What can we say? I was going to use it for a Project Car Hell contestant, but what could possibly compete with a 1980 Cadillac Seville limo for this kind of price? Not only that, the seller claims "HELL YES IT DID RUN WHEN PARKED!!!! Rats chewed some of the wires." How hard could it be? And not only do you get the reviled much-sought-after "bustle-back" trunk, you get genuine CIA provenance!
[Craigslist Inland Empire, go here if the listing disappears]

We'd really like to go with a couple of the German Cheesecake Hell Machines for this, but the shipping costs to your hobo jungle just puts the price tag too far out of reach. Despair not, though; we've got a pair of budget classics for you, and you get to choose between Malaise Era British build quality and Warsaw Pact parts availability. If you're willing to substitute optimism sweat for sanity a fat bankroll, you could never, ever get one of these hair shirts fine European machines back on the road!

Have you ever gone Lotus shopping? Man, they sure ain't cheap! That's because serious car freaks know that nothing handles like a Lotus, particularly one that's equipped with a nervous high-revvin' Torqueless Wonder engine. However, a true bargain hunter knows where to go for a genuine Lotus at a Festiva price: hurricane country! Head on down to Houston with 1,250 Washingtons and this slightly flood-damaged 1980 Lotus Elite (go here if the ad disappears) could be yours. That mean ol' Hurricane Ike was rough on vehicles (we saw some real flood horror stories on the track at the Yeehaw It's Texas 24 Hours Of LeMons last year), but how bad could a little water damage be when you're looking at a no-frills sports car such as the Elite? Fix some electrical bits here, maybe wring out some mildew-enhanced carpeting there, and you'll be several years and vast quantities of cash just a few turns of the wrench away from driving your Elite. Not only that, you get an alleged two grand in "undamaged by Ike" new parts in the deal!

1948: An Iron Curtain descends over much of Europe, yet those plucky Czechs somehow manage to shove a few Skodas under the curtain and across the Atlantic. 1951: This '48 Škoda 1101 (go here if the ad disappears) breaks down, its owner is hauled before Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committe for attempting to purchase replacement parts from Czechoslavakia, and the car is parked in the woods near Gig Harbor, Washington. We can't swear for sure that the story went just like that, but the car's appearance certainly suggests a lengthy campout in the damp forests of Washington state. According to the seller, it has "semaphor blinkers," which is pretty neat, and it looks like the majority of parts are still there; as an added bonus, you can impress your computer-geek stoner friends by informing them that 1101 is the binary for 13. Dude! Imagine this Škoda jacked up over a solid front axle and equipped with the "KGB Special" V8 out of the GAZ-23 Volga sedan- you'd have yourself a Warsaw Pact GAZser!

There's always the infamous Wankel-powered Citroën GX Birotor (rotary + Citroën= boiling brain), but Novaload has found us something even better: Trevor Fiore's 1980 Karin concept car. Fiore seems to have approved of the 3-seater concept, but didn't want to emulate the boring three-abreast seating of the Matra Bagheera. On the Karin, the driver sits in the middle and the two passengers sit slightly behind and to the sides. Since it's a Citroën, the steering wheel and instruments were taken from the fevered brain of a surrealist science-fiction paperback cover artist. This car so gets the Jalopnik Stamp-O-Approval™!
[Citroenet]

Sort of a Rat Fink-meets-Wacky-Packs mashup, Topps' Weird Wheels series of bubble-gum cards parodied many of our Malaise Era favorites as well as such classics as the Citroën 2CV and Z28 Camaro. Punk rockers and roller skaters get a special mid-Malaise shout-out, too.

Someone must give a Ford Econoline or Dodge A100 the Vampire Van grille treatment!

[Branded In The 80s, Bubblegum-Cards.com]

Someday, of course, that will change; no doubt there are present-day 7-year-olds who will read this post several decades hence and slap their foreheads in anguish: "Those fools! Why, that instrument cluster alone would fetch 47,000 Thorium Credits on the Mars Colony!"

What we've got here is a 1980 Civic that I spotted in an East Bay self-service junkyard a couple weeks back; a good example of the first-year second-generation Civic. The body is pretty straight (though somewhat disfigured by a quarter-inch-thick $39.95 paint job), but it's the interior that really got my attention. The door panels, instruments, all that stuff that's hardest to find in good original condition- all in great shape. Even the front seats were more or less intact, which you don't often see in a junked 29-year-old car. Someone had grabbed the steering column and wheel, but I suspect that everything else will be ground up and digested by The Crusher in the very near future.

The area in which Tomsk shot these cars is an old stomping ground of mine, from back in my college days. Yes, when my hobbies included siphoning gas from a '68 Mercury whilst clad in a Dark Angel shirt and generally lowering UC Irvine's property values. In fact, this yellow Corolla sure looks like the one my freshman-year girlfriend had Earl Scheib shoot in "Sun Yellow" for $59.95 (seatbelts, tires, tailpipe, and all), if you assume that 20 years of Southern California sunshine might take a fearsome toll on a cheap paint job. We've also got a first-gen RX-7, of the sort that's getting seriously rare on the street these days. Tomsk describes them thus:

This early first-gen RX-7 looks to be a genuine survivor, from the jewel-like wheels to the badge one the rear proudly proclaiming the powerplant as 100% piston-free. Sure, the right front fender has seen a little action, but on the whole, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find a nicer example that doesn't live in a climate-controlled garage.

Aside from a full-tilt-boogie AE86, this Malaise Era Toyota Corolla 2-door is about as far removed from today's Maytag-esque Corolla as a car with the same name can get. Evidence: P*ssy magnet yellow paint, abundance of surfing-related stickers in the windows, and badges that proudly read "Deluxe" and "5 speed."

This '80 has the usual NorCal slo-mo body rust around the glass, but the rot won't be life-threatening for another few decades. Thing is, these cars really aren't worth much, so a burned valve or busted transmission might be a ticket straight to The Crusher for this survivor. Let's hope it keeps going until 2nd-generation (1980-83) Civics become collectible.


So far in this series, we've seen a pretty good sampling of the first three generations of the Civic, with this '76 Civic, this '78 Civic, this '79 Civic, this '83 Civic wagon, and this '87 Civic 4WD wagon. Just around the corner from today's car is a good group of DOTS honorees, including the 1977 Honda Accord, the 1966 Mercedes-Benz 200D, and the 1976 Ford Mustang II.

Look at the loving manner in which the Porsche line workers brandish those grinders! And that Benz on the Autobahn- it's totally left in the 924's dust! Fast-forward 28 years and the 924 is still doing pretty well in that other 24 Hours race.

The Alpine A310 for 1984 had a V6 in the back, wild what-the-hell-is-that styling, and a top speed pretty close to 140 MPH, which was pretty good for its time. This one has only 39,000 miles on the clock and looks very nice. These cars sold new for around $30,000- about 77 grand in '09 dollars- and they're quite rare even in Europe nowadays. $23,500 for one, though? What do you think?


[eBay Motors, thanks to Franzouse for the tip]

We've also had a 1971 240Z and a 1978 280Z (both of which get regular driving time), though the ZXs are much more common on the island. We're also seeing quite a few in California 24 Hours Of LeMons races, which means you can buy 'em cheap. Plus, we already know they have the pulsing power of a fuel-injected soul!


In 1980, you got a Malaised-out 138-horsepower L28 engine in your 280ZX, which weighed 2,786 pounds. The price tag for the base hatchback: $9,899, versus the $7,121 price you'd pay for a new 1980 Camaro Z28, which had a slightly better power-to-weight (190 horsepower/3,381 pounds) but much more primitive suspension and brakes. Which would you have purchased?

Now, yesterday we saw a 69% Booth Numbah Two recommendation on the $8,995 Chevette, and now we're looking at a car from the same era that's priced at six grand more… yet I suspect we're going to see a little more enthusiasm for the price tag on this pristine example of Wankel history. It's for sale by the original owner. It's a California car, and it was always garaged. The odometer hasn't even hit 2,500 miles yet! It's been bid up to nearly 10 grand by now, but anyone willing to fire a big $15,000 Buy It Now cruise missile right this minute can take it home ASAP. Is it worth it? You decide!

[eBay Motors], thanks to TK for the tip.

Sure, it probably handles like Grandma's Cutlass Supreme, but who cares? It looks good, it has a manual transmission, it's 25-and-a-half grand, and it will probably eat up a real Daytona in a drag race. Watch this, y'all!

[eBay Motors]

The seller, who uses an innovative photographic technique to heighten the appeal of this Dino replica, claims there's a Porsche engine somewhere in the car. Actually, what he or she states is "powertrain says porsche," which could mean we're looking at a VW-based kit car with a dime-store Porsche emblem taped on the 1300's air cleaner, or maybe it's a Madman Grade hand-fabbed tube chassis with a quad-turbo Porsche 928 engine belting out 900 horsepower. Either way, you'd think the innards of a vehicle that earns the appellation "my baby" would be more familiar to its seller, but such is not the case here.
[Craigslist Seattle, go here if the ad disappears]

[eBay Motors]