Good morning! Today on Shitbox Showdown, we’re getting back to our roots a little bit, with two dirt-cheap runabouts from south Florida. Neither one will impress anyone, but they should both get you around all right.
Yesterday was all about trucks, and it occurred to me too late that while neither of yesterday’s trucks is a match for Forest Service Green, they are both pretty close to a couple of my favorite Fender guitar colors: Seafoam Green and Surf Green. In the end, Seafoam won, with the Chevy flatbed amassing twice as many votes as the slightly suspect Volkswagen.
I’m a fan of both of these trucks, but the price of entry for old water-cooled VWs has just gotten out of hand. No way is that Rabbit pickup worth $3,500 in that condition – and yet, someone will pay it, I’m sure. Not me. I’ll stick with a good old Chevrolet for my pickup truck needs.
When you’re shopping at the bottom end of the used car market, as I’ve said before, condition is king, and mechanical condition counts for more than cosmetic. Styling and features and color are distant considerations. You look for the best-running car you can find for the price, and put up with everything else.
This hyper-focus on running condition and price above all else can lead to cross-shopping some cars that were never intended to compete with one another, and such is our matchup today. We’ve got one teeny-tiny hatchback and one great big luxury sedan. But which one is a better deal as cheap wheels?
2000(?) Chevrolet Metro LSi – $1,700
Engine/drivetrain: 1.3-liter overhead cam inline 4, three-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Lake Worth, FL
Odometer reading: 100,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives “perfect”
It never ceases to amaze me how wrong some car listings can be. The seller of this little Metro has it listed as a 2003 model, despite GM dropping the Metro after the 2001 model year. And in 2001, the only model offered was the four-door sedan, so this hatchback Metro LSi is, at newest, a 2000. It also can’t be any older than a 1998 model, because that’s when GM discontinued the Geo name and started selling the Metro with a Chevy badge. The seller also has it listed as a three-cylinder, which would be correct for a non-LSi version, but the LSi got an extra cylinder and a 16-valve cylinder head, bumping the horsepower from 50ish to a potentially tire-chirping 79. You’d think they would want to advertise that.
This Metro is equipped with an automatic transmission, a basic three-speed non-overdrive unit that is under absolutely no stress at all from that tiny engine. Yeah, I’d rather have a stick, too, but once again, at this end of the market, running condition is everything, and a good-shifting automatic will get the job done. The seller says this car runs and drives “perfect,” and claims that even the air conditioning works – a bonus for hot and muggy Florida, though I imagine turning it on slows the car down quite a bit.
It looks pretty nice inside, though personally I’d yank that blue rubber steering wheel condom off before I even drove home. I hate those things. Outside, it’s a different story; it’s three or four different colors of faded paint, with dents and peeling clearcoat. I get the idea, from the pattern of the faded paint, that this car wore a “bra” for most of its life. As a result, the front foot or so is still the nice original indigo color, while the rest has been bleached to a couple of different shades of sad-looking purplish-gray.
The most optimistic feature of this car, however, is the tow ball, and it looks like it has been used. I looked it up: the 2000 Chevy Metro is actually rated to tow 1,000 pounds – so I guess one of those cheap Harbor Freight utility trailers is about all it can manage. Hey, it’s something.
2000 Lincoln Town Car – $1,900
Engine/drivetrain: 4.6 liter overhead cam V8, four-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Fort Lauderdale, FL
Odometer reading: 230,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives great
At the other end of the domestic automotive market from the turn of the century, we find this Lincoln Town Car, the flagship of Ford’s line of Panther-chassis sedans. While Ford’s version, the Crown Victoria, is best known as the police cruiser and taxicab of its day, the Town Car was more likely to be used by airport “limo” and car services – so basically the same thing, but with a higher-income clientele. It’s a good, sturdy, traditional automobile, the last of its kind from Ford, with a separate body and frame, a V8 engine, and a solid rear axle.
This Town Car, fortunately, post-dates Ford’s insistence on slapping a padded vinyl roof on every single one that left the factory. And lo and behold, it’s actually a pretty nice body style without it. It’s just different enough from the profile of the Ford and Mercury versions to make it special, but still obviously part of the same family. This one has a little wrinkle in the right front fender and has lost the center caps from its wheels, but otherwise it has weathered its 230,000 miles quite well.
Outside, at least. Inside, it’s – to put it charitably – trashed. I don’t know if someone left their pet terrier Ripper in there for long periods of time, or drove around wearing studded leather everything, but the front seats in this car are done for. The rear seat is more intact, but it’s absolutely filthy, as is the carpet. And I do believe that’s the rearview mirror hanging from a wire I see. Gotta glue that baby back up on the windshield.
But the seller says it runs and drives great, and that’s what we’re after. It has a lot of miles on it, but there’s a reason these cars were used for police and livery duties: they’re built like tanks.
Good cheap cars have never been easy to find. Cheap cars, yes, and goodness knows I’ve had my share of those, but good cheap cars are special. It starts with something you can just hop in and drive home without getting scared. If you can find that, you’re off to a good start. It’s hard to tell from Craigslist posts, but I think these have the potential to be good ones, despite the low price tags. Which one looks like a better deal to you?
(Image credits: Craigslist sellers)
I was all in on the town car, but that thing is far too trashed for me. Sure a set of seat covers and mirror glue and it could be on it’s way, but I don’t trust that. I guess I would begrudgingly go metro in this matchup.
If the Metro had been a stick, I’d have picked it. I love me a plucky little gear jammer. So Towncar with some junkyard seats it is.
Town Car faults are cheap and easy junk yard fixes while surviving Metros—even in junk yards—are far rarer around here. Metro is a car that’s already power challenged and there’s little more sad than a small, light car that should be inherently decent to drive with a f’n power and fun-sapping automatic (that had also been used to tow and I can’t imagine that transmission had a large durability overhead to shrug off too much of that).
I was recently in the same boat. I needed a car TODAY and it had to be cheap. I was a little luckier in that I had a $3000 budget. The market is such a crapshoot at that price. Maybe it’s fine? Maybe it dies on the ride home?
I got a sweet BMW 318i with 110,000 miles.
I had a ’93 Geo Metro and this one doesn’t look any better. Sure, maybe that extra cylinder, assuming it has it, makes a difference, but auto transmission and air conditioning make up for that, and not in a good way.
Give me the Town Car. It can’t be too hard or expensive to replace the interior.
This is a fantastic Showdown!! Each car has desirable qualities and each one has a fatal flaw. The Metro would win my vote if it had a stick. The Town Car would be a shoe-in if the seats weren’t trashed. In light of the flaws in each car, I will have to throw my vote to the Metro and save money to buy a better car.
I’d take the Towncar, sure it’s a little bit more expensive and needs some work but it’s easy. Go to the junkyard and find replacement seats and a replacement fender. Or if you want to go nuts, get the seats reupholstered. I live in Florida and driving anything smaller than a Fiesta/Focus seems like a deathwish with all the Brodozers here.
The Metro is the better car. People hate on them for no reason. Yeah, maybe people would like the I3 and manual combo better for better mpg, but even the I4 auto is fine too 🙂
Suzuki’s cars are way underrated. They are high quality and cost less than Honda and Toyota. Too bad they stopped selling their cars here because the kind of cars they specialize in are sorely needed in this market now.
The motorcycle engine is adequate for this cute lil car, and it will last a long time with no problems.
Hell yeah I voted for the Metro 😀
The Town Car is called that because it’s a car the size of a town, and it’s cheaply made and not flagship material. Ford really should’ve just made the Australian Falcon over here and used that to replace the panthers, which were already old 10 years ago by that point. Plus, it’s in poor condition and gets horrible mpg. The interior is not that big for a car that size on the outside.
LOL, people hate on them for no reason. I have reasons. I owned a metro and it was TERRIBLE. 3 cylinders producing 50 NA horsepower, except I was in Denver and the altitude definitely took its toll. The door automatically locked at something like 4 mph, so you either had to manually unlock it or pull the door handle twice to open it. This resulted in broken door handles when people didn’t know and tried to get out. What a piece of junk.
oooo automatic locks in a Metro, so yours came fully loaded 😀
Do you really think the Metro was the only car that did that? Even back then, automatic locks weren’t unicorn-rare, except maybe on inexpensive cars like the Metro.
No, I was pointing it out as a bad thing. Mine didn’t even come with a radio, but it had door handles that would confuse people and cause them to break them.
Double pulling the door handle to unlock your doors is not an ordinary thing to do (at least in North America). Of course it will wear the handle faster than by using more straightforward unlocking method
Those Suzuki motors were very durable considering how hard they had to work. They thrive on abuse and neglect. It’s probably one reason Maruti does so well in the developing world.
I have no idea about the slushbox, though. It could be made of glass.
Town Car by default since the other one is a Metro. I want to ride in comfort in a big V8 boat w/ better body style. I don’t care about how the interior is, will just fix it
If that Metro was a stick, I’d be all over it. Like, I’d actually consider driving from Chicago to Florida to buy it. I had a ’98 Chevy Metro, and it was way more fun than anything with 58hp had any right to be. But with a 3-speed auto? NO THANK YOU!
If I’m going for a car this cheap there should be some reason other than a cheap car. The fuel mileage of the Metro sounds like a great drive-to-work-and-back candidate
Both of these cars are just awful. I don’t want to choose between a Town Car that had a knife fight take place in the front seat and an automatic Metro that looks like it was whacked with a bat and left outside in a hurricane that somehow rained acid.
I know cars have become very expensive in the last few years, but this is ridiculous. These cars should have three digit price tags. For comparison, I checked my local Craigslist and found several cars under $2,000 that appear far better than either of these turds.
This is another day where I had to flip a coin to decide which one to vote for. The Metro won the coin flip, but there is no situation where I would pay anywhere near the asking price for either of these vehicles.
Lincoln, because you could probably spend a day in local pick/pull lots and get everything you’d need to freshen it up both inside and out (in the same color), and not be driving a penalty box thereafter.
This is the correct answer.
I’m taking the Lincoln and driving it to the nearest junkyard that shows one in stock so I can buy some new seats.
This is The Way. No shade against the Metro, which will be a great car for someone.
And I bet that the “cash talks BS walks” ethos will bring either of them in under asking.
The reverse “tan lines” on the Metro made my day.
Street racer bros around here spend a lot money on that optical paint for their BMWs that looks pretty much the same.
I also like that it appears to have an extra cup holder in the front bumper.
Both of these would make fine demo derby/fair cars.
Metros with some aggressive tires up front seem to do really well in the figure 8 racing despite their low power, and Panthers are about all that’s left in the full size demo classes.
As for driving either of them on the road, no thanks.
Most are going to take the Lincoln because it’s a Panther and probably has the less stressed drivetrain of the two. And the luxury angle. However, that interior looks like someone died in there trapping a pet frantic to get out after, you know, the “food” ran out. Definitely haunted. No mention of smells, but I’ll bet there are some doozies. So, I very reluctantly choose the Metro with the faded denim paint job. I’ll live to regret it.
Panther is the anther. A quick trip to Pep Boys and you could even sit in it.
Even with a manual, a Metro is a sad little beast. Can’t even imagine how slow it would be with the self-shifter, especially if the a/c is on.
The Lincoln wins in my book. Replace or recover the seats and you have a nice Panther cruiser.
Yep. These are like automotive cockroaches.
Added cost and crust, but that Lincoln is by far the more appealing option and probably has far better parts support by now
Panther platform all day long.
I have a weird affinity for the 3-door Metro. The automatic definitely counts against it, but with working AC, I voted for it enthusiastically!
Buy both and keep the metro in the town car’s trunk for a spare.
now that’s big brain energy
The Metro is the logical choice…but I just can’t bring myself to do it. The Lincoln’s parts availability wins for me. Some seat covers and a regular, non-Honda steering wheel cover and I will be satisfied. Maybe try and find a set of seats out of a Crown Vic or something at the local Pick and Pull.
That’s the same thought I had, buy the Town Car and drive it directly to the nearest junk yard for a new bench.