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.
LH cars were so far ahead of their time.
I feel as though the Taurus walked so the LH cars could run.
Yeah I think there would be no LH cars in ’92 without the Taurus showing the way in ’85.
I’ve driven and owned a few Saturns. My wife’s grandparents had an SL2 that I hooned on the beach when we were dating. Auto, but a decent economy car. Later, I drove their L200.
My in-laws had a manual SL1, and it was fun.
Our first family car was a VUE manual. We ran it 12 years, and it was a great car. I still miss it.
The photo of the rear end of yesterday’s mystery car says it all: ICK.
The mystery car is shiny and expensive? So either it’s a DeLorean or a CyBErTrUk
Both of these cars have got to be some of the nicest $2500-3500 used cars available in the country.
The original owner cream puff Saturn gets the edge here for me, even though I want to click on the Concorde too.
I believe this was the first year of the updated interior on the Saturn SL, which was my preferred interior on those cars. IIRC the exterior update came the following year, so that was my favorite “generation”. (There was only ever one true version of the SL, just with various cosmetic changes over the years.) I had a ’99 SL2, which was the first new car I ever bought. The following year they tweaked the exterior and gave it a new interior — both changes for the worse, IMO.
I had the automatic (don’t @ me, I had an ungodly commute), and I can confirm that it held shifts and got good performance out of that engine. One time I had a stoplight race (on a limited-access road) with a BMW 318, and we were nose-to-nose the whole way. At the next light he was grinning and he yelled over, “What the hell is in that thing?!” And I replied, “Just 1.9 liters, but the car only weighs 100 pounds!”
That PWR was the secret sauce of making those cars fun. Of course they weren’t fast, but they were so light that they made every single HP count.
I believe the SL reached its pinnacle in 1999. My SL2 had ABS and traction control, an efficient automatic transmission, and a decent sound system. Of course the resilient, rust free body panels really helped seal the deal; we had fun hammering on them in the showroom. I did have to watch the oil level. I still held my vote today with the Concorde, however.