Almost as soon we had decided to sell my wife’s Dodge Caravan someone very odd low life decided to steal the rear tail light lens off the van. I know what you are thinking. Surely it fell off while driving. Alas no. We’d gone on a vacation road trip and it was there when I unpacked our belongings that night but missing in the morning. The how and why were a mystery but it did give me an opportunity to visit my favorite local junkyard. They always have something interesting in stock.
Out front was this rather sad looking 1960 Envoy Special which is a Canadian only variant of the Vauxhall Victor F-series. I’d looked at this exact car several years back with an eye to buy an interesting family classic project. It was rather more complete then so I expect the eventual buyer got excited for a restoration but that didn’t last beyond the tear down stage. A shame as these are quite uncommon these days. I could have scored the rims for my Envoy Epic but the tires were garbage and sadly not much else would transfer over.
I quite like these AMC Eagles in theory although I doubt I’d ever own one. This one looks to be well used but I find it odd that you almost never see a rusty one here. For a natural winter vehicle with 4WD that does strike me as a little strange.
Over in the Mustang section we have a trio including one Mercury Capri variant. The red Mustang behind with the factory body kit had a 2.3L four cylinder engine instead of the V8 I was expecting. This bronze 1983 was the most interesting as it had the 3.8L V6 engine.
Offered only from 1983-1986 this 3.8L V6 was the mid range engine option I’d sort of forgotten was even offered. It was designated Essex after the Canadian Essex engine plant and is a 90 degree V6 which shares nothing with the similarly named British Essex V6 which sports a 60 degree angle between cylinder banks. While it didn’t last in the Mustang the Essex V6 found a home in the Taurus.
Triumph TR7s, especially in coupe form, are just not worth very much. This early 1976 went straight to the crush pile and had a Ford Festiva unceremoniously dumped on top of it.
The 1972 manufacture date on this Fargo B200 window van puts it near the being on the long production run for the Dodge B-series van but near the end of the Fargo name plate in Canada. This one sports a V8 engine of some flavor.
I’d seen this 1963 Rambler American 220 a few months back when it was on the crush pile. I’d pulled a hubcap off it at that time to use as some garage art. Seems someone had taken pity on the poor Rambler and stayed its execution for the time being. This one still has a flat head inline six engine but I’d wager in this condition is beyond saving.
I did eventually find my tail light housing after checking many Caravans. Oddly enough there were plenty the side I didn’t need but only a singular driver’s side housing.
Some good photos you got there. Just a guess here. Those cars don’t look rusty enough, to have spent their life in Ontario? The TR7, and the Mustang, look way to good . Alberta maybe?
I got to like the Envoy though. Fun to drive, and so easy to fix.
The AMC Eagles in their last years, had Ziebarting done right on the factory production line. It was a last-ditch gimmick; don’t know how effective it really was. Cars treated with Ziebart that I’ve seen…they may have lasted longer than they might have; but they weren’t immortal.
It could be, since that was a relatively expensive car, especially for Canadians in those years…that the car was saved for snowstorm duty and not driven after the cleanup, when melting agents were covering the road. My onetime toy car, a Jeep YJ…I used it that way. It was a California car; never seen road salt…but about five times, in winter storms, I pulled it out of seasonal storage to make semi-emergency runs in blizzards. Since the roads were covered, not treated, the snow didn’t do it any harm.
What part of Canada are you from? Rust doesn’t seem such a problem in B.C. In Ontario and Quebec, the road salt eats them alive; less so in the Western provinces. Maybe the drier air has something to do with it, aside from road salt.
Rubberized undercoating does well at protecting the underside of a vehicle from road salt until it gets old and cracks. Then the salt gets between the undercoat and the floorpan and festers unseen, until one day you discover there’s no floor left. Happened to my GMC van, which was factory undercoated. I prefer the oil-type spray undercoat (not the dripless kind) which should be applied annually from someplace like Krown.
I’d heard about oil-spraying years ago…at the time I pooh-pooh’d it as being one more old-mans’ backyard remedy. Time has brought wisdom; but also draconian environmental laws.
Who’s Krown? Are they regional or national? Anyone else doing that?
I’ve tried them all over the years.” BigOldChryslers” is right. Ziebart does more harm than good.
Whatever product Krown uses, is by far the most effective. My Camaro, and Mustang, spend the winters in the garage. My Cobalt is drenched in Krown once a year.
The Mustang is my keeper, forever. The Camaro goes when the warranty runs out. “Never winter driven” is a huge selling point around here.
Every car I come across with a Ziebart plug in the rocker has completely rusted out rockers.
“The Mustang is my keeper, forever. The Camaro goes when the warranty runs out.”
Mikey, that’s sacrilege in my book, and this from a (I think) Chevy man!
HOWEVER – as your Mustang is a convertible, I would tend to agree with you.
Ziebart was more than just undercoating – they put a soft non-water-based goo in doors and box sections as well. They’d drill holes for their angled sprayer nozzles to get in; and put plugs in the holes when finished. Those were kinda the trademark badges of a Ziebart job.
As I said, it didn’t seem to make much difference.
Ziebart, Bilstein and Quaker State were popular rust-proof treatments in Hawaii and Guam in the day. They would delay rust in problem areas,
door edges, trunk lids, a and c pillar areas by the glass . . . .
however, if one was diligent with frequent washing and waxing, such rust would be thwarted for quite awhile (as evidenced by some of the old Mopars running around out here . . . mostly Valiants and Darts).
It was always my understanding that the Ziebart process was okay if the people applying it did a good and thorough job. These were franchised operations, and if the owner hired Beavis and Butthead to work there, well…………
When I was in high school, a friend’s family had an early 1970 Falcon. They bought it used, and it had received a Ziebart application when new. My friend’s family never did any follow up treatments, and by the time the car was 8 or 9 years old, every other Falcon in northern Indiana was rusted all to hell, but not that one. I came away with the conclusion that Ziebart treatment was worth the money. We never had Krown around here, and Ziebart seemed to be the only decent one that we did have. I wouldn’t have paid a nickle for Rusty Jones, Tuff Kote or any of the others that seemed to exist to add to dealer profit margins and nothing else.
This is Alberta so road salt is not extensively used. Too cold generally for it to be effective. Gravel is used inside which means windshield tend to live shorter lives.
Eagles, and later Concords, stood up pretty well body-wise. AMC used a lot of galvanized steel in the lower unibody areas, including the rocker panels.
I’m just east of Toronto. They put the salt, calcium, whatever, on by the ton! The temp here is a little warmer so salt is a very effective.melting agent.
Night and day difference on the icy roads coming from New York State into Ontario. OK . . . more road salt can be bad on the body panels if not washed off as soon as feasibly possible, but it did (at least to me) add an extra measure of traction safety . . . . (at the time I was living in Cleveland).
My Caprice had it, the bottoms of the door still rusted out, though maybe not as severely as they would have normally. Rust holes in the front inner fenders as well. Under the hood it’s something of a dirt magnet and makes the inner fenders and door jambs look sloppy and dirty. I’m not too thrilled at all the little holes that had to be drilled in the body to do it. I probably would’ve passed on it if I had the car new and just washed the car regularly.
They don’t use much road salt in places like Aberta because it is normally too cold for it to work. This is the case in Labrador as well but here on the island of Newfoundland we get a salt/sand mix so we have rust issues and broken windshields do deal with. Rusting is so bad here that you hardly ever see cars from the 1990s anymore.
Offered only from 1983-1986 this 3.8L V6 was the mid range engine option I’d sort of forgotten was even offered. It was designated Essex after the Canadian Essex engine plant and is a 90 degree V6 which shares nothing with the similarly named British Essex V6 which sports a 60 degree angle between cylinder banks. While it didn’t last in the Mustang the Essex V6 found a home in the Taurus.
And a bad reputation in the Taurus, Sable, and first FWD Continental. Although I’ve heard once you replace the head gaskets the engine is just as solid as the 3.0 Vulcan. A perverse part of me wants one of those early FWD Continentals even though they are more like a “Lincoln Lesabre” than a true successor to the Continental name.
I always wondered why they never continued with the V6 option on the Mustang after 1987? All you were left with was the 90hp 4 and the 5.0 litre. The V6 engine didn’t return in the Mustang until 1994. I think the even more interesting 6 cylinder Mustangs are the early Fox Mustangs that got the STRAIGHT 6 for a few years.
It was used in the Ford F-series as well for 1982 and 1983. Can’t be too many of those left. I wonder if there was some plant restriction on how many they could make as it did make sense as a middle engine in the Mustang. Perhaps the Taurus was the priority. Even more strangely the same engine (but updated) made an appearance in the Mustang a decade later (1994) as the new base engine.
They put the 3.8 V6 in some trucks? I never knew that!
I remember an acquaintance in Guam (ca. 1991) had an ’82 F series 4×2 with the 3.8 V-6.
A high school teacher of mine had one with the 3.8 V6. His son was in my class and thought it was a glitch from the factory.
The 3.8 was only offered on the F100 and not on the F150 and larger trucks. I’m not sure if it was even available with the higher optional GVW F100. The lowest GVW F100 from 80-83, the 4700lbs version, are the only F series to not use the 5 x 5.5″ Wheel bolt pattern until the 1997, they used the Car 5 x 4.5″ pattern. I don’t think the 3.8 was available with 4wd either but I may be wrong about that. So yeah they are a very rare beast. I had one come in when I was working in a parts store and I went WTF. But sure enough it did show up in the books for what ever parts he was looking for. He also shared the fact that his had the car bolt pattern too since he tried to swap the wheels and found that the common Ford truck wheels wouldn’t fit.
Wow they actually put the straight 6 in the Fox body Mustang? I knew you could get one in a Fairmont and some of the other Fox platform cars but not the Mustang.
That would actually be kind of cool to get a straight 6 Fox ‘stang and make friends with one of those groups that hot rods I6s.
Yeah, when supply problems cropped up with the originally-spec’d Cologne V6, some unclean genius at Ford suggested they just drop the Fairmont six in. Let the buyer figure it out.
The reason for the gaping hole in later Mustang production, between the four and the V8, was that the Lima four actually was rated a few horses stronger than the smog-strangled 250 six. Sad but true – the six would have more torque but also a helluva lot more weight.
So…someone with a bit of momentary sense apparently said, “Why even bother?”
But the 3.8 replaced the straight 3.3 (200) 6 and did have more power than the 2.3. Note it was only in 79 that the 2.3 out powered the 3.3, in 1980 the 3.3 made 91 hp or 94 hp vs the 2.3’s 88 hp and 90 hp MT/AT.
Still awful close. And with the added weight, all of it probably forward of the axle centerline…who, really, would want it? Performance buyers would blanch. Non-enthusiasts would only notice that the four was easier to slap around in town. Only people listening carefully to the exhaust would notice the smoother note…and such buyers would probably want the V8 anyway.
I guess the Ford people figured out that the few committed six-cylinder buyers might be almost as satisfied with the Fairmont two-door six.
I rode in a clapped-out early 90’s LX with the eight-spark-plug 2.3 and auto trans. It was actually pretty peppy for what it was. A 5-speed car would be pretty fun.
I’ve seen one before, it almost looks like the engine is touching the radiator support and the back of the dashboard at the same time.
I wouldn’t knock the straight 6 in the Foxstang, it probably was nice a torquey in that little car.
. . . and, in 1980, when looking at new cars, the 200 six was the middle engine offering in the Mustang/Capri. . . . .
The fact that they left the gap between the 2.3 and 5.0 always surprised me.I guess it may not have sold that well with people who were willing to spend more to get a bigger engine overwhelmingly moving all the way to the V8. The straight 6 never seemed to be that popular in the Mustang though it was quite common in the Fairmont. The rarest pony however has to be the 79 only 2.8 V6 carried over from the MII, which actually had more HP than the 3.3 (200) straight 6 but was also seldom seen.
I liked the fact that those 2.8 cars had a “2.8” emblem in the exact same font and location as the common “5.0”. I never knew they were build only one year.
I think it may not have even made it through the full year. The interesting thing is it used the same K member as the 2.3 and 5.0 cars while the 200 (3.3) cars have a unique K member.
In my neck of the woods, 1980-81 Mustangs were seen only with the 200, no 4s, and V8s were extremely rare. In fact, I have never seen a 255 Mustang, not that I was missing much..
What is visible of the paint on the Capri makes it look way to nice to be in the wrecking yard. Sure the Mercury Mustang isn’t worth as much as the genuine article but there are some that like the box flare look, and a fair number have been dressed up with Mustang front ends and taillights.
I have a thing for those early Dodge B series vans, and the fact that this one is a Fargo makes it even more interesting.
Side note – if your Chrysler Minivan is a 3rd generation (96-00) the taillight lenses from a Dodge Durango will fit too, I believe.
Thanks for the pictures, David. It has gotten so that I enjoy looking at junkyard pictures over those of new cars these days (the only TTAC feature that I look at is Down At the Junkyard).
Getting just a bit off subject, I was watching the DVD of the Bob & Doug McKenzie movie Strange Brew this past weekend w/a friend of mine & we both noticed that the cop cars (which were all Mopars) were yellow. As the movie was partly filmed in Toronto, can any of the Canadian CCs tell me if the Toronto police cars in the early ’80s were really in yellow.
Yes. I often wonder if out-of-town drunks ever tired hailing them, and what hilarity may have ensued.
Actual Toronto police cars were used in Strange Brew, and yes the police cars did go through a phase where they were painted yellow. Later they changed to white with horizontal blue and red stripes, which also look like taxis from an area company called “Blue Line” taxi.
Rambler still using flatheads in 1963 struck me as unusual then I remembered Harley Davidson were still racing them till the end of the decade.Rambler must surely be the last major car maker selling flatheads if I’m wrong I’m sure a reader will put it right!
Studebaker was close, I believe the flathead went away after 1960. Sadly, the flathead engines turned out to be better than the OHV versions, which liked to crack their heads. Actually, Plymouth and Dodge were still putting flathead 6s in their cars thru 1959.
The 195.6 flathead was the base engine in the Rambler American 220 through 1965(!)
“Plymouth and Dodge were still putting flathead 6s in their cars thru 1959.” That’s hilarious, I never knew. ‘Forward Look’, backward power.
Thanks for the answer BigOldChryslers. My friend & I couldn’t imagine police cars being yellow.
Speaking of that Rambler, what’s that near its front with the “BARONS HO….” lettering? Was it the remains of a race car?
I’m thinking it is a pickup bed.
I believe the old style Dodge Power Wagons had flat head sixes as late as 1968.
Is that orange car in the first photo a 79-80 Pinto/Bobcat?
Yes, a Pinto.
The Fargo van is kinda interesting, that was one of those “north o the border” oddities, it was killed off in 1972, the odd thing is that there is a company in Turkey making Fargo and DeSoto badged trucks that has NO connection to Chrysler.
Wha?
http://www.askam.com.tr/v2/default.aspx
Isuzu picked up the Fargo cudgel more recently for some of their vans I guess there was no copyright from Chrysler on the name
allpar.com has a page about that Turkish company. They apparently have some historical connection to Chrysler’s operations in that country, which is how they came to have the rights to those names there:
http://www.allpar.com/world/turkey.html
As for Fargo, it’s my understanding that it was originally conceived as Chrysler Corporation’s truck brand, before Chrysler bought Dodge, and in that capacity Fargo trucks were actually sold in the U.S. for a few years in the late 1920s/early 1930s. Soon after Fargo was launched, however, two things happened. First, Chrysler bought Dodge, which already had a well-established truck operation. Second, the Great Depression hit, making it a challenge to get a startup brand off the ground. At that point Chrysler decided that it made more sense to just have Dodge serve as the corporation’s sole truck brand, and Fargo was killed off. The Fargo name continued to be used on export vehicles, however, and was repurposed in Canada in 1936 for a line of badge-engineered Dodge trucks sold by Chrysler-Plymouth dealers. (Due to Canada’s lower population density making it difficult to ensure full coverage of all dealer networks in all areas, and the more rural orientation of much of Canada increasing the market share of trucks in many areas, it was felt that all dealer networks there needed to have trucks to sell.) This lasted until 1972, after which Chrysler decided to drop the badge-engineering and just allow Canadian Chrysler-Plymouth dealers to sell Dodge trucks.
I figured it was probably something like that, part of Chryslers once world wide operations. I had never heard of them until I did a quick search to see when Mopar Fargo truck production ended and saw the site for the Turkish company.
In the day, Fargo trucks were sold in U.S. territories. They were a fairly common sight sold alongside Dodge Trucks, at least in Hawaii, through the beginning of statehood. Export Dodges/DeSotos (Diplomats) were also sold new in the T.H. (Territory of Hawaii). In 1996, in the Mapunapuna area of Honolulu (most industrial park), I ran across a Dodge Regent; Canadian Style – Plymouth Belvedere with a U.S. Dodge style front clip. This was a 3-on-the-tree, but I’m sure a number of Hy-Drives were sold in the day.
Unrelated, but here’s a shot of Motor Supply Co. on Kapiolani Blvd in Honolulu in 1955 (territorial days). This is their Hudson showroom.
When visiting Hawaii in 1990 I saw the remains of a 60’s Fargo Forward Control Pickup, or maybe it had been a Van. It was sitting right by the side of the road and was almost rusted to nothing except for the area around the Fargo badge. Looking back I should have taken a picture.
Kapiolani was like a dealer row back in the day no? I think thats where the GM dealer is or was(?) I think the GMODC(overseas zone/distribution office) was also there too.
Some great Curbside Classics in that first picture. Two generation Grand Ams, 2 GMC Safaris, a Celica, and a Mercury Mystique at the top. Too bad they became Junkyard Classics before one had a chance to snap a few pictures.
Yes I spotted that Celica right away, too bad.
Looking at the stack, it does seem that at the very least, paint technology has advanced to the point that just-waxed-looking vehicles can end up in the stack as well as old faded ones.
that Envoy/Victor is one of the most rust free examples Ive ever seen, those things rusted out quickly here in our humid climate it seems incredible one lasted so long with salt around
I recently sold an Envoy Epic (Viva HA) that had an ultra solid body. The underside looked like new.
Taillight lens theft from older cars in SoCal is not that uncommon. I recall a colleague at work back in the late 70’s who repeatedly had the right taillight lens stolen from her daily driver 67 Dodge Dart. After several replacements, she finally gave up and used red plastic sheeting as the lenses were getting more and more expensive. Why only the right one was stolen nobody knows…Low life is right.
Around ten years ago, the bumper fillers had rotted off my 1980 Coupe DeVille and some jackass helped himself to not the taillight lens but the actual sockets and bulbs. Of course he cut the wire instead of unplugging it.
I lived in an apartment complex at the time and that type of stuff always happened in the daytime when the decent folks were at work.
The Mustang notch may have a factory bodykit but it certainly didn’t come that way. It’s pretty easy to match up a GT kit onto a base LX, especially in the two tone setup.
IMO notchbacks look awful with GFX.