Junkyard Find: 1989 Nissan Stanza Sedan
Published: December 10th, 2018
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By the 1989 model year, the weak-selling Nissan Stanza Wagon (aka Nissan Prairie) was gone from the United States, but the unrelated Nissan Stanza sedan continued to sell (poorly) through 1992. You didn’t see many of these cars back then, and they’re exceptionally rare Junkyard Finds today.Here’s an ’89 that I found in a Northern California self-service wrecking yard last summer.
Other than some body damage that may have occurred after this car entered the junkyard ecosystem, this Stanza is in nice shape for a 29-year-old car. The somewhat low mileage plus unfaded paint and upholstery suggest that it may have spent years forgotten in a garage somewhere in the Bay Area. Perhaps it was driven only to church on Sundays.
The “Auto-Metal” feature was considered pretty snazzy in 1989, though factory-issued CD players were starting to appear in cars by that point. No, the deck doesn’t detect the presence of a Slayer tape; it looks for the expensive Type IV “metal” cassette, which allowed higher recording levels than lesser tapes.
The Stanza car was based on the Nissan Violet (aka Auster aka Bluebird), which was considered a fairly substantial car in its homeland.
The 2.0-liter engine made 97 horsepower; curb weight was well under 3,000 pounds, so acceleration wasn’t too miserable by the standards of the time.
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It’s made for fashion models? Approved of by fashion models? There’s no telling.
We wouldn’t be surprised if, next to the word “value” in the dictionary, there was a picture of the new Stanza!
If you like these junkyard posts, you can reach all 1600+ right here at the Junkyard Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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havent seen one on the road in ages. last real presence of these on the road i can remember was when i was in high school back in the late 90s early 00s and they were already clapped and circling the bowl then. last one i remember seeing in the wild was a really rough one that had no plates, abandoned under a highway overpass that looked like a bum had been living in it. reason i remember it so well was because i was thinking about trying to get it to start, drive it home, and get it registered as my beater/hooptie car. this was back in 01..
I'm always mystified as to why the Stanza didn't sell well. It was the same size and price as myriad competitors like the Camry and Accord, with no glaring faults, but sold like moldy bread. Perhaps Nissan was using its import quota for the Maxima and Sentra. Was it not marketed enough? I think it was far enough in price from the Maxima as to not have the maxima eat its sales.