As summer has finally descended upon the Wet Coast of the Great White North, and having dug myself out of five meters of late spring snow, here is a slightly abbreviated edition of COAL. Please forgive the non-chronological nature of this story as none of the cars described here could ever be construed as classics. All three were work horses that did a job, and they all did it well.
In February of 2004, I arrived, with wife and two young children in two, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Looking back, I must have been insane to try to make it in what is the most competitive place in Canada. Vancouver is a scenic place with a mild climate; for these reason, the place is full of people with advanced degrees, loads of experience and tons ‘o cash. Really, it would have been much better to go to Calgary or even Saskatoon but I am kind of a visual junkie and Vancouver certainly satisfies that need. Anyway, soon after we arrived, I needed wheels, and fast. Problem was funds were very limited and I had no job. Our first residence was a temporary affair requiring many Ikea trips, so I went looking for a cheap schlepper.
A quick look turned up a 1989 Dodge Grand Caravan, with Ultradrive and the Mitsubishi V-6. The van had over 250,000 km on it but it ran fine, had good brakes and a valid Aircare permit. The agreed price was all of $700. I figured I could not go wrong; even if I got three months out of it before sending it to the scrap heap, I would be money ahead. The van was filthy, had a few dings but was in surprisingly good shape inside, with no rips, tears or cracks. A quick trip to rent a steam cleaning machine made it look just fine.
Sure enough, I had it for three months. It moved us into a permanent residence and hauled all our new furniture. I knew that both the V-6 and the Ultradrive were not the most reliable devices in the world so I was not eager to keep it for long. In fact, the transmission would go into limp mode if it got hot, like climbing the big hills in North Vancouver. When moving was complete, the Caravan went onto Craigslist; within a few days, I had the van sold; get this, for $600. I had driven it for three months for all of $100 plus gas and insurance. Not a bad beater buy. What was the van like to drive? Well, not that interesting at all, but it did what I wanted it. I just hate vans and I really don’t like keeping beaters around for long.
With the van gone I needed wheels again, so I went on my garage knowledge and started looking for an A-Body GM car, preferably a later Cutlass Ciera. As I have stated before, GM was a schizophrenic organization in the the late 1980’s; some good, some awful. The Ciera, the humble Roach it is, was in fact a pretty good car. The Buick 3.3 V-6 is practically indestructible, as is the 4T60E transmission. I found an SL at a rather shady beater lot; it had 220,000 km on it but the interior was mint, not a rip or tear. The car was loaded and even to this day, I have not seen a better instrument cluster; a tach, speedo and four gauges to tell you all you need to know. The stereo was particularly good and the only thing that didn’t work was the left rear power window. The silver paint was faded and because it looked awful, I arranged a transaction price of $700 and was away in a day.
I have a lot of respect for that car; with the FE3 suspension, it held the road very well and the 3.3 V-6 made gobs of low end torque. It was big enough inside for the family and all our stuff went into the trunk. The a/c blew ice cold and it was a nice highway car. The car was a little heavy on fuel, at about 13.5L/100km (17.5 mpg) in the city but on the highway it was about 8.5L/100km (28 mpg), not bad for a cheap car. I had it for over a year, and then I faced a conundrum: should I do body and paint or flog it? The body and paint would have run at least $1000 and who knows what would happen next, as it was a hi-miler. I bit the bullet and decided to sell it. That took all of one day. I got $700 for it. I had driven it for fourteen months for the price of a set of brake pads, like $25 for a Roach, which I had installed at the side of the road in front of my house. Not a bad deal, if I do say so myself.
At this time, I was working as a service adviser at a Chrysler store, so there were always trades around. I was hoping to leave ASAP as it has to be about the most stressful job one can imagine, but I would need a car that would at least look reasonably good. One day, a 1992 Eagle Summit came in on trade. It had only 90,000 km on it, was an automatic and a four-door.
It was a really plain little car but it ran and drove just fine as a grocery-getter/city car. The 1.5 litre four banger gave good pep in the light car, and the computer controlled automatic worked very well. The price was $1000, which I thought was a good deal. It was a good deal and I drove the car for over a year; it was reliable and economical, easy to park and roomy enough. It was also utterly forgettable; I don’t remember it much at all, it was so nondescript. It was a good little car that did its duty taking me to work in a reliable economical manner.
I have never been a beater driver, at least not since high school, and the Summit of Eagles just didn’t fit the image I was trying to project. When you want to start a business, looks are everything because they lead to first impressions. I need a nice car that would make a bit of a better impression on potential clients, so I decided to sell the Summit of Eagles. In fact, a friend bought it and it gave several years of good service. However, Mitsubishi cars are not Toyota cars. Around 200,000 km, things started to conk out, mostly electrical. First was a distributor, a $600 part, as parts for these cars were always expensive. Next was a PCM, which was over $1000. My friend decided to part the car out and did pretty well on it, getting back most of what he had into it.
So there ends the Summer Edition of COAL. As barbeque season beckons, Canuckistanis throw off their parkas and head to the beach to enjoy our three weeks of summer before the August snows begin!
How about a sidebar on the life and inherent stresses of a Chrysler service advisor in Soviet Canuckistan?
It will be a full article, or several. No way it could take up just one piece!
I’m looking forward to that!
It may be traumatic and upset Fanbois to the nth degree.
Having dealt with Chrysler Canada and thier warranty policies, I think I can see what’s coming. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a service writer at a Chrysler dealer if they treat retail customers the same way they treat fleet customers. GM and Ford have thier issues but Chrysler is by far the worst and has been for a long time.
Nope, after my Chrysler store went bust, I worked for GM. The are way, way, way worse.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky, although the fact that our GM (and Ford) trucks generally don’t have a lot of serious problems until beyond the warranty period while the Dodges began to systematically disintegrate well before colours my view. Retail customers may have a different experience though.
Dodge trucks are indeed horrid, especially anything in the front end.
The only beater car I’ve ever owned was a 65 Galaxie 4 dr HT. When I got a job out of the service in 1973, my Dad drove me to work and back. My mother would not allow me to drive Dad’s 72 Polara to work, so he drove me. After a month or so, my Dad coaxed me to look for a car. We looked at a few private seller cars to no avail, and happened on a local used car lot. The Galaxie was the cheapest car on the lot, at $ 200. I really didn’t want it, but Dad kept telling me to buy it. (He was tired of driving me.)
The car got me to work for about 5 days before the Bendix drive on the starter jammed into the flywheel. A friend towed me, and repaired the car. The part was $ 6. I got the tailpipe changed at $ 15. Driving it to work for another 3 or 4 days, I awoke to a crash. Some kid had plowed into the Galaxie in front of my parents’ house. That was the end of the car. The kid’s insurance company finally settled after much negotiation at $ 375.
No more beaters for me. Shortly after, I bought a nice 68 Fury III 2 dr HT. Always parked the car in our back yard. No more street parking for me, to this day.
In the Navy I mostly drove beaters. After I retired I could not afford them. A missed appointment because of a broken car is expensive at more than one level. I was forced to buy new or late model used but they were beaters by the time I was done with them. $100kmi is just getting broken in but that’s a different thread.
Interesting stories Len.
Those were some fine beaters. On the minvan with the Mitsu V6 and the Ultradrive, you played an impressive game of beater roulette.
I miss beaters. It has been a really long time since I owned anything that would really qualify. I have almost always owned at least one pretty old (10+ years) car, but these were very presentable cars in and out, and much too nice for genuine beater status. I suppose that the 93 Crown Vic that my kids are driving may be entering beaterdom, although I hate to admit it.
The last real beater I had was my 71 Plymouth Scamp, and even it was pretty nice considering its age and mileage. But that was when I was still in school and beaters were still pretty normal things for a guy to have.
I suppose that the 63 F-100 I had in the mid 80s was a beater too, although I never really drove that as an everyday driver. It seems to me that there is an incredible freedom in driving a beater. Park it wherever you want, with no concern for door dings. Also, you get to take advantage of that traffic rule that the guy with the biggest, least valuable car always wins. Now I am starting to get in the mood for a beater. Hmmm.
In February 1982 I owned a 1974 Chevy Malibu station wagon as a “winter rat”.
It looked presentable but I soon learned that various engine, driveline, and structural problems lurked under its wood sided flanks. The high point (low point?) of these problems presented itself one snowy late afternoon at rush hour. I just filled-up the gas tank, pulled out onto Main Street, heard some odd scraping sound and then felt the rear end of the car lift a little bit. The car soon stalled.
Turns out the gas tank straps had rusted through and were unable to hold the weight of a full tank of gas. The gas tank, fitted within the left rear fender behind the wheel, FELL OUT and dumped itself all over the street. Traffic came to a virtual halt. Soon the sirens could be heard as the local fire and ambulance and Environmental officials raced to the seen.
I had the tank replaced but soon gave up on this car. While cheap to buy it soon proved to be one of the most costly cars I’ve ever owned.
Wow, I miss your Ciera. Ex-wife had a very similar one when I met her cept it was white with a blue interior. She’s the only person I’ve heard of who had trouble with that trans, the trans died at 75,000 miles and then the GM replacement died 75,000 miles later. I guess that woman was hard on transmissions…
While I have been very fortunate with my employment and financial status for the last couple of decades, I remember well what it was like to have to drive a beater. Half the battle was keeping an eye out for the next one, all the while hoping that the ticking time bomb I was driving didn’t explode before I found it’s replacement. Once I started to get ahead a bit I got into street machines, drag racing and muscle cars, back when they were at the bottom of thier price curve. Wide tires, big carbs with manual chokes, headers and hot cams don’t go well with a Canadian winter.
This required one to have a “winter beater”, a sub-species of the beater, on hand to save wear and tear on your “good” car. Decent tires, a good heater and a reasonable chance of surviving until spring were the requirements here. Bonus points if it had some components you could use on another project in the spring. Generally these were 10 or 15 year old heaps on thier last tour of duty and lasted 1 year. They got “harvested” upon retirement and the hulk went to the scrap yard. Late ’60s and early ’70s GM intermediates were my usual preference, although a ’64 Valiant was probably the best one I ever had and the only one that ever left my hands intact.
I did this for about 10 years until a pretty little redhead came along and turned my attentions elsewhere. That was quite a few years ago now but I still find myself mentally keeping an eye out for the next one even though the need is long past. Besides, the redhead would kill me!
I have never had total beaters, the cars I described here were actually 100% safe to drive and were sold to the next guy. My thing has always trying to get the nicest car I could get for say, $10,000 in today’s money. That is what my LeSabre was and my Acura is now.
Yeah, I have to admit that some of the beaters I had should not have been on the road. I was very fortunate in retrospect not to have caused an accident. I was much more concerned with what parts I could harvest come spring and made my choices accordingly. (It’s got a 396 that runs? I’ll take it….).
Nothing like a good beater, and another great story from our Kanuckistan correspondent.
I believe I would describe most if not all of my cars as beaters… When I was in my early 20s, I bought a ’66 Volkswagen fastback, in order to teach myself how to drive a stick. It was an absolute mess, and a bit embarrassing to drive. It had a cracked block, and would drip oil like crazy– I used to put a piece of cardboard under the engine whenever I parked it, to catch the oil spill. The driver’s side door had been hit, and it wouldn’t open completely. Even though I was (and am) quite skinny, I sometimes resorted to getting in on the passenger side, which wasn’t much better. Oddest thing about the car was that the previous owner has painted “A-12” on the roof, just like the Adam-12 patrol car. Like I said, it was a bit embarrassing to drive, but it served its purpose… I can drive a stick! I bought it for $50 and sold it for $35 three months later. Not a bad deal at all.
VW’s as Canuckistani beaters never really worked very well here for a couple of reasons. First, is unless the gas heater actually worked, you’d freeze your you know whats off in the winter, or here on the Wet Coast, have to wipe the fog off the windows constantly. Outside my area, all VW’s suffered horribly from rust.
Really, air-cooled VW’s make poor beaters since they are cold, rusty and need wrenching all the time. A proper beater needs good tires, brakes, heater and a reasonably good front end. It also needs to go a year without wrenching on it.
Oh, Amen on Volkswagen heaters. My three months of air-cooled ownership were in the summer, and I pretty much sold that crate the second my left foot learned how to deal with a clutch… For year-round “work car” status, that VW would have been a complete joke.
“…filthy, had a few dings”
Well, I do too.
Meet me by the bike racks after school ye neer-do-well.
Iowned a Mitsubishi Mirage identical to your eagle a used jap import 1500 motor it had all the fruit as jap imports do but with JDM grade suspension it was the worst highway car Ive ever driven any hint of a corner had it wobbling all over the road and point it at a hill was like running into a wall. Our 50kmh town speed limit was just about its element butall that went wrong was the carb failed and a burnt out coil fixed with a wrecking yard coil and NZ model sensor free carby.I sold it for $400 and was happy to get that.
A couple of months ago I acquired for myself a beater. a 2002 Chrysler PT Cruiser. I’ve always said that it’s not a good idea to buy a high mileage Chrysler product, but it seemed okay. 177k on the clock, cold AC and the body was solid. $3000 and some change later and it was sitting in my garage, ready to help keep the miles down on my Escape. All was going well for the first 300 miles, and then one day while heading to work, it overheated. I babied it home. Took it to the mechanic a couple of weeks ago, figuring it was maybe a bad thermostat. Um…no. The water pump is on it’s last legs and the radiator had a leak, ~$400 job. And it needs rear wheel bearings. I put it on the List of Craig, but no takers so far…
IF I decide on trying the beater thing again, I’m going to have to do some more homework.
This one makes me miss my old Mystique, which, by the way, is still running and in the loving hands of my best friend.
Richard! Typical used cars become beaters somewhere after 100k. Modern No-pars are most of the way there at 50.
I got more than 5 years out of a ’96 Geo Prizm. The thing was ugly, slow and lovable. Never needed anything except a new driver-side seatbelt. Dealing with the clods at the local Chevy dealer was the only bad memory I have of the car.
Alas, its creeping hood rust was catching on in other places and I was starting to worry that my kids’ friends’ parents wouldn’t let their precious cargo into my dingy little dinghy. Traded it in late 2010 and got $300…which is about what the seatbelt had cost 6 months earlier.
I had two very similar beaters. My first was a hand me down 87 Plymouth Voyager I had for a year. Fortunately it had a 3 speed auto and not the Ultradrive. Unfortunately is had a Mitsu 2.6 I4 with a carb. That engine was underpowered (it had trouble getting above 70 mph) for the van and vibrated and ran rough no matter how much it was tuned. It died at 72K as the timing chain jumped a tooth and fixing it just wasn’t worth it.
My second beater was 93 Buick Century with a 3.3 V6 and 4T60E. I bought the car with 115K on it and drove it for 4 years. At 145K the transmission died. It probably had something to do with me or the previous owner never changing the fluid. It only cost me $1000 so I figure $250 a year for a car that never need anything but oil changes for 4 years is as good of a deal as you can get on a beater.
Every car I’ve had since these two have been nice, even if they are older, and not remotely a beater.
Worst beater I had was an ’88 Toyota Celica. I thought it was a bargain at $700 but it spent more time broken down in random parking lots than on the road. The engine would run so hot that you could fry an egg on the hood after ten minutes of driving in January. It had a leaky sunroof that puked ice-cold water on me whenever I made a turn, the accelerator would stick,go through ignition coils like potato chips, no heat or AC, …etc.