impossibly clean 30 year-old econobox

This blows my mind.

http://denver.craigslist.org/cto/3557880806.html

My girlfriend had a nearly-identical '86 when we first met in '97, down to the paint/interior color. Hers had about 260k hard miles on it when it finally succumbed to wear and rot - it was rapidly shedding large portions of the floor - including my little lady learning to drive a stick on the rather steep hills around her house.

There can't be more than a handful of these things left.

(Hat tip to Gearhead Shirts' FB post for this find.)

Inevitably an automatic. There seems to be a rule that any well-preserved econobox has to have an automatic transmission.

There is a clean AE86 Corolla on my street -- trunk, not a hatch. A miracle, given I live in ON. Of course it is an auto . . .

I'm convinced that automatic transmissions save otherwise cool old cars.

WOW that is a time capsule.

A friend of mine rolled one of those and then, as his next vehicle, chose an FJ55 Land Cruiser.

Believe it or not, I see two or three of those a week down here. Of course they are nowhere near as nice as that one.

How in heck did they keep the engine bay so clean?

Denver doesn't dump salt on the roads all winter. I go there for meetings and constantly point to my Denver coworkers the older rust free cars.

Honda Accords of the same era are popping up with less than 50,000 miles and with absolutely nothing wrong with them. Perfectly clean cars that would look at home on a new car lot. Every one of them has had an automatic.

The answer is simple, people OCD in the "maintain a econotoaster meticulously for 30 years" manner always opt for the auto, driving stick is a chore.

that would be a damn good start to a Chumpcar build, and be easy enough to AIV down to well below $500 to leave room for performance upgrades..

novaderrik wrote: that would be a damn good start to a Chumpcar build, and be easy enough to AIV down to well below $500 to leave room for performance upgrades..

WHAT NO YOU ARE CRAZY

Those cars deserved crushed......I was hoping it'd be the spotless 33k mile '70 Corona my friend drove at mecum, however, that didn't deserve crushed.

I had one of those a while back. Not nearly as nice but with the automatic is was horrible, horrible to drive.

ArthurDent wrote: I had one of those a while back. Not nearly as nice but with the automatic is was horrible, horrible to drive.

Carbureted, early-80s tiny-displacement Japanese tin can – acceleration measurement “weeeeeeeelllll, how long do you have, and can you find a steep hill to point down...” Gorgeously maintained, but I’ll bet it’s nearly unsafe to drive on the highway now. Wonder how wheezy it is up high there in Denver?

It’d be a great little runaround car for the city somewhere, though. Kudos to whoever took care of it this long- looks like it’s never even been sat in.

I see a car like this being purchased new by a widow late her late 60's and being the last car they owned.

For a fun DD, I'd drop it on some 14x7/15x7 panasport knockoffs (or some other oldschool wheel knockoff) with a slightly stretched tire.

Then I'd watch it vanish from my driveway once someone from an unnamed ethnic group with a propensity for these cars saw me in it (the fate of my 2nd EG Civic).

The preservation of that thing is indeed beyond comprehension.

California title but Colorado plates?

how does that work?

My first car, given to me by my parents, was an '88 Chevy Nova. It was even the same color as this one, though mine had some really cool yellow stripes along the lower body... Yeah, it was slow, but it could cruise the highway at 85mph all day long. I used to take 100 mile each way trips with it, which was mostly highway. Man, does that bring back memories.

My car blew a head gasket somewhere around 85k miles. That was in '97. I gave it to my uncle, who owned a repair shop at the time. I think he scrapped it.

A guy showed up at Carlisle last year with an early 80's Accord with under 4000 miles. It was like new.

It's amazing how well a car will hold up with a little old lady buys it new, always keeps it in the garage, never eats or drinks in it, only drives it to church and the store and avoids driving in bad weather.

My grandmother's Pontiac was 20 years old and like new until she died and my father started driving it. He destroyed it within 2 years.

My parents - both in their 80s - have a 1987 Benz W124 300E w/ about 50k miles - silver over black M-B Tex. It's been garaged every day of it's life, never in the snow, washed regularly, never eaten in.

I did new tires/pads/rotors/fluids/filters and a general going over recently, and after I got it up to temp and gave it a good, hard drive it's literally a brand new 1987 car.

They're approached by someone who wants to buy it every time they drive it, but it's mine when they finally sell.

After a literally a decade of deliberation they replaced their 80's Accord EX wagon primary car with...

A 2010 Accord EX. Which now has about 3000 miles.

My take is these cars generally belong to depression era/greatest generation types for whom the purchase of a new car represented a milestone.

Woody wrote: I'm convinced that automatic transmissions save otherwise cool old cars.

Haha yep I know a guy with one just like that, same model 'rolla, minty fresh, all stock, autobox. He's resprayed it once in the original light blue color but apart from that, just maintenance.

motomoron wrote: My take is these cars generally belong to depression era/greatest generation types for whom the purchase of a new car represented a milestone.

My grandma is the same way, but she says it is mainly due to her retirement pension amount. She is mid 80's and has already said her Ford 500 will be the last car she owns. She had a 22k mile LTD before it.