#MalaiseEra
Rare Rides: A Beige Plymouth Champ - American Malaise From 1980
Rare Rides has featured a couple of Plymouths before, both of which were sporty and boasted two doors. Today’s Plymouth also has two doors, but is perhaps not quite as performance oriented as its brethren on these pages.
Hailing from 1980, it’s a super Malaisey Champ hatchback.
Junkyard Find: 1981 Toyota Corona Wagon
Because my very first car was a 50-buck ’69 Corona sedan in dazzling beige, I always photograph Coronas when I see them in wrecking yards. Sadly, Toyota stopped selling the Corona in North America in 1982, which means that I might see one every couple of years these days. Here’s a luxurious, fully loaded 1981 Toyota Corona wagon in a Denver self-service yard.
Piston Slap: An Emissions Digression, Dodging Diverted Air?
- All hoses, pipes etc. are there and all valves etc. are working .
- The A.I.R. pump works but the diverter valve has failed (vacuum diaphragm leaks) and is in the open position so it’s always blowing fresh air into the exhaust manifolds.
Junkyard Find: 1978 Toyota Truck
Rare Rides: A Very Malaise Datsun 200SX From 1977
A fourth-generation Nissan 200SX surfaced previously in an edition of Buy/Drive/Burn, where its squared-off good looks went up against two other Japanese coupes from 1986. Today, we step back two generations and have a look at an 200SX from the Seventies.
Maybe you can figure out if Datsun achieved what it was aiming for with this design.
Junkyard Find: 1978 Subaru DL Sedan
Living in Colorado, I see so many discarded Subarus during my junkyard explorations that it takes a very unusual one to make me reach for my camera. An SVX might do it (though not always), or maybe a BRAT (again, not always), or perhaps a Subaru with Saab badges. A really early Subaru, from the Malaise Era days when few Americans took the brand seriously — I think that’s always worth shooting.
Here’s a first-generation Leone that I had to go all the way to Northern California to find.
Junkyard Find: 1980 Datsun 310 Coupe
Junkyard Find: 1976 MG MGB
In all of my decades of visiting junkyards, one thing has remained constant: I’ll see a handful of Fiat 124 Sport Spider s and MG MGB s every year, about the same number in 2018 as I saw each year in 2001 or 1987. Here’s the latest: a red ’76 convertible in a self-service wrecking yard in California’s Central Valley.
QOTD: Change Is a Bad Thing?
On the Junkyard Find post at the start of this week, conversation turned to vehicle models which resisted change from the designer’s pen (or ruler) and the engineer’s… tools. Today we talk about the good old days, and how sometimes things stay the same.
Junkyard Find: 1977 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Coupe
QOTD: Worst of the Worst?
In a Question of the Day post earlier this month, Matthew Guy inquired about the manufacturer which had the greatest number of great cars in their company’s history.
Today we’re going to flip it, and talk about all the awful things. Prepare your fingers for the incoming salt.
Buy/Drive/Burn: A Rear-drive C-body Showdown in 1980
A few months ago we selected a General Motors C-body from the three on offer in the mid-1990s, right at the end of the front-drive platform’s lifespan. Today’s trio is a variation on that theme, as suggested long ago by commenter Sgeffe.
He wanted to talk about rear-drive C-platform offerings — the full-size GMs available shortly before everything started going awry for the large sedan customer. Let’s go.
Junkyard Find: 1982 Dodge 400 Landau Coupe
Lee Iacocca’s original Chrysler K Platform spawned an incomprehensible tangle of K-related offspring between the 1981 and 1995 model years, but only a few U.S.-market models were true K-Cars: the Chrysler LeBaron, Plymouth Reliant, Dodge Aries, Dodge 600, and Dodge 400.
Of these, the 400 has been the hardest for me to find in the self-service wrecking yards I frequent; in fact, this is the first junkyard Dodge 400 I’ve photographed.
Junkyard Find: 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme
Buy/Drive/Burn: American Wagon Life, Circa 1975
Today’s Buy/Drive/Burn setup comes to us via commenter 87 Morgan, who suggested the trio a while ago. For consideration today: Malaise Era transportation for upper middle-class families. These gigantic wagons served as family haulers before the minivan came along and ripped the sculpted carpet from under their feet.
What will it be — the Chrysler, the Mercury, or the Buick?
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