#sedan

The original Ford Taurus first appeared as a 1986 model, going through three generations and nearly 10 million sales (counting the Mercury Sable) before getting the axe in October of 2006. That made 2007 the final model year for the "real" Taurus, and I've found one of these rare cars in a New Orleans self-service junkyard.

When I'm sniffing around in car graveyards and I find a discarded Toyota or Honda with between 300,000 and 400,000 miles, I won't photograph it unless there's something interesting about it beyond just the odometer reading. With Nissan machinery, however, the bar is lower; today's Junkyard Find should make both Yokohama and Smyrna proud.

When we think about rear-wheel-drive Japanese luxury sedans of the early-to-middle 1990s, the Toyota Cressida, Lexus LS 400 and Infiniti Q45 come to mind immediately. Mazda was in that game as well, though, with the all-but-forgotten 929, and I've found one of those rare cars in a Colorado junkyard.

The 1960 model year saw a trio of brand-new compact Detroit cars ( the Corvair, Valiant and Falcon) appear to do battle with increasingly popular small imports. Sales were strong, and the Detroit Big Three plus the Kenosha One got busy preparing midsize cars to slide between the compacts and the full- sizers. Ford's entry was the Fairlane, which debuted as a 1962 model. Here's one of those first-generation Fairlanes, found in a self-service boneyard just south of Denver, Colorado.

Lee Iacocca's Chrysler Corporation sold K-Cars in the United States for the 1981 through 1989 model years, saving itself from near-certain bankruptcy in the process. These cars are becoming difficult to find in the Ewe Pullets of the land, and I hadn't written about a true K in the Junkyard Finds series since way back in 2019. Today, we'll look at a K sedan that survived 36 years before being retired in California.

Mitsubishi began selling cars with its own branding in the United States in late 1982, introducing three car models and a pickup as 1983 models. We had an extensive range of Mitsubishi models to choose from for quite a while, including a credible luxury sedan known as the Diamante, but those days are long gone. Today's Junkyard Find is one of the very last Diamantes sold here, now residing in a Denver car graveyard.

I've been writing about junkyardified cars here at TTAC since November of 2010, when I documented a pair of Fiat 128s in a Denver boneyard. Since then, we've seen plenty of discarded Volvos here, but no Volvo 200 Series four-door sedans!

As one of the few manufacturers still choosing to play in the midsize family sedan segment, Hyundai continues to update and improve its four-door Sonata. For the upcoming model year, its new price will not be as alarming as its new styling.

Peugeots! The final model year for new Peugeot cars in the United States was 1991, though I find the occasional Mexican-market Pug here and we can still purchase a new Peugeot pepper grinder right now. Back in the 1980s, though, Peugeot managed to hang onto a semblance of American marketplace relevance with the 505. I've found an oil-burning 505 in a boneyard in California's Central Valley, so let's take a look.

The branches of the Chrysler K-Car Family Tree are far too numerous to describe here, since so many different K-derived cars and minivans were built from the 1981 through 1995 model years for the North American market. One of the rarest types is the 1985-1989 Dodge Lancer, and I've found an example in a Silicon Valley self-service wrecking yard.

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.

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.

In a rare double feature, Hyundai threw the covers off a pair of updates today instead of choosing to drag the news cycle out over a couple of weeks. Even more rare? The rigs in question are both sedans.

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.

We interrupt the stream of breathless news from places like the crushingly self-important Monterey Car Week to bring you fascinating pricing details of the somnambulant 2024 Nissan Altima.