P Is For: 1976 Pontiac Astre vs 1981 Plymouth Horizon TC3

Welcome back to the only place you can get two mediocre cars delivered hot and fresh to your browser every morning. Today we’re continuing our march through the alphabet, celebrating the letter P with two remarkably clean yet highly undesirable cars.

Friday was all about General Motors, with an Opel and an Oldsmobile. From the comments, I expected that nicely-restored Olds Cutlass to run away with the vote; a lot of you felt like the Manta wasn’t nice enough to justify its price, and shied away from its tainted title – though, to reiterate, that is only because some idiot sent it to a junkyard and it had to be rescued.

But as it turns out, the Manta won! I was pulling for it. The Cutlass is a beautiful example of a car I have no desire to own. I’d love to see it in person, and I wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to drive it, but I don’t care enough about it to be responsible for keeping it that nice. The Manta is exactly how I like my cars: mechanically tip-top, but a little scruffy around the edges.

All right. We took a look at both Plymouth and Pontiac a couple weeks ago when we were doing dead brands, but I thought these two were worth our time. They’re both very clean, low-mileage cars, probably because nobody really wanted to drive them much. But what the hell; let’s give them a shot.

1976 Pontiac Astre – $4,500

Engine/drivetrain: 2.3 liter overhead cam inline 4, four-speed manual, RWD

Location: Rocky Mount, VA

Odometer reading: 62,000 miles

Operational status: Starts and runs, but needs fuel system cleaned out

Raise your hand if you never knew, or completely forgot, that this car existed. Yeah, me too. This badge-engineered version of the Chevy Vega was sold in Canada for two years before it appeared in the US. Apparently, Pontiac was developing its own small car before the GM brass axed the idea and gave it the Vega instead. The good news is that, like a lot of GM corporate cars, Pontiac took the base material and made it cooler than the original.

The Vega’s engine is infamous; it’s a classic case of GM making things far more complicated than they needed to be. It has a cast aluminum block, a bare wisp of a thing that’s too clever for its own good and is absolutely intolerant of overheating or low oil levels. This 1976 model is supposed to have been greatly improved, but the real improvement came a year later in 1977, when the Astre ditched the Vega engine for Pontiac’s then-new Iron Duke four-cylinder. This one starts and runs, but it has been sitting a while, and the fuel tank is full of rust. The seller says it also needs a new fuel pump, which means someone probably tried to revive it without cleaning out the tank.

Inside, it’s in near-miraculous condition. GM economy car interiors have never been known for their durability, and in the 70s they were especially flimsy. Even with only 62,000 miles on the odometer, I would expect at least some wear and damage. Someone took good care of this car.

Part of the 1976 update to the Vega and Astre was greatly improved rustproofing, and on this car it seems to have worked. Even the undercarriage photos in the ad don’t show anything concerning. The paint is original, and it looks like it could benefit from a good waxing.

1981 Plymouth Horizon TC3 – $6,000

Engine/drivetrain: 2.2 liter overhead cam inline 4, three-speed automatic, FWD

Location: White Stone, VA

Odometer reading: 26,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives fine

Let’s get it out of the way right up front: yes, the asking price is six grand. Yes, it seems high to me too. Especially since I once got this car’s sister model, the Dodge Omni 024, for free. Well, almost anyway; it belonged to a friend of mine in college, who told me that it kept stalling, and if I thought I could get it to run, I could have it. I installed a manual choke cable to replace the defective automatic choke, the car ran like a top, and she demanded it back. At least she paid me back for the choke cable.

The TC3 is the Plymouth Horizon’s sleeker, cooler cousin. It’s a good-looking two-door coupe, though it never had the power to back up its looks until Carroll Shelby got his hands on it. This one at least has Chrysler’s 2.2 liter four; the 024 that I almost owned was powered by a 1.7 liter Volkswagen engine and couldn’t get out of its own way. From what I’ve seen, these early Omnis and Horizons are about a 50:50 split between manuals and automatics; this one has an automatic. It has only 26,000 miles on it, and has had a bunch of recent service work done.

It’s at least as clean inside as the Astre is, and completely stock and original. You don’t see many cars like this that still have their original AM/FM radio. Too bad radio stations are all crap these days. It has air conditioning, but the seller says it needs to be “serviced.”

It’s almost spotless outside as well, with only a couple of bad spots in the paint on the back bumper. I could do without the tinted windows, but that’s easy enough to undo. It’s weird to see one of these early L-body coupes without all the added-on stuff they accumulated over the years: no block-out panels over the quarter windows, no lower skirts like the Shelby Chargers had, not even a rear spoiler. It’s about as close to the body in white (or in this case, body in off-white) as you can get.

I can already tell, as I write this, that a lot of you are going to complain ahout these. They’re too expensive, they’re too boring, they’re crap, blah blah blah. But just try to appreciate them for a second; they’re both very rare cars these days, and they’re a fascinating look at how things used to be. And, personally, I think they’re kinda cool. Which one strikes your fancy?