Good morning, and welcome to the Thursday edition of Shitbox Showdown! Today we’re taking a look at two cars that used to be so common that I’m willing to bet collisions between them occurred on a weekly basis, but are all but exitnct now. We’ll look at the final tally of our engine twinsies from yesterday, and then dive in.
Well, that looks pretty decisive. The GMC takes it. Must be the two-tone paint; always bet on red and black. Or something like that. I wouldn’t know; I don’t gamble much.
And yes, I may have understated the GM 2.8 V6 engine’s shortcomings. I try to keep a positive tone here, in part to counteract the “shitbox” title, but also to remind myself and everyone else what an enormous undertaking it is to bring any car to market. Someone somewhere in the halls of General Motors’s design offices in the late ’70s was really proud of that motor, and I don’t feel it’s right to be outright dismissive of it or any other automotive design. But I did appreciate the colorful invective some commenters used to express their feelings toward it (Sasha Grey? Really?).
Moving on: A week or two ago, David tipped me off to a Facebook group called Underappreciated Survivors For Sale. I’m not generally a fan of Facebook, because too often it seems like The Blob: a big mindless force bent on devouring, well, everything. But with a group title like that, I had to check it out. Many of the cars posted are grossly overpriced, and some are clearly trying to cash in on the ’80s nostalgia wave, which to me says they’re not really “underappreciated” at all.
However, I did find two humble, inexpensive, everyday cars listed there. Both fit Jason’s definition of a “Ghost Car:” if you were around in the ’80s, there was probably at least one of each on your block, but when was the last time you saw one of either? Even here in the Land That Rust Forgot, these are a rare sight. Let’s take a look and see which one is more worthy of consideration today.
1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera – $1,500
Engine/drivetrain: 2.8 liter V6, 4 speed automatic, FWD
Location: Denver, CO
Odometer reading: 33,000 miles
Runs/drives? Your guess is as good as mine
“1987 Cutlass Sierra (sic) for 1500/obo.” That is the entirety of the listing for this car, to save you the trouble of clicking on the link. Someone needs to tell the seller that Craigslist doesn’t charge by the word, I think. Luckily, they did post the VIN, so thanks to AutoZone’s handy VIN decoder, I was able to find out which of the several available engines powers this Ciera. I’m sorry to report that it’s another 2.8 liter V6. But at least this one is fuel-injected. Hey, it could be worse: Olds inflicted a 4.3 liter diesel V6 on some earlier Cieras.
Regardless of engine, these front wheel drive A-body cars from GM have a decent reputation. They sure sold like hotcakes. You couldn’t throw a rock in the late ’80s without hitting a Cutlass Ciera, Buick Century, Chevy Celebrity, or Pontiac 6000 (Kids: Don’t throw rocks at cars). And they stuck around a long time, but the last ten years have thinned their ranks significantly, to the point where seeing one in this condition is a rarity, especially the early squared-off roofline like this.
The mileage listed, and shown in the photos, is 33,315. It’s only a five-digit odometer, so there’s no way of telling whether that has gone around once already. The overall condition indicates that it could be original, but that’s a lot of wear on the brake pedal pad for only 33,000 miles.
Assuming it runs and drives well, for fifteen hundred bucks, this car feels like a good deal to me. Hell, I’d drive it. It’s not stylish, or fast, but it’s comfortable, and there’s a no-bullshit earnestness to it that is lacking in today’s car market.
1987 Ford Escort GL – $500
Engine/drivetrain: 1.9 liter inline 4, 3 speed automatic, FWD
Location: Elmhurst, IL
Odometer reading: 69,000 miles
Runs/drives? Runs, but not drivable until some things are fixed
Any British car enthusiast will take one look at this car and tell you that that’s not a Ford Escort. It’s an imitation, an impostor, a pretender. Real Escorts were delightful rear-wheel-drive confections that everyone east of the Atlantic got to enjoy while we Americans lived through the Pinto years. In 1981, we got the name, engine, and basic appearance of the then-new FWD Escort, but little else.
US-market Escorts may not have been the equal of their European counterparts, but they weren’t horrible little cars. And like the Oldsmobile, they were absolutely everywhere. I knew half a dozen people in high school who drove an Escort, and at least as many in college. They were cheap, economical, reasonably well put-together, and practical. Every Escort of this generation was either a hatchback or a wagon, and either shape would swallow more cargo than you’d guess.
This slightly later Escort is a double-edged sword, equipment-wise: it has the throttle-body fuel injected version of Ford’s CVH four-cylinder engine – giving it way better starting and drivability than the earlier carbureted version – but it’s also new enough to have those annoying motorized seat belts. It’s the better-looking two door body style, but it’s an automatic. Compromises must be made, I suppose, at this price point.
The seller has tuned this little engine up, and it runs well, but the car has rusty brake lines that need replacing, and an inoperative cooling fan that will have to be sorted out. But the rest of it doesn’t look too rusty other than a hole at the bottom of one door, and they’re only asking $500 for it as it sits, so a little time and money getting it roadworthy again might be well-spent.
Survivors? Looks like. Under-appreciated? Well, I guess that depends on how much appreciation you think they deserve. I tend to be pretty sympathetic to old ordinary cars like these, and I like to see them out and about. Which one is more deserving of your appreciation is up to you to decide.
Nothing sadder than a worn out escort. Sorry, Fifi. I don’t mean to get snippy. The Olds looks good and has the factory installed Tru-Coat. All it needs is a license plate frame that says, “I’m fleeing the interview!”
There’s one of those Oldsmobiles in my neighborhood and I’m vaguely amazed every time I see it’s still kicking around. It’s a good-looking machine for the era.
Having owned both, the Oldsmobile all day long. Yes it is a product of its time, and as I’ve said before GM has been perfecting mediocracy for the last 50 years or so. However my ex-wife had an 89 Escort as a driver for a while and that car was horrible. Absolutely horrible. The seats were unsupportive and uncomfortable, the interior was bland. And any mention of the word performance was said as a joke. We had our choice of raising the engine or cutting a hole in the wheel well liner to change the damn water pump. The most poorly engineered piece of crap car I’ve ever seen. It did run for three and a half years with a blown head gasket, so it gets credit for that. That Oldsmobile will run until the body falls apart around it. Both of them are pretty rare up here in the Pacific Northwest too but I have seen examples of both within the last week running and driving.
I voted for the Olds just because I love those wheels so much.
I hear ya. My Focus has the Ford version of those wheels and they’re one of my favorite parts of the exterior.
(my favorite interior part is the cheesy black on white racer-style gauges that seem completely out of place on such a vehicle)
I drove the Escorts as a Pizza-Driver in college. They were terrible. The engines only lasted to about 59K miles before either the Head’s cracked, the Head-Gaskets went, or the Timing Belt failed. They were dangerous the rest of the time due to seriously inferior Suspension designs. It had the Ford Radius Rod/Slop-Arm front Suspension from the 1960’s Falcon, on the Front, and the Corvair-style, fold-under Lower Control-Arm Suspension on the Rear. The only safety moderator was that they did not run long enough to roll-over.
The Gutless Ciera; This was one of the few GM cars that they got close to right. The 2.8(transverse installation) will go a long time, so long as you replace the fluids, the Main-Bearing Oil Seals, and the Transmission(every 140K miles), from time to time. This was truly peak GM, as after this, the Saturn Project drained all the R-D money out of them, leading to the downward spiral of the Quad-Four, the W-bodies, and all the other disasters.
I went with the Gutless Ciera.
My first car was a 1987 Ford Escort. Powder blue like this thing, but a four door. I put the spoiler from an Escort GT on it because I was 16 and dumb.
It had 69K on it when I got it as well! Its initial owner was the Archdiocese of Boston, and my theory is that the nuns who drove it around figured that with the G man on their side, oil changes weren’t a thing they had to worry about. Now, I did oil changes (immediately on taking the car, I was diligent), and from what I recall the oil looked fine. But —
Nearly a year to the day after I bought the car, it shit out on a side road. I had it towed to my mechanic, who was busy, so he said he’d call the next day. He did, and asked that I come by to see it.
When I arrived, he opened the hood and explained what happened while going around to the driver’s door to start the car and demonstrate:
“A piston shot through the top of the engine and made a little hole when it finally stopped. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
He started the engine, and it ran, horribly, stuttering as if it was in a cartoon. Oil began to spurt out the hole.
“You now have a three cylinder, and it runs on gas and oil.”
I voted for the Cutlass Ciera.
There’s someone around here that owns an ’88 Escort GT, in the same dull steel blue. Much better condition, though. I was tempted to ask them if they’d sell it to me until I found it in a parking lot and saw that it was an automatic. Alas…
Just like that Escort I’m gonna pass on this one as well. Because at least the Cutlass Ciera isn’t suffering from rust, it looks like.
These are both great cars. Growing up, the neighbor across the street had a first year escort that he bought to replace the car that he built himself.
But I had to go with the Cutlass. My parents bought about 7 of these over the years, I inherited at least 3 of them. They were not great cars, but they ran. They had at least 3 wheels and they got me from home to and vice-versa. So many memories, though…
I know the Cutlass has a crappy engine, but I don’t really care. I’d drive the Olds until the 2.8 shits the bed, and then if it’s convenient I’ll find a 3.8 to put in it. If inconvenient then I’ll just use the Ciera to take comfy naps in.
I don’t want anything to do with the Escort.
Voted for the Olds, my sister had a 3800-powered Delta 88 back in the day, lot of good memories. Plus this one looks relatively intact, is rocking the basket weave wheels, and the luggage rack/spoiler combo so popular back then. As long as it doesn’t smell like ass, I’d get some white-letter BFGs and roll ‘80s style.
That Escort looks like a tinny, rattly Shitbox that’s a punishment to be forced to drive. No thanks!
Olds. I had a 1989 Ciera Cruiser wagon as a first car. That one was an Iron Duke/3 speed auto car. Wasn’t a bad car, but it was thoroughly clapped out by the time my cheapskate parents handed it down to me. Teenage shenanigans like fitting 10 (skinny track running) high schoolers into it on the regular and even laxer maintenance than previously helped not a whit. But these were comfy cars. Any Escort with the 1.9 can burn. I hate that engine.
“Someone needs to tell the seller that Craigslist doesn’t charge by the word” That applies to about 20% of ads I see. Craigslist should, however, charge for ALL CAPS I KNOW WHAT I GOT CREAMPUFFSUPERCLEANRAREHEADTURNER!!!
And you only get three free meta tags.
The ’88 Escort Pony my buddy had in high school still holds the record as the slowest car I’ve ever driven.
Jason, your “Ghost Car” concept is pretty much the same idea behind “The Regular Prize” that is awarded at our ’80s/’90s meets. The prize goes to the best example of a boring, mundane regular car from back in the day, that you would never expect to be saved, but there it is. Winners include a Chevy Lumina, Celebrity Wagon and Ford Tempo.
Escort mileage: 69,000 miles.
Nice try, but I doubt anything that erotic ever happened in that vehicle.
Too bad the Escort doesn’t have a 5-speed. I had an ’87 GL wagon, black over silver with a red velour interior. It surprised me and everyone else on how much could be loaded in it. And yes, the TBI was light years beyond the carbureted version.
The Olds is the easy pick here. Better automatic, better engine, better everything.
Now if it was this Olds against a late 1980s Escort GT with the manual and in good running condition, then it would be harder to choose.
We already went over just how abysmal and criminally bad the GM 2.8 is yesterday.
This one is an ’87 with the CFI motor. (MPFIs say ‘EFI’) making 90HP, but a quite good 110ft/lbs of torque. Remember, the curb weight here? About 2100lbs. That’s it. The Ford ATX isn’t the most exciting, but they used the thing from 1980 until 1994 because it was reliable and simple. There’s no computer here so an MTX-II or III swap is purely mechanical.
And if you really want to cook with gas? The 1987 Escort GT is the source for half the parts to turn a gen 3 into a barnburner. Factory 4-2-1 header with post-merge catalyst, high lift camshaft, roller lifters, and a 2-piece intake that’ll take you to 110HP and nearly 150ft/lbs of torque using factory parts. And the harness is limited to the engine so it’s pretty much all bolt-up with no interior destruction required. A few more dollars in injectors, port and polish, machining the deck to bump compression, and some junkyard injectors will net you a 2000lbs, 150HP+ pocket rocket.
But as a shitbox? It’s fine as is. Do the timing belt every 90k (CVH is non-interference) and the trans fluid every 50k and that’s about all this’ll ever need.
Rootwyrm, you would know: weren’t the automatic transmissions in the Escort notoriously bad? That’s the reputation they had around here. From the early ‘90s through the Great Recession there would >always< be at least 2 for sale on 220 between Roanoke and Rocky Mount Va(~30 miles). $250-500 plus ‘runs good need tranz’. I’m really curious: were they fine if you changed the fluid regularly?
Pure myth. Escorts were always treated the worst of the entire Ford stable and then some. They were the bottom dollar, bottom rung, entry-level, “but hey at least it has an automatic.” So consequently, they got about as much maintenance as the bathroom at that shady off-brand gas station selling porno mags next to the kratom and CBD.
This gen got the ATX/FLC. Which was found in just about every other 4 cylinder FWD Ford product. That’s Lynx, Escort, EXP, LN7, Tempo, Topaz, Taurus, Laser, and export Falcon. The FLC stands for ‘Fluid Link Converter’ which also tells you it’s greatest weakness. That and Ford, for reasons which hopefully forever remain unknown, just… look, it’s an absolutely miserable transmission. It doesn’t have an OD and it’s really awful cable kickdown.
But miserable doesn’t mean it’s fragile. It’s simply that the lack of maintenance and tendency for leaks meant it invariably cost more to fix than the car was worth by the time it failed in an Escort. “Yeah, it’ll be $750 to rebuild the trans.” “The car’s worth $250!” “Sold.” But the problem of course is that it does develop leaks, both external and internal. And once it starts leaking internally, yep – you’re pulling it, which costs more than the car’s worth. A 1987 Ford Escort GL like this one had an original MSRP of just $7,312. It was literally the cheapest car you could buy with an automatic transmission, and consequently, entirely disposable even before the atrocious interior materials, poor assembly, bad paint, and even worse rustproofing.
You didn’t see that kind of death rate on even slightly higher end cars like the Tempo/Topaz or Taurus, simply because they were better maintained. Once the maintenance stops – usually with owner 3+ – it’s all borrowed time.
I’d take the Escort because for the brief moment in time I worked as a line tech at a Ford dealer, I did a lot of work on these, so I can sort of remember the ups and downs. Hopefully the seat bracket broke completely instead of cracked. A broken bracket got you a new one, a crack got you a piece pop-riveted to the crack track.
The price difference is more than made up for either in condition OR drive line / trim level difference. Cierra wins in spite of a closer emotional connection to the Escort.
I’d love to be able to edit out the extra “r”.
Lots of promise in both of these, but I’m going with the Olds. Mouse belts were of the devil.
That Ciera’s still around unlike many because of dat dere TruCoat!
I’d go for that one, even though I much prefer the 3.3 cars.
The first new car I ever bought, as a poor young college graduate, was a 1989 Ford Escort. It was a shitbox when it was brand new and it sure as hell hasn’t improved with age. Terrible gas mileage, awful handling, just a totally miserable car. It was the cheapest new car I could find at the time, long before I had learned the wisdom of buying gently used, but it’s one of my great regrets in life.
The Olds is so much better in every way, so if I had to buy one, I’d willingly fork over 3x the price of the Escort and be happy about it.
I had an ’88 Escort EXP back in the late Nineties that I used as a commute vehicle, I liked that wierd-ass thing. An oddball wing stolen from the Merkur XR4ti and only two seats, but the 1.9 hemi motor with a stick kept up with traffic OK, as long as I perpetually beat the dogshit out of it. My favorite thing was the big curved glass hatch, it weighed like 200lbs and would eventually tear the mounting bracket for the hatch struts right off the stamped hatch. Every single EXP I ever saw had a piece of wood lying in the back to prop up the hatch because the gas struts had failed and/or the brackets were ripped off. A/C would cool beer, though.
I’d buy another one right now, but I think they’ve all been crushed.
Have experience with both of these since they came out when I was in high school, the clear choice is the Olds. While not a great driving experience, it does in fact make a decent highway cruiser, and there is plenty of room in the back seat, if you know what I mean. The Escort is just a miserable car.
I had to vote for the Oldsmobile. My grandma owned one of these in light blue. One of the hardest things I had to do was tell her I wrecked it. Being a dumbass 17 year old I was driving it too fast through a series of turns and spun it into a ditch. The damage was oh so minor and at first I didn’t see anything. My dad noticed a dent in the driver front side and some dirt in the bumper. I had to tell her what happened and it sucked so hard. Of course, she forgave me because she was one of the nicest people to ever walk this planet but I still feel bad about it almost 30 years later.
There’s no way in hell I’d drive a us spec escort, so Olds. Mind you, 500 bucks for a more or less operational vehicle ought to be prime LeMons territory for someone. It might get a price for actually following the rules.