Welcome to what is going to be a weird week here at the Showdown! I’m currently sitting in a fancy-pants hotel room in Fort Lauderdale, and in a few hours I’m going to board my first-ever cruise ship. I decided not to pass off my duties here to someone else for the week, because frankly, I expect to be bored some of the time, and this will give me something to do. But I don’t know when in the day I’ll have time to write, so I won’t be able to check results. Instead, I’ll just wait until a week from now, when I’m back at my own desk, and next Monday we’ll go through all the week’s results.
There is a theme for the week, and one of Friday’s competitors would almost fit it, but we’ll get to that theme in a minute. We looked at two Chevrolets from the bad old days, and it’s clear that not everyone shares my opinions on Camaro styling. Whatever; just know that you’re wrong. Without the “both” option, the vote may have been closer, but as it stands, the big-block Suburban by itself has won the day.
Suburbans are cool, but I just don’t have any use for it. The Camaro, on the other hand, is my kind of car, and it would also allow me a sort of redemption for a past sin. Back in the 1990s, when I was broke and had shitty credit, I went through a string of dirt-cheap cars, one of which was a clean, almost completely rust-free 1978 Chevy Nova Concours coupe. It looked good, and ran OK, and I murdered it in cold blood. It had the same 305/TH350 combo as this Camaro, and I decided to soup it up with an ill-advised combination of a too-big carb and a shift kit in the transmission. The result was nearly undrivable and not any faster than stock. Being kind to this Camaro would make up for that horrible mistake.
Now, for the theme this week: I recently sold a 1971 MGB GT, after determining, nine years and several thousand dollars in, that it just wasn’t the project for me. It was a hard blow, because it was one of my dream cars from when I was a kid, but I just wasn’t getting anywhere with it (figuratively or literally). It went to a good home, so I’m not worried about it. It does leave me with only one extra vehicle to tinker with, however: my trusty old Chevy pickup, which either runs perfectly or completely shits the bed and requires lots of work; it’s never in-between with that thing. I can foresee a future where I want another cheap car just to putter around with.
So that’s what I’m looking at this week: not these specific choices, but potential ideas for a future “park it out back and fart around with it when I have time” car. I have broad and eclectic tastes, as you all may have noticed, so these are going to be all over the place. We start out with a mid-engine sports car and a slowpoke diesel sedan.
1985 Pontiac Fiero GT – $3,650
Engine/drivetrain: 2.8-liter OHV V6, four-speed manual, RWD
Location: Winfield, IL
Odometer reading: 128,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
It seems to be a universal truth that the stuff that comes out when you’re between ages ten and eighteen sticks with you for the rest of your life. The Pontiac Fiero has definitely stuck with me; I’ve wanted one since the first time I saw one, at age eleven, in the tiny showroom of Detzler Pontiac in my hometown of Oswego, Illinois. I’ve driven a few, and built models of them, but the right car has never coincided with the right time and the right pile of money to put one in my driveway.
There are good Fieros and bad Fieros, and this one seems to fall somewhere in between. It’s a 1985 GT model, the first year for the GT, which has a strange combination of features. It’s a V6, which means it’s far less prone to catching fire than the first couple years of four-cylinder Fieros, but it has the sloping nose of the 1984 Indy Pace Car version, which personally I don’t like as well as the standard early Fiero front end. It also has a four-speed gearbox, rather than five, but at least it’s a manual. The seller says this was a kid’s project car, but the kid got a job and now has no time for it. We’ve all been there. It runs fine, but that’s about all the details we get.
This is the only photo of the interior, but it looks pretty good in there. It’s not trashed, and it’s not that drab institutional-looking GM gray. It could use a good cleaning, but that’s true of just about any old used car. As long as it doesn’t smell funny inside, you’re good to go.
I didn’t recall dark green being an original Fiero color; I thought it was just red and white for 1984, with black and silver being added for ’85. And it looks like I was right. This one’s color change was done completely, but not well; the door sills are painted, but the green paint is flaking off the original white finish in a few places. Oh well; it’s a good excuse to try a cheap homebrew paint job. The lack of the original wheels is disappointing, but the ones that are on it aren’t terrible.
1986 Volkswagen Jetta Wolfsburg Edition Diesel – $4,500
Engine/drivetrain: 1.6-liter OHC diesel inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Bemidji, MN
Odometer reading: 251,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well, but starts hard in the cold
This car I know well, even though I never experienced one exactly like this. We had a VW Dasher with a diesel engine when I was a kid, and my second car was an ’85 Golf with a gas engine. Put them together, add a trunk, and voila: diesel Mk2 Jetta. We never had anything as fancy as a Wolfsburg Edition, however; my dad never would have sprung for it in those days.
The old fable about the tortoise and the hare could have been written about an early VW diesel and almost any other car. Note that in the description, I did not say turbodiesel; this car’s engine is naturally aspirated. It makes just 54 horsepower and 74 pound-feet of torque. Zero-to-sixty is measured in Led Zeppelin songs. But it will get there eventually, and these things will happily cruise along at speed all day long, and do so for hundreds of thousands of miles. This one has a quarter of a million miles on it, and it’s still going strong. The seller says it could use new glow plugs, because it starts hard in cold weather.
This interior is eerily familiar to me; it looks exactly like my old Golf inside, right down to the color. I look at it and I remember all those VW-specific quirks: the headlights shut off when you shut off the engine, but the radio does not; the lock buttons cannot be pushed down when the door is open (to prevent locking the keys in the car); the turn signals have only one indicator for both directions. I haven’t had a VW product since that Golf, and looking at this car makes me a little homesick. It’s in good condition, too. The seller says the air conditioning doesn’t work, but honestly, you’re better off without it. It takes up too much of the engine’s already-meager power.
Outside, it’s rust-free, but missing some trim. The seller says it’s all included, though. I can’t decide if I like the aftermarket wheels on this one or not. VW (and Audi) had some great factory wheel options back in those days, and I think I’d rather have any one of them. But these aren’t as terrible as they could be.
With their age and condition, either one of these would be better suited as a third or fourth car, rather than a daily driver. But they’re not really projects in the typical sense, either. Instead, they hit that middle ground that I enjoy so much: you never have nothing to do, but you can still hop in and go for a drive when you want. Which one do you all prefer?
I SOOOO wanted a Fiero as my first car in the early 90’s. Now with a more mature outlook it is the Jetta for me.
I had a gas 2nd gen VW and it was a fun car. Add a diesel and it gets even better. I would prefer the turbo for 25% more power.
Went with the Jetta even though that Progressive jingle, “it’s a dog park,” was playing in my head the whole time. Not sure what that implies.
Even if the Jetta was gas, I’d still choose the Fiero.
And oh, you grew up in Oswego? I grew up about a dozen towns upriver in Fox River Grove. Oswego looks a lot different than it did back then.
And I grew up in Batavia, between Fox River Grove and Oswego. I remember that Pontiac dealer in Oswego. Tiny.
Batavia really looks different.
Always wanted a pre-emissions VW diesel. If you think that Jetta is slow they also offered that diesel in the Vanagon, which must weight 1000 lbs more.
Jetta all day every day. It’ll get the job done long after the Fiero has been parted out.
in this case tinkering wise the Fiero is the more difficult choice. they are just more frustrating to work on without a lift. but I would still choose it here. It seems like it already kind of runs better and I recall those diesel Rabbits of this era and how dog slow they really were. 50 mpg, but dangerous to attempt to drive in traffic back then, more so in this day and age.
Yeah, when my slow car looks fast in comparison to the VW I have to go with the Fiero just for safety’s sake.
They were not dangerous to drive in traffic. You just kept your foot to the floor. My 4spd Peugeot 504D had less power and more weight, and it kept up with traffic just fine. Either is massively faster than a semi or a bus when accelerating. People today are simply spoiled. I don’t understand paying for power you will never use.
Turning left across traffic at a residential street was either a very long wait for an adequate hole, or you went right and then did a U-turn at the next hole. Otherwise it was pucker your sphincter and go, hoping for the best.
If you can’t manage that in even the slowest of cars you probably should give up the keys. The average idiot can’t find full throttle with a GPS.
The wheels on the Jetta are from a Saturn Ion.
They’re kind of hideous on this car… not to mention they probably add weight.
Which, when your engine makes 50-ish hp, is not going to do you any favors.
The Jetta absolutely!!
Daily drove a ’85 NA Jetta 1.6D manual in a lovely if faded dark red for many years until just 2 years ago when some damn jerk ran a red light and totalled it (otherwise I’d still be a-drivin’ that ol’ Jetta today.) While it had some Achilles’s heels (such as the cursed & infernal clutch shift linkage assembly) and some weird maintenance-related issues (the original owner was a pilot who drove it only when home in between flying gigs & then it was used [and abused!] as the shop car for a local repair shop) overall it was actually a reliable and solid car and I miss it dearly to this day. Currently DDing my kid’s turbocharged diesel but automatic Mercedes station wagon (a W123 or, more accurately, a S123) since my kid didn’t want to take it into the rust belt when moving up North.
While the 0-to-60 time was around 17 to 19 seconds I never had any issues with acceleration, as the 52 hp was indeed perfectly cromulent, and found the Jetta to be excellent for slinging around on Dragon-like roads (was planning on taking it on the Dragon itself which is actually close to where I live but then it met its untimely demise, gah.)
Yeah, people get so hung up on the low horsepower figures and like to play up the “glacial” acceleration for contrivedly humorous effect *eye roll* It gets so tiring when those people go on and on about that… damn uneducated philistines.
To be sure, no diesels with two-figure horsepower would ever win any drag races but those Mk2 VW diesels were indeed perfectly adequate if not even more so especially if and when they’re in good fettle. Plus they do have good to excellent road handling. So the Jetta gets my vote, even against a manual mid-V6-engined sports car.
Are you sure he ran a red or the light just changed like 2 times while attempting to get through the intersection and the guy froggered you.
Ha, yeah, talk about people playing it up for contrivedly humorous effect; if you were ironically riffing on that, then lol, and if you were in earnest then thank you for making my case, lol.
Nope, it was some geezer (in fact, it was the day before his 70th birthday) blasting through a red light in a new and over-powered truck and hitting the rear quarter panel of my Jetta as I was driving through at normal and legal speed (in fact, as I saw him barreling down the road I couldn’t accelerate since there was a car right in front of me so there was nowhere for me to go, gah.)
How many of your door handles were broken?
The shorter question is: which one worked?
LOL. Two were broken (the rear ones) when I bought the Jetta so I replaced all four door handles with ones I took off a 1992 Jetta at Pull-A-Part and they actually held up for the entire time I had my Jetta with the exception of the rear left one which broke just a couple weeks before the Jetta was totalled. Had actually put new door handles in my online shopping cart (at either Parts Place Inc, Rock Auto, or FCPEuro) but hadn’t yet placed the order.
At least the door handles on Mk2 VWs are a breeze to replace..
I love the honest candor of this door handle conversation.
Across three MK1 and MK2 Jettas and a few hundred thousand miles, I think I broke two and had one broken via crook breaking into the the car. At <$20 and <5 minutes to replace, who cares?
No car is perfect, and if you are going to have a common dilemma, that is not a bad one to have. Very little went wrong with any of them, particularly the base 2dr Jetta. That thing was an absolute anvil of a car. very little to break on it, a lot to be said for that.
Right on, Brother. The “the dangerously slow” thing is moronic. And they aren’t even that slow if you drive them properly.
I love playing with old diesels, so I’ll take the Jetta.
Definitely a candidate for a fry grease conversion if you were so frugally inclined I suppose.
Biodiesel was supposed to save us all, but then someone figured out that they could swoop in and capitalize on it. Now you can’t just go to a restaurant and have them happily give you their old fryer grease, because a collection company has already claimed it.
The Fiero’s stripe makes it look like the front bumper is being held on by duct tape, especially in the first picture
Hard starting in cold isn’t a problem on the Jetta for me: it’s an ’80s diesel, they all are like that unless you plug the block heater in. Also my grandfather had a diesel Rabbit where he allegedly shimmed the fuel pump just so, so that it ran more like a GTI. I want to do that someday…
The Fiero might be fun but I have a much more modern car in the same general category (FR-S) that probably is better than it in most every way while not having flaking green paint. Also only a 4-speed manual? Gimme another gear man!
The Jetta will mechanically last forever, but is that even a good thing? Out of all cars to crank up tons and tons of miles, would you want it to be in a 1986 diesel jetta with 54 hp? That’s a lot of misery. Out of the two, I’d say the Jetta is the best to tinker with because its so damn simple, but to what end?
I’m going Fiero because at least if you’re gonna tinker you have to dream about something cool. Swap in some 88 parts and you’ll get a dcent handler too. I strongly prefer the fastback to the notchback, but at this price and condition its hard to complain. Also FWIW pretty sure we had those wheels on our 93 S-10 Blazer.
Yeah, you haven’t ever ridden in a Mk2 VW, have you? They actually make for excellent road trip cars. Took so many road trips with my ’85 Jetta diesel. When my kids were in high school but not yet driving I would chauffeur them and their friends everywhere locally and on road trips partly because they actually preferred it to the more modern choices available to them, lol.
In fact, of all the cars of various makes and various ages in my fleet over the years the best ones by far for going on road trips were a 1969 VW bus (which I still have but is awaiting an engine rebuild), a 2002 VW Golf TDI (sadly totalled by a rear-ender), and the aforementioned 1985 VW Jetta 1.6D (also sadly totalled, this time by a red-light-runner.) Ha, yeah, note a pattern there with the best road-tripping cars, they’re all VWs (at least vintage ones.) They all might have had two-digit horsepower but to this day I count them among the best cars I’ve ever driven or ridden in, period.
Not a mk2 — mk3 and mk4s (in fact my mom has a mk4 TDI from new that now has 300+k miles) and had a handful of old diesel mercs. Good road trippers I’ll give you that…but I think I may have reacted strongly to the idea of a “tinkering” car. I wouldn’t want to take something parked out back most of the year on a road trip.
Simple, rock solid, great fuel economy. Perfect daily commuter.
Agree on that, but IMO a “tinkering” car is not really a daily driver to me. I’ve had too many of those that haven’t worked out. Either I’m getting old and impatient or I actualyl learned something after all the years of trying to make it happen. Probably both.
Who said anything about a “tinkering” car? The nice thing about a MKII Jetta is that you could actually daily drive one.
Wouldn’t be my only car but it could be a daily commuter to save miles and running costs on something either fun or useful (like a truck)
I voted Jetta.
But that price is absurd. I’d offer half-that, if even, for a Mk2 non-turbo diesel.
$5K is the new $1500. <shrug> Somebody will snap it up if it isn’t rusty.
I mean, it has to be the Fiero. Sure, it doesn’t have the 88’s suspension upgrades and brake upgrades, but parts are easier to get than an 88, and there’s a decent aftermarket with specialists.
I hate the diesels of that era.
However, a guy I was stationed with swapped an old diesel rabbit for a TDi engine, and that thing SCREAMED while still getting 30+ MPG.
So that’s the route I’d take
Fiero for sure, though I love me the Jetta’s spartan-but-functional instrumentation.
And a historical note – that medium gray monochrome interior that we all love to hate now was actually the height of cool back in its day. It screamed the future, and allowed the dash lights/colors (and grid patterns, often) to really stand out. It seemed worlds better than the previous mishmash of fake chrome and wood, vinyl, etc. of the 70s.
And it also wasn’t any shade of brown or tan…
Fiero.
My dad has said many, many bad words while under the hood of both GM and VW cars, but when he was under the hood of the VW he meant them.
I was all in on the Jetta until I saw it was not the turbo diesel. Fiero at least COULD be cool someday.
Had a 1981 Jetta diesel, worst car ever!!! I’m sure it was built by extremely hungover October festers. The only redeeming feature was downshifting would lay down the best smoke screen ever and instantly remove tailgaters.
The Fiero. I have spent way too much time in Golfs and Jettas (my Dad had a string of them from arund ’75 all the way to 2000). Looking at that interior is like pouring water instead of milk on your breakfast muesli.
I’ve always thought the Fiero was kinda cool, but I’ve owned two MR2’s (both MK1) so I’m spoiled. But between these two? Easily the Fiero, not the Iron Duke and interior looks much better than I would have guessed.
Don’t want either, but given a gun to my head would take the Jetta.
Am very familiar with northern Mn. This car would start much easier with upgraded glow plugs, and a block heater and fuel heater. All easy to do fixes.
The Pontiac is ok, but…
Because life has taught me to avoid some kid’s project car like the plague.
I would really need to spend a good amount of time checking it out before handing over cash for it. YMMV
I picked the Fiero. If I had to drive it daily, tho, I’d probably have gone for the Jetta.
The jetta looks fun. a survivor for northern MN where cars go to rust back into the earth. Also there is cold and then there is COLD. The cold start issue may be fine in places where is does not average below zero in winter.
Pontiac, and keep the green. You can’t cover the best car color with a homebrew paint job.