Author: Murilee Martin
By the center Sixties, George Romney had left the helm of American Motors to turn into governor of Michigan and company president Roy Abernethy had decided that AMC needed to compete more directly against GM, Ford and Chrysler. To ensure that the Kenosha manufacturer formed from the 1954 merger of Nash and Hudson to try this, a real full-size automobile needed to be created to steal sales from the Impala, Galaxie and Monaco. With a wheelbase stretch and a restyling by Dick Teague, the Rambler Ambassador became that automobile for the 1965 model 12 months. Here’s a once-snazzy soft-top Ambassador…
The 1965-1970 version of GM’s full-size B Platform was considered one of The General’s best successes, underpinning nearly 13 million cars. Each of the U.S.-market GM automotive divisions (except Cadillac) had their very own B-Bodies during those model years, from the proletarian Chevrolet Biscayne on as much as the opulent Buick Wildcat. Doing business only one small rung below Buick on the GM “Ladder of Success” in 1968 was the Oldsmobile Division, and the king of Olds B-Bodies that 12 months was the Delta 88 Custom Holiday Sedan four-door hardtop. Today’s Junkyard Gem is considered one of those cars, present…
Recently, we took a have a look at a solid late-production Chevy Corvair coupe in a Denver junkyard, and a few readers couldn’t consider that anybody would throw away such a rare classic. Hold onto your hats, Corvair fans, because eight Corvairs just showed up within the inventory of a yard in Colorado Springs. Because we just saw a coupe from the ultimate couple of years of Corvair production, I’ve chosen an early four-door sedan from the eightsome to follow it in this series. U-Pull-&-Pay got the model years mistaken for many of those cars of their system, probably because…
When Chevrolet introduced the Camaro for the 1967 model 12 months, Pontiac got its own version at the identical time (in contrast to Mercury, which had to attend just a few years to begin selling Mustang-sibling Cougars). This was the Firebird, which stayed in production until each it and the Camaro were discontinued after the 2002 model 12 months. Today’s Junkyard Gem is a base Firebird coupe from the ultimate fourth generation, present in a Colorado automobile graveyard recently. Lately, first- and second-generation (1967-1969 and 1970-1981) Firebirds are all but inconceivable to seek out in the massive self-service wrecking yards,…
Chrysler killed off the wagon versions of the Plymouth Valiant and Dodge Dart compacts in america after 1966, which meant that the one latest small station wagons offered through the center Nineteen Seventies by American Dodge and Plymouth dealers were the Mitsubishi-built Colt and the Hillman-built Cricket. Meanwhile, American Motors was doing pretty much selling Hornet Sportabouts, so something needed to be done. That something turned out to be the Dodge Aspen and its Plymouth Volaré sibling, which debuted as 1976 models and included longroof versions. We saw a discarded Volaré wagon in glorious brown a few years back, and…
When General Motors created the Geo brand to sell vehicles designed and — in some cases — built by Japanese partners, the primary 4 models were introduced for the 1989 model 12 months: the Metro (Suzuki Cultus), Prizm (Toyota Sprinter), Spectrum (Isuzu Gemini) and Tracker (Suzuki Sidekick). Geo got the axe in 1997, with the Metro, Prizm and Tracker becoming Chevrolets. Of those, the Tracker survived the longest, with U.S.-market sales continuing into 2004. Here’s an example of a really late Tracker, present in a North Carolina automobile graveyard recently. The 1989-1997 first-generation Trackers were based on the Suzuki Sidekick,…
Starting in 1972, Ford began selling Mazda Proceed pickups with Courier badges in the US. At the identical time, Mazda was selling the identical trucks here because the B-Series. Then the Ranger replaced the Courier in 1983, while the B-Series remained available in North America through 1993. For 1994, the Mazda/Ford pickup world got flipped on its head, with a Mazda-ized Ranger taking up the B-Series name here. Today’s Junkyard Gem is one in all the early Ford-built Mazda pickups, present in a North Carolina automotive graveyard recently. The precedent for slapping Mazda badges on U.S.-market Ford trucks began with…
Once you’re a young city-dweller and your automotive is a generic 20-year-old sedan with the bottom engine, what do you do? You personalize it, in fact, and that is what the ultimate owner of this Accord LX did. An unlucky rear-end collision sent this automotive to a Denver automotive graveyard, giving us an illustrative snapshot of a spot and time in popular automotive culture. This automotive began life as certainly one of the greater than 350,000 Honda Accords sold in the USA for the 2005 model yr. It is a dime-a-dozen mid-level DX four-door with the bottom 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine…
Just over a month before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009, General Motors announced that the 83-year-old Pontiac Division could be “phased out” by the tip of 2010. Only three Pontiac vehicles were sold as 2010 models in the US: the Solstice, Vibe and G6 (recent G3s were sold here during 2010 but they were all 2009 models, while the G5 was available as a 2010 model only in Canada and Mexico). Today’s little bit of junkyard automotive history is one in all the very last Vibes ever built, present in a yard near Denver, Colorado. This automobile…
Greater than a thousand years ago, Scandinavian invaders conquered much of northern England and Danes got here to rule the old Roman city they called Jórvík. The Danelaw is long gone, but I visited that city (now often known as York) a few months back and located some ancient Scandinavian treasure in a junkyard scrapyard there: a Saab 96, as rusty as a long-buried iron Viking sword but still recognizable. We saw a 1973 Saab 95, the wagon version of this automotive, in a California boneyard last fall. 1973 was the last 12 months for the 95 and 96 in…
