Welcome back! Today we’re sticking with the same-price theme, and looking at two cars for just under three grand that you’re probably not going to want. But they’re just what caught my eye today. And really, there are worse cars. Aren’t there?
Yesterday’s $5,000 German sedans were both pretty nice, and the positive comments seemed to be about evenly matched. But the big Benz won pretty easily, mostly due to its build quality, it sounds like. And thank you for the correction that the W126 still uses the old Citroën-derived hydropneumatic suspension system. I though it had been switched to a simpler air-ride setup by this point.
Actually, that knowledge makes me want it less. I know how to replace the BMW’s lower control arms, but I wouldn’t touch that Mercedes’s suspension system with a ten-foot breaker bar. Make mine the 7 Series. If I want a Sacco-era Mercedes-Benz, I’ll look for something with nice ordinary shock absorbers.
All right; time for some bad choices. It’s an underpowered malaise-era coupe with a transmission made of peanut butter versus an Eastern Eurpoean import based on a Fiat. You’re welcome.
1980 Pontiac Grand Prix – $2,900
Engine/drivetrain: 3.8-liter overhead valve V6, three-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Alhambra, CA
Odometer reading: 80,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
GM’s midsized A-body (later G-body) launched in 1964, and produced some seriously cool cars over the years: Chevelles, Cutlasses, and Skylarks, to name a few. They got bigger, then smaller, then outdated, and that leads us here: to the 1980 Pontiac Grand Prix. Powered by a Buick 231 V6, the precursor to the legendary 3800, this car boasts a whopping 115 horsepower, to haul around 3200 pounds. Speedy it is not. Worse, that milquetoast engine feeds the rear axle through one of GM’s more notable failures – the Turbo-Hydramatic 200 automatic transmission.
Ask an old-school mechanic about the THM200, and you’ll probably give them PTSD. It was meant to be a more efficient and lighter-weight alternative to the THM350, but it was severely under-built, and its failure rate was spectacular. Most of them ended up getting replaced by a 350 (or the lighter-duty version, the 250), but there are probably still a few 200s floating around. Both transmissions’ fluid pans have the same basic shape: a square with one corner cut off. If you want to know which one this car has, count the bolts around the perimeter of the pan: the 200 has eleven, and the stronger 250/350 has thirteen. If it only goes to eleven, you’d better plan on a transmission replacement eventually, especially if you upgrade the engine.
Transmission-related nerdery aside, this car doesn’t look terrible for an American car from 1980. The seat needs reupholstering, and the carpet isn’t in great shape, but the rest of the interior looks all right. I always liked the Pontiac dashboard more than the other A/G-bodies; I like the circle motif. This looks like a base model, so a lot of those circles probably hold idiot lights instead of gauges, but it’s still a cool-looking dash.
Outside, it’s a bit of a mess. I bet it looked pretty cool back when it was new, with two-tone paint, those sweet steel wheels, and no landau top, but time has not been kind to it. The paint has been touched up with a spray can, it looks like, there’s some damage to the driver’s door, and those soft plastic filler panels between the body and the bumpers probably left the chat ages ago. You can get replacements for some cars, but I’m not sure the Grand Prix is one of them.
1988 Yugo GVL – $2,900
Engine/drivetrain: 1.1-liter overhead cam inline 4, four-speed manual, FWD
Location: Palmdale, CA
Odometer reading: 77,000 miles
Operational status: Will start if you pour fuel in the carb, has been parked since 2001
Here we have the perennial whipping-boy at the top of so many “Worst Cars” lists, presumably among those who have never experienced a Dodge Aspen: the Yugo. Built in the former Yugoslavia, based on a Fiat design, and imported to the US by Malcolm Bricklin, the Yugo was supposed to be the next Beetle or Model T. It was the cheapest new car available in the US at the time, and it sold well – at first. But quality problems, political issues, emissions compliance issues, and the lack of maintenance so common to cheap cars doomed it.
This is the ever-so-slightly upmarket GVL model, which has some extra stuff standard but still uses the same 1.1-liter engine and four-speed stick as the base version. It’s an interference engine, with a timing belt that has a service interval of only 40,000 miles, which was part of the maintenance problems. Ignore the timing belt replacement, and the engine ate itself shortly afterward. A similar fate befell an awful lot of Fiat 128s, the car upon which the Yugo was based. At 77,000 miles, this car should be just about due for its third timing belt – but that’s not all it needs. The seller says this car has been sitting since 2001. It will run if you dribble gas into the carb.
Yugos are either “refreshingly simple” inside, or “depressingly cheap,” depending on your point of view. The material quality is wretched, but there’s also almost nothing to break. The worst problems with this one look to have been caused by the sun; not surprising considering its desert location. The seller makes a big deal of the fact that it has a Yugo-branded stereo. I wonder if it still works?
The outside looks presentable, but there is a little rust on the rear hatch, and the paint looks pretty chalky. Again, probably bleached in the sun. The seller says two of the original wheel covers are missing, but all I see are four matching Wal-Mart wheel covers. Me, I’d throw them straight in the trash. I’d rather have bare steelies than those hideous things.
Neither of these is a particularly wise choice, of course. They’re both pretty much crap, but sort of interesting crap, don’t you think? I mean, one is a symbol of Detroit having to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern car era, and the other is a curiosity from a failed attempt to bring cheap wheels to the masses. They’d both attract lots of lookie-loos and question-askers at a car gathering. Which one is more your speed?
(Image credits: sellers)
A brick and a cinderblock
The Pontiac is too pricey for the work it needs to make it better, and it’s not the right specimen. The Yugo is actually interesting, and as a non-running project, it takes up less space.
I dithered on this one, because the Pontiac speaks to my heart (I spent a lot of childhood hours in a ’79 Delta 88), but the Yugo is more interesting, and possibly a better drive.
But if I were to get a nostalgic Malaisemobile, it wouldn’t be this one, whereas all Yugos are basically alike. So Yugo it is, but someday I’ll swap it for a different ~1980 GM.
If you hurry, our local pull a part has a spare Yugo. Looked ok and someone had put new tires on it, but evidently has fatal drivetrain issue @ 95k…probably that timing belt you mentioned.
Went with the Buick…GM runs badly longer and all.
The Pontiac is possibly the sensible choice here,but it’s boring. The Yugo is at least somewhat interesting and manual too,everywhere. Would probably make a good autocross car,with some modifications.
Pontiac for the easy win, we had 2 of these and ’79 and a ’83, I learned to drive on the ’83, was a purple brown color with the laundau roof, bucket seats and a console shifter. I also learned to wrench on it, did the breaks etc. ah nostalgia!
Spectacular turds, these.
I’ll save my internet money for tomorrow, it can’t get worse. Hopefully.
The GP just needs a junkyard powertrain swap with a 2000-2007 5.3 Vortec/6spd Hydra-matic. Then recover the seats in the finest velour money can buy.
Neither of these is worth $2900
Both choices suck today.
We had an 84 GP that was bought off a friend who quit driving. Bought in 1992 for $400 bucks, 25K miles on it. An old lady car.
No issues except it was boring as hell, and lost the exhaust on the interstate one night at 1am.
“Parked since 2001” scares me. GP it is.
Yeah right? If it was the beginning of 2001, BILL CLINTON was president.
Going Yugo. If I’m going to own an absolute piece of crap, then I’ll take one that’s notable and which makes a good conversation piece. The Pontiac is neither.
The Grand Prix is a small block Chevy crate engine away from being fast. The suspension is very upgradable, and most parts are still available thanks to the Chevrolet it shared its platform with.
While I kind of enjoy the rare sighting of a Yugo with say an X19 1.5 swap. bring the stock 45 HP up to a whopping 75. I am not in love with the things enough to try to figure out the swap mess.
I do however feel like the mid nineties 3.8 F-Bodies are probably cheap enough to consider a swap into this old Poncho. Though again, I am not sure I would care enough to actually try and the price to get into either of these seems obscene to me.
The Yugo has a terrible feature shared with a few other 1980’s manual transmission cheap compacts: a truly ugly shifter with a plastic sleeve over the whole mechanism. It makes it seem like the whole shift lever is just a flimsy plastic rod.
You’d be surprised that, despite the simple interior, PLENTY of things can break. My interior door handle broke. A friend broke the door card by throwing a NERF football at it. Window crank plastic split and fell off.
Also, I am impressed that despite being out west it found a way to rust. That’s dedication to craft.
The fact that either of these is nearly three grand is still upsetting, no matter how many times people tell me, ‘well, that’s just the way it is now’. Bah.
I love the idea of building up the GP, but I want to be like Torch, so I’m taking the Yugo.
A friend of mine inherited a G body GP from his mom, and over the years has built it up with a turbo series 2 3800 and T56 Magnum behind it, it’s a really impressive sleeper honestly, I’d take the GP and probably do something similar.
So to be clear, they will pay me $2900 to drive/haul these away. Sigh…Ok I’ll take the runner. I didn’t think much of the Yugo when new so gimme the Pontiac.
Seriously, the questions at Radwood would quickly turn to “you paid how much for that???” Both of these sellers are high. The Pontiac’s ad says it’s in very good condition. Hah! And the Yugo’s seller will consider trades. Hmm, I’ve got a really good ham sandwich I just made. I wonder if they’d trade?
And the Yugo has a lien on the title. A non-running Yugo from 88 that’s been sitting for 23 years in the desert still has some outstanding debt. No thanks.
How would one go about getting a lien on a Yugo?
The Yugo probably does have better build quality than lazy Detroit shit LOL
As shocking as it is to believe, it is notably worse, and that is saying something.
While the Poncho was the ugliest of all the G-bodies, by far, at least it supposedly runs and drives and can be fixed with parts available at the corner store. Plus that interior is “mint” for one of these, looks like it is only 4 or 5 years old.
Sorry, “ugliest” belongs to the Regal. I’d give the Grand Prix the most boring looking though.
I’ve always wanted a Yugo, if for no other reason to see if they were really *that* bad. This is not the one I would want, but I’d rather have it over that Grand Prix.
Pontiac because it’s a running, driving car in pretty decent condition. As has been mentioned below an SBC will bolt in very easily or an LS with a bit more work, but ultimately you can hold off on that until the gearbox implodes.
Voted Yugo, but I think I’d rather walk.
No input from The Autopian’s own resident Yugo owner?