(*DISCLAIMER* There is no conspiracy against trucks in this article. I do hereby swear that there are lots of trucks in Canada.)
Like I said in my recent article about the cars in my neighbourhood, the climate in Vancouver is very mild, with very little road salt. That means there are just so many cool old cars around. The ones I am featuring today are all within a few blocks of where I live. Anyone who wants to know the location specifically can Google “Vancouver General Hospital.” I live two blocks south.
This little critter appears to me to be Gen 3 Civic, so circa 1987. It’s a local car used as a daily driver. It’s been parked in the same street for like fifteen years but not always in the same place, so she’s a daily driver for sure. These used to be thick on the ground but there are plenty of succeeding generations around, too.
This 944 showed up only recently. By the looks of it the car is a 1985, so it’s thirty-six years old. It’s being used as a DD, too. I happened to speak briefly to the owner, who is a surgical resident at VGH. He said the upkeep is not easy but it’s a lot cheaper than a new Porsche. He has a good point. This is a survivor and it shows some wear, tear and rust.
This first generation Lexus LS 400 is in beautiful condition. I’ve always loved these cars and the styling is so timeless it looks as new today as it did in 1990. That’s pretty amazing in my opinion. I have always wanted one but the timing was never right.
This Nissan 300ZX seems to be a 1987 but correct me if I am wrong. It’s in beautiful condition and it is parked on the street with classic plates. Herein lies the problem with owing a classic in my neighbourhood: where are you going to park it? By the plastic on the T-tops it’s obvious they leak. The T-top was never a good idea at the best of times and in a place that rains as much as Vancouver, perhaps a solid roof would be easier to live with. It’s parked right ahead of our little Civic.
This 1990ish Tercel is a daily driver. They are famous for being tough as nails but they are getting a little rare now. This one is owned by a young man who sees it is an appliance in which to grow his safe driver discount.
This looks to be a 1990 Honda Prelude and other than the flaking on the wheels, it’s in superb condition. The owner is a young gent who recently opened his own barber shop and didn’t want to sink a lot of money into a car while his business grows. Smart guy!
This looks like it’s a 2000ish Saturn and it’s the last one I’ve seen in the city. My sister had one like this and after 140,000 km, the entire thing fell apart. It’s sad how Saturn ended up. The buildup was so hyped that I really thought a cool car was going to be offered. I test drove one and was shocked by how bad it was. The had good hotdogs, I am told.
So there ends my short curbside tour of my neighbourhood.
I love almost all of these, but the Civic is a 4th generation.
A fine selection of non-trucks. Although these are all familiar to me, they are all gone in Ontario. As DD rides anyway, the 944 and 300ZX have collector value but you don’t see them on the street.
Those Tercels sure were tough, unlike the Saturns.
The Tercels were tough, but the Saturns are not to be written off. A frugal buddy of mine has a Saturn wagon with 400k miles that he bought new.
As an Ontario dude I agree. The only elderly daily drivers I see are in my own driveway. They’ve vanished in most of the province.
Very rarely you’ll come across an older daily driven by an elderly person in a small town . But that’s not any level of vehicle enthusiasm, they’re simply the original owner, who drives very little and sees no need to replace their old car.
That’s the great thing about the West Coast. Especially on Vancouver Island you’ll literally see 40+ year old cars being driven daily. When I was in Victoria last summer, I spied a mint 1976 Plymouth Arrow, for example.
Thirty year old cars are common here. When I got my driver’s licence in 1980, there wasn’t a single car from 1950 on the road. The absolute oldest were about 1965. My brother brought a 1967 Bel Air in 1976 and I thought it was ancient. Turned out to be the oldest car I had experienced and for a long way in the future, too.
Nice collection. The LS400 is 2nd gen, not first gen.
I also have a long term case of serious automotive lust over a first or second generation Lexus LS400.
Me too. The styling was Mercedes-like but they took it up a notch, in a way that makes them timeless, as the OP noted. And they were put together so well, since Toyota (already the maker of solid dependable cars) had something to prove
A nice selection of older vehicles. That Honda Civic is the same as the one the elderly lady that lives in my building drives – hers is white with blue interior. I had spoken with her in the underground parking a couple of years ago and commented to her that her car was in such great shape. She had told me at the time that she had purchased the car brand new in 1989 and only drives it on short errands. I believe that Tercel to be around a 1995 – 1998 model year. A buddy of mine had one just like the pictured car as his beater/commuter when gasoline prices where really high a few years back, he kept it until he changed work locations and then handed it down to his 18 year old daughter who wrote it off within two months.
That Saturn is a 1996 to 1999 second generation S series, the first facelift. I sat in an S series once and thought it was like a 7/8ths scale subcompact car, including the seats. And I owned a Horizon.
I remember a couple bits from car magazine articles about Saturns. One was that in general there is a trade-off between good handling and good ride, but Saturns somehow managed to combine poor handling with poor ride. Another was that no car company ever got so far with a flower and a smile.
I later owned a Pontiac TransSport. Constructed just like a Saturn, competing in the new hot minivan market, and offered in slightly different versions by three GM brands. But not Saturn.
Something was really wrong with GM management – actually a lot of things. The original Saturn was a clean sheet design that could have been original with more room than others and innovative features, sort of an American Citroen. Instead they made plastic scale models of Oldsmobiles.
The Saturn hype has been covered here many times but suffice to say, GM really did a bad. I mean, a complete new car company! No using of anything else in the supply chain! We’re going it all alone! And then they come out with a car that was mediocre at best. My mother had a 1997 and it was a crude, buzzy thing. She loved it, though.
The whole point of Saturn originally was to not have badge-engineered copies of other GM cars, hence no copy of the minivan since that wasn’t built at the Saturn-exclusive factory in Spring Hill. Slapping a Saturn badge on the Pontiac/Chevy/Olds would have been exactly what they were planning on not doing.
Eventually after they ran out of development money and dropped all of that standalone stuff Saturn did get a version of the van, the Relay. By that time the world had figured out that GM didn’t understand minivans and the jig was up anyway. It now may be the second-rarest Saturn of them all with less than 27,000 sold in total (I believe the Astra sold even fewer).
Not all Saturns were bad, here’s one with 556,016 miles (not kms) on it, it did something right for someone out there.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/curbside-recycling-1992-saturn-sl1-typical-gm-crapped-out-after-only-556016-miles/
The only Saturn Ive ever seen close up was that model they werent sold here but at least four turned up Ive seen one listed for sale and the one I saw in Napier wore panels from to other cars.