On a recent visit to family in northwestern Oregon, I walked several times on a logging road with wonderful views, at least when it wasn’t gray and rainy. I had no trouble identifying Mt Rainier, Mt St. Helens and Mt Hood in the distance. But I was totally stumped by this wreckage off to the side of the road. I’m sure that some reader here will identify it instantly.
McPherson struts – but with a conventional steering gearbox, not rack and pinion. Hydraulic clutch.
Four lug slotted wheels.
A distinctive C pillar in a very Japanese-looking color.
But these vertical HVAC controls threw me off. Volvo used them on the 122S (Amazon) but that didn’t have strut suspension. BMW and Peugeot had struts but not rack and pinion, and not this dashboard. The trim, seat construction and bumper details suggest late Sixties, early-Seventies to me. There were no visible powertrain parts. I’m stumped. How about you?
Unfortunately my hiking companions weren’t much help figuring out the identity of this trailside wreckage.
The strut mounts scream K-car or similar.
Maybe, a Chevy Citation or a GM x-car
All the above guess’s have rack and pinion steering, this has a steering gearbox and 4 lug wheels which aren’t that common, looks like the clutch and brake master cylinders have been broken off. Also seats had springs in them that goes back a ways.
Ok Thank you. I didn’t took the time to read the article. Thank you for the clarification.
Maybe, A Toyota Corolla 1976, 1977
HVAC sliders match 72-76 Corona Mk II, but not mcpherson struts on those. ???
VW 411 or VW squareback.
VW’s were air cooled, with rack & pinion steering, with the engine in back, this is clearly a front-engined car. The “kidney bean” rims suggests Ford Pinto, but the Pinto also had Rack & Pinion steering. Maybe the Pinto’s bigger brother, the Maverick, or a Maverick derivative (Ford Granada, Mercury Monarch). The Maverick used upper and lower wishbones with conventional shocks, but I’m not sure about the later examples. The Ford Fusion and Mercury Zephyr were Fox-Body cars, which used MacPherson struts instead of double wishbones, but again, I think they used rack & pinion steering instead of conventional recirculating ball steering gear.
The wheels look like small import, maybe Japanese, more like VW rabbit, except this would likely be a RWD car with the recirculating ball steering and lack of drive axle remnants. I was thinking along the lines of 1980 Corolla but the wheel openings are more rounded (of course they could have been swapped from something else). But I don’t know anything about the HVAC control.
Nice challenge-
I’d eliminate all US cars, can’t think of one that used MacPherson struts and recirculating ball steering.
I also think it was built in the 1965 to 1982 range, based on the uncommon pairing of MacPhersons and recircultaing ball steering.
I agree with the general impression it’s Japan built.
My best guess was ’72 Toyota Carina, as it had vertical HVAC sliders, Mac struts and the right steering, but the cowl details do not match up.
Also, that may be a hood latch mounted below the cowl which indicates a reverse hinged hood, but the image is not definitive…
I’ll be interested to see if we can crack this one.
I thought about a reverse hinged hood too, but noticed the hood latch mechanism up front where a rear-hinged hood would latch.
That cowl looks very much like a late 1960s Chevy…but I can’t square the front suspension with that.
Looking closer at the lump in the center of the cowl, I now think that’s a wiper motor.
Mounting the HVAC levers inside a metal dash is definitely a 60s thing. .Most later cars had the sliders hanging in a plastic frame.
The way the brake Hydraulic cylinder is mounted in a cover plate also makes me think it’s a raht hand drive model modified for the US market.
That’ll buff out…!!!😂
The metal coils springs in the seat cushion does not make sense with McPherson struts, they seem from different decades. Maybe a mashup.
Not necessarily different decades, and I even searched dash photos of 1950’s Ford Consuls which I suspect had both, but no luck.
BMW 3 Series (E21), built from 1975 to 1983. This is what a AI search came up with
Just checking in after five hours. I didn’t expect it would be this tough for the CC Commentariat! I don’t think it’s the Corona MkII or the Carina, as the HVAC sliders, though vertical, seem differently positioned in photos I found and the Toyotas may actually use 4 sliders, although just 3 rows, with 2 shorter throw controls in one row that seem to be fan speed and recirc. Also the C pillar has an horizontal slot for air exhaust (?) which doesn’t seem to match the Toyotas. And while the E21 does have vertical sliders (again it seems like some versions, not all) but they’re in two sets of two on either side of the dash centerline.
Late 1960s Datsun 510? I’ve found a variety of different HVAC controls on these (in photos).
Yup. Looking at the photos in this guy’s thread – https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/datsun-510-4-door-named-benjamin-frank510/134878/page3/ – I’d say that the cowl and firewall holes match up to the burned Oregon car. Especially the hole above the steering shaft.
Also, in other underhood photos of 510s, you can see that the right strut tower was a favored mounting point for the big relay (?) that is still mounted on the car that dman photographed.
I agree-
The image attached below shows that the slots for the cowl vents match up perfectly, the brake master cylinder uses the same mounting plate on the firewall, the sheetmetal where the wiper motor mounts matches up, and there is a sheet metal arch on the left side of the firewall on both cars.
I also found some 510 service manuals showing a three lever heater control on the sedan, and of course the 510 has a C Pillar vent.
Finally, the 510 appears to have a parking brake pull lever to the right of the steering wheel, and we can see a parking brake cable going into the firewall in that location.
And they’re 4-lug so even if those wheels aren’t original they’d probably be something that fits. I think those newer slotted steelies are what threw people off the scent.
The 510 was one of my first thoughts, especially as I couldn’t see any obvious remnants of a solid rear axle or leaf springs. Especially an early model 1968-69 with the horizontal speedo cluster. But the HVAC controls seemed wrong. And that big hole with the stamped reinforcement on the lower dash, right of center. The 510 might have had something like that where the umbrella handbrake lever poked through, but on left hand drive that hole was much closer to the steering column. And most 510 interior photos show typical Japanese horizontal HVAC controls, under the right side of the gauge cluster … the central upper opening in the dash is for the radio. Other photos seem more ambiguous but that area is usually blocked by the steering wheel.
But the firewall photo seems inarguably a 510. And the vent opening at the base of the C pillar also says 510 to me. So maybe, as Dave Skinner suggested, it’s a JDM conversion, explaining why the handbrake hole is right of center? Not unheard of in Oregon. Anyway, I’ll give Jeff the award for CC winner of the day, with a honorable mention to Dave. Look me up if you’re ever in Santa Cruz and I’ll buy you a beer, or a coffee. Or both.
‘68-‘69 510 dashboards had vertically oriented HVAC controls adjacent to the steering column, just like what can be seen in the mystery photo:
Thanks dman for an entertaining way to spend the day. What I will say is that youze guys must have better AI than I do since the few AI searches I did in service of this quest resulted only in pandering statements about how it was a burned car in a rural setting…and the robot repeatedly insisted that the right front wheel was “brake hardware”. After getting AI to uselessly repeat itself several times, I gave up and went at it the old-school way (i.e., thinking about it).
The power of the CC (human) Commentariat declares victory 🙂
I used AI to ask what 1960’s or ‘70’s cars had McPherson struts but not rack and pinion (not asking about any of my pictures). That pointed to various BMW’s and maybe Peugeot. Next I tried image searches of dashboards for pretty much every car I could think of. And that did include the early 510, but I didn’t try to narrow it down between 19t8 and 1969 which I assumed were the same. And many photos had the HVAC controls obscured. So after the comments started coming in, specifically your firewall photos confirming that it was a 510, did I specifically ask Google about differences between 1968 and 1969 510 dashes, and that got me the final answer. So I did have to think about it a bit too, but your thinking was the tipping point that got me there.
Look’s like a pile of garbage to me…..!
Update, I just found this on a 13 year old Datsun forum, after explicitly asking Google AI if the 1968 and 1969 Datsun 510 dashes were different. The answer:
“The heater controls on the ’68 are horizontal while the ’69 are vertical. Ignition switch is mounted on the dash to the left of the steering wheel on the ’68 and is on the steering column on the ’69.”
If this is correct, the wreck is a 1969 Datsun 510. Nissan Bluebird for most non-North Americans. I guess AI has its use. Thanks again to everyone for all the guesses.
For reference, here’s a dash pic of ANOTHER 1969 510 that has been discarded in the brush, in this case in Tuscarora, NV. Heater controls clearly-ish visible.
And here’s the link to the write-up that Paul did that included several pictures of the whole vehicle in situ.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/nevada-overland-trip-exbro5-day-5-junk-yard-pay-dirt/
Thanks Jim, all my Google image searching for “Datsun 510 dashboard” never took me to Paul’s photo from the Exbro trip. I guess it needed some better SEO. My other mistake was relying on a 50+ year memory that the ‘68 and ‘69 510’s had identical dashes. By the time the 510 became desirable in my peer group the 1970+ models with themround gauges and horizontal HVAC sliders were commonly available used and cheap. So I didn’t pay much attention to the first two years.
Wow that thing looks like it rolled off a mountain .
-Nate