I’ve been pretty rough on you this week, forcing you to choose between some cars I know many of you dislike. But you’ve all been good sports about it, so thank you. Next week, I’ll choose some cars that will hopefully make up for it a little bit. They won’t be good – the name of the game is “Shitbox Showdown,” after all – but they won’t be quite so godawful.
For now, though, we need to take a look back at the week’s finalists, and you need to choose your favorite. And that means we need to check out yesterday’s results. And to the surprise of almost no one, the Dodge A100 pickup has run away with the vote. That Cougar could be cool, if it were in better shape (or just rusty still, without the crappy half-assed bodywork), but there is something really appealing about a scruffy old truck.
I’m with you. I’m not a fan of the tool boxes, because I like how the A100 looks without them, but I wouldn’t bother trying to get rid of them. Someone suggested using this truck as a motorcycle hauler, or a support vehicle for a race team, and I think that would be excellent. You’d be the talk of the pits.
Right then, let’s take a second look at this week’s contenders.
2015 Mitsubishi Mirage – $2,000
This little three-cylinder wonder rightfully beat out a Dodge Caliber on Monday. It’s a former Turo rental car, and judging by the dents on it, some of its renters have not been too kind to it. Still, it’s holding together well, and it’s said to run and drive just fine.
Don’t expect luxurious appointments inside, but since it’s a 2015 model, it has more stuff standard than small cars of a decade or two earlier. Power windows, keyless entry, and a tilt steering wheel were all things a Toyota Tercel buyer could only dream about, and Mitsubishi threw them in, free of charge. What a deal!
1988 Chrysler LeBaron Sedan – $5,200
All these years I’ve been trying to push K cars on all of you, and all it took to get one to win was to put it up against something even worse, like a Mercury Topaz. Though to be fair, this is a nice K-car. It’s from late in the run, with all the good improvements like a fuel-injected 2.5 liter engine, it has practically no miles on it, and it has obviously been taken care of.
And since it’s a Chrysler, and not some mere Dodge or Plymouth, it has a cushier interior and better sound-deadening. There is one disappointment I should mention: some of you in the comments on Tuesday mentioned Chrysler’s talking Electronic Message Center. I regret to inform you that by 1988, that option was only available on the New Yorker; this LeBaron sedan is speechless. I don’t know if that changes your opinion of it at all.
2003 Buick Century – $1,500
Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any smoothly-functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.” I’m not sure I’d call a Buick Century magic, but I think the point Clarke was trying to make is that if you make something that does its job well enough, you don’t even notice it doing its job. It just sort of happens. And that’s exactly how I’d categorize this car.
GM has built a lot of cars like this over the years, and they’re pretty much interchangeable, but they all share some common elements: they are neither the top or the bottom of the range, they’re late in a model’s run so the engineers have had time to iron out the bugs, and they stick with simpler, older technology. This Century uses the tried-and-true 60-degree V6 and a four-speed Turbo-Hydramatic transmission that’s rated for more power than the engine makes, resulting in a lazy drivetrain that will just keep doing its thing indefinitely as long as you maintain it. Combine that with a comfy interior, and you’ve got a car you can just use and ignore.
1969 Dodge A100 Pickup – $4,000
One of the most annoying things about modern trucks is that they’re trying to hide their roots. Trucks didn’t start out as fashion accessories for suburban cowboys; they started out as working vehicles, bereft of creature comforts and possessing only as much power and capacity as was necessary to do their job. Today’s gigantic, overpowered behemoths, slathered in luxury appointments, feel like they’re compensating for the fact that so few of them do any actual work. This humble old Dodge doesn’t need to boast about its capabilities; it lets its resume – years of wear and tear – speak for itself.
This humble truck can teach its driver a little humility, too. It’s easy to ride someone’s ass when you have five thousand pounds of steel and a dozen airbags surrounding you, but if you’re relying on non-power drum brakes, and your feet are six inches behind the front bumper, you keep your distance. Old cars aren’t as “safe” as modern ones, but they keep you honest.
I know you were none too thrilled to see these cars the first time, but has your opinion of them softened a bit now? Or at least one of them? Discuss, debate, and choose, and I’ll see you back here on Monday.
the A100 is easy to repair. mechanical parts are everywhere. sand that truck, paint it one color and throw a camper on the back. there’s your overlanding rig. the tool boxes make for neat storage too. would trade my sambar for that mopar.
As much as I like the A100 and would be fine, in theory, driving it I had to say no because my tetanus shots are out of date. The fancy K-car is priced like it should come with 3 spares and a shipping container of parts. The Mitsubishi isn’t a real car, it’s a Mirage. That leaves the boring, dead reliable, grandpa car. While it will run for ever, I wouldn’t want it to. So I would take the Buick and the number for the suicide prevention hotline.
For that price the buick might as well be free. Looks comfy too!
The coolest vehicle here is the A100. The right choice is the Century.
So I picked the LeBaron, mostly for the digital dashboard, but also because someone has to preserve these so that the children know what we had to endure in the Before Times.
Yeah. That Buick will probably run until the heat death of the universe. It’s not necessarily what I would want to be driving until then. But on a constrained budget, I could. My ’17 Accord might make it until then and be more fun.
Best bang for the buck is the Buick. Mirage is a penalty box and parts can be expensive. The other two are overpriced for what they are. In reality wouldn’t own any of them.
My parents had one of the Buicks. It was depressingly mediocre. The rear seat belt would only retract, slowly strangling the passenger until they undid the belt, let it in al the way and pulled it back out. The Buick is the lowest price, and looks spiffy and clean, which makes it suspicious.
The Mitsubishi is the next cheapest, so if I’m forced at gunpoint to take one of these, it will be the one that would be cheapest to run, and would not make me very sad if it catastrophically died somewhere.
The A100 is cool, useful and unique, but horribly ugly. It would take Maaco’s finest to put it on the road to recovery.