Which Leftover Is A Better Treat? 1984 Cadillac Seville vs 1996 Honda Accord

As some of you already guessed, my poorly-formed plan for the week was to bombard you with Ford Tempos, putting a different one up against something weird every day. But consider yourselves lucky; I have run out of things to say about the stupid things, so I’m abandoning that plan. Instead, I’m going to make you choose between the would-be competitors to those other two Tempos.

Yesterday, we looked at arguably the best Tempo ever built, and the most notorious Renault ever sold here. Kudos to the twenty-four percent of you who voted for the Fuego; you’re my kind of weird. The Tempo is almost certainly the better car, but the Fuego is the more noble choice.

I owned a ’92 Ford Tempo for a couple of years, and it actually wasn’t a bad car. I had pretty good luck with it, then I sold it to my brother, who had considerably worse luck. I still don’t think he has entirely forgiven me for that car. Mostly what it was, though, was painfully, relentlessly dull. A V6 and a five-speed would probably wake it up some, but I don’t care enough about it to find out. I’ll take the Fuego, get it running, and sell it on to some other hopeless romantic, and then be able to say I once owned a French car.

That’s the thing about choosing cars for this column: there has to be a hook. A car can’t just be old and worn-out; it has to be old and worn-out in an interesting way. It can’t just be a bad car; it has to be legendarily catastrophic. And bonus points if it’s funny-looking, either by design or condition. There are plenty of old cheap used cars on the market that would make far better transportation than the ones I show you, but they’re boring. I don’t want to write about them, and you don’t want to read about them. So we’ll skip any further explorations of Ford’s exercise in mediocrity, and look at some cars more worthy of the title “shitbox.”

1984 Cadillac Seville – $2,500

Engine/drivetrain: 4.1-liter OHV V8, four-speed automatic, FWD

Location: Coldwater, MI

Odometer reading: 39,000 miles (probably rolled over)

Operational status: Runs and drives

The original Seville was Cadillac’s first attempt at downsizing its cars. And really, the first Seville was pretty good; it had decent styling, a good list of features, and a powerful (for the time) Oldsmobile V8 under the hood. In typical GM fashion, however, the second generation ruined pretty much all of that.

The second-generation Seville switched to front-wheel drive, using the Oldsmobile Toronado’s architecture. In place of the Oldsmobile V8, however, it used either a 368 cubic inch version of Cadillac’s own V8, or the much-maligned Oldsmobile diesel V8. In 1981, the situation got even worse when the 368 became the variable-displacement V8-6-4. Luckily, that mistake only lasted a year, after which it was replaced by the “High Technology” 4.1-liter V8, which is what this one has. The HT4100, as it became known, has its own host of problems, but the seller says this one runs and drives, at least. The odometer reads 39,000, which may be original, and it may not be.

It’s a bit of a mess inside. The leather is torn, and the dashboard is cracked. The headliner and rear deck are all torn up, too. I think there’s an overhead console that is dangling by its wires. And part of the underside of the dash looks disassembled. Basically, it’s hosed.

It’s not much better outside. The paint is coming off in sheets, it has a cracked taillight, and the grille is missing. As if the Seville’s “bustleback” trunk style wasn’t ugly enough, someone decided to stick an aftermarket Continental kit on it. Oh, and it’s a Michigan car, so it’s probably rusty underneath, too.

1996 Honda Accord EX – $2,950

Engine/drivetrain: 2.2-liter OHC inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD

Location: Portland, OR

Odometer reading: 293,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives well

People repaint cars for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it’s damage repair, or maybe it’s just because they wanted to change the color. Sometimes, though, you wonder what the owner was thinking. Who looks at a bottle of Pepto-Bismol and thinks, “That color would look great on my Honda”?

The fifth-generation Honda Accord is a hell of a car, maybe the best of the breed, actually. It has a 2.2-liter four-cylinder that makes enough power, it has all the comfort and convenience stuff you could want without being gimmicky, and it’s incredibly reliable. This one has almost 300,000 miles on it, and it still runs great, according to the seller.

We don’t get any photos of the front seats, only the rear. The rear seats are in good condition, but that’s not really an indication; lots of cars spend their lives with no one riding in the back. At 293,000 miles, I get the feeling that the driver’s seat, at least, is in pretty bad shape.

If you can get past the lurid color and the stupid clear lights, it’s actually not in terrible shape outside. The wheels are probably not to everyone’s taste either, but personally, I don’t hate them. And since it’s a Portland car, it probably isn’t rusty. It does, however, have a salvage title for an undisclosed reason. It could have been in an accident, or it could be a theft recovery.

I don’t know that either of these is any better than yet another Tempo; I just know I couldn’t write about another of those damn cars, and I’m pretty sure you all didn’t want to read about another one either. Instead, you have a ratty Caddy and a pink Accord to choose from. I make no apologies.