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    Phillip Greden

    Phillip Greden

    Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden. He thinks the Datsun F-10 is going to make a comeback.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1999 Mercedes-Benz C43 AMG

    As I've learned from my years poking around in big American self-service wrecking yards, high-end European machinery loses its value in a hurry when it gets into the hands of owners who don't take care of all those pesky maintenance items.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1989 Audi V8 Quattro

    After the "Unintended Acceleration" debacle of 1986, in which a 60 Minutes report on the auto-trans-equipped Audi 5000's alleged tendency to drive itself at full throttle into garage walls, sales of all Audis — even non-5000s with manual transmissions — plummeted in the United States and stayed at low levels well into the 1990s.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1990 Mitsubishi Montero

    Americans had been buying Mitsubishi-made pickups (badged as Plymouth Arrows and Dodge Ram 50s) for the better part of a decade when the Americanized version of the Pajero SUV appeared in American Mitsubishi showrooms. Naturally, there was a Dodge-badged version as well (known as the Raider), but finally Americans could buy a bouncy, off-road-capable SUV with big Mitsubishi badges all over it. The first-generation (1985-1991) Monteros have become quite rare, but I found this high-mile example in a Denver yard a few weeks back.

  • Junkyard Gems: Murdered-out 1990s European luxury sedans

    These fully-depreciated late-1990s European luxury sedans spend their last days together in a Denver-area wrecking yard.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1983 GMC Caballero

    Everyone knows about the Chevrolet El Camino, including the later 1982-1987 G-Body models, but the El Camino's GMC-branded siblings seem to remain in obscurity. Known as the GMC Sprint for the 1971 through 1977 model years and the GMC Caballero after that, these cartrucks were virtually identical to their better-known Chevrolet brethren but sold in much smaller quantities.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1998 Isuzu Oasis

    The badge-engineered Isuzu version of the Honda Odyssey minivan, this rare 1998 Isuzu Oasis ends its journey in a Denver self-service wrecking yard.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1982 Mazda 626 sedan

    The ancestor of the Mazda6, the Mazda 626, got a modern front-wheel-drive setup starting in the 1983 model year. Prior to that, though, Mazda sold a rear-wheel-drive 626 based on the Capella, which could be purchased in North America for the 1978 through 1982 model years. At that time, Mazda was best-known on these shores for gas-swilling Wankel-engined cars, though the economical GLC (distant ancestor to the Mazda3) had given the brand more mainstream appeal.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1985 Nissan Pulsar NX

    A rare-example of the first generation of Nissan's gas-sipping sporty car, a 1985 Nissan Pulsar NX.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1996 BMW Z3 Roadster

    The BMW Z3 maintained its resale value for longer than its 3-Series cousin, but now examples are showing up in the cheap self-service wrecking yards of California. Here's a 1996 BMW Z3 in a San Francisco Bay Area junkyard.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1986 Saab 900 Turbo

    The Saab 900 sold well in Colorado, and owners of these cars tend to hang onto them for decades. For those reasons, I still find 900s while making my rounds of the self-service wrecking yards in the Denver region. The 900 received a makeover for the 1987 model year, so today's Junkyard Gem comes from the final year of the 900 with the endearingly 1960s face derived from its 99 predecessor.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1959 International Harvester B-110 pickup truck

    Everyone likes 1950s and early 1960s American pickups, and you still see a surprising number of them driving around in our current century (there's a '53 Ford F-100 in my Denver neighborhood that serves as a great test subject for my beloved old film cameras). Rough ones aren't worth much, though, particularly if they weren't made by GM or Ford, and so depressing quantities show up in the self-service wrecking yards I frequent.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1984 Ford Ranger Explorer

    The successor to the Mazda-built Ford Courier, this 1984 Ford Ranger in a San Francisco Bay Area junkyard has plenty of luxury extras (by 1984 small-truck standards).

  • Junkyard Gem: 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis LS Brougham Station Wagon

    A late-1960s-style big Ford wagon that was still being made in the 1980s, this 1983 Mercury Grand Marquis Brougham wagon showed up in a Northern California wrecking yard.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1982 Toyota Starlet

    With the best gasoline mileage of any car you could buy in the United States, this tiny rear-wheel-drive 1982 Toyota Starlet was still on the road at age 37... when a crash took it out of commission.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1990 Chevrolet Beretta Indy

    Rare? Yes. Valuable? Not so much.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1985 Bertone X1/9

    Once Fiat departed these shores after 1982, Malcolm Bricklin continued to import the 124 Sport Spider as a Pininfarina and the X1/9 as a Bertone. Here's an example of the latter type in a San Francisco Bay Area junkyard.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1995 Buick Regal GS

    In the middle 1960s, The General's Buick Division was known for its well-built cars, positioned just a step below Cadillac in the GM prestige hierarchy and popular with successful businessmen of the not-so-flashy sort. To snazz up the division's image for the 1965 model year, Buick's overlords created the Gran Sport high-performance package for the Riviera and Skylark. During the ensuing decades, various models of Buick got GS-ized, with varying ratios of actual-versus-image performance.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1977 Volkswagen Rabbit

    Other than the Cabriolet versions (which were sold in North America until the early 1990s), you'll have a tough time finding examples of the Mk1 Volkwagen Golf in North American wrecking yards. I've seen a few in recent years, but most of the ordinary, commuter-grade 1975-1984 Rabbits got used up, worn out, and crushed long before the 1990s came to a close.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1997 Land Rover Discovery XD

    Land Rovers tend to depreciate fast, once they get into the hands of third or fourth owners who don't take care of regular maintenance items and allow the interiors to get trashed. The XD was a low-production special edition for the US market, and it came with various flavors of stripes and badges. This one might be a clone, or a mashup of ordinary Discovery and XD Discovery body panels.

  • Junkyard Gem: 1990 Ford Taurus SHO

    Ford sold the first-generation Taurus SHO for the 1989 through 1991 model years, and no Taurus since that time has attained its level of madness. Oh, sure, later Tauruses had more horsepower, but the combination of lightweight, ordinary-looking sedan, high-revving engine, and manual transmission made the original Taurus SHO the purest of the factory-hot-rod Detroit sedans of its era. Ford hired piano- and motorcycle-builder Yamaha to turn the unexciting Vulcan V6 into a performance engine, and the result was a 7,000-rpm redline, 220 horsepower, and one of the coolest-looking intake manifolds in automotive history.