QOTD: Roadside Savior?

If you’re into older cars, especially older cars most people might overlook — frankly, cars regular folks might not walk across a room for if someone offered it for free — this scenario won’t be unfamiliar.

You’re driving down a seldom-travelled street, perhaps in a seldom-travelled town, and spot something in your peripheral vision. A lightning bolt courses through your nervous system. Suddenly awake, instantly aware and ready for action, you slam on the brakes and jerk the wheel to the right, coming to rest by the roadside in a cloud of dust.

There’s an old, potentially garbage car over there, and it might be for sale.

Just such an occurrence took place this past weekend as your author struggled to find an out-of-the-way campsite out in the sticks. Things were running behind schedule, but your author’s mind wasn’t so focused on reading signs for Shady Acres or Moonlight Cove to not notice something desirable off to his right. And the object that brought 2,800 lbs of Ohio-made metal to a halt was NOT the C3 Corvette languishing on cracked pavement outside an abandoned-looking (but perhaps not totally abandoned) roadside garage/cafe.

Sorry, but I’m rarely in the mood to gaze upon a ’79 Vette, as I am no longer 12. I am, however, very apt to go apeshit over something akin to motoring Cialis: a pillarless hardtop coupe. Mmmm. Who doesn’t want to slide behind the wheel of one of those? Making this B-pillar-discarding vehicle all the more arresting was the fact it was from the 1980s…and Japanese.

What was it, you ask? Why, none other than a post-refresh second-generation Mazda 626 — a four-cylinder, rear-drive coupe of tidy proportions hailing from 1981 or ’82. Even the color was seductive.

The Mazda, looking fetching but bearing no “for sale” sign, looked like it had an owner. I hadn’t the time to stick around and find out (even if I did, concern about the owner’s stance on Castle Doctrine made loitering in a place free of witnesses an unsavory proposition); plus, your author’s funds — as well as limited parking space — made a new addition to the family just another pipe dream. Alas. One day I’ll become an adult.

While vintage Mazda enjoyment is off the table for yours truly, this scenario may have had a different outcome had any one of you been driving by.

Today, we’d like to know: Have you ever purchased a vintage/collector/just plain interesting car after seeing it on the side of the road?

[Image: ©2019 Murilee Martin/TTAC, Mazda]