Something just occurred to me about this new Let’s Make A Deal idea, something I hadn’t thought of. I’ve just given myself fifty percent more work when it comes to finding cars. I don’t feel like doing that, so here’s how it’s going to work: Yesterday’s winner advances, gains a new challenger, and there’s a new mystery car. We’ll keep going like that until Friday, when I’ll figure out how to wrap this all up.
Yesterday’s winner was the super-clean Chrysler Concorde, a fine machine if not a particularly exciting one. The Pontiac Bonneville came in a fairly close second, and 188 of you were brave enough to choose the mystery car.
Would the Chrysler have still won, if the mystery car option wasn’t there? Was there some amount of Ross Perot Effect going on there? We’ll never know.
So not that it matters, because it didn’t win, but what was the mystery car yesterday? To quote Samuel L. Jackson, hold on to your butts…
1988 Buick Skyhawk – $1,000
And some of you thought it was going to be a Ford Tempo. Ha! You should be so lucky. This lesser-known J car is for sale at a tow yard in South Carolina. It’s a repo, which means someone was making payments on it, I guess? Or not making payments, as it were? I can’t even make a joke about that. If you’ve had a Buick Skyhawk repossessed, you’ve got enough problems without me piling on.
I imagine the badge on the back sums up how most of you feel about this car. The Skyhawk was available with either the Cavalier’s 2.0-liter pushrod engine or the 1.8-liter OHC from the Pontiac Sunbird. I have no idea which one this car has. Either way, it’s eighty-something horsepower going through a three-speed automatic. But hey, it only has 76,000 miles on it, and the interior isn’t as dreadful as you’d guess.
All right; enough about that. Let’s do a quick recap of the Concorde, just in case any of you missed it yesterday.
1994 Chrysler Concorde – $2,500
Engine/drivetrain: 3.3-liter OHV V6, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: New Lebanon, OH
Odometer reading: 165,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
I know a lot of you aren’t big Mopar fans, so this car’s victory yesterday surprised me a little. I think its super-clean condition gave it the edge; that Bonneville wasn’t bad, but it was a little rough around the edges. This is also not your typical Mopar. The early to mid 1990s were a good time for Chrysler; new ideas were flowing after years of K-car stagnation, and this car was the first fruit of those ideas. It’s a hell of a car, and this is a fine example.
It’s sort of an “old man” spec, with the base 3.3-liter engine and a bench seat, but that also probably means it was treated gently. It has 165,000 miles on it, but you’d never guess from looking at these pictures. Is it still your top pick, though? Let’s take a look at its rival and find out.
1995 Saturn SL2 – $3,500
Engine/drivetrain: 1.9-liter DOHC inline 4, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Lynnwood, WA
Odometer reading: 82,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Now this is a different kind of car, from a different kind of company – or so GM led us to believe back in the 1990s. That lasted about a decade before Saturn devolved into just another GM brand, and then got the ax during the post-bankruptcy restructuring. But those ’90s Saturns were pretty cool cars, and this is a good example. It’s an SL2, with the twin-cam engine and some other sporty touches, and it’s in great shape.
Saturn rather pompously referred to its engine and transmission as a “power module,” and it came in four flavors: single- and double-overhead-cam engines were both available with four-speed automatic and five-speed manual transmissions. The SOHC cars were geared for economy, while the DOHC engines got shorter gearing to make better use of its extra power. And they’re a lot more fun. This car has only 82,000 miles on it, all from the same owner. It runs and drives great, and comes with maintenance records. Can’t ask for more than that.
No one is ever going to mistake a first-generation Saturn for anything other than an economy car, even the “fancy” SL2 model. There’s an awful lot of hard gray plastic inside, and the seats are only so-so comfort-wise. This one is a little short on options; it has crank windows and probably manual door locks as well. It has sheepskin seat covers, which, in this case, I imagine were installed for protection or comfort rather than to hide damage.
The outside looks great too, and it doesn’t get more mid-’90s than teal. Saturns, of course, famously use plastic for all the vertical body panels to avoid dents, but the underlying structure is steel, and can rust. The seller helpfully includes a couple of under-car photos in the ad, and it’s as clean as a whistle under there.
Mystery Car – $?
Tomorrow’s mystery car can’t possibly be as bad as today’s, can it? It isn’t. It’s much shinier and way more expensive. But it probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
I’m still playing with this format, and I’m not sure it’s going to stick around, but I’ll stick it out for the week and see how it goes. Let me know in the comments if you’re digging it. In the meantime, it’s business as usual, with a new twist. Vote for your favorite, or take a chance on the unknown.
That Saturn is in otherworldly good condition. They do like to rust but being in the PNW where rust fears to tread has spared this car. Those Saturns were definitely a WYSIWYG kind of car. If teenagers couldn’t kill them as long as they remembered to fill it with oil and top off the gas, nothing short of physical destruction could.
Unless its something I really like I’ll be rolling the dice with the mystery car.
I love how some weirdo put covers over everything on the Saturn to protect it while barely ever driving it for them to hope to get a whopping $3.5k for it 30 years later. I’m picking it, though. The honesty and simplicity of them is something nobody has offered in years and I they were kind of fun to drive because you weren’t insulated from everything. The condition and color are also great and I can’t remember last time I saw one in any condition.
That era of econoboxes had a lot of fun to drive compact cars. Not at all fast but handled fine with decent tires and somewhat engaging to drive with a manual to make the best use of what power the engines had on tap. But time marches on and today’s econoboxes are just castoff used CUV’s beat to within an inch of their lives.
Fine is an understatement. A bone stock Neon R/T was campaigned in stock autocross spec, and wound up winning nationals in 1998. It had lower lap times than like… a huge amount of surprisingly nice cars. 300ZX TT? Supra Mk4? RX7? Miata?
Didn’t matter. Neon R/T beat them all.
That Saturn is RAD IC AL. Perfect teal color, someone shined up the wheels nicely, I’d be bringing that to Cars ‘n’ Coffee and Radwood.
As the former owner of a 1992 Saturn SL2 with manual locks and crank windows, its a no-brainer today. Mine made it just north of 200k, but being retired. I’d happily drive this one now.
This one is easier. Saturn all the way over a Chrysler Concorde. I would actually drive the Saturn and almost bought one of those in teal back in ’95. I voted mystery car yesterday and got an Ick. I’m betting that with my luck, the mystery car will turn out to be something really cool on the day I don’t vote for it.
Yesterday’s mystery car is an appropriately priced beater, and a different kind of dull than either the Concorde or the Bonneville. I voted appropriately. Today, the Saturn was tempting me (it’s slightly less dull and more maneuverable than the Concorde), but I’m going for Mystery #2.
Me too! He says it’s shiny! It’s *bound* to be great!
(n.b. never, ever taken gambling advice from me)
Dang, people her feel startlingly strong about a Saturn, especially considering it’s not even an SC.
I would not want an SC under any circumstance. The SL looks better and also has the correct number of doors. SW would be even better.
Saturn all the way. My dad and then brother drove a ‘94 manual SL2 for almost 25 years and it was surprisingly fun to drive.
We’d probably still have it if it wasn’t done in by a leaky sunroof. The mildew did not improve the interior…
Our SL2 also killed water pumps, but fortunately it usually happened quickly enough that we could warranty the part. Not sure if that was a wider issue or we were just lucky.
I had a manual Saturn SL2 with crank windows as my daily for 16 years. As much as I like the Chrysler LH cars (I have a weird fascination with the LHS) it would not be a difficult choice to re-up with the Saturn as a cheap driver.
Funny Saturn story. My daughter’s best friend was in the back seat behind me and I heard a bunch of activity, then a plaintive voice saying “the window doesn’t work”. At the next stop light I calmly reached behind me and cranked the window down for her. The reaction was explosive and hilarious, as she had never seen crank windows before.
I have no doubt you’ll pick something actually awesome today for door number three just to torture us when we have two perfectly good choices.
OMG that Saturn is my Mom’s old car, I swear – we had a 95 Saturn SL2 in that EXACT TEAL WITH THOSE EXACT RIMS in the 90’s!! It was an automatic though, I remember it had a ‘sport’ button and teenage me thought that was awesome and when I got to drive the car I remember hitting that button and feeling like I was putting the Millennium Falcon into hyperdrive (let’s ignore the fact that the button did NOTHING).
I must vote for the Saturn based on my overwhelming nostalgia alone.
I really like the Concorde. But I also really like Saturns. Half the miles and a stick shift is worth the $1000 premium.
You really wouldn’t go wrong with either of these cars. Unlike the poor folks who chose the “ick.”
This is tough- my first car vs. the car that my friends had that I wanted. First gen with the updated interior and a stick? This is my dream SL2!
I made so many fun memories in both these cars, but my 16-year-old self would have given up the Concorde for the Saturn in an instant, so 22ish years later I think I need to vote Saturn just to give that guy a win.
Easy win for the Saturn. If the Saturn was in Olympia instead of northern Seattle I would be tempted to go pick it up as a backup commuter until I hand it over to my teenagers when they get their licenses.
Saturn SL2 with stick was not really a bad car at all. Family had one when new and after a while it was kinda falling apart and sounded like a swarm of angry bees when driving, but it ran strong, like a cockroach. Could have been a lot worse, definitely gets my vote today.
Your cockroach comment reminds me of a 1996 Civic Coupe manual a former coworker of mine had. I referred to it as “the cockroach of Japanese automobiles” because it was unkillable after all of the triple-digit-speed abuse it was put through. It even made skittering noises like a crawling cockroach!
Who would’ve thought I’d be eyeing a Saturn really hard today? What the hell is happening?!
It’s ok you’re safe here.
Saturn all the way. The ‘90s teal and its relatively good condition are both endearing and I’m a sucker for ‘90s shitbox economy cars.
My family had a gray Skyhawk that was replaced by an SL2, both a year newer than the examples here. I’d like to take the gamble on the mystery car again for fun, even though it burned me with this Skyhawk, but the Saturn is too nice to pass up.
Unless the mystery car is the exact same car but a wagon, I’m taking that SL2 every goddamn time. Look at it! If that showed up for sale anywhere nearby, I would probably own it right now.
I was shocked the first time I drove a 1st gen Saturn with the DOHC. It was legitimately quick for the time even with an auto.
I wanna vote for Door #3 but today I gotta vote for the teal rubbermaid.
I like the new format. I cant wait until there is a goat or donkey as the mystery transportation
I would absolutely take a goat over a Skyhawk so that’d be an improvement at least.
That Saturn is great, but somehow the LH platform is still calling to me.
Pal o’ mine drove an SL2. Decent set of wheels; I’m sure the owner could be talked down a hundo or five. It gets my vote.
All I know is whatever door I pick, when you open another and show me a goat, I should switch. Mystery car for me, but we’ll see what happens.