I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time detailing my friends’ cars and sometimes fixing / breaking them. They’re largely hand-me-down desperation-mobiles, but that makes their stories even more CC-worthy. You see, budget car shoppers are much more likely today to end up with, say, a 2000s Lexus than my own thrifty choice of an 80s diesel Mercedes. These cars may not be pretty, but if you dig deeper, they can offer the same sort of social commentary as those of true classics still doing daily driver duty that appear frequently in these digital pages.
I am by far and away the biggest car enthusiast in my group of friends. So I wasn’t exactly surprised to get a text from my least car obsessed friend (who hadn’t driven since getting a driver’s license last year), telling me he was doing used car shopping– basically my Bat Signal. Except this time, there was a twist. He had a miniscule budget and needed this car to (A) sit in a storage unit for three months, (B) fit all of his worldly possessions inside during this prolonged storage, and (C) immediately fire right up and move him 400 miles the day he gets back from a prolonged trip. And he had barely over a week to buy this car before the big day. Oh dear.
Fortunately, he already had a family friend connection willing to sell him a car and just wanted me to drive check it out with him. This ought to be interesting.
One thing to know about me before we begin is that I love hopeless automobiles. The more unloved and doomed they are, the more I want them to keep driving despite their circumstances. Earlier this year, I picked up a staggeringly unreliable Nissan 300ZX that has really tested this love of down on their luck cars. But it’s given me plenty of practice in ignoring all but the most serious problems and prioritizing fixes.
I am definitely biased in favor of challengingly decrepit cars, but what I was about to see was shocking, even to me.
A front wheel drive base model 2003 Honda CR-V with just a shade over 200,000 miles would ordinarily be a fantastic choice for my friend’s requirements. This particular one had tons of recent mechanical work addressing common age related failures such as gaskets, seals, and belts. However, it had some of the worst amateur bodywork I’ve ever seen performed on it. It’s difficult to imagine a more aesthetically ruined vehicle than this deeply sad automobile.
The story was that it was traded to an indie mechanic who was to work on it as partial payment towards a recently mechanically refreshed vehicle. Since then, the mechanic had most of the CR-V’s mechanical neglect reversed as a side project.
Importantly, the seller offered the insight that the staggeringly ugly body damage was there when the car was just two years old. I figured that if the Honda has held up long enough to age out of car childhood and even teen years, it’s got at least another year in it.
However, there were a few caveats besides its atrocious bodywork. The tailgate had the only working lock cylinder, and the windshield wipers flopped loosely about the windshield in a comically ineffective manner. Additionally, the interior was coated in dog hair and slobber, and the exterior looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. These problems didn’t trouble me much, though.
Still, I told my friend to buy it since very few other cars this cheap would come with so much as a fresh oil change, let alone a significant mechanical overhaul.
First up, give it a good clean. Starting, obviously, with the roof, as I wanted to see the dents clearer. I hadn’t made up my mind yet as to whether the car had been rolled or had merely scraped against the bottom of something low hanging.
As the coats of built up pine sap got washed off, I began to notice something odd. Literally every single surface of the sides of the car and roof was covered in skid marks and scrapes, but nothing was that badly crushed in. It must have fallen over into a particularly soft thicket of bushes at some point, leaving it disfigured but unexpectedly solid.
The goal was to thoroughly go through everything that isn’t ordinarily cleaned and wipe away decades of being the unloved third car used for dog transport duty. We even took the spare tire off to deep clean behind it.
It cleaned up well, but there’s no polishing a shine into gray primer over bondo. With a little work with the clay bar and the polisher, the few bits of un-ruined paint remaining did take a shine. I doubt that many vastly more deserving cars, also languishing at the rock bottom of their depreciation curves, will ever get a clean as thorough as this damaged CR-V got.
There was a moment after we finally finished deep cleaning the surprisingly intact interior when we sat back and realized we had made a massive oversight… It was late at night and pouring down with rain; yet, we had just spent 6 hours cleaning the car and had made no attempt to fix the windshield wipers. So the moment came when I had to send the “new” driver into the slowly lessening rain with ineffective wipers, but it was unavoidable.
The spit shine was far from the end of the help I had promised my friend on this car. After all, the car’s newly acquired cleanliness was mainly for motivation to fix its other problems. I still had four evenings of help to give to prepare for his move.
First up, the tragically floppy wipers. The linkage’s bushings had suffered from a small case of nonexistence, so we replaced them. The mechanism felt nice and tight afterwards, but we quickly realized the splines on the arms had been eroded down to nothing. Reducing the play in the system from about 2′ to a mere 8″ was still a win. The bodge repair would do for now.
Next up, safety. A full brake job including soft hoses on top of rotors and pads offers a lot of peace of mind. That takes a lot of time when you have to do it right as the light is failing, with a trunk full of basic hand tools and the world’s worst floor jack, but we eventually got it done.
The least straightforward part of the mechanical improvements was the locks. Replacing the passenger side took a long time due to a fiddly and unforgiving door handle design, but we eventually got it done. The driver’s side was even worse due to the bashed in door reducing the inside space to nearly nothing, and getting a hand in there was a true challenge, but eventually all the locks functioned.
And that was that. In the span of barely over a week, the car got purchased, cleaned, and the most glaring problems addressed, all ready to fulfill a duty no unproven bargain basement car should be called upon to perform. It might be ugly, but this CR-V is living up to its design intent as the all-purpose box on wheels.
I’m sure we’re all aware of how the price floor for a decent used car has risen in recent years. This ruined CR-V is what a truly cheap car looks like in today’s world. Gone are the slant 6 Plymouth Valiants with the bumpers rusting off and even the immortal diesel W123 Mercedes are retiring to garages (except for mine). Give it enough time and even this decrepit CR-V might stick it out long enough to become a curbside classic. For now, it’s merely a curbside hooptie.
Reminds me of my post college days when I was young, lacking money, but desperately in need of reliable transportation. So I bought up neighborhood junkers. These were $200-300 cars.
I had two questions for the sellers. What is wrong with it, and why are you getting rid of it?
If they said nothing was wrong with the car I walked away fast. They were either lying or oblivious. Of the two an oblivious owner was worse. Such a $200 car was a basket case because it was never maintained. I’d listen to the list of problems. The more little problems the car had the better. One I remember was a 1974 Pontiac Ventura (basically a Chevy Nova with different sheet metal). Its problem was you had to keep adding water to the radiator in the summer. It didn’t overheat, and it didn’t do this in the winter the owner said. That owner was getting rid of it because they could not deal with having to add water twice a week.
Each junker then got taken to my ace mechanic before I even used it, with the list of what was wrong and instructions to find and fix everything else too. It typically cost me around $600 to turn these junkers into solid transportation though I was willing to do as much as $1000 repairs to each, if needed. For my $800 I got the equivalent of a $2000-3000 used car.
I kept at least three such cars at a time, so I would always have transportation when I needed it.
Of course my little fleet of ugly ducklings was also shared with my good friends when they were truly in need. None of us were old enough that car rental firms would deal with us. You had to be at least 25 to rent a car.
It was a rough time of life, made rougher because I could not know the future. For all I knew back then I would be near broke my entire life.
I now know my life would work out just fine.
But your article brought back memories of that Ventura, a burgundy Plymouth Duster that turned out to have a salvage title, and the other hoopties that I turned into reliable transportation through a combination of little money and big need.
When I was car shopping two years ago, I was scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel of used cars at $2,500. There was not much out there that I would want to own and I wanted something fun, so I ended up with a 1985 Mercedes 300D with a big rust hole in the floor and no working heat or A/C. I was cross shopping it not with other cars but with not owning a car.
The days of working cars below a 1k that just need a few things are long gone. Finding anything even at 2k is pretty tricky now. And that’s to say nothing of extortionate insurance rates.
Car buying at the low end is a mess these days. Over the last 10 years used cars have risen more than inflation it was worse a couple years ago but still not great. We ended up buying my son a car in 2023 and what should have been a $3500 car in 2021 was a 5K car in 2023, now it’s back to a $4000 car. Using an inflation calculator some of the car I bought and looking at similar age and mileage online now I see most are 1.3 to 1.5x inflation over that period some times way more.
In 2006 we bought a 96 or 97 plymouth voyager with 120k miles for $1400 (it was a base model). Inflation would have that at about $2300 now. You would be hard pressed to find a similar 10-12 year old van with less then 150k miles for less than 4K these days most I see are more like 5-7k.
A broken 2003 Ford Ranger is now worth $3,500, somehow. Having bought two $2,000 cars myself in the last two years, I know just how few options there are for truly bargain basement transportation. It’s kind of sad.
Nice work, given the inherent limitations of the body damage. I’d say it was run off the side of a road into a deep ditch; I see that all too often here on Oregon’s many smaller roads and highways, especially on a Sunday morning! These old CRVs are gold.
I bought an ’03 Chevy Tracker three years ago for an off-road/overlanding trip, and now we keep it down at our Port Orford cabin. It has some 225k miles on it and hasn’t needed a single thing since I addressed a couple of minor issues when I got it. Tough little car.
For a new driver, it’s nice that the exterior literally couldn’t be any more ruined. You’d have no fear of shopping carts or tight parking garages in this thing.
Though this CTV is FWD so no offroading for it.
FWD is just fine offroad, it just means you need to carry more speed going in and never touch the brakes…
The body condition though is ideal for a commuter, something that looks like that will ALWAYS be given the merge. If in doubt just start wobbling slightly towards the nearest Audi or BMW, they will always cede ground. It’s the fastest way across any major city. Zero Fs given with the receipts on full display.
“A friend in need is a friend indeed”. It’s commendable you gave of your time and expertise when needed. The best thing is you won’t see the vehicle again after it drives into the sunset.
If your friend has a sense of humor he might want to invest in a “This Car Is Not Abandoned” bumper sticker, assuming there is an appropriate place to mount it. (I had one on my 60 Rambler, which had an actual bumper.) A little levity is nice.
Great story and you helped your fellow man! I have rehabilitated several vehicles that had been counted out by others too. It always feels good to help out and get a win for the underdogs.
My 18 year old needed his first ride. He isn’t interested in cars. He wanted a Tesla, or “something nice”. His birthday was last month, and he tired of sharing his twin’s Avalon. (She’s OCD about her car.) So – we could use a truck. “A TRUCK?, NO WAY!” No one at their hoity-toity school drives THAT.
My money. I chose. A truck. Told him it was mine, but that he could buy it off me if he liked it. LOL! Love at first sight! It was a fleet work truck garaged the past 5 years during THE LOCKDOWN. 132,000. 2001 F-150 XL. Bench seat, crank windows. No carpeting. Mike paid me for it and his friends are excited to ride in a truck older than they are. Dealing with basic mainteance issues from not being driven. He promised I can have it back as my new Curbside Classic when he wants something new.
(I have a photo, but right now, it’s too big!)
Here it is:
I found one for sale, but it had rusted below so severly, the rear end was barely attached, but ready to fall off. Thank god for mechanics!
My hat’s off to you, Gray. You’re a fine friend. If that CRV could were a cat, she’d be purring for the first time in a long time.
Do you mind telling us what the price was? And add in at least $1,000 in parts and labor.
Nice job! I kind of love cars like this. My problem is stopping at necessary improvements. Once I bond with a car, my temptation is to start fixing things beyond the necessary.
I agree that the bottom end of the used car market is grim these days. I’ve become one of those old guys who expects to find a decent Town Car or LeSabre or Ranger for “2500. Nope, no such thing anymore. I was lucky to stumble across my Mazda3 that started at free, but that I probably have about $3k into. If only I can hold out and not sink money into a suspension rebuild and new tires.