#MiserableEconoboxes
QOTD: Reserving the Cheap Seats?
Most readers know of our weekly Ace of Base series, which turns a jaundiced eye to the instant-ramen end of the price scale for a particular model. Thanks for all the comments on those, by the way.
Sometimes, though, there is no cut-rate model. No trim on which to hang the placard of “Value Leader.” Let’s fix that, shall we?
![Matthew Guy](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/21/101521_1.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1986 Honda Civic 1300 Hatchback
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 2000 Toyota Echo
The Toyota Echo, known as the Platz in its homeland (the hatchback was named Vitz), was available in the United States for the 2000 through 2005 model years. It was an inoffensive and reliable little commuter appliance, but something about its proportions seemed wrong to American car shoppers and few signed on the line that is dotted.
These days, even a Daewoo Lanos is easier to find than an Echo, but I was able to find this forlorn silver ’00 in a Denver-area self-service yard.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Ace of Base: Mazda3 I Sport
Base model. What does that image conjure to mind? Vinyl seats? Tinny AM radio? A low rent penalty box on wheels? A few years ago, you’d be right on the money. Driving misery was available for voluntary purchase at the showrooms of just about every major car maker.
Now, though … it’s tougher to find, but there are entry-level vehicles out there that, in their cheapest guise, won’t make you cringe with each pull of the driver’s door handle. These base models? They’ve aced it. Here’s a good example.
![Matthew Guy](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/21/101521_1.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1971 AMC Gremlin
Once American Motors was absorbed by Chrysler in 1987, after lingering on the ropes for a few years during a series of early-1980s bailouts by Renault (i.e., the French government), random strands of its Kenosha/Boulogne-Billancourt DNA appeared here and there in various Chrysler products over the following decades. You’ll still find plenty of examples of full-on AMC products in North American junkyards today, in the form of the XJ Cherokee and AMC Eagle (the case could be made that the Chrysler LH is an AMC design, via the Renault 21/25-based Eagle Premier), but full-strength AMC models from the company’s heyday of the George Romney era and into the early 1970s are very rare sights today.
Here’s a pre- Malaise Gremlin, in glorious brown, that I spotted in a Denver yard last week.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1988 Mitsubishi Precis
The Hyundai Excel had a Mitsubishi engine, and so some obscure tenet of badge engineering mandated a Mitsubishi-branded Excel so it might drive on the same roads as Plymouth-branded Mitsubishis.
This was the Mitsubishi Precis, a car that was so stunningly bad and such a poor seller that this one is the first and only example I have ever seen in all my years of crawling through wrecking yards.
That makes it one of the rarest cars … in the world.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1981 Toyota Corolla SR-5 Liftback
These days, plenty of tuner kids want to get a E70 Corolla and turn it into a sick drift machine … but then reality sets in and they end up commuting to work in a 15-year-old Kia Rio instead. Meanwhile, the abandoned drift-project TE72 wagons become 24 Hours of LeMons cars, if they’re lucky, and the rusty SR-5s just get scrapped once something costing more than $19 breaks.
This ’81 Corolla two-door SR-5 liftback gave its all in the service of its owners, and now it awaits parts buyers in a Denver self-service yard.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Real Racing: 1980 Showroom Stock C National Championship (Video)
Murilee loves to wax about the scourge of Miserable Econoboxes infesting our shores during the Malaise Era. Turns out, a few of them skipped daily commuter duty and went straight to the track instead.
![Matthew Guy](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/21/101521_1.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1988 Subaru Justy DL
You can’t talk about the miserable econoboxes of the 1980s without talking about perhaps the most miserable of them all: the irresistibly cheap, irredeemably terrible, front-wheel-drive Subaru Justy (the all-wheel-drive Justy could be a lot of fun, of course).
You won’t see many of these cars today, but I was able to find this 28-year-old survivor in a Silicon Valley U-Wrench-It yard.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1992 Geo Metro LSi Convertible
The Geo Metro, a Suzuki Cultus imported by GM, came after the Chevrolet Sprint version of the Cultus but before GM axed the Geo brand and started selling Chevrolet Metros, which sold in respectable numbers during its 1989-1997 run.
There was a convertible version of the Metro, which allowed thin-walleted drivers to enjoy open-air driving without having to take a Sawzall to a 20-year-old Corolla, and I’ve found one of the few remaining ones at a San Francisco Bay Area self-service yard.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1983 Nissan Sentra Coupe
The first-generation Nissan Sentra first appeared on American roads in 1982, early in the very costly Datsun-to-Nissan rebranding process. The lightweight, fuel-efficient Sentra was a big sales hit, because drivers in the early 1980s (with vivid memories of the gas lines of a few years earlier) were willing to put up with double-digit horsepower and lots of NVH in a car that promised decent reliability and cheap point-A-to-point-B costs. Now, of course, nearly all of the early Sentras are gone, so this well-worn example in a San Francisco Bay Area yard gives us an interesting history lesson.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1969 Volkswagen Beetle
The production run of the Type 1 Volkswagen Beetle, which was built using essentially the same design from 1938 through 2003, will never be surpassed; the runner-up Morris Oxford II/Hindustan Ambassador was made from 1954 through 2014, and we feel fairly sure that the Chinese Communist Party will put a stop to Chinese production of the first-gen Kia Pride/Ford Festiva long before it beats the Beetle in the year 2053.
I see quite a few Beetles during my junkyard travels, but rarely photograph them. This one, found in a San Francisco Bay Area self-serve yard, had enough of a story to tell that I felt compelled to document it.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1982 Toyota Starlet
The Toyota Starlet was sold in the United States for the 1981 through 1984 model years, though not in large numbers. It was rock-and-stick simple, had rear-wheel drive and an unkillable pushrod engine, and it got a (claimed) 54 highway mpg. But it was tiny and cramped even by Miserable Econobox standards and had to compete with the Corolla Tercel on the very same showroom floors. Since the Tercel was cheaper, roomier, more powerful (everything is relative!), and generally more modern, American Starlets were rare to start with. They have become even more rare today, as generations of wild-eyed engine-swappers tripled Starlet horsepower and stuffed the handful of remaining examples (that didn’t succumb to rust) into concrete abutments and dragstrip K-barriers.
Here’s a Colorado ’82 that is as close to being completely used up as any vehicle I have ever seen in a wrecking yard.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1990 Daihatsu Charade SX
The Daihatsu Charade was available in the United States for the 1988 through 1992 model years, then was forgotten more quickly than the speed at which Darmstadtium-267 decays. Still, among the Daewoo Nubiras and Kia Rondos and Sterling 827s and other forgotten machinery at your typical California self-service junkyards, you’ll see a Charade now and then.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
Junkyard Find: 1978 Honda Civic Hatchback
The first-generation Honda Civic sold like crazy in California, and could be found everywhere in the Golden State from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. These Civics are now virtually extinct, both on the street and in the junkyard, because they were used up and summarily discarded.
![Murilee Martin](https://cdn-fastly.thetruthaboutcars.com/media/profile/2022/07/26/70200_2.jpg?size=50x50)
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