Good morning! We’re going to kick off this week with a couple of cars I found on the Facebook Underappreciated Survivors page. They’re both uncommon cars these days anyway, but these two up the rarity factor by not being ordinary sedans.
I made you choose which one of Friday’s finalists you would be willing to drive for a year, and you picked the least interesting one of the lot. I guess I can’t blame you. That Mitsubishi Galant does look like a nice, comfortable car, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be reliable.
Placing myself in the same scenario, I have to think about what I’m most likely to need a car for in the coming year, and that’s probably going to involve a lot of home improvement. Only one of these would work well to haul stuff home from the lumber yard, and that’s the Mazda truck, which you all put in last place. If I were strictly choosing one for my own amusement, it would be a toss-up between the Toyota and the Mustang. But if I follow the same “I have to drive only this for a year” rule as I set down for all of you, I have to take the truck.
When I was younger, I used to love looking through car brochures, and I assume I’m not alone. My dad and I would go to the Chicago Auto Show every year, and I’d come home with a bag full of brochures, and pore over them for the next several weeks. I always enjoyed trying to spot the different variations of each car on the road, though some styles seemed impossible to find in the wild. These two are a bit newer than my brochure-reading days, but I have a feeling they would be easier to find in a brochure than in a parking lot. Let’s check them out.
1990 Mazda 626 LX Touring Sedan – $1,400
Engine/drivetrain: 2.2-liter OHC inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Acworth, GA
Odometer reading: 320,000 miles
Operational status: “Runs and drives” is all it says
The few sedans that are left on the market have one thing in common: they should be hatchbacks. Those tiny mail-slot trunk openings don’t do anyone any good. Why not just make the rear window open up with the trunk lid, like Mazda did way back in the ’80s? Mazda calls this car the 626 Touring Sedan, but anyone else would call it a hatchback.
Whatever you want to call it, it’s a very well-made car that is capable of racking up some serious miles. This one has 320,000 on it already, and it’s still rolling along. The seller says it has new CV axles and a new battery to help it on its way, for what that’s worth. At this price, “runs and drives” is probably good enough.
I’m pleasantly surprised by how well the interior has held up, with that many miles. It’s a two-owner car, both owners in the same family, and clearly, they treated it well. It’s not torn up or even worn out inside. It does have those silly automatic seat belts, but at this price, I think I’d be willing to put up with them.
It’s not too bad outside, either, except for a couple of cracked light lenses and some bad spots in the paint. Being a Georgia car, it shouldn’t have any rust to speak of. Rock Auto has a replacement for the front side marker/turn signal, but you’ll have to scour junkyards for a taillight, or put up with red patch tape.
1996 (?) Mitsubishi Diamante Wagon – $2,000
Engine/drivetrain: 3.0 liter OHC V6, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Stuart, FL
Odometer reading: 166,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
The Mitsubishi Diamante is one of those cars I tend to forget exists, until I see one. And until I saw this ad, I had completely forgotten there was ever a station wagon. But I think the seller might be mistaken about one thing: as far as I can tell, there was no Diamante station wagon in 1996. Since it’s clearly a first-generation Diamante, it must be a 1995 model.
Like so many Mitsubishis from this era, this one is powered by a 6G72 3.0 liter V6. It’s mounted transversely, driving the front wheels through a four-speed automatic. It’s in good mechanical condition, according to the seller, and at only 166,000 miles, it should have plenty of life left.
The inside of this car has seen better days. The leather is cracked and worn, and it looks like part of the headliner is missing. The dash has some scuffs and what looks like tape residue stuck to it. But the seller says the air conditioning works, as do the power windows, so it’s not all bad.
Curiously, this one has a cracked taillight in the same place as the Mazda, and you’re even less likely to find a replacement for this one. It looks like it has already been taped up at least once. Apart from that, it just looks like a tired old car.
The rarity of these two cars is not much more than a curiosity at this point. Neither one is going to be a collector’s item. But they’re cheap, functional, and known-reliable models that you could certainly get your money’s worth out of. It’s all a matter of which one looks better to you.
I had an ‘88 626 turbo hatchback with a five-speed back in the day. It was a nice enough car until the turbo went kablooey, so I traded it for a 1979 Pinto Country Squire wagon with low, low miles. The Pinto really was a nice car!
https://itisgood.org/auto-biography/#88Mazda