You all remember our contributor Emily Velasco, right? Sure you do. She once made a coilpack and spark plug sing. Anyway, she likes to send me pictures of interesting cars she sees while out and about or, occasionally, ones she sees in dreams. Last night, though, she had a little car-identification challenge for me, and it was enough fun that I thought it would be unethical to not share it with all of you. So who’s up for a little morning car part identification game?
Emily presented the challenge to me like this:
How do you feel about a round of Can We Stump Jason? Okay, for all the money, can you identify the car this door panel came from?
…and then she showed me this picture of a discarded interior door card:
Now, keep in mind, she said this was for all the money, which is a non-trivial amount and I could definitely use all the money to get some of my project cars running again. All the money would solve a lot of problems!
I’m happy to say I did figure this one out, and pretty quickly. The message came in at 10:02 pm and I got it by 10:09, according to the timestamps on the texts. Am I proud of myself? A bit, yes. I guess she’s just going to Venmo me All the Money?
Now, I’m pretty sure there are those of you out there who will ID this even faster than I did, but it could prove a challenge for some people, too. As far as hints go, I don’t want to give anything away, but I will note that this fake stitching is not a bad way to get things started:
That’s all I’m going to say, though. I will note that I think it’s interesting that just about all of you will be able to guess country of origin and general timeframe almost immediately, which is impressive when you really think about it.
When you’re ready for the answer, you can click here to see it!
Emily also sent me some pictures of a friendly little orange kitty she met by the door card; maybe this was from his vehicle? He wasn’t clear.
Okay, if you got it, tell us in the comments! And maybe tell us how long it took, and what the big clues were! I’d like to use this as a sort of guide to how all of our weird car-addled brains work. I think if you showed this to most normies, they’d be sort of baffled that gearheads both are capable of such feats of useless identification and that many of us enjoy this kind of thing.
But that just makes it more fun.
I’m pleased with myself for suspecting it was a GM full size truck from the late 70s/early 80s. I’m not usually good at this and will get future ones wrong.
The beautiful rich materials and precision-molded “stitching” are dead giveaways because we know GM spared no expenses on quality in this era.
It would have taken me a hundred guesses to get it right, but I will pat myself on the back for immediately saying, “Oh, that’s from GM” as soon as I saw it.
I didn’t get the door card, but I know a handsome guy with fine whiskers when I see one.
I like this game. More please.
I got it quickly. There were so many of them around in the ’80’s, most rusted to shit but still running.
Yep. Knew it almost immediately.
It’s an ’80’s GMC truck door card, jimmy / suburban.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/116635202012
The shape, armrest, door handle location, crank window location, and chalkiness all look like the door card to my 85 C10 Squarebody Scottsdale, but the trim and pattern are different. This either seems like it’s from a lower trim or an older truck. Although it is entirely possible my door cards are not original to my truck. Definitely from some sort of Squarebody.
I guessed 80s Chevy Suburban after seeing the lead image,but wasn’t sure about what version really. There are probably hundreds of variations of the same doorcard.
Also, I am more of a dog person.
I’m going with a GM truck or van from square body years that obviously had crank windows.
Pretty proud of myself for knowing/guessing the answer correctly. I’m really not good at interior parts, this just happened to be one I am familiar with having spent a decent amount of time around it.
More cat pics, please!
78 Buick Century
As soon as I saw the header image I was wondering why there was a GM square body door panel pictured. Very distinctive and easy to service.
That’s what I thought too. And then I thought it had the lower vent built into the doorcard so I talked myself out of it.
Older ones have a roughly 2/3rd height doorcard. The lower portion, where a speaker and vent is usually located, is full metal still.
Newer ones may be full height, though a quick Google search I’m not seeing much.
The light blueness and the cheapness says Ford to me. So I’m guessing something everybody likes to hate: The US Granada (sorry, I mean Mercedes-Benz S-Class) 😀
That was my first thought also….chalky blue interior —>Ford, but I thought Ford truck.
“If you think you have the answer, write it on the back of a twenty dolla bill and send it to…”
But yeah, that’s malaise American, and I couldn’t tell you more than that because I was born in ’86.
Cute kitty though. I can even imagine his little engine purring at the skritches. :3
I’ve always enjoyed characterizing cats’ purrs as different motors. My old guy had a fine diesel clatter; one of the two I have now has a high strung turbo-3, the other a V6 (it’s not smooth enough to be inline-6).
I had a cat for a while that I hated, so she was just worn out brakes.
It all looks VERY General Motors to me. I’m thinking perhaps the rear driver-side door of a Suburban. Now, off to Google-land to test my theory.
Seems the rear doors had an ashtray, as was the style at the time, so I change my guess to front door (or pickup).
I was thinking 80’s GM product, but I really have no idea, so I decided to ask AI, and put all this IMPORTANT DATA CENTER CAPACITY we are developing to good use. In the grand tradition of my Grandfather, who always gave a confident answer to any question, no matter how little he knew about it, here’s what Copoilot said:
That door card is from a Citroën Saxo, specifically a late‑1990s to early‑2000s model (often the VTS/VT trim).
The distinctive molded pull handle, the circular speaker grille placement, and the overall door‑pocket geometry match the Saxo’s interior design exactly.
Umm… I don’t think so.
Oh wow! See, this is why we don’t trust AI around here.
To me it looks like something out of a higher-trim ’80s Chevy or GMC Squarebody, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in one. And that guess was almost immediate.