from the Vauxhall Cavaliers of Great Britain to the Isuzu Askas of Japan to the Daewoo Esperas of South Korea. In the United States of the 1980s, the Chevy Cavalier was the J-Body King, but its Pontiac-badged sibling, the Sunbird, was a not-so-distant second place in the J sales race. Today's Junkyard Find is a sporty Sunbird coupe, found in a yard just south of Denver, Colorado.

The Ford Escort began life in 1955, in Britain (just a year after World War II-era food rationing finally ended), as a cheapified version of the Ford Squire wagon. After the pinnacle of rear-wheel-drive Escort action on that side of the Atlantic, a front-wheel-drive version appeared over there; a not-so-closely-related North American cousin showed up as a 1981 model.

For a few years after the end of World War II, Detroit's automakers sold mildly facelifted prewar designs while they made the switch back to peacetime production. Chrysler managed the feat for the 1949 model year; we admired a Plymouth Special Deluxe sedan from that year in a Colorado car graveyard last summer, and today we're going to take a look at an example of one of the last of the stopgap postwar Chrysler products: this '48 Dodge in a yard just south of Denver.

The XJ Cherokee was born out of the French government's bailout of American Motors and made its debut as a 1984 model. It was so successful that it stayed in production in essentially its original form through three corporations and into the following century. Today's Junkyard Find is one of the very last XJ Cherokees ever made, found in a Wyoming car graveyard last week.

Chrysler revolutionized the American family-hauler world in the 1984 model year when the Plymouth Voyager and Dodge Caravan minivans first appeared. That same year, Toyota began selling Americanized versions of its LiteAce/ TownAce/ MasterAce Surf vans over here, attracting less attention but moving enough of them that I still see them during my junkyard travels. Here's an '87 that received the camper-conversion treatment, now residing in a Northern California car graveyard.

Just over 20,000 Buick Reattas were made during the model's production run for the 1988 through 1991 model years, and I had documented seven of them in car graveyards prior to today's Junkyard Find. All of those cars were in reasonably good condition, but today's '88 is an example of a Reatta that was loved to death by its final owner.

The LeBaron name goes well back in Chrysler history, starting when the coachbuilder known as LeBaron Carrossiers was purchased by Detroit car-body-builder Briggs Manufacturing in 1926 and Chrysler bought Briggs in 1953. After various high-end Imperials got LeBaron branding over the decades, Chrysler decided to turn the Dodge Diplomat into a swanky luxury machine and revive the storied LeBaron name in the process. Here's one of those cars, found in a Denver boneyard recently.

Station wagons were falling out of favor in a hurry with American car shoppers as the 1990s progressed, especially after the 1991 Ford Explorer and 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee hit showrooms and put the hammer down on the truckification of our roads. Mitsubishi didn't seem to worry about such trends, though, and a longroof version of the Diamante luxury sedan appeared here for the 1993 model year. Here's one of those extremely rare wagons, found in a Northern California car graveyard a couple of months back.

Over the last couple of decades, the Nissan Altima has become the butt of countless online jokes and is now generally considered the most wretchedly disposable of US-market motor vehicles. We can assume that this is the result of so many years of ex-fleet Altimas being dumped into the market after full depreciation, coupled with a general sense of utter dysfunction in Nissan HQ. In any case, the Altima is an icon now, and I've spent years trying to find a first-year example in the car graveyards I frequent. Finally, in a Denver-area boneyard, I found this battered '93 GXE sedan.

When the first Hyundai Excels appeared on American streets as 1986 models, bearing shockingly cheap price tags, did anyone imagine that someday there would be a big, ostentatious Hyundai luxury sedan with serious V8 power available here? It happened, and I found one of those machines in a car graveyard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a few weeks back.

Toyota sold new Camry station wagons in North America from the 1987 through 1996 model years. I've found a couple of examples of the first-year longroof Camry during my junkyard travels, but the final-year cars remained elusive… until I spotted this one in a Silicon Valley car graveyard in April.

Nissan sold two generations of Silvias badged as Datsun 200SXs in the United States from the 1976 through 1983 model years, then sold the subsequent Silvia generation here as the Nissan 200SX until 1989. Today's Junkyard Find, found in a yard just south of Denver, is a nicely preserved example of the final year of the S110 Silvia, as well as of the Datsun name.