After sitting forlorn in the back lot for three years, I decided to get the old ’77 Dodge Chinook out on the road again. I fixed the brakes and and attended to a few minor other issues, and we packed up and headed for the coast on Saturday morning, since a heat wave was forecast. It was certainly cool out there; a bit too much so, as a fog bank was rolling in right on the deck. So after a nice walk on the beach and lunch, we headed up and in, as in the very rugged mountains directly overlooking this section of the coast.
The forest roads that wind up and through here are utterly deserted, and there’s plenty of free camping on this national forest land. And in the place we picked the second night, a little pull-off next to a burbling creek, I stumbled into this about 20 yards in the undergrowth: a genuine shitbox. And what a lovely one at that, it even had a padded seat; Stephanie and I both enjoyed using it. And as a beneficial consequence, I don’t have to dump out the Chinook’s holding tank.
The term “shitbox” is most commonly used for cheap, basic cars, new or used. The Hyundai Accent/Excel profiled today at CC perfectly fits the definition. As does my xBox. So what’s your favorite shitbox?
It was great too be back in the Chinook. There’s few things better than tea time at the beach in its sunny cabin when there’s a cool breeze outside.
A chance to catch up on some (non-automotive) reading.
It was the first time Lil’ Man was along, and that was was mostly fine, except that we had some disagreements about who should drive.
This is where we found ourselves the first night, up on Cummins Ridge, some 2000 feet overlooking the Pacific coast, down there in the fog, past the trees. Totally deserted, and no cell coverage for three days. Very relaxing, to say the least; came home very refreshed.
So back to the question at hand: What’s your favorite shitbox?
Well I just bought a 1986 Toyota Camry which I named Jibbers for $600 so I can learn stick shift driving, but an AAA certified shop says it needs about $3,600 worth of work. I assume my Camry meets the qualifications of a lovable shit box since I enjoy driving Jibbers even when I stall.
I have encountered stinging insects in outhouses back in New York so I quickly got into the habit of kicking the lid to see if anything is buzzing. I have not had the luck of finding a toilet worthy of sitting on in the woods, but I do have toilet paper and alcohol hand sanitizer in my vehicle should an escapade in the woods be warranted.
Glad to hear you two had a nice and relaxing vacation and I love the scenery in Oregon.
I really like those old Camrys from the ’80s, or almost any Toyota from that era for that matter. They seem to be very high-quality, well-engineered, and durable vehicles.
Cool motorhome Paul…..didn’t realize this was part of your collection. Love the dog in the driver’s seat. When my dog tags along and I go into a store or something she always moves to the front seat every time.
Onto your question I once had to drive a 3-cylinder Geo Metro for about a week but with the 5-speed I sort of enjoyed driving it. On the flip side it was nice to see it go.
I had this for a while. It also had a padded seat.
(Light bar optional)
What was the lightbar for?
I had just pulled it off a decommissioned security vehicle so I tried it on for size. The only picture I could find quickly for my Festiva.
It did look good though.;)
Hmmmm – favorite and shitbox are two words that I don’t think I have ever applied to the same car. Perhaps it would be the bright blue and white AMC Pacer (with the Navajo cloth seats) that a girlfriend owned when I was in law school. It was definitely a shitbox, and at the time struck me as the only car I had ever been embarrassed to be seen in. But now, perhaps it would at least have fermented into a quirky shitbox, so I guess that’s it.
Best cheap shitbox I ever bought was a 82 Mazda 323 van, cost a slab of Boags draught 24 cans $31.95 retail, I tossed in a used engine some welds had is inspected passedand registered and drove and worked it hard for three years it barely missed a beat, the only repair needed was a new universal joint theoretically non replaceable according to Mazda, but they know very little about bush mechanicing and I replaced it anyway,Seen here loaded to the windows with fire wood it made a great powered wheelbarrow.
Aaahhh Boags, they would rust b4 ur eyes Kiwi.
I sold that car when we moved to Geeveston where I worked it snapped the timing chain on Gormanston hill Queenstown for its new owner, an actress who wanted a cheap bomb.
I know a few actresses down here,I wonder,lol.That is a story have rarely heard,snapping a timing chain,Peugeot 404 timing chains would last for more than half a million miles.
My 1st car at age 15 was a white with red leather MK V11 Jaguar.A few Vauxhalls later and at age 16/17 in 1972/3 was a 1965 MK2 3.8 litre auto Jaguar,British racing green with tan leather and both were those boxes,pure excrement.
1981 Chevette! Slow, Not very comfy, No A/C, AM only radio. OTOH, always ran, simple as a Zippo lighter to maintain, and nearly as cheap to fill!
Reminds me of an elderly woman I assisted and she drove a late 1970s Mazda 323.Her name was Mrs Strange,an Englishwoman living in Australia and a former senior newspaper journalist.In that same time assisted two other elderly women,one was Mrs Smart and the other was mrs Strong.A couple of times and after a big night I would turn up and momentarily pan through my mind,are you Mrs Strange,Strong or Smart?
That would be my first car, a 1982 Renault 5 (“Le Car”) with an 845 cc engine. Manual 4-speed transmission, manual choke and everything else was manual too. I bought it ultra-cheap when it was 6 years old, with a brand- and period correct portion of rust. Very economical and it served me well, I constantly drove it to the max and nothing went wrong.
Nothing beats starting to drive in an underpowered shitbox with a vaguely shifting manual transmission. Any next car is an easy-peasy powerhouse, so merci, Monsieur Renault !
Ah! The car I remember most fondly is exactly the same spec – my grandmother’s ’81 R5 – but I can’t bring myself to call it a shitbox.
My gran had scraped all four corners on her wrought iron gates, and it developed four gaping holes. After she gave it to my parents in ’86 (we didn’t have a car) my dad and I used hilarious amounts of plastic filler and painted various parts of it in something of a red oxide colour called “Comma Stop Rust”. The car was white, and after a friend of the family said it looked like an Ayrshire cow, we resprayed it with rattle cans – no primer. The filler was still extremely lumpy.
I never drove it, but did steer as we backed out of driveway. I was born the same year as the car. I cried when my parents sold it for 350 quid in 1988 – with 36,000 miles on the clock.
Well, at least your grandmother’s R5 left the yard in “good health”. Mine went up in flames after a welding job going wrong…
In the second half of the eighties my brother had a Fiat 127 as his first car. It was toxic waste-green (quite a popular 127 color, actually) and had a 1,050 cc engine with a 4-speed manual transmission. (what else ?)
IIRC it was from 1978. Little to no rust, unlike my R5. Overall the little Fiat was just better built. My brother revved it -in all gears- like he was riding a motorcycle. Braking and cornering, ditto. As a matter of fact, the little Fiat seemed to enjoy that treatment.
I hope that “favorite” is meant to be sarcastic.
One of my fiends in elementary school’s dad drove a 4-door Ford Aspire. This was late-1990s/early-2000s, and the car was already a beater, missing hubcaps, body damage, and yellowed headlights.
I always thought it was odd his father drove this, as they were comfortably middle-class and lived in a nice house on a nice street and they ended up sending the kid to private school (we lost touch after that).
I forget what the father did, but the mother was a paralegal at a big Boston law firm and drove a purple Plymouth Voyager “Rallye” – even though they only had one kid, which I also thought was strange.
I am an only child, but my folks bought a 95 Voyager anyway since it was kind of like a pickup and van all rolled into one with better fuel economy and ride quality which comes in handy when living in the countryside. Minivans are also cheaper since everyone rather have a truck or SUV among other reasons.
My favourite was a 1980 rabbit ( in euro GTI trim) great car ran it for years rebuilt the engine and clutch. Later sold it on to a buddy who needed a cheap set of wheels. When he tried to register it in BC they said it was to rusty so he tried to blow the motor up but had no luck and sold it on to another guy who was restoring another one. I like to think that motor is happily chugging along but I am sure by now it has been turned into a fridge…
The only real shitbox I’ve owned was the 1961 Ford I purchased for 75 dollars in the late spring of 1968. It would barely move under its own power as the clutch was pretty much shot; it was a moot point anyway as I had a different 223 CID six and Fordomatic that was swapped in. Even after Mr. Keach (who did the work) slathered about 10 pounds of Bondo on the rear quarters and then painted the entire car, the Ford wasn’t much to look at. It did get me through my senior year of high school so I guess the mission was accomplished.
The “facility” you found at your campsite reminds me oh so well of my days in the Army National Guard. The main part of each annual training was a 10 day field exercise, typically conducted as far away from any modern conveniences as possible. People learned to be very creative dealing with nature’s calls. The fact that so many are willing to go out in the woods, voluntarily, and live like it was the 19th century remains a complete and total mystery to me 🙂
My Idea of “roughing it” on vacation is bad cell service and no wifi! I’m a city boy, The outer suburbs are rural enough for me!
Last week i received a letter from my old school telling me i was invited to its 170th anniversary,oldest school in OZ.In 1969 we were taken in the long wheelbase Landrover to a dorm style wooden hut halfway up the snow and ice covered Mount Arthur.Further up the mountain was an army obstacle course,ropes,swings,walls,leeches etc.We were 12 years old.I liked the obstacle course but in the middle of winter we climbed to the top of the mountain and down the steep front.We chopped firewood for the fire/stove,had icy cold showers from a water course from the mountain,if when chopping wood we found a wattle grub,we had to eat it.After 2 weeks of that we had to carry our backpacks and walk down the mountain and along the bitumen road to Launceston and the school.That was about 14 miles.Despite the hardship and crap food it was an interesting experience.My sister was married to a lighthouse keeper and lived on steep and wild remote islands,there is a certain beauty about simplicity.
My girlfriend and me travelled to sister’s house in the bush in 1978 in our 1972 VW Dormobile camper and as usual she asked if I would make that cake.Homemade 2 sponges,chocolate and soaked in rum,a filling of unsalted butter,dark chocolate,eggs etc and covered in whipped cream with strawberry spirals on top and half moon shaped thin orange slices,kiwi fruit medallions and sometimes traces of black organic sultanas randomly across it.I noticed more men women and their children than usual and asked my sister why.She said word has got out that you are coming and they are here for the cake.Talk about laugh.She told me of her new neighbour across a few paddocks and a creek and said he was an author,James McQueen.She said he liked a drink and soon after he appears in the small and busy kitchen.Am introduced,he said call me Jim,we talked and then I asked him did he see a story on ABC news this week.He told me he didn,t have a television and that he has a few chooks and spends most days in his vegetable garden.He said every night at 6pm he goes inside,turns the ABC radio news on,sits in his old armchair and his favourite chook comes in,sits on the arm of his chair and interprets the news for him.Everyone was in fits of laughter.Jim has departed now but my memory of that very funny bloke lives on.
I always thought those 2 terms were mutually exclusive, but since they may not be….my 69 VW beetle with the hot rodded engine would probably fit the description. It looked raggedy as the rear fenders had “ripped”/torn lower edges, the paint looked really weathered, and the front seats were bordering on shredded. But that thing ran like a “scalded cat”.
1981 Dodge Omni Miser, my first car and the only one that ever left me stranded (vapor lock – I don’t miss carburetors).
My favorite SB would be my ’75 Audi Fox 2 door. Ran like a ape after I swapped in a used wrecking yard ’83 1.8L GTI engine, and was reasonably reliable for the 2 1/2 years I owned it. Had terrible torque steer, and I managed to explode a couple of outer CV joints on the right side. Been gone 20 years now, but that goofy car still brings a smile to my face when I think about it 🙂
My favorite shitbox would be my red Yugo. My red one had all the luxury items in it (meaning actual working AC and a AM/FM/cassette stereo, but only two speakers in the doors). I had the factory Cromodora alloys, too. I bought it for about $1K back in 1991, drove the little beast for 2 years before it was totaled. I used to take that thing into Atlanta traffic twice a day, ran like a little flea among the SUVs.
It had bad rings and there was a lot of blow by. At high engine speeds it would get sucked up into the PCV system and eventually flood the carb with motor oil. One cloudy November evening I made the evening news (the traffic cam shots) as my car had just ingested a bunch of oil and had stalled at the exit ramp to the Stone Mountain Freeway. Cars were backed up for miles. Good times…
Otherwise it was a great car. It ran well (once I figured out how to deal with the blow by), got about 38-40 MPG, had a clever folding rear seat that could be rearranged into a shelf and other than a broken shift linkage (easily fixed with a $10 part) it never left me stranded.
(The picture is not my car. I used to have pix of it, but lost them in a storage unit flood.)
Ok, for the first time in my life I felt a pang of …something… …positiveish… about the idea of driving a small home out to the middle of nowhere away from everybody and everything for the weekend.
I’ve never been one for camping, but to just drive out to the woods and then walk back and sit in a comfy chair and read all weekend… now that appeals to me.
Yes, I’m up for the occasional hike but day trips only please. My idea of roughing it on vacation is staying at a hotel that only provides basic cable and no Wi-Fi. I will say that the best part of my National Guard days was being far enough away from civilization that you could not see any electric light at night, that was extremely cool. Of course this coolness was sort of mitigated by tactical road marches on cloudy nights under blackout conditions when you could literally not see the front of the vehicle that you were driving. And then, when you remember that the 65 ton main battle tank behind you is being driven by someone who has averaged four hours of sleep per night for over a week, well that just makes everything that much more exciting.
I assure you it’s great. Especially so if the scenery is great too. Most of the comforts of home, but cut off from all the stressors. The most relaxing thing I know. I came home feeling like a different person the other day.
(Okay – I just deleted my previous response after paying closer attention to the loose definition of s***box.)
Though it wasn’t mine, I have to give it up one time for my older brother’s ’85 Renault Encore 3-door hatchback toward the end it’s life. Manual steering, non-reclining front seats, no A/C, not even an AM radio. You couldn’t even buy a cheap stereo for it without also having to pay to have it wired for speakers!
Still, I enjoyed driving it infinitely more than the 7 year old ’84 Ford Tempo GL our parents passed to me as my first car. At least the Encore ran 90% of the time. By the end of that little hatchback’s life, it had all kinds of homemade switches and things installed into it, for example, to keep the engine fan running, etc. It was a sad day when what was probably the best-loved Renault Encore in the entire United States was left for dead in the late 90’s.
*Non reclining* front seats? I didn’t know those Renaults had such a thing. The Alliance I had, it had the best seats of any car I’ve ever owned.
I tirelessly chide the Jalopnik site writers to stop using the juvenile four letter expeltives…and now it followed me here. Drat.
Perhaps some are offended by four letter words, And as far as abusive talk or flat out profanity, I would largely agree, But the word S**tbox (SB) or Piece of S**t (POS) have such a long history of “car talk” that it’s OK with me. In fact POS as an acronym has been so long part of my automotive experience, that the first time I saw it as a term for Point of Sale, I laughed, Especially when the POS device failed, revealing itself to be a POS.
Wow that’s a lot of camper in a small package!
I guess mine would be a ’73 Mercedes 280 SE 4.5. It looked great when I bought it and it pulled like an ox with that marvelous V-8, but it turned out to be a rotted corpse held together by its skin, like a perfectly thin 4-pack-a-day smoker. The mechanic I took it to put his arm around my shoulder and gently suggested euthanizing it. No matter. It was my first time behind the wheel of a big Merc, even a 20-year old one) and its handling and power was a revelation. I ran it for a year then sold it cheap to another guy who ran it another year until the front bumper fell off and the swing axles collapsed.
On a wall in my office at work, I have my 2016 Shit House calendar, with each month having a privy in a scenic location. Each month has quotes about attending to nature in peaceful solitude. Your picture would fit well on such a calendar.
As for shitboxes, I have had pangs of missing Mrs. Jason’s 1996 Ford Escort. It was a fun, if woefully underpowered, drive.
I formerly worked for a consulting firm that specialized in challenging wastewater treatment designs (e.g. leachfields). They had a subscription to Pumper magazine, which contained countless full page glamour-shot advertisements for port-a-potties, and included a septic “Truck of the Month” feature.
Now, that was a great read – especially the stuck-back-on rear spoiler!
I did not know that existed. A Christmas present for myself!
Back in the late 80s to 90s my friends and I accumulated a large number of rusty field cars. They ran fine but were too rusty to fix. So we raced them around the farm after the crops were cut. A 73 Buick Century was my favorite. The 350 had plenty of power and the snow tires really threw the mud. The vinyl buckets were comfy and the basket handle shifter was cool. We had two 81 Escorts that excelled at creeping over soft ground. But the Kent 1600 cc engines were no match in the races for a 76 Rabbit. The VW would pull away each lap, even though the shift linkage broke, leaving it permanently stuck in 3rd gear.
We had so many other shitbox race cars, a Citation with no hood latch, 77 Fury with a leaf spring poking through the trunk, 76 Duster with a rubber block in place of a torsion bar, 78 Caprice, 81 Parsienne, 82 Olds 88, with a 3.8, our slowest shitbox. The most durable shitbox? A shortbox G-van with a 350 that cost me $300. That one survived the races. I fixed it and put it back on the road. It lived through 3 more owners and 12 more years, and finally died with 500k km on the clock.
Good times.
That would have to be a Fiat Nuova 500 that belonged to my friend Willy ( who also owned the Almost COAL: Taunus 12 M). It was white and had holes in the rag top. That earned it the nickname ‘Saltshaker”.
I owned a 1959 Fiat Nuova,suicide doors,no sunroof though.Owned several later Fiat 500 cars great fun.
I think that car would’ve fit in to the trunk of the ’67 Lincoln I had! T-I-N-Y!
Is a Saturn S-Series considered a shitbox? Maybe I’ll answer my own question- I think there were a couple of CC articles about that generation Saturn being “plastic, buzzy, and oil-burning.” I have one of them, and it has only two of the aforementioned qualities — it’s not buzzy. I recently had a massive exhaust leak repaired and the engine is unbelievably quiet, even with almost no sound insulation anywhere on the car.
I think shitboxes can have a different kind of appeal. Maybe it’s the reliability or ease of repair that makes them a good car for someone.
My favorite shitbox was not small. It didn’t start life as a shitbox either. It was a 1985 Mercury Colony Park wagon I bought for $500 as a winter beater. There is something liberating about driving a car you don’t care about.
Wow….I thought I stumbled upon that loser site Jalopnik. Curbside Classic is a much more respected site with intelligent writers.
Of course it is. Thank you!
My current daily driver 1970 Opel Kadett 1100 sedan. It is a tin can shitbox extrordinaire. It makes no pretensions about being anything else. It is happy with being what it is. Super fun to drive, ultra reliable, and a big middle finger to those with the gotta have the biggest/newest mentality. A serious attention getter too, from toddlers on up. In the kids case, I think that they see this tiny yellow car and think that someone left their Tonka toy at the curb.
For me, it was my 197x? Honda Life Kei car which I acquired for $400 or around 1980 when I was living in Japan. It had a 360cc engine and a shifter sticking out of the dash. Most of my travel in those days was by Kawasaki, or by train, but sometimes (Tokyo has a miserable and looong rainy season) a fella just needed a car.
The car was a pasty faded yellow when I got it and was pretty tired. It just managed to keep up with traffic – which maxed out at around 40 KPH. No radio, nothing you could call a ventilation system, and not much heat. Still, it ran, and it kept me dry. I had it for about a year (or more?) and never opened the hood to look at the engine. When the battery died, I discovered you could push start it by yourself by putting it in gear, opening the driver’s door and giving it a standing scooter push. It was a pretty good definition of “minimum car” and worn-out-minimum-car at that. I still have a soft spot in my heart for it though….
Here’s a picture of a much nicer example
Paul this is your site and all, but let’s keep it classy, This is a great site. Not like I’ve never heard the word. Just don’t like to see it used in a post heading. Just my two cents.
You can’t possibly be serious, right? I was reading about shitboxes in car and Driver over 30 years ago. It’s a term of endearment, really. And what I found in the woods really is a shitbox.
Seriously, I am a bit amazed that at least three or more commenters have objected to the use of the term “shitbox”.
First of all, love the Chinook. There’s nothing like getting away from everything for a few days, not to mention a tough old Mopar drivetrain to get you there and back.
For the four-wheeled shitboxes, I had a few. The first was a ’78 Cutlass Salon that my folks bought new, and then passed to my older sister for a few years. When she finished college, I got it and drove it hard for three years. It never let me down – the 3.8 was slow but always fired up first time and never used a drop of oil, and the transmission worked flawlessly – I don’t think the engine had enough power to stress it much. The build quality was crap, but it had good bones and the Gutless served us for 12 years before my dad sold it to a friend who got a few more years out of it. The next was an ’81 Datsun 310 I inherited in 1985. Slow and noisy, but fun to drive and good on gas. I kept it for three years until it rusted out underneath – the mechanic told me to get rid of it when I took it in for a safety check. They were beaters, but I got a lot of good use and good times out of them. As for the other kind – it would have to be one in Massassauga Park near Parry Sound, Ontario at 5am one morning. No rattlesnakes or stinging insects, but a big old owl in the trees nearby gave one hungover camper a bit of a surprise.
Well this is going to sound Strange! In 1967 I turned 16 and since my mom had my 55 Ford that my uncle gave me (after he spun a rod bearing) towed away 6 months before my 16th birthday, I went out a bought a 55 Chevy Stovebolt 6 cyl 2 door post sedan for $25. It had holes in the floor and rust all over it and a 3 speed on the floor with a mickey mouse JC Whitney shifter that the the previous owner installed wrong so the shift pattern was backwards. First gear was all the way over to the right and down. In ran like crap and water splashed up through the floor in the rain but it got my friends and I to school every day. After a few weeks of torture my uncle gave me a Morris Minor that was pretty nice except the transmission had bad 1st & reverse gears. My father and I replace the cluster gear and had it back on the road in a few days. I sold the 55 Chevy for $35 some guy at a different high school. And I was hooked on English cars for the next few years. with only one exception the car that broke my heart A Midnight Blue 65 Comet Caliente Convertible with a White top and White interior.But that is another story.
When my parents and I moved back to CT in the late 80s, there was a brief period where mom was finishing grad school and dad had lost his job while we lived with my grandmother. We had jettisoned the ’82 Chevette Scooter (well, it died at 75K, actually), and mom was driving the ’88 Hyundai to class.
After a few months, dad got a job again, so he’d drive the Excel during the day, and mom would use it for night classes. But then mom graduated from her masters program at Yale and promptly got a job with a 45 min commute. What to do?
We didn’t have a lot of extra cash and my parents didn’t want to ask my grandparents for help. After some careful perusal of the classifieds, Dad found an ’84 Honda Civic low trim hatchback with 150K or more miles. This must have been early 1990 when this happened. It was triple beige, 4 speed manual with scorching hot beige vinyl seats. But it was peppy, got 40 mpg highway, and allowed mom to drive the new car on her commute. Soon after purchase, a lady ran into him in the parking lot, squashing in the left headlight and cracking a parking light. For whatever reason, Dad didn’t take the car for repair, in fact I’ll bet my parents pocketed any insurance check since we needed the cash.
Instead, we were in a rundown shopping center and a man and his very young son approached. “I can take that dent out now for $50” he told Dad. Dad said okay, and the man came back with some tools and hammered out the dent very presentably. Then Dad and I went home, taped off the front clip and spraypainted it black, like those pleathery covers some people put on their headlights back then….now the Civic looked kind of menacing and sporty!
It never let him down and we sold it to a very young pastor in 1994 with 220K on the clock.
Definitely my favorite shitbox….though the Chevette was actual shit and the Hyundai was not much better.
My favorite SB is my ’74 Datsun B210 hatchback. Bought it from a friend when it was about 8 or 9 years old. He charged me $400, but not a penny extra for the butterscotch yellow paint and rusty floorboards. Fixed those with some sheet metal, pop rivets and plastic roof cement and it ended up fairly water-tight. Some tan shag carpet pieces to cover it all spiffed it up rather nicely.
Before long, that little A13 engine started smoking like a freight train when it was cold. No mosquitos in MY neighborhood!
I was working for Nationwise Auto Parts at the time and discovered that Datsun engine parts were crazy cheap. Pulled the motor, sent the head to the machine shop, honed the cylinders, put it back together, and voila! The sweetest little 1300 cc sewing machine motor you’d ever want to have! Just enough pep to get out of its own way with the 4-speed tranny, too!
Once repaired, that car made the perfect winter beater. Start it up in the coldest Ohio winter and five minutes later, you had HOT heat, and plenty of it. The thing never ran hot in the summer, either. Stone reliable and much more user-friendly than the VWs my dad had when I was a teenager.
Drove it until the spring of 1986 when rust claimed most of the welds in the left-front inner fender. I can’t remember for sure, but I might’ve shed a tear after handing the keys to the man at the scrapyard. (Maybe it was just some rust in my eye? 😉 )
A sentiment about many friends and family (and a couple of my own) cars. Those are where the best memories come from! Those beasts that saw us through!
I’ve had many shitboxes through the years but the one that I have now is my favorite. It’s a 1999 Dodge Dakota reg cab with an 8 foot bed. It’ a pretty rare bird with the long bed. I’ve owned many trucks but this one always feels just right, and when it’s not just right, I have a small trailer that I use for extra capacity. My grandkids love it because they get to ride up front because there is no backseat. I had a very close call on the Interstate with it when a big buck, and I ‘m talking at least 250 pounds, jumped in front of us in traffic. Traveling at 70 mph and we got him square. My 7 year old granddaughter was in the passenger seat and his rack crashed onto the hood just 3 feet in front of her face. The old truck took all of the damage, sparing us harm. Life’s lesson, we had a talk about how fortunate we were and how the outcome could have been much different. That was a few years ago and she’s blossoming into a stunning young lady. Too close for comfort. I rebuilt the damage with junkyard parts. Time continues to ravage the truck though. It’s got 170,000 miles on it. I just put ball joints and brake lines on it as well as some exhaust work. I undercoat it with raw linseed oil to keep the rust at bay. I hope it runs forever, or at least as long as I do.
I’m about to get a FREE shitbox–a ’91 Ford Tempo LX that looks like it’s spent the last 25 years cooking in the Florida sun. It was my dad’s work car for the last 13 years (so he could save his beloved DeVille for science I guess?). Now the old man’s getting ready to retire and talking about junking it. Unspeakable. I offered to buy it instead (I like weird tinker toys) and he told me he’ll just give me the thing for free. Aside from how it looks, it actually runs pretty good. I just don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with it yet….or how I’m going to tell the wife about my acquisition.
I experienced some great shitboxes on our canoe crossing of Algonquin Park this summer, although I prefer to call them treasure chests.
Sometimes they’ve put one in a great spot, and you get a commanding view of the lake and the sound of the wind in the pines. What a feeling!
I’m familiar with that view. Algonquin Park is great – I haven’t been there in several years. Time to plan another canoe trip with a few friends. It’s an easy drive from Toronto and one of the great things about Ontario.
Ah my 98 Saturn Sl2. Its noisey, uncomfortable and not the most thrilling. But it’s my first car and it gets me around to work and school. 1 of its power windows don’t work and two others sound like a chicken getting its neck broken when operated. It burns oil like crazy and the auto trans lazily clunks in and out a gear. It has a rockin cassette deck with graphic equalizer which I use to play my cassette collection with pride. The loud novelty air style repeatedly goes through fuses as a use it throughout town. I will soon be selling it as I’ve grown tired of the constant vibrations and hastily slapped together GM plastics. It’s a shit box but it’s my shit box.
Those plastic panels though…pretty nice if you live in an area where they salt the roads.
I had a 91 Nissan Sentra, it was the biggest shit box. The trun release cable didn’t work,the hood release cable didn’t work, glove box wouldn’t latch, The drivers door wouldn’t latch, it wouldn’tgo into 5th gear and you could hear the damn thing rust. But boy was it a damn dependable car. I drove it hard for 3 years with ZERO maintenance, not even an oil change.Not until 1st gear went, did I send it to the junkyard.It fired right up and purred like a kiten before they dragged onto the flatbed, with 225,000 miles!
Hmmm…. JPC is correct re: juxtaposition of favorite and shitbox. In any case, my faves were the two different 2nd Gen Camry Wagons I owned. Clearcoat crapped-out, lots of brittle and busted plastic inside, tired rubber suspension bits. But, they kept chugging along. The ’95, owned by my brother, then me, then him again, just passed 310K miles. Not much to look at and less-than-slotcar handling, but they sure could haul a lot of stuff.
For the one type of box: my Aunt had a Plymouth Grand Voyager for road trips. She made a point of getting one with privacy glass in back. Add a camping facility, fitting into a cardboard box, with a bag of kitty litter at the ready and she never worried about a “120 miles to next rest area” sign.
As to the four wheeled variety, a box my 66 Plymouth Belvedere certainly was, but it wasn’t my favorite. More the opposite end of the scale as it had no endearing qualities.
My 02 Escort sedan was certainly less refined than some others, but not ratty enough to be a box.
Then there was the 81 Mazda GLC, 18 years old at the time. A rightful contender, but not really battered.
Right now, the favorite box is my 06 Focus. Dents and scratches galore. Breaks in the plastic panel below the front bumper where it has collided with steep driveways. Little holes in the upholstery. The top of the steering wheel rim is crumbling from exposure to sunlight and heat.. Bottom trim, ie crank windows, mechanical mirrors and locks, manual trans. I don’t think it has a scrap of sound insulation. However, it gets down the road quite well, especially when it’s old bones have warmed up a bit.
The below. 45-50 MPG of diesel come rain or shine and it never broke down. You had to be patient with a 80 MPH top speed (59 HP) but it was therapeutic in a Zen kind of way. Was also very good in the snow with that heavy cast iron engine over the driven wheels – I never had to put snow chains on it. Yes you had to maintain it (rust and consumables) but what would expect for a car more than 20 years old.
I sold it to a Romanian gipsy because I was living in Vienna at the time and you really don’t need a car here; I bet it still serves someone in Transylvania.
I can confirm that the 1.8 liter naturally aspirated Ford diesel is capable of moving a Ford Escort (a 1994 60 hp panel van, in this case) PLUS a tandem-axle trailer with a good load of sand.
… and if you treat it right, it would do 300,000 Km and more with no problems.
1972 Plymouth Valiant that I had in the mid to late 80’s. The perfect car for driving in Boston. Not too big, but big enough and with a dent (or 3) on every body panel people tended to give me plenty of room. It wouldn’t start when it was hot and it leaked when it rained, but I bought it for $300, drove it for 3 years and sold it for $300.
You remind me of the 71 Duster that my college roommate bought (but shouldn’t have). How worn-out does a slant six have to be to use enough oil that his dad bought it by the 5 gallon bucket from Tractor Supply? It was a 3 speed that would fall out of second gear if you went over bumps. They opened up the diff to change fluid and gear teeth fell out. The thing was simply shot. But it always started, ran and fogged for mosquitoes.
…the 71 Duster that my college roommate bought
Sounds like my dad’s 51 Champion at end of life. Buying oil in 5 quart cans. Shifter linkage broken with the trans in 2nd, but the OD still worked. Speedo broken. Dad was ticketed for speeding when I-94 was newly built and lightly traveled, doing something like 85 in that wreck.
Favorite TV box.
“Lumpy” Rutherford’s car, which he always referred to as his “heap”
…or maybe Carl Kolchak’s ride, which fit the loser image of the rumpled suit, straw hat and sneakers. It did seem to run OK, as the wheeze of the Falcon six was clearly audible on the soundtrack.
1996 Nissan Sentra. Bought new in December of ’96 for $11,999 off the back of my local dealer’s lot. It replaced a ’91 Jetta that couldn’t be trusted to run for more than 3 weeks out of any given month. I bought the Sentra in an act of desperation, not really wanting a car payment, but needing something that would do what it was supposed to do. 6 years later it had well over 200,000 miles on it, although the odometer had broken at 186,000. A life change pretty much required me to buy something a bit bigger and more comfortable, so I stored the car in my grandparents’ garage for a month. It was only after that short storage period that I had to replace the original battery. I sold the car on ebay eventually, with original clutch and exhaust system. I hated that car from day one. It looked like a licorice jelly bean, had cheap plastic wheel covers that always looked like they were on crooked, so it looked like the car was wobbling down the road, the 1.6 litre engine was truly the proverbial sewing machine mill, the shifter was spongy, the handling was non-existent, but the stupid thing just kept going. There was never a day that I ever wondered if that stupid little car would get me wherever I wanted to go, be it across town or across the continent, and even at the end there was not one component or original accessory that didn’t work exactly the way it did the day I bought it. It was the car that I liked the least of any that I’ve ever owned, but indisputably the best.
The 1986 Jetta GL with 300+k miles. Carrying my ass since 1991. Been putting up with my use and abuse without being too shitty about mechanical problems, still on it’s original engine/5 speed transmission. It never got the message that it’s supposed to cost a fortune to maintain and be unreliable. Even the paint and interior have failed to turn shitty looking after 30 years. Does have brown interior so the spirit is there.
The runner up would be the 1985 Yamaha 700 Maxim. It’s at 76k miles, also with few issues through the years and in great shape still. It’s in the garage resting atop a piece of cardboard, guess that makes it the proverbial shit on a shingle. I’ve been farting around with this machine since 1994.
Recent additions are a $700 1995 Geo Prizm I found for a family member and a $2000 2007 Chevy Cobalt that another family member purchased on her own. All it took was a week for her to slam it into the rear of a BMW which really left the front end in really shitty condition.
The catbox is getting really full.
One hot summer night in Sydney with high humidity and torrential rain,about 6pm,on a busy four lane road,suddenly the manual gear lever wouldn’t work.Luckily a parking spot in front of a real estate sales office,the office was still open.The rain was so heavy that the water cascading down the street was 2 inches deep.I didn’t have a change of clothes and it was still daylight so stripped down from my Levis,boots,socks and shirt leaving me in my jocks.I got out of the ute and suddenly looked and the men and women of the real estate office are all standing in the window staring at what they would have thought was a naked muscular man on the other side of his Peugeot 404 ute.Had to crawl under and lie down in that stream of water,push the connecting rod back in place and dry off inside the ute,get dressed and drive off.Several cars bipped their horns at me as they drove past on that very busy road.It was funny.
My favourite SB was the 1992 C33 Nissan Laurel I owned from 2001-2005. There were several trim levels offered, from Grand Cruise to Grand Saloon to range-topper Medalist, but mine was the trim-nameless entry level model with RD28 straight-6 diesel and 5-speed manual transmission. White with brown cloth+vinyl interior, the only extras were the power windows/mirrors and air conditioning that were standard across all C33s.
It had numerous certifiable SB features, the highlights being:
* an indicator held on by a stretchy cord,
* a dodgy bootlid hinge torsion rod that kept popping off so the bootlid never sat flat,
* a coathanger for an aerial,
* one wheel was a different size to the other three! (That wheel turned out to be off a Mitsubishi Sigma!)
* high end (in 1992) old stereo system with separate amp and CD changer, none of which worked
* (factory) mirrors mounted way down the front end of the front guards
* broken hood ornament
* an odometer that said 300,000km but had been illegally wound back by persons unknown upon arrival in NZ, with the true mileage being 500,000+
* a breathtaking thirst for oil – depending on mood it used 1-4 litres of oil per 1,000km, although in un-SB-like fashion the exhaust wasn’t smoky.
Being an ex-Japanese driving school car, it also very rare SB features such as a second rearview mirror factory-fitted where the passenger side sun visor went, and a spotlight under the steering column that shone on the pedals. The dual controls had sadly been removed in Japan though…
But in spite of all of the above, it proved to be very comfortable (great seats and ride, excellent a/c) and hugely economical (I’d frequently get more than 1,000km from a (60L) tank of fuel. And being a genuine pillarless 4-door sedan meant it had an element of ‘cool’ about it once I’d fitted factory alloy wheels and aerial. I paid NZ$2,500 for it and sold it for $1,250ish (with full disclosure about its intriguingly excessive oil thirst). It lasted another three years and 50,000ish km for its next two owners before popping a conrod through the block, thereby shuffling off its mortal coil in true SB fashion.
The shitbox you show in the first photo reminds me an awful lot of ones I saw during a 50 mile hiking/backpacking trip through Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains.
God that was a memorable trip. I’d give a lot to do it again.
Anyways, back on topic. My favorite (current and only) shitbox is my 2001 Subaru Outback with 200,000+ miles. Manual Transmission and suprisingly taut suspension ensures that it is somewhat entertaining to drive, and AWD and heated everything (mirrors, seats, windshield, and rear window) ensure that it is likely to remain as a winter beater far into the forseeable future (so long as I can find a place to store it, as I will likely purchase a different car in a few years due to the nasty corrosion on my specimen).
My Mum’s 1965 Hillman Imp? Does that really count as a shitbox?
Glad you had a very relaxing several days.
I never had a favorite shit&ox, because by definition they were crappy cars. a few examples;
– 81 Old Cutlass Diesel – all the problems expected
– 86 Ford Escort GT – had pieces of a napkin clogging the A/C lines (from the factory)
But the worst was a an 80 Buick Skylark (X-car); that in its first year puked its 4 spd transmission, had a gas leak at the carb that almost set the whole thing on fire, had brake problems, over-heating problems, and on-and-on…
And I’m sure everyone here knows the originator of this quaint phrase – the ever quotable Brock Yates.
I’m not sure about Yates; I always thought it was Hank The Deuce’s term for the VW Beetle!
Oregon- where interesting and disturbing imagery collides with similar metaphors.
Here’s mine- a chance to get away from it all, lift the lid on your spirit, and dump all of your troubles.
Well, you could always use the Aussie term thunderbox for the outdoor facility. (most accurately applied to portable units)
The most memorable automotive shitboxs might have been my friend’s poverty spec VW Rabbit. He kept it clean and shiny but it was the short lived US made stripper with a carb and vinyl seats coated in Armorall that left you sliding around in turns. It replaced a rather rusty 69 Beetle which collected ice in the footwells in the winter so it was still a step up. My personal cars have always been decent base vehicles, however the Volvo 164 and 78 Scirocco both had rust issues and my 81 Scirocco 16V conversion was a work in progress and a bit noisy. Our 85 Ford Ranger S was also borderline shitbox since it was the ultra basic price leader and a little worn around the edges. The 1993 Ranger XLT that replaced it was a massive improvement, as well as the only new car we’ve ever bought (so far). I still miss the Scirocco and the Ranger and wouldn’t mind either as a project car.
I have used the term “thunder bucket” as a euphemism for “toilet”! (I’m from Pittsburgh, I don’t know where I picked up the term).
Had a rental Kia Sportage last week while moving my daughter in for her first year of college. Filled it up with suitcases from the airport, and then with stuff (twice) from Target and Bed Bath Beyond. (IIRC all I had when I started was a single footlocker, but then again I walked uphill in the snow to and from school. 😉 )
As for actual s***tboxes, the pilot-to-bombadier style at Philmont Scout Ranch are world famoud and can’t be beat:
https://www.instagram.com/p/6ge9nsGdek/