Junkyard Find: 1986 Isuzu I-Mark Hatchback

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

In the late 1980s, if you didn’t want to buy your Isuzu Gemini as a Geo/Chevrolet Spectrum, you could get it as a genuine Isuzu. I-Marks are (and were) very rare, though we have seen an ’87 in this series), and so this one with gigantic ISUZU badging has some historical interest for the true connoisseur of cheapo 80s hatchbacks.


The only I-Mark I’ve ever driven was the needs-some-TLC ’81 diesel in the clip above, and it was a fine car. However, that was the earlier Chevette-sibling rear-wheel-drive version. Today’s I-Mark Junkyard Find is the front-wheel-drive sibling of the Holden Gemini (among many others).

That’s the 70-horse 1.5 liter 4XC1 engine right there, close cousin to the engine in the early-90s Lotus Elan.

It was cheaper than the Civic, Corolla, and Sentra, and… it was cheaper.

This one almost made it to 100,000 miles during its 27 years on the planet.

It probably still ran when towed away, but expired tags spelled its doom.

When a car owner knows that the junkyard is the likely next stop, the Cotton Candy Little Tree usually gets replaced by a New Car Scent tree. That’s the law.

You want luxury? An I-Mark with factory sunroof in 1986— that’s luxury!









Murilee Martin
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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  • RatherhaveaBuick RatherhaveaBuick on Jan 24, 2013

    Love those icons on the climate control.

  • Timewarrior27 Timewarrior27 on Sep 22, 2016

    My first new car was a 1986 Isuzu I-Mark, I am still driving it almost 30 years later with about 85,000 miles and counting. Finding parts is a bear I admit, but I really have not needed to do a lot of repairs. I did just last week had to replace the original ignition coil. Heck it has not even needed clutch work.

  • 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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