Hey, do you know what a float bowl is? How about an accelerator pump? Mixture screw? If you think I’m just throwing words together, there’s a chance you’ve never had to work on a car with a carburetor before. If that’s the case, in some ways, you should count yourself lucky, because these old mechanical fuel-delivery contraptions are often a real pain in the ass when something goes wrong. But if you’re going to dabble in older cars, at some point you’re going to come across one.
It will come as no surprise that the little island-blue Plymouth Neon beat the snot out of its Saturn competiton yesterday. The combination of a stickshift, a great color, and that fun seat fabric was just too much for the dowdy but competent Saturn to overcome. A manual Saturn SL2 might have changed the discussion, but I had limited time to search for cars and had to take what I found quickly. Maybe we’ll do a rematch someday.
You know I’m all about the Neon. I love those cars. I even liked the SOHC automatic one I owned, until some jackass in a WRX with no insurance rear-ended me. (No, I’m not still bitter about it, why do you ask?) I will probably go looking for another small, manual car for fun at some point, and a Neon (if I can find one) would definitely be on the short list.
The last carbureted car sold in the US was, if I remember right, an Isuzu pickup truck, sometime in the mid-1990s. Even ten years earlier, however, lots of cars still had carbs, especially at the low end of the market. Fuel injection was special enough to warrant its own badge: my 1989 Chevy truck has a prominent “EFI” sticker on the tailgate, proudly declaring the absence of a carburetor under its hood. Fuel injection was a wonderful advancement, but we covered bazillions of miles in carb-equipped cars, and still do today. Kits exist to convert older cars from carbs to fuel injection, and lots of people install them, but there’s no reason you have to. A carburetor will work just fine, and if you find a car with a new carb on it, like these two, you probably won’t even need to mess with it at all. Let’s take a look.
1985 Toyota Tercel – $4,500
Engine/drivetrain: 1.5-liter OHC inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Tacoma, WA
Odometer reading: 74,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
There is possibly no better example of car-as-appliance than the Toyota Tercel. You could make an argument for the Prius today, I suppose, but it’s just an extrapolation of the same idea: a sturdy, no-nonsense vehicle built to be reliable, efficient, and practical – at the expense of anything even resembling fun. Most Tercels were driven into the ground ages ago, but once in a while a survivor pops up, like this little beige number.
This generation of Tercel only came with one engine in the US: a 1.5-liter four making just 63 horsepower. It does the job, but that’s about it. The transmission is a five-speed manual, driving the front wheels through a final drive mounted below the engine. It’s a weird arrangement, but it worked well. This one has just 74,000 miles on it, and the seller says it runs well. It does have a new Weber DGV carb on it in place of the stock carb. I doubt the Weber carb adds any power, but it probably helps with drivability and ease of tuning. It probably also won’t pass a smog test, if you live in a place that requires such things.
You wouldn’t expect a basic transportation car like this to have much in the way of creature comforts, so you won’t be disappointed when I tell you it does not. It doesn’t have a tachometer, or air conditioning, or power steering. I don’t even see a radio in the dash. It does have a right-side rearview mirror, so it isn’t the absolute cheapest Tercel available in 1985, but it’s close. It’s in good condition, which isn’t surprising considering the low mileage.
These boxy little hatchbacks, regardless of make or model, were everywhere in the ’80s and ’90s. Everybody bought them, but nobody thought of them as anything special. They’re still not anything special, but with a few decades in their rearview mirrors, they have a certain charm. This one is in particularly nice condition, and I bet it’s exactly like the one that someone’s mom had, and they’ll snap it up in a heartbeat, purely out of nostalgia.
1987 Dodge Ram 50 – $4,200
Engine/drivetrain: 2.0-liter OHC inline 4, four-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Elk Grove, CA
Odometer reading: 95,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
All three of the Big Three automakers imported a small truck and put their name on it at some point, but Chrysler started later than Ford or GM, and kept their captive import truck longer. The Dodge D50, as it was known originally, didn’t appear until 1979, but it stayed in showrooms all the way through 1993. This is the first year of the second generation, and it appears to be a fairly basic model.
As such, I’m guessing it has the smaller 2.0-liter engine instead of the 2.6 liter. Most little import trucks like this you see have manual transmissions, but this one has a four-speed automatic. All is not lost, though; the automatic comes with a column-mounted shifter, as all automatics should. It has low miles, and the seller says it was a “barn find.” They’ve done some work to bring it back to life, including installing a refurbished carb. It runs and drives great, and currently needs nothing except a belt for the AC compressor. Belts are easy to install, but the question is: why was it removed?
To go along with the column shifter, it has a good old fashioned bench seat. It looks like it’s in good shape, but it’s vinyl, so you might want to get that air conditioner fixed. This one is pretty well devoid of options too, apart from the air conditioner, but I do see an old-school two-knob tape deck in the dash.
The outside is in really good condition too. These small trucks lead hard lives when they aren’t stuck in a barn for an undisclosed length of time, so maybe this one lucked out. It does have a couple of dents, like a proper truck should, but the paint is shiny and it doesn’t have any rust.
If you have taken a shine to either of these, but the carbureted engines give you pause, don’t let them. These are both good, reliable cars, and by all accounts, they run fine. Fuel injection is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t strictly necessary, and if you limit yourself to nothing but fuel-injected engines, you’ll be missing out on a lot of interesting old cars. Which one of these do you find more interesting?
I’ll take the truck. However, at that mileage, the timing belt probably needs addressed before something bad happens. Ask me how I know.
I’m not paying $4k+ for either of these; that’s just nuts! And I swore off carbs years ago, so unless something is REALLY special, I’m not owning another carbureted engine.
I had an ’83 Tercel hatch like this. It was metallic silver. Other cars have.. stuff. This had paint, a 5spd, a glove box, and three seats, a roof. BUT I LOVED it so much. I treated it like a Jeep. Up and down curbs, dirt roads, trails. My more creative brother said it was the most boring car every (I disagree because: beige K-car) and that it needed something extra, so we got stick on Helvetica letters from the hardware store and gave each door the ultimate in irony: The C H A N E L branding (from the posh French fashion house). It was a joke. OBV the Chanel company wasn’t buying silver Tercels for company cars, but somehow the metermaids thought it was a commerical vehicle. I parked [illegally] like a cop, and never got a ticket. That thing rocked. I’d buy another today. Tough fun. And… “fashion.”
Everyone ragging on the Tercel for being slow is just doing it wrong. Here’s me having a blast doing Rallycross in a 1995 Tercel:
https://imgur.com/a/p8eW2Pg
To be fair, a 1995 is around 90 hp, so I think around 30 hp more than the 1985. Mine also has working AC, but you definitely feel the hp loss when the compressor kicks on. The AC seems to be the only option the car came with. It’s a base model, so no clock, no radio (although I did add one), no passenger side mirror, crank windows, 4 speed manual. It’ll do 70+ mph on the highway if you’re patient, but any kind of accident over like 55 is probably certain death.
I owned an 84 and a 92 D50. Bulletproof!
The only Turdcel I’d be interested in has to be 4WD, and this one isn’t it. I passed on a same MY Wagon because it was rusty around the rear windows and the seller was asking pretty much the same money but I admit it had twice the mileage.
So this is the comparison it takes to get me to A. vote auto over standard, and B. vote truck over damn near anything else. I remember how I felt about Tercels in the ’80s, I won’t let time trick me into thinking they could be even a little fun to drive (or that they’re interesting in any other way).
I voted for the Tercel out of pure spite for the Ram 50 owner. How can you tell me that the AC compressor “just needs a belt” with a straight face?
“Just needs a belt,” my ass.
I’d be willing to go to the Tercel on that travesty alone, but really I’d be inclined to take it in any case, they’re pretty familiar and the scrappy little rig gets a LOT done if you’re not in a hurry.
What am I going to do with a stripper Tercel that won’t pass emissions? I voted truck but the “just needs a belt” BS is insulting. Irl I wouldn’t give that seller the time of day.
If I’m going to buy a vehicle with no functioning AC I’d rather it was honest about it. Even though I have no use for another hatchback. Plus the truck could do some actual work. And I like its bench seat because that increases its passenger capacity by 50% over most short-cabs, and I happen to have a three person household so that’d get us places if we hadda go.
But, if they lied about the AC they lied about other stuff. So, maybe I’ll paint the back windows and pretend the Tercel is a van.
And yes, both seem hilariously overpriced but the $~3K they’ll probably get for either of these is just 2026 being 2026, I guess.
Ram 50 just wish it was a diesel especially at that price.
Neither. I never see myself owning a carbureted vehicle again and they are both massively overpriced.
My choice is easy today, as a Ram 50 owner.
One of the many great things about my own Ram 50 is that it’s a 1990 model, which was the first year for fuel injection. Practically everyone with the carb’d models swaps out the original feedback carb for a Weber.
The carb holdouts of the later 80s went to great lengths to meet emissions, which led to unreliable electronic feedback controls and miles of vacuum lines. My worst experience with this was a 1988 Accord DX. The vacuum diagram looked more like a wiring diagram for the space shuttle.
That Ram 50 is the quintessential “old man truck”. Basic trim, but with A/C for comfort (when it worked) and an automatic, because these old knees just aren’t up to using a clutch all the time anymore, now get off my lawn. I’d wager that the “barn” it was found in was someone’s meemaw-and-peepaw’s detached garage. And, in this case, I wonder if “barn find” is just an intriguing euphemism for “estate sale find”.
Makes no difference to me. As a “man of a certain age”, I feel no shame picking it today.