Good morning! Today we’re looking at two cars with everyone’s least favorite safety feature: motorized seat belts. I know. But if you can look past them, and find a seating position where they’re not digging into your neck, the cars they’re attached to are pretty good deals.
Yesterday we looked at a couple of old minivans. I wasn’t expecting a clear favorite, but I got one. The Kia Sedona simply ran away with this one. Its better condition and more powerful motor gave it the win, it sounds like, even though the Dodge Caravan would be easier to keep on the road.
Me, I’m taking the Caravan, because it’s a known quantity. I don’t care about the low power; I’m fine with slow cars. So you use 90% of the throttle getting on the freeway when everyone else is using 40%; big deal. I can picture the Caravan’s engine bay in my head already, and I know what to look for, and that counts for a lot. And apparently the market agrees with me: the Caravan is sold, while the Sedona languishes.
Thirty years ago, airbags became required in cars and light trucks here in the US. But for a few years before that, the requirement was less strict; only some type of “passive restraint” was required. Several automakers opted for automatic seat belts instead of airbags, presumably because they were cheaper to make. The dumbest form of these consisted of a motorized shoulder belt that moved along the edge of the roofline before slotting into place on the B-pillar, combined with – get this – a manual lap belt that still had to be fastened. I’ve had a couple of cars with this system, and you do get used to it, but it’s so utterly boneheaded that the mere existence of it will piss you off every time you get in the car. And the positioning of some of the shoulder belts makes them hideously uncomfortable for shorter drivers. But avoiding such systems means missing out on an entire half-decade of good old cars. For our purposes here, the only fair thing to do seems to be to find two cars with electric shoulder belts, and pit them against each other, so that’s what I’ve done today. Let’s check them out.
1990 Nissan Stanza XE – $1,600
Engine/drivetrain: 2.4-liter OHC inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Chatsworth, CA
Odometer reading: 100,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Tell people you own a Nissan these days and they make all sorts of assumptions, most of them unfair. But it wasn’t always that way. Back in the 1980s and ’90s, Nissan was respectable and built some damn good cars. The Stanza wasn’t what you’d call an exciting car, but it was a decent alternative to a Camry or an Accord. This one is a hell of a lot cheaper than a Camry or Accord of the same age would be, especially with the low mileage. That might be related to the stigma attached to the Nissan name these days, but if so, that works to a buyer’s advantage. Someone is going to get a good car for cheap.
This final-generation Stanza is based on the Japanese market Nissan Bluebird, but as usual, the American version is a little different. It’s powered by the same KA24E four-cylinder used in Nissan’s Hardbody trucks at the time, just turned the other way and driving the front wheels. This is a larger, lower-revving, higher-torque engine than what was offered in Japan, which suits American driving styles better. We don’t get much information about this one’s condition; all the ad says is “Runs and drives strong.” Literally. That’s it. Come on, sellers; help me out here.
It may be my imagination, but I feel like car interiors used to be nicer than they are now, or at least Nissan interiors were. You don’t see velour seats anymore, for example. And the old switches feel higher-quality. There does appear to be one thing broken in this one, or at least out of whack: the horn button cover on the steering wheel. It’s crooked, like it was taken off and not reinstalled properly. It might be as simple as snapping it back into place, or it might not.
All that California sun is hard on paint jobs, especially if you have to park on the street, as appears to be the case here. The trunk lid is really faded, and though I can’t see the roof clearly in the photos, I bet it’s the same. There’s also a pretty good scrape on one corner of the front bumper, but considering its age, it’s a decent-looking car.
1994 Ford Escort LX – $2,100
Engine/drivetrain: 1.9-liter OHC inline-4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Stockton, CA
Odometer reading: 113,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Ford’s idea of a “world car” seems to be “give it the same name as the European one, and use kinda-sorta the same engine.” This Escort has more in common with a Mazda 323 than it does the Escort that Europeans knew and loved in the ’90s. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course; Mazda has made some excellent and fun small cars over the years. This is an economy car at heart, but it’s more fun to drive than you’d guess.
The engine, the one part it shares with its European counterpart, is Ford’s CVH overhead cam inline-4. CVH stands for “Compound Valve-angle Hemispherical,” referring to the shape of its combustion chambers, but anyone who has spent time with one knows it could also mean “constant vibration and harshness.” This little engine is loud and thrashy. And for all that bluster, all it can claim is 88 horsepower. This one has a five-speed manual, courtesy of Mazda, to make the most of that power. It runs and drives well, the seller says, and it has just 113,000 miles on it.
Most cars in the early-to-mid 1990s had either passive seat belts or a driver’s side airbag, but in some Escorts, Ford took a belt-and-suspenders approach and included both. The interior of this one is in really nice shape. The only thing I see that needs attention is some squares of double-stick tape on the dash, which I think were holding on one of those carpet dash covers. The cover did its job; except for the tape, the dash looks like new.
This Escort has the “Sport Appearance Package,” which includes the rear spoiler and alloy wheels. You won’t fool anyone into thinking it’s a GT, but it does jazz it up a little. It looks decent in white, but I feel like it needs some stripes or something to break it up.
These are both good, clean, low-mileage cars that would serve someone really well – if you can get over the dumbass seat belt arrangement. I know some people don’t mind them, but for others they’re an automatic “nope.” Whichever camp you’re in, you don’t have much of a choice today; both cars are equal in that regard. Seat belts aside, which one would you rather have?
The Stanza is almost certainly the better car here but I’m going Escort for the nostalgia factor today as my grandmother had almost this exact car (hers was an auto) for years right up until she passed. I think hers was a ’93 which she bought new and when she passed in 2015 it only had 19k on the clock. As far as I know my weird Uncle (the family hermit) still has it.
I have to go with the Escort. I owned both a 94 and 96 base models with stick.
It was reliable and since I wasn’t racing them , the HP was sufficient. I say “it” because the 96 was stolen.
As much as it disgusts me, I’ll take the Escort. I have a lot of fun memories from younger years that were made in an Escort.
Clicked on the Escort pretty quick – it’s the much better version of the one my wife drove for a number of years.
Maaaan if that Escort were a GT, I’d have voted for it. The LX’s, even now in nice shape, don’t do anything for me.
That Stanza is comfier, quieter, roomier, and even if the AC doesn’t work, the $500 price delta between the two will no doubt fix that issue.
Went Escort, would have been a hard no if it were automatic. I have never experienced an automatic gearbox as bad as the one that came in this generation of Escort.
So you never experienced the first couple years of Escort with the auto and 1.6L CVH. By the ’90s, it was fine.
I thought they were fine when they were working but that tended to be brief.
There’s a good chance there was something wrong with it, it was a hand me down from my grandfather. He used it to haul lawnmowers so it was not exactly showroom-fresh
“Went Escort, would have been a hard no if it were automatic. I have never experienced an automatic gearbox as bad as the one that came in this generation of Escort.”
So you never got to drive a Focus with the Powershift DCT?
The wife had a ’99 Escort Sport with the automatic and it was fine.
Side note: The ’99 Escorts had different exhaust systems, depending on whether or not they came with the spoiler.
Voted Nissan. To me, these are a great example of why Japanese cars became popular. These were both affordable, but only the Ford looks cheap. The Escort’s interior is awful. Very little effort was made to design this interior and the materials look low budget. The exterior styling of the Escort is fine, but if you parked this next to a more expensive ’90s Ford product, it would be painfully obvious which one is the bargain bin special.
The Nissan, on the other hand, looks like a typical Japanese car of its day. The interior is virtually indistinguishable from the interior of a nicer ’90s Nissan. If you parked this next to a ’90s Maxima, the Stanza would be smaller but otherwise the difference wouldn’t be huge. Looking at these cars 30 years later, it is hard for me to understand why anyone would have chosen the American car.
Some commenters are giving the Ford bonus points for having three pedals, but realistically, if you want a cheap fun-ish three pedal car, a 2000s Civic is going to be way better than this thing and not much more expensive (if at all).
The MTX is not good enough to sway me. The Stanza is a much better car, even against an Escort that’s mostly a 323