Cars that went to the salvage yard in quick order

[Dyusik]

Originally Posted By: morepwr
I havent seen a neon on the road in quite a while. I would ad Chevy Beretta to the list. I cant remember seeing one in a very long time.


Drive one daily. Solid. Bulging dash, headliner sagged, no paint, and stereo amp is fraking out. Otherwise drives great. A few 96 cent cans of white is all in going to do to it to spiff it up. oh It leaks into the trunk.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

I remember the Neon advertising. "Peep Peep"

 

[Hokiefyd]

Originally Posted By: crazyoildude
A lot of Cadillacs from 96 on with the northstar that engine was very powerful and fast but it had head bolt issues and the engine had to be removed to fix it the correct way. Before 1996 (dex cool era) they seemed to be good but after 96 we did a boat load of them they were a German design to make up for the HT-4100 another engine we did a lot of and the conversions to 350 oldsmobile engines.


The Northstar engine was not a German design. They also rarely had issues with Dex-Cool. I owned two...a '97 and an '01. Excellent engines and easy to work on. Water pumps were cake to replace. Spark plugs, also very easy. Intake manifold was dry, so if you had to replace the starter down in the Vee of the engine, it could be done standing up. That engine incorporated a lot of very smart designs for its day. Under-spec'd head bolt threads were a weakness. This was remedied later on in the Northstar's production, but it was a little too late to shake its reputation (often from shade tree mechanics, whose failed "Heli Coil" repairs would repeatedly haunt them).

 

[IndyIan]

1st gen Neons are getting a little sparse here, even though its dodge country. Mine was quite tough and reliable after the headgasket got done. A few years ago there were still quite a few.
Honda Preludes are nearly extinct as well which is a bit surprising to me. No protégés left either.

 

[hattaresguy]

Road salt keeps older vehicles off the roads around here, anything pre 2000 is pretty much shot.

 

[Yah-Tah-Hey]

I remember the Neon advertising. "Beep Beep." Pos when it came out and a pos when it was discontinued. Let's not forget the Yugo. Consumer Union said it was "a waste of natural resources."

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: 01rangerxl
The early Mitsubishi based Avengers never sold in large numbers, so they were kind of an unusual sight when new.

I can't think of a particular model I have seen hitting the yards early other than the usual rental car and weird brand econobox suspects, but I do sometimes see outliers that catch my eye. For example, Pull-A-Part had a 2008 or 2009 Fusion about a year ago. It was fairly complete, but was a rental car grade trim level. It had an underhood fire that did a lot of damage...pretty much everything from the dash forward was trashed. The damage was enough to put the car in Pull-A-Part's budget, probably around $500.

The last time I was at Pull-A-Part, about three weeks ago, there was a 2003 Nissan Frontier crew cab on the yard. It was a V6, had not been wrecked, and only had about 140K miles on it. It looked like up until recently it had been a fairly nice truck. No idea how it ended up junked so soon. I can't imagine any mechanical problem making that truck worth junking at those miles...plenty of Pathfinders, Frontiers, and Xterras to get replacement parts from. Pull-A-Part only pays about $500 tops, usually much less for their cars.


Went in a river, maybe?

 

[eljefino]

Daewoo anything... Lazagna, Nubrian? The pontiac lemans that was a daewoo. Ford Aspires and Probes. Toyota Previas. Hyundai Scoupes and Tiburons. 1st and 2nd gen taurusses.

Stuff hanging on: 1st Gen Kia sephias. Tons of dents from cheap thin body but somehow still out there. Saturn s-series. Cutlass Cieras. LH dodge intrepids (3.5?)

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: morepwr
I havent seen a neon on the road in quite a while. I would ad Chevy Beretta to the list. I cant remember seeing one in a very long time.


I saw one yestrerday...wearing the livery of a driving school!

My mother's 95 Highline was good...went about 75,000 miles (wrecked in an ice storm) with no trouble worse than a wheel bent by a pothole. Her 98 Sport was lousy...the DOHC/auto was a horrid combination, gas mileage was poor with no OD, build quality just wasn't as good. (It was from Mexico, her 95 was built in Belvidere.)

 

[Jarlaxle]

Originally Posted By: Hokiefyd
Originally Posted By: crazyoildude
A lot of Cadillacs from 96 on with the northstar that engine was very powerful and fast but it had head bolt issues and the engine had to be removed to fix it the correct way. Before 1996 (dex cool era) they seemed to be good but after 96 we did a boat load of them they were a German design to make up for the HT-4100 another engine we did a lot of and the conversions to 350 oldsmobile engines.


The Northstar engine was not a German design. They also rarely had issues with Dex-Cool. I owned two...a '97 and an '01. Excellent engines and easy to work on. Water pumps were cake to replace. Spark plugs, also very easy. Intake manifold was dry, so if you had to replace the starter down in the Vee of the engine, it could be done standing up. That engine incorporated a lot of very smart designs for its day. Under-spec'd head bolt threads were a weakness. This was remedied later on in the Northstar's production, but it was a little too late to shake its reputation (often from shade tree mechanics, whose failed "Heli Coil" repairs would repeatedly haunt them).


Don't forget trhe dreaded "Northstar drip", the $2000+ oil leak.

 

[wag123]

The Chevy Vega. I don't think any one of them made it past 5 years old. If the engine didn't crater first, the car rusted into oblivion.

 

[ledslinger]

X body GM. I hadn't seen one on the road in years, and thought I'd seen my last one. Saw one in a driveway that was likely licensed and ran. My oldest brother who always makes bad car buying decisions bought a Chevy Citation new. What a total bit of junk. Rode like no car I've ever been in, like the front and rear were two different cars.

 

[carock]

Man oh man, where is AUDI on this list? Talk about a race to the scrapyard!

 

[tgferg67]

The Saturn S Series. Oil consumption and lots of female drivers who don't check oil - a winning combination.

 

[gfh77665]

Originally Posted By: HosteenJorje
I remember the Neon advertising. "Beep Beep." Pos when it came out and a pos when it was discontinued. Let's not forget the Yugo. Consumer Union said it was "a waste of natural resources."


LOL, thats what I was thinking, too. There was a funny internet picture of somewhere in Eastern Europe, where some guys lifted a Yugo by hand, and flipped it into a green dumpster, LOL.

 

[RedVic]

Originally Posted By: HosteenJorje
I remember the Neon advertising. "Beep Beep." Pos when it came out and a pos when it was discontinued. Let's not forget the Yugo. Consumer Union said it was "a waste of natural resources."


I agree 1000% that consumer union is "a waste of natural resources"!!!

 

[daves87rs]

Originally Posted By: Silverado12
Originally Posted By: oilpsi2high
Chevrolet Cobalt


I've seen some of those w/high mileage.


Ditto.


And mine is still going....

 

[daves87rs]

See very few Neons now, even the ones at the end....

Wife had a 95 when we got married, and besides blowing head gaskets (was finishing the second one when we got rid of it), it was a fun little car to drive.

One of the cars you didn't have to stop at low speeds to make a turn..

.

 

[Oldmoparguy1]

When the Neon came out I went to look. I was driving an 87 Omni at the time. the first gen Neons were just an updated Omni. Early Chrysler 2.2 8V motors had a bad design headgasket, and there were a lot of failures. They were fixed fairly quickly. The 2.0/2.4 16V engines were given the same design headgasket! It was an engineering decision. It was 2 or 3 years before they fixed it.... I have 2 Omnis, an 86 turbo with 127K and an 87 N/A with 175K. I have 2 minivans with the 4 speed, both over 200K. That transmission was used across all the lines at one time and was just fine if you took care of it. Trash talk against Chrysler products is mostly hearsay from people with no personal experience. We have several on here bitog who routinely bad mouth Chrysler products, while not ever having owned one. It's just the thing to do.

 

[rjundi]

Originally Posted By: tgferg67
The Saturn S Series. Oil consumption and lots of female drivers who don't check oil - a winning combination.


Standard trunk accessory was a case of cheap motor oil. My brother in law made it to 280k before some sort of brace rotted out in it. He changed oil once per year at state inspection because his feeling was he poured so much into it qt/400-500 miles it was clean.

My few friends who owned one all had a case of supertech in trunk.