It’s Friday once again, and time for another Junkyard Outtake. This week, we’re back at the U-Pull – a place where Valentine’s Day is just another day to lay in the snow, get greasy, and hopefully find that part you need to keep your wreck on the road.
The rest of the world may not understand your love for beat-up old cars… but don’t worry, we’re here for you. Even if your guilty pleasure is a mean, green, head-gasket-eating machine like this one. (Hey, Cavaliers need love too!)
Before we dig into this week’s lovely finds, I’d like to take a moment to highlight one that got away.
This 1986 Regal was one I bought last summer. Its elderly owner had passed on, and the children wanted it off the property. It was in great shape, with next to no rust and a mere 86,000 miles on the clock. Getting it running took minimal effort. Plus, it had power everything – this car had options I’d only read about, such as electronic climate control and a six-speaker Concert Sound stereo system.
The catch? No one seemed to know where the title was – and the family had given up on trying to obtain a replacement after being sent on multiple wild goose chases by the DMV. So I bought it as a parts car. Within a few days, I’d stripped it down to the bare bones; only the drivetrain (3.8/TH200) remained. The above picture was taken towards the end of the process – I also removed the front spoiler, windshield, and various other things. All the parts got filed into the attic for future use.
Being unwilling to crush such a clean car, I threw the remains on craigslist for the same $350 I’d initially paid. Even in its stripped-down state, it still ran and drove excellent – I waited until the last moment to remove the battery and steering column in order for it to remain movable under its own power.
Eventually some young guys came and bought it. They had a history of making dirt track cars out of G-bodies, and thought this would be a good base for their next build-up.
That was last August.
A few days ago, I found an envelope in my mailbox that I wasn’t expecting. The return address was in the same town where I’d found this Regal. Curious, I opened it up – and immediately was filled with dismay.
Inside was the Regal’s original title, all signed and ready to go. Attached was a note: “I found this among my mother’s things. It looked important. Wondered if you needed it for anything. Thanks.”
#@$&*%!!! I’d destroyed a perfectly good car for nothing. The parts were being put to good use – and I had no reason to suspect the title would ever show – but still. Aaaaarrrrhhh! If only I’d known…
Now, with that little tale of heartbreak that out of the way, let’s get back to the junkyard.
What would you call this color? More importantly, what color interior would you choose to match it? (This car’s black cloth selection just wasn’t doing it for me.)
Ooh – I see 8-spoke alloys! That can only mean one thing…
There’s a Z26 Beretta around! Looks pretty spent, though.
Not every car with an RPO written on the side is a powerhouse.
It would have been more fun with a third pedal. Still, those wraparound buckets are kinda interesting.
Everybody knows that simply adding a spoiler makes cars go faster.
Finally, someone has found a use for this stray “pimp” rim that’s been floating around the yard.
I wouldn’t normally pay much attention to a 2000-05 Monte Carlo like this one. But looking closer, it became apparent that this was a mighty well-kept car.
This car was super clean, both inside and out. My guess? Either it suffered catastrophic failure while in a dealer’s inventory, or its owner had recently detailed it. I grabbed several pieces for my Impala, whose spartan 9C1 interior can use all the help it can get.
The black leather in this car was very nice, too. I really would have liked to buy it… if it hadn’t already been wrecked. Seems I’d been beaten again by the imbecile who routinely destroys seats in this yard to remove their switches. Looks like they had a go at the airbag on this one, too. Morons.
This Cutlass also caught my eye.
What’s with the odd insignia on the door? I seem to recall that being used for some anniversary edition or the like, but this car is otherwise unremarkable (cloth interior, 3.1, etc).
Ah, a dealer “special edition”. Whatever gets ’em out the door, I suppose…
Can’t say I’m familiar with that style of spoiler. Wonder when (or where) the car acquired it? Did the dealer install it, or did someone have it painted to match later?
Our tour comes to a close with this Northstar-powered Caddy. These are a fairly common sight in the yards, almost always victims of engine and/or transmission failure.
Hard to imagine today’s $40K Cadillacs sitting abandoned and open to the elements – but one day, they too will join the rows of once-proud cars that fill the junkyards.
Well, we started with a green car, and we ended with a green car. How’s that for a loop?
Next week’s Junkyard Outtake will take us into the vast, uncharted wilderness known as the Import Section… where BMWs, Audis, Volvos, Benzes and Saabs lurk around every corner. You never know what we might find!
I think these were especially good second hand cars. Just reliable pieces of transport, and to this day, still see a lot of them on the road. I’d like to take a poll. Who cannot stand when dealerships affix their name onto their cars? Hate that!!!!!!! At least the license plate border can be removed and replaced easily.
That’s one of those things that people seem to hate on a new car, but when you see a 50 year old car that still has its dealer emblem on the back everyone goes “oh hey that’s neat!”
Decals are easy to remove, glued-on plastic badges not much harder (biggest issue with those is if they’re above a factory emblem, keeping the Goo Gone away from that). And I think manufacturers cracked down on dealers drilling holes for them.
Ah the Beretta. Has any other car produced in such huge numbers disappeared from the road as quickly as the Beretta (and it’s 4 door kin Corsica)? 20 years ago they were everywhere. Now – couldn’t tell you the last time I saw one in the wild.
Yup I have not seen a Beretta or Corsica since I owned a Beretta about 12 years ago. I was just thinking about the same thing about cars that sold crap loads in the day and are pretty much gone from the roads now.
Here is my top 10
1. 1986-1995 Mercury Sable/Ford Taurus
2. 1982-1994 Cavalier/Sunbird
3. Ford Tempo/Mercury Topaz
4. Aries K/Reliant K
5. 1987-1997 Pontiac Bonneville
6. Chevy Celebrity/Pontiac 6000 (you still see loads of Cutlass Ciera/Buick Century on the roads but non of the Chevy/Pontiac A bodies)
7. 84-91 Pontiac Grand Am
8. 88-96 Pontiac Grand Prix
9. Geo/Chevy Prizm
10.First generation Kia Rio
Now to be fair some of these cars(aka first gen Rio) really were complete junk and did not last, but others like the Prizm should have lasted a long time due to the Toyota underpinnings.
I still see a lot of the first-gen Tauruses (Taurii?) in Texas, where they’re generally free from the ravages of rust. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a K-car of any kind though, except for the occasional first-gen Caravan hauling ladders around.
To be fair, it seems that almost all the Civics from prior to 1992 are gone as well, it’s not just an American thing. Once something gets to be about 22 years old, it needs to have had one dedicated owner to stay put together.
Geo Storm! My buddy’s Dad had one when we were in high school…you never see them anymore.
Still see loads of 91-96 W-body GP’s and 92-97 Bonneville’s in my area of Upstate, NY. Heck we have no less than 5 on our dealer lot as I speak for sale.
I was thinking the same. I haven’t seen a Beretta/Corisca in years. I do still see lots of K cars on the road though.
That title thing is weird. Doesn’t seem to be an issue here in Canada.
It’s old HiLux syndrome- most of these are the sort of cars that just keep going on and on in the background of people’s lives. Because they are so common no one notices them, no one thinks they will ever be scarce enough to preserve and mostly they are not enthusiast cars.
They get no respect except for their utility, then over a year or two they all just wear out and get crushed.
You rarely see a HiLux over twenty years old because, they just keep going, then one day everything is too knackered to bother with repairs.
I test drove a loaded Beretta circa 1987 and I can see why they disappeared so quickly. The car looked great on the outside and interior looked cool.
Closer examination showed that the cool looking interior was of very low quality materials. The drive was not good at all. The car just didn’t go down the road that well. It had just terrible torque steer, even when you applied some gas to go faster it would pull towards the ditch. The whole thing reeked of cheap and “rip-off.”
That’s because they were cheap rip-offs. In ten years, they were all gone.
That’s too bad about the Regal and the issue with the title. Some states have more lenient laws on vehicle titles; in my native Kentucky it is fairly easy for the vehicle owner to obtain a replacement title if the original is lost. Basically the owner just has to go to the DMV, complete a form stating that the title has been lost and then leave with the replacement title in hand. I don’t know how other states handle this, perhaps it is more complicated elsewhere. That Regal would have been a great starting point for a “faux” Grand National, although that might not be cost effective.
Canada is even better. No titles. Just write your self a new bill of sale.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that green color on a J body – or any GM. A lot like the current pale green on the Fiat 500.
I don’t like providing free advertising for the dealer. I remove everything the dealer adds to the car like the rear license plate trim with dealer logo and the placard they use to fill the front license plate holder. If it’s at all possible I remove the vinyl stick-on that they put on the trunk, too. If they put their lettering in the rear window, I get out the razor blade out and shave that crap off. I’ve already paid for this stuff, too as I’m guessing it’s part of the ‘dealer prep’ package.
Replacement titles are easy to get here in Arkansas. Tell the DMV you lost the title, provide a VIN and pay the nominal fee. Takes a little while for them to research the VIN and send it to you.
That color was called Spring Mist Green from what I recall, we ordered a couple of Sunfires in that color when I was ordering cars for a Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealer, I really didn’t know what they would look like until they showed up, ughhh…
I think we we nicknamed it Mylanta Metallic.
I saw a Sunfire in this color go past me a few weeks ago and had a lengthy internal debate as to whether that was a factory color or repaint. Thanks for settling that, and it did look horrible!
It’s tough to say because this Cavalier is wrecked, but I think it looks much better here with the Chevy’s softer features. There was similar Ford color not too long ago and the first year Camry Hybrid had a color like this available, maybe a little lighter though. One of them parks near my regular train station, only one I’ve ever seen:
Wow…this week’s junkyard out-take has brought back some memories and brought up some interesting points. My parents for the longest time have always been Chevy people. In fact, up until my father’s 2 most recent purchases (’99 Intrigue with a 3.5 and an ’09 Hyundai Santa Fe), I cannot remember my parents driving anything but Chevy (my mother still does with an ’08 Impala).
Anyway, back in the fall of 1988, my father bought a top of the line (but a demo model) ’88 Caprice Classic Brougham LS that came with everything offered except leather seats. It was metallic blue, which IIRC was a pretty common color on that trim level. One Saturday when the car was a year old, as my father was backing it out of the garage he managed to hit the passenger side mirror on the garage door frame and did some nice damage to the mirror and upper half of the door. He put the damage through his insurance…they paid, and the rental they got him was a red Beretta couple just like the one in this article.
By the time the Caprice was 9 years old it had developed a really bad case of the tin worm…which was really sad because that was still an excellent car mechanically with its 305 V8. Heck, the salesman at the dealer where my mother bought her ’95 Monte Carlo (the Caprice came from the same dealer but bought from a different salesman) freely admitted that when these Caprices were made that GM “cheaped” out and used the cheapest recycled metal they could find to make these Caprice’s bodies. My father sold it and leased a ’97 Lumina (much like the one next to the Beretta). This turned out to be a really nice looking POS…the brakes were awful on this car, and it was constantly having electrical problems left right and center. Finally when the 3 year lease was up my father couldn’t turn that car in fast enough.
It is so interesting that cars as common as the Beretta and Corsica were back in the day have virtually disappeared in the wild…I too cannot recall the last time I saw either while out and about. I remember a high school friend of mine (we both graduated in ’95) had an ’89 Corsica for a while in the 90s and didn’t seem to mind it. She now drives a Volkswagen Jetta.
“Hard to imagine today’s $40K Cadillacs sitting abandoned and open to the elements – but one day, they too will join the rows of once-proud cars that fill the junkyards.”
Nobody in 1999 imagined that a 70k+ Mercedes CLK would today be parked in front of the cheap apartment a few blocks away from me and wearing a rattle can paint job and shoddy bodywork. Seems like nobody ever thinks about the inevitale fate of the day’s new luxury cars becoming tomorrow’s pieces of junk until it actually happens. Due to their hip hop popularity, by, 2025, I imagine that the current generation of today’s Escalades will probably all be wearing pimp rims and fill wal mart parking lots, sleazy used car dealers, inner cities, college towns, and trailer parks across the country. They will also probably become extra common in junkyards since most of the owners won’t have the money for repairs when something big goes wrong.
“Hard to imagine today’s $40K Cadillacs sitting abandoned and open to the elements – but one day, they too will join the rows of once-proud cars that fill the junkyards.”
Happens to them all eventually. No matter how proud of it the owner had been, no matter how loved, they all end up that way.
Really creepy Mercedes ad from several years ago
Neat video – a nice way of summing up what I’ve so often thought when looking at old cars. I actually watched it twice!
It’s a little like thinking, “if only these walls could talk”.
But then, on the other hand, some of the stories are probably better off having been lost to the changes of owners and passing of time. You might not want to hear everything that old car would have to say!
This is creepy? I think it’s one of the best ads ever done! If only the C-Class they were advertising really did have the soul of a W114…
+1. Best ad they’ve done. And as a former W203 owner, not necessarily the best car they’ve done.
This is creepy?
I realise that the people who produce ads want people to remember them, and by that measure, they were successful with this one.
But the crusher operator looks so sad, as if he’s lost a loved one, and he bows his head in prayer. Then the car’s life flashes before it as it dies. Just makes me go eeww.
The only consolation when I sold my much loved 98 Civic last fall, because it no longer met my needs, was the guy who bought it seems to be an enthusiast that was interested enough in the maintenance history that he may take care of it, so it still has a long life ahead of it.
Well, everything dies eventually. I remember the first time I saw this on TV thinking that it was slightly uncomfortable and that’s what really made it remarkable. It forces you to think: yes, I will be dead one day too. Maybe some people just leave off there, but the second half of it should be – now what are you going to do with the rest of your life? Buy a Mercedes-Benz? Hopefully (according to this commercial). The imagery shown through the windshield directly ties in to the “soul” of the crushed car being passed down through the generations.
Well, everything dies eventually. I remember the first time I saw this on TV thinking that it was slightly uncomfortable and that’s what really made it remarkable.
Yes, but I don’t enjoy taking a favorite pet to the vet to be put down, and that’s what the ad reminds me of.
I don’t think you’ll have to wait until 2025 I see them right now.
I wandered through the import section at one of my local yard, its always a disaster, the yard is organized in sections a huge GM section, pretty big Ford section, a Mopar section and then comes the import and truck section….
Every import car is in this section, no rhyme or reason to layout, BMW’s co mingle with Hondas, Mercedes and MG’s, VW’s and Jags, not to mention all the other assorted what not, Hyundais, Daewoos, Mazdas, KIA’s Volvos, etc, you would literally have to go row by row looking for the car you want. Same for the trucks, which is ever worse, because it includes all import and domestic trucks, vans, suv’s minivans, etc etc.
Its getting harder and harder to find really old cars in these self service yards, there was a 69 Delta 88 and an 81 Malibu coupe in the GM section, everything else was about 1988 and up. A Fairmont Futura and Mark VI in the Ford section and a 73 Valiant in the Mopar section.
The import section is full of formerly expensive cars that have reached the end of their run, several 7 series Bimmers, XJ’s, S-classes and E-classes, Q45’s, LS400’s, Audis, etc etc some were even in nice shape, their leather was in decent shape. There was an 85 500 SEL with 140K on the clock that was really clean, it even had the complete unused first aid kit in the package shelf.
Sounds about like the yard I frequent. Oldies are becoming less and less common there. Other than a Corvair that briefly appeared two years ago, I don’t think there has been a pre-’75 GM car there that I can recall.
Trucks are a different story. ’70s and ’80s trucks are still a fairly common sight, but they’re almost always completely spent by the time they arrive – worked to death, hit on every panel, and rusted out to boot.
In terms of Chevy trucks, I waited out a dry spell of about three months when they had no ’96 or newer GM full-size trucks (pickups, Tahoe/Yukons, Suburbans, etc). ’88-94 is still the most common generation, and it’s a red letter day anytime something ’99+ shows up.
Last one was a 2001 Suburban, and it was literally a feeding frenzy. I’d been waiting months, and needed lots of things from it – but with the truck getting so much attention, I had to pick and choose what I could pull quickest!
The trucks are so beat that there is hardly anything to take, and they are all pretty old, same for the full size vans, on the other extreme though, there was an Escape in the truck section that made me do a double take, again, because it seemed so odd and new.
On the other extreme, there was a 76 Beauville van that looked like a skeleton of a van.
That Monte belongs there. Those fugly things are a rolling eyesore, they look like the front, middle, and rear were designed by 3 different people that weren’t allowed to communicate with each other… blech. And I won’t mention all the mullet-haired tat-covered mouthbreathers I see driving them here in the Cleveland area…
Not a Monte fan here, either.
In vague terms, it sounds appealing – a modern coupe in the same family as the Impala and Regal, with L67 power available.
But the looks really kill them… as do the children and NASCAR wannabes who tend to snap them up, making a well-kept one that much less commonly seen.
BTW, this one was an L36-equipped SS. (Never understood the thinking behind that, either, what with every SS Impala of that vintage getting a blower.)
I think the Dale Earnhardt Monte Carlo or whatever it was officially called was hands down the saddest American car of the last twenty years. It’s too bad you couldn’t utilize those seats, though… those look nice!
Could you still pull the seats and just use them as manual ones on your 9C1’s existing seat frames?
Possibly. But they roughed them up pretty well in the process. Price is the same regardless of damage, so I decided to pass.
That silver Aveo in the background surprised me, until I realized that those too, are now a full 10 years old. It’s probably because I’m only in my 20s… but seeing mid-2000s cars in these junkyard shots is weirding me out. I remember when those were BRAND new: sitting in uber-polished first-year examples at the Detroit Auto Show, shiny rows of them lined up at Chevy dealerships. Aveos were always pretty marginal and cheap so I can’t say I’m too sad, but they’ve always seemed “new”. Heck, even that Monte Carlo seems pretty contemporary until I remember it’s been 14 years since its release.
I tell this to my dad and he just laughs, saying he still feels the same way about ’65 Fords and Chevys. I suppose I’ll become desensitized to it in a few years.
The Aveo was indeed a surprise. This week brought several: an ’01 Vibe, a couple of base ’04+ GPs, and even an ’07 Malibu.
Normally cars that new aren’t seen around this yard. But time marches on…
Really “new” cars mess with my head at the junkyard too, there was a pretty new Aveo in the yard, along with a wrecked in the front 05 Cobalt and a wrecked G6 coupe. It seems so odd.
I once remember seeing an 08′ Camaro in a junkyard shortly after they came out. It was a bad rollover and looked completely mangled.
That silver Aveo in the background surprised me, until I realized that those too, are now a full 10 years old. It’s probably because I’m only in my 20s…
iirc the Aveo had a reputation for expensive engine problems. Wouldn’t take many years of depreciaton on an already cheap car for a replacement engine to exceed the car’s value.
I tell this to my dad and he just laughs, saying he still feels the same way about ’65 Fords and Chevys.
Same here. See so many Curbside Classics here that I either owned or considered owning at one time, which are now 30-40 years old.
I suppose I’ll become desensitized to it in a few years.
Nope. I haven’t. The longer the time span, the more cars that I owned or was interested in when new become “old”. I also have been going to the Detroit Auto Show since the late 60s. Really unnerving that cars I drooled over, touched, sat in, turned to dust 20 years ago.
I am getting there. I remember the first 2000 Monte I saw, a black LS at Green Chevrolet, early fall of ’99. It reminded me of a fake Lincoln Mark VII or VIII, with its almost-continental-kit trunk lid. I have to admit I kind of liked them. I am also surprised to see so many 1998-2002 Town Cars with peeling paint and flat rear suspensions; I remember sitting in them at the QC Regional Auto Show when new. A friend had a silver 2002 Signature that I rode in and drove many times–and which led to my own TC purchase last fall.
Friends of ours bought a silver circa-2001 Monte SS in silver with black leather. It is still in really nice shape, and in original condition, despite their living in Wisconsin. They traded a rusty ’91 metallic beige MN12 Cougar LS for it in 2004.
Nice tour today, Keith! I’m looking forward to next week. If you look hard you’ll see various GM bits in some of the imports, Audi used to use some for their power seat controls as well as HVAC controls.
I love those Z26 wheels! I was very surprised to see a purple one at the Birmingham, AL Pull-A-Part several years ago — the car actually had the 2.2L4 and automatic — talk about “Appearance Package”.
Too bad about that Regal. My less spectacular story was when I reluctantly called the mobile crusher in to thin out 1/2 of my car collection in Alabama: I had moved to NC and there was no way I’d ever bring all those cars up here.
Anyway, there were 33 or 34 Fieros in the bunch and being a couple cars shy of their minimum car count (100 cars), I reluctantly painted the X of death on two title-less clean 4-cylinder Fieros. A few months later I discovered the title to the car I X’d and not only that…the title was already in my name. 🙁
The part about the Regal is bumming me out so hard. I had a Cutlass Supreme not too long ago that got wrecked and I’ve always wished I had just fixed it since then. The damage wasn’t that bad, and it had been my grandmother’s. This happened in December and I don’t have a garage, so the thought of spending all winter doing body work in the driveway was about as appealing to me as stapling my hands together. Should have just manned up…
I also had a friend with a Regal that was nearly identical to that. It was an ’83 but in the same color and completely loaded, except for the V6. It also had the upgraded suspension which made it feel like a completely different car than my Oldsmobile. He actually didn’t like it, though. It was a replacement for a green Cadillac Seville just like the one seen here and he went back to those after owning the Buick for only a few months. That was right before my Cutlass got smashed and he had offered it to me very cheap. Would’ve loved to take it, but I didn’t have the space… if only he had tired of it a few weeks later 🙁
Inside was the Regal’s original title, all signed and ready to go. Attached was a note: “I found this among my mother’s things. It looked important. Wondered if you needed it for anything. Thanks.”
One of my favorite phrases “procrastination is a virtue”. Having settled the estates of 3 relatives over the years, I know it can take weeks, maybe months, of sifting through files to learn what is there, and what isn’t, and how stuff relates.
Murphy’s Law rears its ugly head once again. If I’d sat on the car in hopes of receiving paper one day (which the seller assured me wouldn’t happen), I could have kept it forever and gotten nothing.
Sad as that situation ended up being, I’m still happy to have a whole car’s worth of body and interior parts, high and dry in my attic. I even have it all inventoried 🙂
There’s an ’82 Regal in my backlot that’s been waiting nearly two years to get some attention, while I’ve been collecting parts and piecing together a new motor to install. It’ll surely be happy to receive many of those parts in the not-so-distant future.
The Spring Mist Green on that Cavalier sure looks nice, but what the hell ran into that the car looks horrible!!
That Beretta looks so sad and pathetic. Going to guess it drove into a tapered Jersey Barrier.
The generation of Bonneville with the pimp rim looks a bit frumpy especially with the curvacious cars of today.
An earlier post mentioned these common cars of yesteryear and aside from the Rio and 6000/Celebrity I have seen all of those cars in the last week. In fact today I saw a late 80s Dodge Aries and a 94 Cavalier.
1. 1986-1995 Mercury Sable/Ford Taurus
2. 1982-1994 Cavalier/Sunbird
3. Ford Tempo/Mercury Topaz
4. Aries K/Reliant K
5. 1987-1997 Pontiac Bonneville
6. Chevy Celebrity/Pontiac 6000 (you still see loads of Cutlass Ciera/Buick Century on the roads but non of the Chevy/Pontiac A bodies)
7. 84-91 Pontiac Grand Am
8. 88-96 Pontiac Grand Prix
9. Geo/Chevy Prizm
10.First generation Kia Rio
The generation of Bonneville with the pimp rim looks a bit frumpy especially with the curvacious cars of today.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that car is an Olds Delta 88.
“I’m pretty sure that car is an Olds Delta 88.”
You are correct, that’s an Eighty-Eight. It was featured in the Junkyard Outtake two weeks ago – a surprisingly low-mile car.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/junkyard/junkyard-outtake-crushing-the-deadly-sins/
Despite a very rusty climate there are a few of these running around. The best looking one is a early 90’s Corsica in mystic teal metallic which is actually a lightish blue. The car is clean and well kept and has no showing rust which is really amazing as this climate eats cars.
Calling Geozinger… our resident Cavalier expert.
Aaaaaand, I’m back!
I saw that opening pix and thought, oh this could be something sad. It is kind of, but at least it was put in the boneyard after an accident, not something silly like a water pump replacement bill…
That Spring Mist Green was a special green, it wasn’t offered all of the years of production and only on non-sporting cars (i.e. no Z24’s or Sunfire GT’s). I think they stopped offering it after 2000 or maybe 2001, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a J with that paint in the post 2003 refresh era.
It’s been a fun game for me to play, to see what weird color combination J body I can find on the road. There is a Spring Mist Green early 3rd gen (95-99) Sunfire SE plying the roads of Grand Rapids, though. I did see a 2000-ish Z24 Cavalier in gold last fall, but of course, I was driving the other way and could not get a pix of it.
My wife never understands why I read so much about cars. Is even harder to explain the appeal of a story about a junkyard. GIRLS!
I owned two Cavaliers of this vintage, bioth two doors. The ’97 was t-boned and totalled,the 2000 was traded in after 7 years on a 3 series, the BMW dealer said it was the cleanest Cavalier he’d seen, but that didn’t get me a bigger trade in! Come to think of it the Chevy dealer slapped some gawdawful Y2K edition sticker on it which I made them remove.
I had no complaints, they were solid little cars with a bit of style and reasonable mpg. No similar coupe offered by any Detroit manufacturer now, too bad.
The local Pick-n-pull here in Tampa is equally bad for older vehicles. Thanks to the “urban” population here I still have plenty of General Motors G-bodies and B-bodies to pick from. It never ceases to amaze me when I see unusually dismantled quadrajets. Is there a market for used quadrajet top bodies??? People do some really strange things to junkyard cars. Rear seats torn apart, trunk lids ripped open. Who are these crazy people?
These douchebags destroy quadrajets to get the metering rods out of them, rendering the carbs useless. To add insult to injury, an entire junkyard’s worth of quadrajet metering rods will fit in one of these shoplifter’s pockets.
For awhile, another crew (maybe the same crew?) in Birmingham, AL was smashing instrument clusters to grab the odometers out of GM speedometers.
Another one that befuddles me is seing a slew of late model cars with all the fuses and relays pulled. I have owned a lot of cars, and have replaced maybe a half dozen relays and never a 50+ amp fuse. To your remark about the odometers, there is probably a resale market for the odometers at sleezebag used car lots or Mecum/Barrett Jackson for the “numbers correct” and “tribute/omage” cars they promote (also sleezebags).
The Cavalier 2.2 had issues with the 1997 and older 2.2 with defective head gaskets so that was indeed an issue. We have sold many with the 2200 engine from 1998 onward and it seems that those rarely every need that replaced so it seems as GM fixed that issue with the 2200 revamp but I could be wrong on that.
Looks what is for sale in my neck of the woods…
http://rapidcity.craigslist.org/cto/4581947891.html