This week between Christmas and New Year’s is always a weird one. Nobody quite knows what to do with themselves, and time ceases to have any meaning. Which is good for today’s choices, because if you’re going to drive one of them, you had better not be in a hurry.
Yesterday we looked at a couple of SUVs that were cheap because they were only 2WD. A lot of you were impressed with the Ford Explorer’s condition, but concerned about its hit-or-miss reliability record. The scruffier Nissan Pathfinder seemed like a safer bet, and it cruised to an easy win.
Me, I wouldn’t even consider the Explorer with that Pathfinder sitting there. I loved ours. It wasn’t fast, it rode rough, and it got appallingly bad gas mileage, but it felt invincible. This one, with far fewer miles and the newer, nicer interior, looks like a great occasional-use truck to me. It’s a good thing it’s on the other side of the country, actually.
Cars today are really, really quick. Like, stupidly quick. Does a minivan or mid-sized crossover really need to reach 60 MPH in six or seven seconds? No, but a lot of them can. Nobody actually pushes them that hard – as much as you sometimes wish they would, when they’re merging onto the freeway in front of you – but the capability is there.
It wasn’t always that way. Cars from forty years ago were downright leisurely, with 0-60 times in the teens, and nobody really minded that much. The two cars we’re about to look at would be derided as “dangerously slow” by some today, but just on the pokey side of average when they were new. And I’m sure they can keep up with modern traffic just fine, with a little planning ahead. Let’s check them out.
1982 Datsun Maxima Diesel Wagon – $6,500
Engine/drivetrain: 2.8-liter OHC diesel inline 6, three-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Hollywood, MD
Odometer reading: 290,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Diesel engines, outside of full-size pickup trucks, never really caught on in America – but that didn’t stop just about every manufacturer from trying them in the 1980s. Some were fairly good successes, like Volkswagen, and others were abject failures, like Oldsmobile. But the vast majority of them were nothing but low-volume curiosities, sold for a few years and then dropped from the option list. These days, when one comes up for sale, it often inspires thoughts like “Huh, I didn’t know they sold a diesel version of that.” And such is probably the case with this car: the original rear-wheel-drive Datsun Maxima.
Some manufacturers, like Ford, bought their diesel engines from someone else, but Nissan kept this one in-house. It’s a version of the same L-series inline six found in countless Z cars. With diesel power, it makes 90 horsepower, which won’t knock anyone’s socks off, but it shouldn’t be as shockingly slow as a Mercedes 240D or a VW Rabbit diesel. It’s mated to a three-speed automatic; the Maxima gained an overdrive gear in the year following this. Despite this, the seller says it manages 38 miles to the gallon. It has a ton of miles on it, but that’s not uncommon for old diesels like this. Those who love them love them, and are loath to let them go.
It looks pretty good inside for the mileage, though I imagine those seats have covers on them because they have seen better days. It looks like it’s absolutely stock inside, right down to the stereo. You kept your cassettes, right? This car is also of the correct age to have been available with Nissan’s talking message center. I wonder if this one has it, and if it still works?
It looks good outside, but there is a little bit of rust starting to show in the extremities. But compared to cars this age in, say, the Great Lakes area, or upstate New York, it’s pretty much pristine. The wire wheel covers are a nice period touch, and they show how far Nissan was willing to go to cater to American tastes with this car.
1986 Chevrolet Celebrity Wagon – $7,000
Engine/drivetrain: 2.5-liter OHV inline 4, three-speed automatic, FWD
Location: El Cajon, CA
Odometer reading: 102,000 miles
Operational status: “Just hop in and drive.”
If you were around in 1986, you probably remember that every road, every suburban neighborhood, and every mall parking lot was absolutely lousy with Chevy Celebrities. Chevy’s mid-sized A-body was the best-selling car in the US in that year; this is one of more than 400,000 examples sold. Or maybe you don’t remember them at all. Ubiquity and bland styling rendered them almost invisible. But I bet you rode in one. I know I did. In fact, one of my friend’s moms had a Celebrity wagon exactly like this one.
Powering this box of nostalgia is our old friend the Iron Duke – sorry, Tech IV – four-cylinder, a cast-iron, overhead valve dinosaur from a time when 92 horsepower was enough for a family to get around. What it lacks in alacrity, it makes up for in toughness; these things are hard to kill. And except for being a bit unrefined and noisy, they actually ran pretty well. The transmission is GM’s three-speed TH125C, nothing special, but it works well enough. The seller says this one runs and drives great, and is ready for its new owner.
It’s a blast from the past inside as well, with a bench seat, a column-mounted shifter, and a wide rectangular speedometer that only goes to 85. That’s all right; chances are the car can’t do more than that anyway. It’s all in very good condition, and the seller says everything works. Oh, and from the looks of it, this one has the rearward-facing “way back” seat, as well.
Outside, it’s just about flawless, or as close to it as a 1980s GM product ever got. A few odd panel gaps were just part of the experience back then. It’s got all four factory wheel covers, and nice whitewall tires for the full Reagan-era effect.
I know already that I’m going to get a lot of complaints about the price of these. But I’ll tell you what – today, as a late Christmas present, your fake internet dollars are on me. You can pretend to have either of these you want, my treat. How’s that for a deal?
Neither. I don’t care what the car market is like, was like, or will be like. I would not care if these were the last two cars on earth. $6k plus for an 80s Nissan interior or $7k for an 80s chevy anything is a hard pass. CP for both of these all day.
The Celebrity is a carbon copy of my first car in high school, except it was a sedan. The Iron Duke spun a rod bearing and finally seized on me after one year of ownership. I replaced it with a Ford LTD which sent me on a long path of being a car nerd.
This is a «neither « situation for me. I’ll go with the Chevy because it looks like there’s more car left,it is way to expensive though.
For the life of me I can’t understand why that Maxima air intake is on the other side. Could they not just have relocated that A/C component a bit lower or smarter and sucked air into the filter box in a short straight line.Anybody ?
For pure GenX nostalgia, the Celebrity is the only choice. The stories that “back-back” could tell, as we’d call the “way-back.”
Car and driver had a comparison test of these maxima wagons back in like 1984. I think the Cressida wagon won but the maxima came in for a lot of love. Living next to Maryland I probably wouldn’t buy anything over three years old from there. I’ve seen rust total 5 year old Maryland cars.
When I was in college a kid had one of those celebrity wagons passed down from his great grandmother. As part of his architecture masters he built a retaining wall slash outdoor power tool station. He must have hauled 30,000lbs of cinder blocks a half pallet at a time in the back of that wagon. The thing was a tank. And worked well as a mobile sawhorse. The carpet still looked serviceable when he finished.
I’m within the FB “market shed” of the Maxima. It’s been for sale for a very long time. Sorry, but I’ve lived in severa states abutting MD all my life (thankfully, never in it) but I’ve never seen the catotrophic midwest rust-belt kind of rust you describle. Even back in the 80’s.
I live in MD and I did have to get rid of my first car due to rust, but it was 19 years old with 235k miles when that happened. I don’t know which 5 year old MD cars you saw totaled due to rust, but I’ve never heard of that happening here. I regularly see 15+ year old cars here with minimal or no rust.
Whoa. my apologies to Maryland…
I went to look at a 2017 Honda HRV during the pandemic that wouldn’t pass Maryland state inspection without rocker repairs.
That was the last time I went north to look at a vehicle. in my experience central VA and NC cars are cleaner and priced the same.
The GM Tech4 was a poor follow-up of the Iron Duke. They over- lightened the new engine, which resulted in early main bearing failures.
My father bought a fleet of these Celebrity’s for his college and the vehicle maintainers became very unhappy as the engines failed well short of 50k miles. The factory warranty was only 12k miles back then.
The lack of any sort of front end badging on the Datsun makes it look like the perfect random traffic vehicle from a Need for Speed or Midnight Club game.
If mileage wasn’t a consideration, the Datsun. I saw a very nice baby blue one at a Radwood show recently and it’s quite nice inside.
I’d prefer the Datsun but can’t get over the 200,000 mile difference so I’m going to be a celebrity
Some is clearly wrong we me because it’s a both day. Though those prices are a little hard to stomach.
I’m pretty familiar with Dukes and not put off by the three-speed auto, though you gotta admit that it’s going to soak up a notable percentage of the Duke’s modest output. And the assessment of its reliability is right on: a hotrod it ain’t, but the damned thing will just keep going.
Celebrity for me. It looks shockingly good for being nearly 40 years old – honestly it looks more like 3.9 years old than it does 39 – and probably has about that much left in it.
“shockingly slow as a Mercedes 240D”
Don’t discount the ability of a 240d at a stop light or intown driving, That 2.4 liters of diesel lump has some decent low-end grunt.
Gotta be the Datsun. Diesel and all and I wouldn’t touch an Iron Duke even if forced.
Another Celebrity vote because of the nostalgia factor…but I’d have to lie about how much I paid for it, because I don’t want anyone to know that I nearly spent as much for it today as my father did for our family’s lightly-used one nearly 40 years ago.
The good news is that it would probably turn into a pile of rust fairly quickly, mimicing the same thing that happened to our old family truckster, maximizing the nostalgia thing. That, along with the pain-in-the-ass of oil changes on that engine.
My father used to keep a fresh set of four spark plugs handy during the winter. The Iron Duke had a tendency to flood on winter cold starts. Once the plugs were wet, cranking did nothing except run down the battery on cold winter days. He got real good at changing them with gloves on.
It also had a tendency to lock up the rear brakes on slippery surfaces….now that I think about it, maybe car-related PTSD would not be the best use of seven thousand bucks.
Datsun for sure Japanese diesel wagon. It’s less of a crack pot price the the celebrity.
Tough call. (checks member name) Mark, can you give me $13,500 in holiday Jalopoly money so I can have both?
Went Datsun, style is too cool and the seller has dropped the price from $9000, so now it’s a steal.
I learned to drive on my mother’s Maxima of this generation. If memory serves, that button on the console to the left of the emergency brake is the on/off/repeat button for the talking reminder system.
Mom’s was a sedan and not diesel but she LOVED that car and drove it way past when she should have traded it in.
I had no idea there was a Maxima diesel, though of course I remember the wagons. I’ll take the Maxima, even though I don’t really want it, despite being a diesel guy and a wagon guy.
Agreed with Star4car below though: these ought to be $2-3K cars if it weren’t for our f-ed up market lo these past several years.
These should be $2000 cars. I’ll go yell at a cloud now.