Once, You Could Buy A Car That Showed How Proud You Were Of Being A Cheapskate

There are certain kinds of cars that, conceptually, just don’t really exist anymore. Like when a company takes a mass-market everyday car and strips it down to make something fun and silly. That’s no longer a thing. You know what else isn’t a thing? Cars that are proudly cheap. Yes, cheap, as in inexpensive, to buy and to operate. There was once a time when carmakers would have distinctive versions of cars for cheapskates, proudly branded and named and badged and (often) sticker’d, cars that really leaned into the whole idea of frugality, without shame. Frugalcore cars.

Today, the concept of everything having to be “premium” has killed this idea, and has been a disaster for small, cheap cars, which have been forced into metallic gray paint and made to try to be things that they are not, to their detriment. There’s a reason a new Nissan Versa is such an undesirable thing, and that’s because it’s a cheap car forced to pretend it isn’t, and deep down it knows that this just isn’t true.

In the past, a cheap car was something to be celebrated, allowed to thrive and revel in its perfidy, and no attempt was made to hide what the cheap edition of the car was. It was celebrated, in fact, with special names and identities, and there was no shame. As a result, a cheap car could be charming and appealing. Here, to sum up this idea, is a simple diagram, featuring two Nissans – a modern-ish Versa and a ’70s Datsun B210 Honey Bee:

I miss the days when being broke but wanting a decent car wasn’t something you had to hide, but something automakers actually courted, with cars like the ones I’m about to show you. Consider the one I just used as an example, the Datsun Honey Bee.

The Honey Bee was introduced in 1975 as the lowest-spec version of the Datsun B210. They started with the basic B210 two-door with a four-speed manual transmission and the A14 1.4-liter engine. To get the price down, Datsun removed or altered a bunch of stuff compared to the normal B210 (list from Datsun1200.com):

• No Wheel covers (dogdish caps fitted)
• No “honeycomb” wheel covers
• No Spare tire cover
• No Trunk mat
• No Cigarette lighter (blind plug fitted)
• No Speedometer trip meter
• No Rear window defogger switch (blind plug fitted)
  • 1976 Honey Bee has the defogger
• No Carpet (only Mat)
  • California models included carpet
• No Armrest (pull handle is fitted)
• No Door trim molding
• No Rear side molding
• No Rear seat ashtray
• No Wiper blade high-speed fin (uses basic type from 620 truck)
• No Door lamp switch for assistant side
• No Console box
• No Non-glare glass
• No Chrome molding for windshield
• No Chrome molding for rear window

Changed Equipment:

• Blackwall tires now fitted (instead of whitewalls)
• Trunk finisher: hardboard instead of laminated
• Front seat is folding only, instead of reclining + forward-folding
• Interior Trim: Black or Beige only (Deluxe has Black, Blue or Brown)
• Floor trim: Black only (Black or Brown in California)

After all this, it actually weighed 10 pounds less than the regular B210, too, which helped it hit that 41 mpg highway figure, I’d imagine.

Pretty much all of these seem like reasonable trade-offs to get to a selling price, in 1976 for example, of $2,844 (about $15,700 today, which is dirt cheap for a new car). I mean, no rear seat ashtray? Fine, the kids don’t have to smoke all the time. No wiper blade high-speed fin? What are we, sharks, who needs that? Rubber mats instead of carpet? Good, easier to clean. No spare tire cover? Fine! It’s not like you didn’t know it was a tire already! All of this is fine!

I like how Datsun made their ultra-basic stripper model something that felt fun, more than anything, and the name they gave it reflected this idea of cheap and cheerful, not dire austerity. Honey bee! That’s just a happy name.

Plus, Datsun managed to make an ultra-cheap car without taking the drastic measure that some American carmakers resorted to to get the same basic result: removing the rear seat. Both Chevrolet with the Chevette Scooter and (a few years earlier) AMC with their base-model Gremlin were two-seaters only, the back seats of which had been sacrificed on the altar of frugality.

I made a chart comparing these two stripper models a while back:

Unlike these two, the Honey Bee could be used for an actual family of four, and I’m pretty certain it was, often.

Sometimes stripped-down cheap cars have made fuel economy the banner they fly, proudly, which gives a cheap car a sort of extra bit of justification, as the concept of “efficiency” feels somewhat more embraceable to people than “I’m cheap as shit.” Fundamentally, they’re really doing the same basic thing: reducing content in the cars, here in the name of weight, but it saves money, too, and that was as important for these cars, even if it wasn’t hyped as much.

There are a few of these worth noting, like the cleverly-named Plymouth Feather Duster from 1976, sold for about half a year:

The Feather Duster managed to shave 187 pounds from the regular Duster and get better fuel economy thanks to using aluminum instead of steel for some components (like the manual transmission case), having a more efficient rear axle ratio, and special Slant Six tuned for economy. They also included Mopar’s goofy “Fuel Pacer System” which used the driver’s side turn indicator tell-tale lamp to let you know when you’ve been pushing too much on that go-pedal:

Where Feather Duster was a clever, fun name for their cheap, fuel-economy and frugality-focused car, later on Mopar seems to have lost the plot and named their ’80s-era fuel-sipping car something far less fun: the Miser.

Well, it was either the Dodge Omni Miser or the Plymouth Horizon Miser, but “Miser” was in that name regardless. Can you imagine a carmaker selling something called a “Miser” today? Does anyone want to be associated with a miser? Did GM have the trademark on Scrooge or Skinflint? Oy.

The Miser got an impressive 30 to 35 mpg in the city and 50-52 on the highway, I guess depending on which ad you’re looking at. The price of $5,299 in 1980 comes to about $20,000 today, so that’s definitely on the cheap end of things, and I guess it got there by eliminating things like the rubber impact strips on the bumpers, using the cheapest steel wheels, and even giving up any grille badges.

I like how this commercial couches the idea of buying a dirt-cheap car in the context of “America’s not going to be pushed around anymore,” said by that guy from the Naked Gun movies and who once punched out Paul Newman, George Kennedy.

I think the last really unashamedly frugal car that hit the market was likely the Honda CRX HF, which was an interesting example, as it was an extreme economy/frugality car based on a sporty car variant of a normal-level-frugality/economy car, the Civic.

The CRX HF (High Fuel) version arrived in 1985 and used the 1.5 liter engine with the two-valve-per-cylinder CVCC head, and only made 62 hp, the lowest of any CRX. It was also significantly lighter at about 1,850 pounds (compared to about 2,100 pounds), with lighter-weight sway bars, rear axle, rear brakes, and other parts, letting the HF get 49 mpg city and 52 on the highway, impressive numbers for a non-hybrid to this day.

I’m not sure that commercial up there really got the point across, equating an air pump with a gas pump, but it looked pretty cool.

Today, we still see cars that wear their fuel economy numbers as a point of pride, like Priuses and other hybrids. But the idea of cheapness as something to revel in and be proud of, that feels very gone. The idea of getting economy just from austerity, from deleting unnecessary stuff from a car, leaving just the most basic, usable, and affordable transport, I’m not sure that’s coming back anytime soon.

And yet, it’s a formula that could work for modern EVs, too. Not every EV has to be so damn heavy, and a genuinely light EV could get the desired range demanded with a much smaller and cheaper battery if things like a Featherweight Edition of a Tesla Model 3 or something existed.

But they don’t, and I’m not sure the current car culture will change enough so they could. But I’m still hoping for a cheap-ass car comeback.

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