It’s an automotive cockroach. The Buick Century, the one made between 1982 and 1996, might be proof that at some point in time GM actually did try to make a good front-driver car for the 1980s. The front-drive A-body was everywhere…Chevy Celebrity, Olds Cutlass Ciera, and the Pontiac 6000 STE with it’s funky all-wheel-drive system all came from this platform. It was about as exciting as a barely-warm freezer waffle, but they could last. Think of it as GM’s apology for the Citation and it’s related siblings. Fourteen years more or less unchanged is a pretty solid run and these things sold decently well, too. That doesn’t mean that anybody is shedding a tear when one gets beat on like a rental with the walkaway insurance in full effect, but it does give the car some cool points. This is your typical Craigslist fare, right here: what would be an otherwise clean Century had been the recipient of an unplanned rhinoplasty and left the otherwise clean but classy Century looking like a bulldog in the middle of a morning dump. Instead of harvesting parts and sending a running, driving car off to the scrapyard for an easy couple of hundred dollars, spotlights were installed, stickers were added and the OEM foot-operated E-brake was modified into a redneck drift brake. The car isn’t meant to do anything but to run the Lemons Rally trips, which it’s done, and to have fun with, which you’ll see happen.
I can’t believe these words are coming out of my mouth…but after seeing the beating this Buick took and how little it genuinely seemed to be affected, I kind of want one of these now. The best proof that a daily driver is worth the coin is when you can beat the shit out of it and it simply looks at you like you need to toughen up. I’m willing to bet that a Dodge Spirit or a Ford Contour would have bent seven ways from Sunday trying this.
my ex wifes dad bought a new 1987 Pontiac 6000 put nearly 200thou on it then passed it on to 3 consecutive daughters who used and abused it through college along with an assortment of boyfriends who also abused it it was still running and driving when I drove it into Standard auto wreckers yard pushing nearly 400thou !. . .I must admit I felt shitty just leaving it to be picked apart then crushed …
There was a 2 door t-type century available for a couple years. I think it was basically an interior and trim package with stiffer springs and bigger sway bars. Pretty cool little cars if you want something you don’t see everyday. I’m sure a turbo 3800 swap would make a nasty little sleeper out of one.
That video was genuinely hard to watch. Men have to act like childish morons? The conversation- pointless blathering, talking over each other at a million miles an hour, sounds like a bunch of women. Geezus…what happened to men?
Not to mention who would do that to an Alfa Romeo Giulia? Why can’t I be rich and have an inordinate amount of free time.
I rolled my Mom’s Olds Cutlass Ciera at a high rate of speed when I was 16. The passenger A pillar ended up about 6″ from my face while sitting in the drivers seat. No belt like on like a dummy but walked away pretty much unscathed.