Welcome back! After yesterday’s awful hatchbacks, I thought you all might want to look at some things you might actually want to buy. So I found a few cheap and nice junk cars that I think might do better.
But I have to say, I enjoyed the stories. Cheap, ordinary cars like these are made for mischief, whether it’s doing donuts in a snowy parking lot in a Chevette or making a J-turn on a gravel road in a Dodge Omni 024. My brother’s first car was a Plymouth Turismo that caught fire in traffic, so he replaced it with a Horizon. And I once left a party, completely freaked out, with a gorgeous girl driving a black Chevette, and I Wish I knew what happened next. (Or maybe I didn’t.)
Anyway, for me, between the two, the Horizon is the best, and it’s not even close. It’s pleasantly bad, like hair metal or a B-movie. The Chevette is just bad, like the diner in the next town that your grandfather was always insisting on taking you to.
OK. Now let’s look at better alternatives. Whether it’s a T-top or a truck, let’s see what you prefer.
Engine/Drive: 1.6-liter inline four-cylinder with two overhead camshafts, four-speed automatic, front-wheel drive
Location: Long Beach, California
Mileage: 206,000 miles
Operating status: Runs and drives great
Remember when every car manufacturer sold not only subcompacts but also sporty subcompacts? There was the VW Rabbit, but also the Scirocco. Under the hood, more or less the same car, but the design made the difference. Ford had the Escort and the EXP. Toyota had the Tercel and the Paseo. And Nissan had the Sentra and the Pulsar, which for some reason by the time this car was produced was no longer called the Pulsar, but simply the NX.
This is the base model of the NX, the 1600, named after its 1.6-liter engine. It was the same engine as in the Sentra, designed more for fuel economy than driving pleasure, but that was OK. The point of such cars was to be able to drive an economical car that didn’t see like an economy car. Nissan has gone one step further and fitted all NXs with T-tops, similar to the previous Pulsar, for some open-air fun. This NX has an automatic, but I imagine many of the 1600s did.
This is a one-owner car with over 200,000 miles on it, but the seller says it runs and drives well. It seems to have suffered from the California sun; there’s something odd wrong with the airbag cover. I’m not sure how much I can trust a thirty-year-old airbag anyway. But I would never recommend someone remove it and install an aftermarket steering wheel, and I never did anything like that with a Miata I owned a few years ago.
It’s also pretty sun-bleached on the outside, which raises doubts about the condition of the T-top seals. If the sun has been baking on the paint, it’s damaged those seals too. You might want to take it to a car wash for a “pre-purchase inspection.”
Engine/Drive: 3.0-liter overhead-valve V6, five-speed manual transmission, rear-wheel drive
Location: Brentwood, California
Mileage: 205,000 miles
Operating status: Runs and drives well
A few days ago we looked at two Ford Rangers from other countries. One of them was actually a Mazda with Ford badges. What we have here is the exact opposite: This is a Ford Ranger built in St. Paul, Minnesota, with Mazda badges and some improvements to the sheet metal. And I don’t just mean that huge dent in the hood.
The Mazda B-series of this era offered the same three engines as the Ford Ranger: a 2.3-liter four-cylinder, a 4.0-liter Cologne V6, and in between the 3.0-liter Vulcan V6 from the Ford Taurus that this model has. I haven’t heard anything good about this engine in this application; I’ve heard that it offers only a marginal increase in power over the 2.3-liter and is only slightly more fuel efficient than the big six-cylinder. But it’s reliable, as is the Mazda-built five-speed manual behind it.
This truck has also had only one owner and has just over 200,000 miles on it. It runs and drives great and the A/C works, which is always a welcome bonus on a cheap vehicle. It is in good condition overall, with just some wear and tear on the interior.
Aside from the aforementioned tweak to the nose, it looks good on the outside too. It’s an SE, so it has fancy alloy wheels and some stripes, and it’s green, which I think is the best color for a truck, although I might be biased.
These two are nothing special, but they are cheap and they run well, and at this price, that’s enough. They will last you a while, probably without major problems. One is a little more useful and the other has a little lower consumption. So, which one will it be?
(Image credit: Facebook Marketplace Seller)
