Welcome back to Shitbox Showdown! Today’s matchup seems very lopsided, until you start to look at the details. I’ll give you a hint: one of these cars passed a smog test. We’ll dig into those details in a moment, after we look at yesterday’s truck results:
Looks like a narrow win for the Ford. Neither one seemed too popular, however; we weren’t exactly “swamped” with comments, or votes. So let’s move on to a little psychological experiment involving a pretty but ailing German sports coupe and a dowdy American sedan with a trick up its sleeve.
California, as our Editor-In-Chief is finding out, is a land of a great many rules and regulations surrounding automobiles. Sometimes the rules work out in your favor, but quite often they really, really don’t. And when they don’t where does that leave you? Sometimes it means ditching the problematic car in favor of something that already meets the letter of the law, which leads us to today’s contestants. Let’s check them out.
2001 Audi TT Quattro – $3,700
Engine/drivetrain: Turbocharged 1.8 liter dual overhead cam inline 4, five-speed manual, AWD
Location: Santee, CA
Odometer reading: 178,000 miles
Runs/drives? Runs great! But…
The Audi TT is a cool little car. Introduced in the late ’90s, it was sort of the Karmann-Ghia to VW’s New Beetle: a stylish, low-roofed 2+2 coupe with enough performance to back up its looks, and of course it’s available with Audi’s legendary Quattro all-wheel-drive system. The first-generation TT is another car with some history among the Autopian staff: Mercedes Streeter had a star-crossed ownership of a car almost exactly like this, in silver.
This TT features a 180 horsepower version of the VW/Audi 1.8T engine, driving all four wheels through a five-speed manual. Sounds good, right? Small car, decent power, tons of grip, three pedals on the floor – it’s a recipe for fun. Unfortunately, it’s also a turn-of-the-century Audi, which means it also has a fiendishly complex and notoriously finicky engine management and emissions control system. One sensor has a bad day, and the whole thing can go haywire. And that appears to be what has happened with this car: it won’t pass emissions because some sensor won’t reset. The solution suggested by the testing station was to drive the car a while and re-test, but that hasn’t worked. The next step would be to fire the parts cannon at it until the problem goes away, but the seller sounds unwilling or unable to pay for that, so they’ve bought a different car and are unloading this one as-is.
It’s too bad, because this car runs and drives beautifully, they say, and it is in nice condition for 178,000 miles. Everything works, including the air conditioning, and the registration is actually still current, so there’s a little time to work out the emissions issues.
Cosmetically, it’s not perfect, but it looks pretty damn good. These are not low-maintenance cars, but they are reportedly very good cars to drive (I’ve not had the pleasure myself). Plenty of them are available for less money than this, but they’re likely to have a lot more problems than a failed smog test. And if you live somewhere besides California, you can likely ignore the fault and drive it as-is.
1989 Chevrolet Corsica – $1,500
Engine/drivetrain: 2.8 liter overhead valve V6, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Lemon Grove, CA
Odometer reading: 153,000 miles
Runs/drives? Runs great!
But let’s suppose you don’t want to deal with all that, and just want something that’s ready to go as-is. You’re willing to sacrifice cool styling and leather seats for mechanical simplicity and reliability. And you’re intrigued by the idea of a once-common but now rare car, with an uncommon and desirable mechanical spec. Have I got the car for you! Feast your eyes on the 1989 Chevy Corsica, equipped with a 2.8 liter V6 and a five-speed stick.
Yep, that’s right; Chevy’s humble L-body sedan could be had with a manual. And it’s a good one: the Getrag 282 five-speed (yes, the ad calls it a four-speed, but it has a fifth gear). I’ve had two of these before, one in a Cavalier Type 10, and one in a Quad 4-powered Olds Calais. It’s not as precise as a Honda or Mazda gearbox, but it’s a damn sight better than the vague, rubbery messes that Mopar and Ford called manuals back then.
Now, even the best manual gearbox in the world couldn’t turn a Chevy Corsica into a performance car, but the alternative is a mushy three-speed automatic that soaks up the V6’s power like that one soggy French fry soaks up the pickle juice on the plate. With the manual, this car could almost be considered sprightly. It still handles like a Chevy Corsica, but you can’t have everything. The seller says this car runs and drives just fine, and has a new battery and a recent clutch replacement. It has been sitting for a while, and the registration is several years out of date, but it just passed a smog test.
Cosmetically, it looks like every other remaining Corsica: dreary. And why are they always maroon? These things did come in other colors, right? Once upon a time, this would have been the ultimate stealth car, but it’s such an uncommon sight these days that it might actually get noticed. Nah, who am I kidding? It’s still a Corsica. No one cares. But it’s cheap, it runs fine, and it’s ready to rock.
Yes, I know this is a silly comparison. But let’s just say you have your heart set on a manual, and you have a very limited budget. Are you going to choose the car that looks good and is fun to drive, but needs work to be able to drive legally, or the drab, uninspiring one that’s less than half the price, and ready to go right now?
(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)
My dad had a Corsica that he bought from Enterprise Rent-a-Car – for a low price, since it was painted Raspberry, which was actually a darkish pink metallic. So they weren’t all maroon! Awful car, but still better than a can of Audi worms.
Corsica – Paint it with some of the leftover $ and save the rest (@ 5%) for future repairs.
You definitely buy the Audi. Secondary air monitor won’t set, not a terribly difficult problem to diagnose and fix but that poor individual has been lead astray by a not so knowledgeable smog tech. Order up some Rosstech VWAG software and you’ll be good to go.
Is it my imagination or are the whitewalls on the Corsica rattle canned? Easy choice, move the TT to a non-emisisons state and take all the time you need to fix 🙂
No. This choice may be one of the few things American public transit would beat…
My mum’s 1.8T/five-speed New Beetle ran like an alarmed hominid and made it past 180k miles before the clutch gave out and the rocker panels rusted through again… but it was religiously maintained.
Was this Audi religiously maintained?
https://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-iiam.gif
(Shockingly, Entie’s windows never fell down into the doors, though it did have issues with faulty door latches setting off the alarm to remind her that it was, in fact, German.)
My grandfather had a Corsica. He sold it and bought an Achieva. It was… fine, and I always liked the Corsica and Beretta for their clean-in-this-particular-case of-their-time generic-video-game-car shape, but I’d rather drive the TT, and I’d certainly rather be in the TT if I get hit by a truck.
Okay, I miss that damn VW, so it’s a nostalgia vote for the squished VW just under the wire this morning.
If the Corsica was somehow a mint condition time capsule, maybe, but this one is roached like every other remaining Corsica, and probably smells like old bong water and Cheetos.
I will take my chances with the Audi. (famous last words, I know….There is nothing more expensive than a cheap German car). If you get lucky, you may get the emissions straightened out. If not, move away from SoCal, or perhaps register it with America’s DMV (Vermont). Drive and enjoy it for a few, days, weeks or even months until it breaks catastrophically. (It will eventually). At that point the Audi is still worth considerably more parted out, than the Corsica will ever be whole and running.;
Chevy Corsica for me. It was the manual that tipped things in its favour for me as it’s relatively rare for the Corsica to have the manual/V6 combo.
And all that Corsica needs is a nicer set of wheels from the LTZ model and it will look a lot better
https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Corsica-LTZ.jpg
And it will actually be a usuable vehicle, unlike the Audi which may look pretty, but likely will spend more time in the shop than on the road.
No matter what your vote, you’ve got to hand it to whoever put whitewalls on the Corsica. Being a dinosaur, I roamed the earth when Corsica was new and I don’t ever recall seeing one on a dealer’s lot so equipped. Keep in mind by 1989, even most Buicks… saints preserve us… we arriving at dealerships with blackwalls!
I can’t see Chevy passing up on the profits, but they are not shown in the brochure, which might or might not be conclusive evidence, as by 1989 brochures for low end models were getting very skimpy.
https://www.oldcarbrochures.org/United%20States/Chevrolet/1989-Chevrolet/1989%20Chevrolet%20Corsica/slides/1989%20Chevrolet%20Corsica-01.html
Now I’m trying to recall whether my grandfather’s white-on-blue-velourn’t Corsica had whitewalls. I don’t remember them on its replacement, an Achieva, though he put ’em (and natty navy-blue pinstripes!) on his first (silver, 2002ish) Forester years later, so who knows…
I can’t see buying that Chevy as anything but a cheap way to get to work, and I can’t see the Audi being bought as anything but a second or third car for fun or date night or whatever. Since I already have an old car to drive to work in, and you can’t have too many fun cars, I pick the Audi.
That said if you had a really shitty car to take you to work whose to say a back-up shitty car wouldn’t be a bad idea for when SC1 breaks down.
Haha I definitely thought Saturn with the SC1, not shitty car 1, but now I will forever call the Saturn SC the shitty car! Which is very fitting.
The TT should never have been offered in black. It’s a terrible color for that car, an abomination. It completely obliterates the geometry of the styling and misses the point of the fun too.
Now that I think of it. A harlequin fist gen TT would be a riot!
Right? I just want to wrap it in blue painter’s tape like it’s an S4 (https://www.autoblog.com/2006/11/19/2-guys-an-audi-s4-blue-tape-and-the-coolest-road-trip-ever/)… but then I’m biased, ’cause I learned to drive manual in my mum’s Vortex Blue New Beetle, and half the cars I’ve owned (including my avatar) have been blue, too.
(None of ’em have been black, but most of ’em were just boxes with the corners sanded off, so it wouldn’t’ve mattered much styling-wise. One of those, the 745T I’ve mentioned in the past, was sort of a harlequin – green, with a maroon hood and several wheel colors.)
Anyway, teal deer, I’m totally down for this TT’s harlequinization too.
I’ve never seen a manual Corsica before (and I haven’t seen ANY Corsica for quite some time), so adding that to the price and the early aughts Audi competition and it gets my vote. They did either seem to be maroon or that odd bright 90s blue, or white. Nothing else.
The Audi seems like it could be fun if you can drag it back somewhere that doesn’t require an emissions test. Great choices today!
Corsica story!
When I was in college I joined the sports car club, who put on events like autocross and even rented a local small asphalt oval track for a day for the club to run on… this was 2003 or thereabouts. My avatar picture over there was taken at one of the autocross events.
I really enjoyed those autocross events, they were truly ‘run what you brung’ as you’d expect with poor college students. All sorts of cars were there, from the silly entries like my ’78 Cougar to fun stuff like my buddies in their 84 Trans Am, 89 SHO Taurus, and 91 Integra GS-R, all the way up to really serious competitors with brand new sports cars. The fastest car at the autocross was a brand new and modded WRX that the owner trailered in. The second fastest car was a beater Chevy Corsica.
There was nothing at all special about the Corsica, except that the driver 1) was very very good and aggressive, and 2) did not care one iota what happened to the Corsica. He drove the absolute wheels off that thing – it heeled over so hard in the corners I thought the door handles would scrape the ground. I loved watching that thing run.
Respect the Corsica.
If a Mazda gearbox from this time was considered precise, I’d hate to think what this thing is like! Even 15 year old me knew my 88 323’s gearbox was rubbery and crap.
The TT looks pretty nice overall. Even if it cost a couple thousand to fix, it’s still pretty cheap IMO for what it looks like.
That Corsica looks like what you’d expect from a Corsica. A “how does this still run” POS.
The perverse and committed could make that Corsica handle like a Beretta Z24.
I’ll take the TT! Burn that Corsica w/ fire! (Even though my Grandma DID have one and was in good shape of course- hers was light blue, not maroon) It fits that it’s in Lemon Grove- what a LEMON! Didn’t know they could come w/ a stick, wow!
A little Corsica anecdote:
I was in Seoul for a few months in the 90’s, and the vast majority of cars I saw there were Korean, the exceptions being just a handful of American and German cars, and exactly one Japanese car, an 80’s Mazda R-X7.
And 100% of the taxis I saw were Korean….until the day I left, at the Airport, I saw…….. a Corsica taxi.
TT for me.. If there are no codes, it’s no problem, as AZ does OBD2 testing. looks like cheap fun, even if it’s the wrong color for the valley.
I can practically smell the menthol and vape juice in that Corsica.
I smell old bong water, too. That smell never comes out, and this car pre-dates vape juice…
I voted Chevy for the oddity of a manual Corsica but really neither one for me. I live in Oregon so I could run the Audi as is but I also live in the sunny part so a Black TT will be an oven and I think these only look right in silver. The Chevy is very late malaise and I prefer my GM mediocrity 3800 powered.
Engine swap!
I bought a used Corsica a long long time ago. I think it was a 92 with the 4 cylinder. I probably bought it in 98 or 99. The damn thing ran for at least 8 years after I bought it. I couldn’t kill the thing.
I remember one day I was out working on something on the car and my son wanted to help. He was 2 or 3. I gave him his plastic hammer and said he could help. He ended up beating the dashboard and cracking the plastic.
Like they say. A GM will run crappy longer than most vehicles will run.