The early-90s Escort GT was a decently fast car for its day, but Escorts were always such disposable cars that you seldom see any of these semi-goofy-looking GTs these days, on the street or in the junkyard. Here’s an example that I found in a Denver self-service yard last week. (Read More…)

Keeping track of American-market versions of the Corolla got difficult in the early 1980s, because you had the rear-drive E70 Corolla, and then you had the unrelated front-wheel-drive Corolla Tercel. Here’s an example of a “real” Corolla that I spotted at a Denver self-service yard last week. (Read More…)

I’ve had more Honda Civics than any other type of car (at least one example of each of the first five Civic generations), at one point owning two ’85 hatches and a CRX at the same time. The mid-80s CVCC cars were great to drive and very reliable (provided you didn’t overheat the engine— ever), but when California tightened up smog-check requirements in the early 2000s it became impossible to keep one registered. Why? This. (Read More…)

A couple of recent Junkyard Find Datsuns (the ’78 510 and ’77 280Z) featured mysterious “FLOOR TEMP” idiot lights on their dashes. Floor temp? Why? (Read More…)

Mitsubishi has struggled mightily to get a solid toehold in the North American market. The Eclipse sold fairly well, but Mitsubishi’s top-of-the-line (for America; we never got the Debonair) luxury sedan never really emerged from obscurity. Here’s an example I found yesterday at a Denver self-service wrecking yard. (Read More…)

Wait a minute— this Malaise Era heap, with its solid rear axle and AMC Hornet-esque lines, this car can’t be a 510! That’s what I thought when I spotted this car at a Northern California self-service yard last month, having forgotten that Nissan’s American marketers slapped 510 badges on the 710/Violet/Stanza/200B for the ’78 and ’79 model years. This is the first time I’ve seen one of these things in at least 20 years. (Read More…)

By 1985, it was clear to everyone that the Renault Alliance, product of the strange AMC/Renault mashup that failed to save the “not too big to fail” Wisconsin automaker, wasn’t quite as good as the ’83 Motor Trend Car of the Year award suggested. Still, enough Alliances sold that you still see them in the junkyard every now and then. Here’s one I spotted in a California self-serve yard last month. (Read More…)

Americans have never had many choices for front-wheel-drive pickup trucks; you could make your own by dropping a random pickup bed on a Sawzall-ized Sentra, or you could go with an Omnirizon-based Dodge Rampage or a Golf-based VW Caddy. Not many Rampages or Rabbit pickups left, though I did find this ’80 VW in a Denver junkyard last year. Now here’s another one, apparently quite unrusted, getting ready to be eaten by The Crusher. (Read More…)

It was just a couple of months ago that I shot this blue ’82 Sapporo in a California junkyard… and now here’s another Sapporo in the same yard. (Read More…)

There was a time, let’s say in the late 1980s, when the quantity of Pintos in junkyards went from “glut” to “famine,” as if a switch was flipped and all the Pintos just disappeared. The same thing happened with the early Hyundai Excel, too, only they lived, died, and got scrapped within a five-year period versus the 10-to-15-year period for the Pinto. Still, every so often I find a lone Pinto that hung on an extra couple of decades before getting junked. For example, this tan ’74 that showed up in a Denver self-service yard last month. (Read More…)

I’ve started this series with all analog clocks, but I think I’m going to dip into my extensive collection of digital automotive timepieces pretty soon. For today, however, we’ll stay old-school with another hand-equipped unit. This one has some heavy-duty-upscale Roman numerals and the right-turn signal indicator built in, so you know it came from a car that at least aspired to prestige (though it’s not a Ford Aspire). Study this clock, make your best guess, and then click the “More” link to see if you had it right. (Read More…)

I spent a lot of time crawling around this ’69 Dodge A108 van during the last couple of weeks, picking up much-needed parts for my ’66 Dodge A100 Hell Project, and so I became quite familiar with the A108’s junkyard neighbor: this ’79 Jeep Cherokee. (Read More…)

In yesterday’s Name That Car Clock challenge, we went all the way back to 1965 and admired a beautiful, though admittedly nonfunctional, Oldsmobile timepiece. Today, we’re going with something from my collection of junkyard-harvested clocks that’s a bit newer. Quick, what’s the year/make/model of the car that yielded this clock to my junkyard toolkit? (Read More…)

Here’s a car that you still see frequently in Colorado, both on the street and in the junkyard. You see Tercel 4WD wagons on the street here because they’re cheap, sensible winter cars and they tend to keep grinding out the hundreds of thousands of miles in their Tercelian slow-motion fashion… and you see them in the junkyard because they’re not worth enough to fix when something major finally fails. (Read More…)

We saw a Porsche 944 clock in yesterday’s Name That Car Clock challenge, and today we’re going to dig even deeper into my big collection of automobile timepieces for a really tough one. I love the look of this clock so much that I bought it knowing it didn’t work (I bring a 12-volt battery pack to the junkyard when I’m hunting clocks). You decide what year/make/model vehicle gave me this clock, then make the jump to see if your guess was correct. (Read More…)