#MalaiseEra
Junkyard Find: 1973 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
Cadillac had become by far the top luxury car manufacturer in North America by the early 1970s, with the all-time pinnacle of Cadillac production reached in the 1973 model year: 304,839 ’73 Cadillacs purred off the assembly line. Then, well, the Yom Kippur War pissed off OPEC’s most important members, European luxury cars gained more than just a minor foothold, and Cadillacs became so commonplace that their prestige value sank for the rest of the decade.
Here’s a big, plush Sedan DeVille, from the final year of Cadillac’s undisputed reign over the American road, photographed in a Denver self-serve car graveyard earlier this year.
Junkyard Find: 1980 Honda Accord Sedan
Junkyard Find: 1977 BMW 320i
Rare Rides: A Stunning 1978 Pontiac Bonneville Coupe
Pontiac is one of the most featured marques of the Rare Rides series, and to date there have been seven of its models represented here. Today’s Rare Ride was in showrooms the very same time as the odd and short-lived Sunbird Safari Wagon, but was intended to entice a much more traditional customer.
Let’s have a look at the upright and respectable Bonneville coupe.
Rare Rides: The Extra THICC 1970 Mercury Marauder X-100
We all recall the Panther-based Mercury Marauder as the last gasp of large, sporty motoring from Mercury. Today’s Rare Ride is the predecessor everyone forgot — the 219-inch Marauder X-100.
Junkyard Find: 1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham Hardtop Sedan
Junkyard Find: 1973 Volkswagen Super Beetle
The air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle was pretty well obsolete when North American sales took off during the late 1950s, and so this mid-1930s design had become shockingly obsolete by the 1970s. Still, Americans understood the Beetle as a comfortably known quantity by that time and the price tag was really cheap, so Beetles and Super Beetles still sold well in 1973.
In the parts of the continent where the Rust Monster remains meek, plenty of these cars still exist, enough for them to be fairly common sights in the big self-service junkyards. Here’s a ’73 Super Beetle in a San Francisco Bay Area yard.
Junkyard Find: 1982 Mercury Cougar GS Two-door Sedan
Junkyard Find: 1981 Mercedes-Benz 300TD Wagon
The oldest Mercedes-Benz W123 diesels are getting pretty close to 45 years of age, which means that— finally— they’re wearing out and becoming easy to find in the big self-service car graveyards that I frequent. Most of these proto-E-Classes sold in North America were sedans, but the wagons developed something of a cult following and I keep my eyes open for discarded examples.
Here’s an ’81 300TD turbodiesel that seems to have been going strong when it got crashed.
Junkyard Find: 1974 Toyota Corona Station Wagon
Rare Rides: The Very Special 1978 Buick Riviera 75th Anniversary Edition
Riviera. The mere mention of the name brings to mind visions of luxury. Perhaps of a CRT that glowed brightly on a stormy night, as your grandmother drove you home from a 4:55 p.m. dinner at Old Country Buffet. Or perhaps of the GM 3800 V6, maybe in elite supercharged form.
Today’s Rare Ride predates either of those anecdotes, and is special for a very different reason: It’s a last-of moment.
Junkyard Find: 1973 Plymouth Duster 340
Rare Rides: The Lancia Beta HPE, a Reliable Shooting Brake Dream From 1977
Junkyard Find: 1979 Mercury Cougar XR-7
Junkyard Find: 1981 Chevrolet Chevette
North Americans could buy the Chevrolet Chevette, featuring the finest in affordable early-1970s Opel Kadett C technology, starting with the 1976 model year. Chevette sales continued all the way through 1987, amazingly enough, because it could be manufactured and sold so cheaply.
Since the Chevette was so simple and sold in such large numbers, enough have survived that I still find them in the big self-service wrecking yards to this day. Here’s a grimy, beat-up ’81 spotted in a Denver yard last winter.
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